Overachieving and Under-Earning: How to stop questioning your worth and start earning it (Part 2)

This is the second article in a 3 part series on Overachieving and Under-earning. Find the first part here.

Below we look at how traditional career building falls short, why it's not what we want to be but who, and how success is an inside job.

Where are you going?

We have all been there, browsing the aisles of the grocery store without a list, searching for something to jump out at us and scream “This is what you want to eat!” This is often how we end up building a career. Without a list of experiences we want to have, jobs we want to do, accomplishments we want to have, we wander around and consider only the opportunities that jump out at us. 

Career planning often asks the question “what do you want to be?” meaning what title do you ultimately want to define yourself by. I like to ask “Who do you want to be?” meaning what qualities and attributes do you have? It is a slightly different approach that I find helps women in particular define what it is that they want to do. 

You see, as women, we often define leadership roles in terms of how men have executed them because, well, often men have already executed them. This can rub us the wrong way since it doesn’t always line up with how we want to feel while doing a particular role and this holds us back from achieving our full potential. 

For example, women often shy away from being a CEO because they don’t want to have to put work before their family, since this is what they have seen men do in the role. Or they don’t want to be a politician because they have seen men act sleazy in that role. They don’t want to be an entrepreneur because they saw their dad work to the bone trying to bring success for his family.

If we think about who we want to be, we understand that we get to choose how we think and act. We suddenly realize that we can be a CEO, a politician or an entrepreneur in a way that is aligned with who we see ourselves as. 

So who do you want to be? A leader who inspires? An entrepreneur that only works part time? An MPP who stays true to her core values?

You are worthy. 

We hustle so hard for our worthiness without ever truly realizing that there is absolutely nothing that you can do to increase how worthy you are as a person. You were born at your fullest capacity for being valuable and worthy. Nothing you have done and nothing anyone has done to you, can decrease or take away from your inherent worth as a human. 

If we accept that our worth is static and unchanging, it relieves the pressure to perform and please and work so hard to prove that we are a good human, worthy of love, and of value in the world. 

We can also let go of the need to worry about changing how others perceive us. We cannot control other people’s thoughts or actions, so spending time worrying about what others will say about us or think about us is wasted energy that could be put towards mastering self-confidence. It’s the same amount of energy output, just redirected towards something that you actually have control over. 

We don’t need to prove that we are worthy. We may need to prove that we can competently do a task, but the ability to complete a task doesn’t make us better as a human than anyone else and the inability to do so doesn’t decrease our worth. 

This may seem like a heady and deep topic for something focused on careers, but the truth is that so many of us operate under the belief that if they just work harder, longer, or better that they will receive the love that they already have access to (HINT: it’s self-love). When we look outside of ourselves for our worth, we will always come up short. 

When we live from a place of knowing that we are inherently and unchangingly worthy and valuable as a human, we take on a very different energy- one of unshakable confidence. You are able to take risks, fail, be seen, ask for what you need or want, and many other things that give us the tools and experiences that advance our careers. 

Success is an inside job. Meaning, when you feel successful because you believe there is nothing that can take away from your self worth, then you act and become successful.