Not feeling good enough?

Being totally honest with you all, I’ve always been someone who has leant towards never feeling quite good enough. I would constantly look at others and put more energy than I would care to admit into thinking about why they were smarter or more capable than me.

My work for a management consultancy exacerbated this. We tended to hire people who were from Oxford or Cambridge, spoke 5 languages, and the culture of the company was often framed in the context of people supporting others in the company being the best of the best. At the time it was not good for me - I worked harder, took on more responsibility [often without the financial rewards] and tried to be something I wasn’t. I tried to make my brain more data driven and become a thought leader on matters that required high data analysis. All in the effort to prove to myself that I was as good as everyone else. 

Now I look back I realise it was a huge life lesson for me. My detachment to who I really am, which is a people person who relies heavily on intuition and emotion, made me really unhappy. I wish now that I had seen the power in being my authentic true self. I think about the me now who is comfortable with who she is and knows the real power I have with my ability to read people and to cut through nonsense. I know that I have a natural talent for getting people to open up, to articulate complex theory around the power of the mind so that people can make it work for them and to use my gut to steer people on issues they have been avoiding. I know how to tap into people’s real potential and use it to transform their emotional states and so their lives.

Sometimes I think about the good it would have done my old company had I shown up more as myself, where with hindsight, those skills were most needed.

It is no co-incidence that several of my old colleagues have become my clients, ones I have come to care for deeply and who remind me of all the ways that what I do is needed. People who’ve been set on a corporate path that they didn’t really want to be on or who were quite literally buckling under the pressure of not being true to themselves like I was.

With this in mind, I now teach the power of authenticity and how to be true to who you really are in week 7 of my Fear to Founder Program. Often the women on my program [corporate, smart, cool, driven] have never really taken the time to own what they are really about. How times of adversity have changed them and what their values are and it is transformational for them.

So if that is you, please take the time to think about your story and what you are about. What is important to you? What is the change you want to make? How are you not being true to who you really are? How would people benefit is you owned what you are really about? 

Most importantly, it is exhausting being who we are not. So start being brave, bold and accepting yourself for who you really are. As you do, you will find the rest will follow.