KEY BEHAVIORS THAT HOLD WOMEN BACK FROM CAREER SUCCESS – part 1 – seeking approval

April 9, 2022 Katharina Engelhardt

We all want to be more successful - in one way or another.

There is a problem, though. There is often a lot working against us and our success. We might have had a chance at a big promotion, but there were too many other good candidates. Sure, we could switch careers, but there never seems to be the right time. Sometimes it feels like everyone and everything is conspiring to steal your success! To top it off, we haven’t even mentioned everyone’s biggest impediment to success: themselves.

It’s true. We are often the authors of our own demise. We engage in behaviors and habits that hold us back from true success. That is why I wrote this blog series. Over time I will examine eight key behaviors that typically hold people back from success.

A Few Words on Success

The idea of being more successful sounds great. After all, who doesn’t want to be more successful? However, what does it actually mean? What does being more successful look like? How can my everyday, typical life benefit from becoming more successful?

suc·cess /səkˈses/ 1. the accomplishment of an aim or purpose.

This is a straightforward definition. Success is accomplishing something you aimed to accomplish. “Being more successful” means accomplishing more of what you set out to accomplish. It is as simple as that. I want you to accomplish the things you want to accomplish. It’s important to note the term “you want” from that last sentence. That’s the most important lesson in life. You define what success means to you. Don’t let anyone else decide that for you. Don’t let anyone tell you that your goals are too big, but more importantly, don’t let them tell you that your small goals are insignificant. If your biggest goal right now is to just survive another day - achieving that is a success. Success can’t be defined by anyone but yourself. Running a marathon might be a success for a veteran runner. But getting off your couch, and committing to a new walking routine, might be an even more impactful success story for someone totally sedentary.

The point is that success means different things to different people. If you want to be more successful, you need to know what that means. It’s up to you. What do YOU want to achieve? It’s important that you can define this before moving on. In this blog series I want to talk about success blockers.

What Are Success Blockers?

A “success blocker” is simply a behavior or habit that you engage in that negatively impacts your chance of success. These behaviors hold us back from achieving what we want to achieve. Sometimes these are behaviors we are actively engaging in, and other times they are subconscious habits that we might not be fully aware of. Exhibiting one or two of these behaviors won’t necessarily hold you back from success, but they will make the journey a lot more uncomfortable. If you are dealing with many of these success blockers, you likely aren’t getting close to the results in the life you want, and more importantly, deserve.

The question then is: Why would we deal with these obstacles when we can eliminate them? And that’s the good news they are all within your control. There are plenty of forces in the world already holding us back that we can’t control – so focusing on the things we can, gives us a leg up

Let´s look what these success blockers are and how to deal with them.

1. Seeking Approval

While these success blockers won’t be in any order, I think it is important to start with this one because it goes hand in hand with defining our idea of success. Success is achieving what you want. If you are always seeking the approval of others, how can you do that?

Seeking approval is a behavior that we should all be familiar with. If we haven’t engaged in it, we know others who have. This behavior is when you get too caught up:

·        People pleasing
·        Worrying what other’s think
·        Worrying about societal norms

People-pleasing is when you aim to please people to the detriment of yourself. Obviously, being kind is nice, but letting people walk all over you is no recipe for success. Worrying about what others think is just as hurtful to your success. Of course, the opinions of your closest loved ones matter, but you can’t be worried about what the neighbor down the street will think about you all the time.

Bending to societal norms is another way we sabotage our success. It’s important to note that we live in a society, and there is value in the collective good. Many social norms benefit us, our success, and the collective well-being of everyone. Think about things like wearing a seatbelt or not driving drunk.

However, those aren’t the societal norms we are talking about. When we mention societal norms, it is more about randomly imposed deadlines or expectations that the world around us expects. This will make more sense when we share some real-life examples below.

Real-Life Examples

People Pleasing

A classic example of people-pleasing is taking on too much work that isn’t your responsibility. A coworker asks you to take on a client issue for them. You know you don’t have the time, and it will impact your work, but you don’t want to let them down, so you say yes.

Worrying What Other’s Think

You have a great opportunity for a career change. It’s everything you have ever wanted. It’s a bit risky, but the rewards could be life-changing. You aren’t sure you want to take it, though, because you know your In-Laws would be worried about the risk.

Worrying About Societal Norms

You are in your mid-30s, and you feel stuck and hopeless in life. You decide to make a big change and consider returning to college to re-train. You end up giving up because it’s “too late” for someone of your age to go back to school.

How to Address

Why Do You Need Approval?
One of the best ways to deal with approval-seeking behaviors is to get to the core of your issues. Quite often, approval-seeking begins at an early age. Some people had very authoritative parents, so they have difficulty disagreeing with people they view as authorities. On the other hand, some people may have had distant parents, and their need for approval was never met as a child, so they look for it anywhere they can get it. When you reflect on why you seek approval, it is easier to know what steps to take to address it. Even if you don’t know how to address the root issue, reflecting upon it can still help you feel freer to move on.

Reframe Rejection
Rejection sucks. It would be silly – and a lie – to deny it. No matter what level of rejection you feel, when someone doesn’t find you nice enough, good enough, smart enough …or whatever – it stinks. That’s why we seek approval so often! No one wants to feel rejected. The problem is most of us view rejection much worse than it is. We think of rejection as some sort of soul-crushing proclamation that we will never recover from. Think about asking someone out on a date. You are nervous, and your friend says, “what’s the worst that happens? They say no?” That never really helps, does it? We hear that and think, “yes, that is the worst thing that can happen, and I will never recover from it!” That isn’t realistic, though, is it. Think about past rejections you have had (I know this isn’t fun, but bear with us). What was the worst outcome? Did it really hold you back at all? Were there any positives that happened as a result of it? When you put your rejection under a microscope like this, you will quickly learn that it is rarely (if ever) something that ruins our life. In fact, you may learn that rejection led you to unpredictable paths that actually improved your life. Reframing rejection is one of the best ways to stop seeking approval. If you can get comfortable with the idea of someone not liking you or what you did, you will be able to focus on your own goals, wants, and needs.
Focus On Growth
Focusing on your growth, learning, and progress is a great way to stop worrying about others’ approval. It isn’t guaranteed to cure you of your approval-seeking ways, but it is hard to worry about others when you are too busy trying to improve yourself.
The important thing here is to focus on learning and growing in ways that help you achieve what you want. If you start changing yourself for others, you are just reaffirming your approval-seeking behavior.
Addressing your weaknesses (or strengths) also takes the steam out of others’ opinions of you. Instead of letting someone’s negative feedback ruin your day, you will be confident knowing that you are working on yourself. Speaking of confidence…

Remind Yourself That You Rock
Seeking approval often stems from insecurity. We crave (or need) the approval of others so much because we don’t have the approval of the most important person – ourselves. You must start working on improving your self-esteem. One of the best ways to do this is our previous tip. Committing to a growth mindset will help build confidence. Another great way to achieve more confidence is to limit your negative self-talk. Whenever you catch your mind running wild with negative thoughts, tell it to shut up! You could also add positive affirmations to replace these negative thoughts. When you notice a negative thought brewing, replace it by saying something positive about yourself aloud.

Conclusion

Success isn’t as tricky as everyone makes it out to be. While success means different things to different people, at the end of the day, a successful person is just someone who achieves the things they want to achieve. No one can create your roadmap to success. That is something you have to seriously think about and create for yourself. However, as a career and leadership coach I can help you avoid behaviors that typically hold people back from achieving what they want to achieve. If you can remove – or at least mitigate – these behaviors from your life, then you will see better results all around. You will achieve more of the things you attempt to achieve. …and that’s success!

In the next blog, I talk about perfection and focus.

Best of luck on your journey. My group coaching GLOW UP! can help you to overcome the success blockers. Reach out to me to learn more.

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