Have you tried to advocate for yourself at work and call attention to all of your powerful contributions, but still feel unseen by those that matter?
This week, I share my own story about why I spent so much of my life blending in, and how that prevented me from rising and getting recognized at work.
I didn’t understand the skill of advocating for myself.
But once I recognized the key blocks preventing me from being able to champion my own work, I was able to speak up easily.
If you’re still struggling to confidently advocate for yourself, tune in for this week’s episode to learn the 3 blocks that are getting in the way.
QUOTES:
“Some bosses will like you, some bosses will not. It has nothing to do with you. It’s just the way the world works. Some people are into you and some people are not. But when your self worth is tied up into your job, it’s going to be tied up into their opinion. Some days you feel great because you have a great boss, and some days you feel crappy about yourself because you don’t. And when you start to really remember that your worth and value is not tied to what they think of you, you will be able to be in your power no matter what is going on.”
“The sooner you can reclaim your power back from other people’s opinions (of you), and from your job, you will be able to advocate for yourself that much sooner and faster.”
“If you’re in a swirl around what you really care about, what you really want, you will never be able to powerfully advocate for yourself…. It’s hard to stand behind something if you don’t even know that’s what you want. So this is a huge one to get clear on: What is it that you actually want?”
“Are you going for the promotion because you think you’re supposed to? Is that just the ladder that you’re on?… If you’re in a swirl around what you really care about, what you really want, you will never be able to powerfully, powerfully advocate for yourself.”
“The good news is, is that you can start to make shifts in any of those three categories. It’s really possible. It starts by paying attention to what’s going on in your head, the thoughts that are coming up for you, and then just starting to address it and starting to pay attention for it. Like, if you’re not sending clear boundaries from work with work, you’re probably giving away your self worth and your power to your job. So you could just make it simple and say, okay, I don’t work on weekends anymore. Those are practices that require you to learn to be quiet and to tune inward and to say, okay, what is there? What information is inside me that is going to start to guide me that is not related to me taking a test or taking another person.”
NICOLE
Hello, friends. Welcome back to the School of Self-worth. I am your host, Nicole Tsong. Today, we have got a big, big topic on tap for you. This is one that I hear about a lot from my clients, and I wanted to bring it to all of you here. That’s really how I come up with the topics that we are talking about here on the School of Self-Worth, and today, we get to dig into this juicy topic of what is getting in the way of you advocating for yourself at work?
So this is a topic relevant to Asian American women and to anyone who works with, or has someone on their team, or reports to, or is in any capacity connected to an Asian American woman. I have to say I love this conversation, and I’ve got some really great tips ahead that are going to make this so simple. At the same time, you might have some resistance to some of the things I share, because they get in deep. They get into the things we don’t necessarily want to look at. But I promise that by looking at these things, you start to see the truth, and that truth is how you can shift out of these blocks. There truly is freedom on the other side.
If you’re an AAPI woman who wants to manifest her promotion in 60 days, working 20 % fewer hours, make sure to DM me ‘promotion’ at Nicole Tsong on Instagram, because I’ve got something there for you. In the meantime, let’s do this. Let’s get started with this amazing conversation.
Welcome to the School of Self-Worth, a podcast for ambitious women who know they are worthy of an astoundingly great life. Join us weekly as we get on the right side of your intuition, redefine success, and reclaim your self-worth. I’m your host, Nicole Tsong, an award-winning journalist who left it all behind to become a best-selling author of three books and work/life balance expert helping ambitious women unlock their intuition and step into a life of fulfillment and radical joy.
Every single week I will bring you diverse and meaningful conversations with successful women from all walks of life who share insight about what it takes to be brave, joyful, and authentic every day. Every episode is thoughtfully designed to leave you feeling empowered with tangible tips and advice that will lead you to your next breakthrough.
Okay, friends. So today we’re going to talk about the main blocks to advocating for yourself. And I have to share a little bit of my backstory because I am the person who was blocked for many, many, many years in my life, from advocating for myself. So some of you know this, some of you don’t. Some of you are new to this, not knowing this about me, because you know me as the person who has a podcast, who speaks all the time on social media and a speaker for events.
I used to be so quiet, like ridiculously quiet, you could barely hear me. It was kind of a family joke about how quiet I was. One time I was walking down the street with a friend in college, and she literally stopped me and said, “Nicole, I cannot hear you, you have to speak louder.” And that experience really stuck with me because I always was like, well, I can hear myself, but I didn’t realize until that moment that other people could not.
And there were so many causes for this, truly. But I would say growing up as a woman of color, I was singled out constantly. People were always asking me where I was from, and they didn’t mean Chicago, where I actually grew up. I could always feel that I was different, my skin color, my face, my eyes, so many of those things, so I became a total rule follower to try to blend in. I always tried to make myself as inconspicuous as possible. And then I also grew up in a family where I have a Chinese culture background, and that priority is always in the group culture, it’s always about making your parents and your family proud. That was always the highest priority over yourself, your individual self. So I always went above and beyond. I worked so hard at school, where a lot of perfectionist tendencies came out. I always wanted to make my family proud, so I would go above and beyond with school and grades and extracurricular activities.
But the funny thing was, I never wanted to be number one, because I would draw way too much attention. So I always tried to slip in number two, number three, like just a little bit underneath that number one slot. And it worked. Like if my hard work totally paid off, I got into a great college. I leveraged connections through college to get my first journalism jobs. But through all of this, I was always still very quiet. I really never understood how to advocate for myself until I got around the blocks that I’m going to share with all of you.
So I remember the first time I finally got around the blocks I’m about to tell you about, and I was working for the Seattle Times. This is at the point in my life where I was really at this crossroads of what was next for me after journalism, and I felt very lost and having a really hard time. But I had gone to yoga teacher training, and I knew it was time for me to leave to teach yoga, and I remember coming back from a yoga teacher training, and I was so clear. I had gotten around the blocks and felt this was it, it was time to do this. And while I was also shaking and terrified, I marched myself down to a new yoga studio that was under construction nearby, and I knocked on the door and I just said, “Hey, are you looking for yoga teachers?” I mean, I can’t even tell you how hard this was for me. I was not the type of person to do this, especially with somebody I didn’t really know that well. It was a teacher of mine, whom I really respected, but I just couldn’t believe I was doing this. But this person was so kind, and suggested we talk about it, and that’s how I got my very first yoga teaching job. And I was really shocked at how easy it was, and that was all I had to do.
However, there were a few key things I had done that I’ve identified since then, that I have applied ever since, to really learn to advocate for myself very powerfully, and these three steps I’m about to share are so essential for you to be able to advocate for yourself as well.
So the first thing I did and what I had to understand at that time, was I wasn’t advocating for myself. I had been giving away my worth and my value to my job. So my first major block is that all of my self-worth was tied into my work, and when you’re always getting your value and your worth from your job and your boss, it’s actually really hard to advocate for yourself in a powerful way, because you’re always doubting your worth and value. You’re not sure if you deserve that next stage, that next thing that you’re actually going for, whether it’s a big project or it’s the promotion. You’re always going into it with this undertone and energy of, “Am I really worthy of this?”
This is you giving away your power to other people’s opinions of you. Now me, in that situation, I knew I was capable of growth. I was finally ready to let go of journalism as my identity, and I was really ready to go on to what was next. I was entering an industry I had very little skill in. I wasn’t actually good at it at the time, but I knew it was time for me to do that. I had separated out that I was worth pursuing a career that was meaningful to me, and was fulfilling to me. I just had my own self-worth truly intact and that’s what I brought with me when I asked for that yoga job.
When you’re always giving your power away to your job and to other people’s opinions of you, you’re just going to always be at the mercy of other people. Here’s the truth. Some bosses will like you. Some bosses will not. It has nothing to do with you. It’s just the way the world works. Some people are into you and some people are not. But when your self-worth is tied up into your job, it’s going to be tied up into their opinion, and then some days you feel great because you have a great boss, and some days you feel crappy about yourself, because you don’t. And when you start to really remember that your worth and value is not tied to what they think of you, you will be able to be in your power, no matter what is going on.
When you really are letting someone else’s opinion of you determine your worth, you’ll be struggling for the rest of your life to feel worthy of this life. It will get in the way of you being able to advocate powerfully for what you know is amazing about yourself. The sooner you can reclaim your power back from other people’s opinions, the sooner you will be able to advocate for yourself. So that is the first big block, you just need to stop giving away your worth, and your value to your work.
All right, and then the second big block. This one is also doozy, and I see it so, so frequently. You haven’t decided if what you’re doing is what you really want to do. So you’re doing something because you think you should, because somebody else maybe told you it was a good idea, or it’s something you’re good at, because you’ve done it for a very long time, but it’s not because it’s something you’re really clear about – like when I marched down to that yoga studio, I knew exactly what I wanted. I wanted a yoga career, I didn’t know how it was going to unfold or really know the next steps, I just knew that if I wanted to teach yoga I had to start teaching yoga! And this one felt like a big stretch because it was going to be the opening of a really nice yoga studio. I didn’t know if they would take someone like me, but I was at this point where I was so clear, nothing was going to stop me.
And so many women I see are doing what other people want for them. They are always getting sidetracked by what other people say or what other people want to do. Whether it’s like, “Oh, should I get this promotion?” And are you going for the promotion because you think you’re supposed to? Is that just the ladder that you’re on? And so you’re like, I guess I better follow the ladder.
You know, I heard from one woman who was thinking about pivoting her career, but didn’t really know what she wanted to do. Then she met a recruiter, and she’s like, “Well, maybe I would like recruiting”, then literally, in the next breath, she’s actually thinking, “I wouldn’t like recruiting”. So I asked her what she really likes. And that was really hard for her to answer. So if you’re in a swirl around what you really care about, what you really want, you will never be able to powerfully advocate for yourself.
You have probably hired people who are not really clear on what they want, and then you’re trying to get them to tell you, yet you might be doing the same thing, right? You’re just like, well, I think I’m supposed to go to that next level and rise in this organization. But is this what I want? Is this the job that I want? Is this the work that I really want to do? And if you don’t really know, people can sense that, and you can also sense that within yourself, and it can be very difficult. It’s hard to stand behind something if you don’t even know whether it’s what you want. So this is a huge one to get clear on. What is it that you actually want?
This leads me to the third and final block. And this one is also a doozy, this one’s a big one. And that is, you haven’t developed your intuition. So in the case of me with the yoga studio, I had a really strong intuitive hit that I needed to pursue being a yoga teacher. It was the strongest one I’d really ever had in my life, around my career, so I was really confident that even if that yoga studio said no, something would work out. I just knew it was time for me to do that, and that I was going to be so persistent, until it actually happened.
But when you haven’t done this, when you are relying on what other people say, rather than what your own intuition and your own guidance is saying to you, you are going to keep second guessing yourself and be full of doubt about whether it is possible. When you’re not really clear if it’s right for you, there are so many things that can come in and keep you from actually doing it. Like if you’re going for a promotion, and you don’t know if you want all that work. If it comes from an intuitive place, you would be in the powerful position of knowing there are things for you to do in that job. There are people for you to impact and it is time to stay in this job so that you can really do what you are here to do on this planet. Like what is a powerful, intuitive place to come from that’s deep and filled with purpose?
That’s what advocating for yourself is. When you come from that place, that’s when people start to really pay attention to what you are saying. If you’re not in that position and you haven’t developed your intuition, you can also now start to feel like an imposter. You’re like, “I’ve never done this before” – then you’re not going to have that confidence in yourself. But when you have an intuitive hit, you’re just like, “All right, here I go, I’m just really going after this and see how I’m going to make this work in my life.”
So these are the three biggest blocks. If any of them are occurring for you, any of those three, it’s going to be very challenging to advocate for yourself. And the good news is that you can start to make shifts in any of those three categories. It’s really possible. It starts by paying attention to what’s going on in your head, the thoughts that are coming up for you. And then just starting to address it and starting to pay attention to it. Like if you’re not setting clear boundaries from work, you’re probably giving away your self-worth and power to your job.
So you could just make it simple and say, “Okay, I don’t work on weekends anymore. You know, these are really small things you can start to do, or also start to get really clear about what you want next and develop your intuition. Those are practices that require you to learn to be quiet and to tune inward and to say, “Okay, what is there? What information is inside me that is going to start guiding me, that is not related to me taking a test?” Like all of those strengthsfinder and skills tests out there, which are awesome, but when you’re really clear on what you want, you may not actually have the skills for what’s next, and your job is to be persistent in developing and pursuing those.
So that could be a career pivot situation, but also for those of you who are wanting to advocate for yourself to really rise higher at work, it’s still important to go through all of these steps. What do you want? Develop your intuition. Is this the right choice for me? Is this the right next step? And start to listen from that place.
All right, friends, This is such a fun conversation, and I would love to know what’s resonating with you, what you’re hearing for yourself. So make sure you send me comments or thoughts on Instagram @NicoleTsong.
If you would screenshot this and share it out with the world, we always appreciate people sharing more about the School of Self-Worth. And if you know that you’re ready to manifest your promotion in the next 60 days and you want the exact step by step to do it, DM me ‘promotion’ at NicoleTsong on Instagram, and I will be so happy to share details with you there.
All right, friends, thanks so much and we will see you next week. Thank you for tuning into today’s episode. Before you go, don’t forget, if you are a high-achieving woman who wants to uncover your biggest blind spots, preventing fast, intuitive decisions, I’ve got a 72-second assessment for you, so make sure to DM me ‘quiz’ @NicoleTsong on Instagram.
Thank you for being here and for listening. We read every note that we get from you about how the podcast is making a difference in your life. Please know how much we appreciate each and every one of you. Until next time, I’m Nicole Tsong and this is the School of Self-Worth.
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