Part 8 of My Journey Starting a New Career in My 40’s: "Letting Go of Past Resentment"

“There is much to be enraged by these days. When we as leaders hold on to unhealed wounds, we can inflict harm on the people we seek to lead. Committing to our own healing then becomes critical for creating the conditions in which all can thrive. It is a leadership imperative to continuously work on making ourselves whole. Forgiveness releases us from the bonds of past trauma and creates room for us to be more fully human. It allows us to lay down old histories and lay new spacious and liberating foundations.”

- Akaya Windwood and Rajasvini Bhansali “Leading with Joy - Practices for Uncertain Times”

As a leader and now leadership coach I’ve worked with many high performers who are driven by a chip on their shoulder. The leaders have experienced some degree of hardship in their lives, and are motivated by the fear of the past repeating itself or coming true. These leaders believe having a chip on their shoulder is an asset. They use resentment as fuel for their extreme drive and ambition, and choose to work longer and harder than everyone around them. Over time these leaders experience burnout and even debilitating stress, but choose to keep going because they feel they must achieve success at all costs.??

In “The 15 Commitments of Conscious Leadership” the book talks about how all leaders can be driven by 5 levels of motivation. According to the book, levels 1 and 2 leave a toxic residue, and levels 3-5 do not.

In my experience, leaders who have a chip on their shoulder are motivated by levels 1 and 2. In efforts to avoid repeating feelings of fear and shame they’ve experienced in the past, they hold onto old grudges and over rotate their focus to “winning” in the game of life. They use blame, shame and criticism to motivate themselves and others, which creates toxic relationships and workplace cultures. At an unconscious level, these leaders accumulate money, power and status as evidence that they are winning, but rarely feel lasting joy from their accomplishments or fulfillment from their wealth and prestige. Instead, they find themselves on a never ending treadmill of exhaustion and anxiety as they run from their fear of failure. Many of these leaders report they are barely holding it together.????

In Conscious Leadership we have a saying that “if you spot it you got it”. That means what you notice in others is likely something that exists in yourself. Upon deeper reflection, I realized I had a pretty big chip on my own shoulder. As a minority woman in advertising, I’ve definitely experienced my share of feeling “at the effect of” an unjust world over the last 20 years. As one of the only Asian people in the agencies I chose to work at, when discrimination happened, I allowed it make me feel small. Once an Agency Partner once asked me to read some Japanese calligraphy in front of others. When I mentioned I was born in Taiwan and raised in the US, he frowned and said “you call yourself Asian?” while everyone laughed. I also struggled being a young woman in a male dominated industry. I remember sitting in an edit bay while a Creative Director asked me out repeatedly in front of the other men. At one point a partner in the agency joked “why don’t you just take her to the parking lot and rape her?” In that moment I remember shaking with fear and anger, but doing everything in my power not to show it. I couldn’t let them win. When I really look back on my past, the chip on my shoulder started long before my career even began. While my immigrant father was a stable financial provider, he also had an explosive temper. He was abusive throughout my childhood and often told me I was stupid and worthless. As a result of these, and many other experiences, I developed a drive to overcome hardship at an early age, which then snowballed long into adulthood. I spent a good deal of my career running from my own fear of failure, needing to prove to myself and others that I was smart, worthy and successful.? I unconsciously believed that wholeness would come if I kept my head down and worked harder than everyone else. In the story in my mind I would eventually triumph, and painful memories of the past would be but a distant memory.?

I share my experiences because I believe we ALL understand the hardship of being made to feel less than. No matter what your life experience, we can all relate to wanting to prove others wrong, especially those who doubt us or tell us we can’t. I also want to acknowledge that positive things can emerge from this tension, like taking action against injustice and using resilience and hard work to create a purposeful and meaningful life. These are worthwhile experiences that a healthy dose of adversity can push us towards. What I want to point to in this article however, is the danger of the chip on the shoulder when it becomes the main source of motivation. Sure, in our 20’s and 30’s being motivated by toxic fear and extrinsic rewards might improve the quality of our lives - at least in the short term. When we are younger and work harder than everyone else, we often get promoted, recognized and climb that corporate ladder. But by the time we reach our 40’s and 50’s, this way of being feels unsustainable. Gone unchecked, it can result in burnout, broken relationships and in some cases depression and severe somatic symptoms. In my case, by my late 30’s I found myself divorced and unhappy having spent 70% of my career either on the road or working long hours. To borrow a term from Arthur Brooks, I had become a success-addicted workaholic with little understanding of what really motivated me from the inside.?

I recently read Deb Liu’s book “Take Back Your Power” and her chapter on forgiveness really resonated with me. In the book Deb talks about how being aware of past grudges, and how coming into forgiveness is the first step in truly becoming whole again.??

“Imagine the hurt of being wronged as a snake’s fang embedded in your skin. As long as it’s there, the poison continues to infect you, and the wound can’t heal. Your suffering continues, and resentment grows. The pain of removing the fang—of choosing to forgive—can be immense in the moment, but its benefits to your psyche cannot be overstated. It not only gives you a chance to heal and recover, but it stops the poison from continuing to enter your body. No longer festering, the wound can now close as your body filters out the remaining resentment, anger, and distress. Removing the fang is the first step to becoming whole again.

Though forgiveness is a powerful force, in American society it is sometimes viewed as a weakness, as if by forgiving someone, we are letting them off the hook for their transgressions. What we don’t realize is that forgiveness is for the forgiver, not for the forgiven. Not only does it yield psychological benefits, but it also yields physical and emotional dividends.”?

- Deb Liu, “Take Back Your Power”

So what does this all have to do with a career pivot in your 40’s??

As someone who had long been fueled by a chip on my shoulder, it was through forgiveness that I really started to understand my authentic power and purpose. With the help of Conscious Leadership and other coaching and therapy practices, I chose to remove the metaphorical fang so my body could heal. As the poison left my body, I began to shift from the limits of a victim consciousness to a creator mindset. I stopped blaming and criticizing others, and I especially stopped blaming myself. I allowed myself to feel all my feelings, especially lingering sadness, anger and fear. I separated facts from stories about the past, and loosened the grip of righteousness on my stories. I began to reveal my inarguable truth to people I was in a meaningful relationship with. It wasn't easy, but I knew that stepping into integrity around the content of my past could allow my impact and influence on others to be exponentially greater. And this didn’t have to mean forgetting or dismissing my difficult experiences. In Conscious Leadership we often reference Byron Katie who says “in life, pain is inevitable but suffering is optional.” In my case, I was willing to honor and acknowledge the hurt of the past, but chose to forgive rather than to resent. This freed me from suffering and gave me energy to step into a vision for my most exquisite life. So many clients tell me they have a vision for what they want to do, but at the end of a long day or week have no energy left to take action. My response to them is to hold a mirror to where energy is leaking. Holding a grudge requires energy. Building walls to protect and defend oneself requires energy. And running from your fear of failure? It’s the equivalent of being on a high speed treadmill with no “off” button. It’s no wonder leaders with a chip on their shoulder struggle to muster the energy to step into a different way of being.??

Life shows up the way it does, and resentment is a natural defense mechanism that occurs in all of us. But by understanding how the chip on our shoulder can limit us, we can instead choose to forgive. By forgiving we can increase our potential for real impact. We can create from a place of self compassion and wholeness. We can dissolve the energetic blocks that aren’t serving our greatest growth and evolution. And from there, we can step into our full aliveness and begin creating the life that we really want.?

Follow: @joycechen_coaching (Instagram) and The Conscious Leadership Group

Action Steps Towards Forgiveness

As you reflect on this article, what past resentments or grudges do you continue to harbor? These grudges might be contributing to an extreme fear of failure (and rotation to workaholism as a result), burnout and exhaustion, or a pattern of stuckness in your career. Here are few helpful practices that may help you open the door to forgiveness around a particular issue (would recommend doing this with a coach, therapist, or even a close friend that can witness you):

• Think about any areas of life where you are holding resentment.
• Notice any constriction or tightening of the body in response as you tune into these memories or thoughts. Breathe and allow these body sensations.?
• Allow any corresponding feelings that arise in order to feel them all the way through - sadness, anger, fear may show up.?
• Take a few breaths of gentle kindness and compassion for yourself.? If you are struggling to do this, try this forgiveness meditation by Tara Brach.?
• See if you’d be willing to accept yourself for feeling everything you are feeling, especially fear.??
• If you are willing, reveal withholds that you might have with the person you have resentment towards if you want to cultivate a meaningful relationship with them. In the practice of Conscious Leadership, revealing is about being self expressed and known, not about changing or controlling the other person. If you notice you are unwilling to reveal or if speaking to them isn’t possible, write down what you would say to them as a clearing exercise for yourself.??