76. Success
I was coaching a client recently and we were discussing the idea of being successful.
I asked this client what that even means for them. Does it mean making a certain amount of money, having a certain title, working in a specific industry?
So many people are working so hard to “be successful” without even getting clear with themselves about what that actually means.
And guess what - once you dig in, a lot of your ideas about “being successful” are likely informed by cultural messaging you may not even agree with.
Success is one of those things that we get a lot of subtle and not-so-subtle messaging about in our socialization, basically from the day we’re born.
And again, those ideas are informed by the culture in which we grew up.
For a lot of us, the culture in which we grew up is also steeped in lots of things we don’t want or agree with - such as white supremacy, capitalism, patriarchy, ableism, heteronormativity, and so much more.
So it can be deeply helpful to examine your ideas about what success means to you and make sure that they align with who you want to be, not just who you were taught to be.
It’s wild to consider, isn’t it? Success can be whatever you want it to be.
Wherever you are in this exploration, on this week’s episode, I’m showing you how to get clear on the way you currently view success as a concept, how you think about your own success, and how to decide on a new definition of success for yourself, if that’s what you want or need for your life.
Can’t wait to hear what you think and see what you create with this week’s teaching.
If you want to supercharge your capacity to create a life that blows your mind, I have some one-on-one coaching slots opening up soon. Send me an email and let's talk about it or click here to schedule a call with me and we’ll see if we’re a good fit to start working together!
If there are topics y’all want me to talk about on the podcast, feel free to write in and let me know by clicking here! I’d love to hear from you!
I have a super fun announcement. This July, I’m launching my group coaching program Satisfied AF. It’s one of the coolest things I’ve ever designed in my life, so if you want to come together and be part of a community, build relationships, and figure things out so your life can feel satisfying as f*ck, click here to sign up for a consult.
WHAT YOU’LL LEARN FROM THIS EPISODE:
How to get curious and identify the way your brain currently defines success.
Why we have to be particularly careful in spotting our socialization in our thoughts about success, among so many other topics.
How to see where socialization has played into your definition of success and where you may want to make changes.
The places in my own life I’ve had to see my socialization and redefine what success means to me.
How to start coming up with a new definition of success that works for you and is aligned with who you want to be, not who you were taught to be.
LISTEN TO THE FULL EPISODE:
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FULL EPISODE TRANSCRIPT:
This week we’re talking about success.
You are listening to Love Your Job Before You Leave It, the podcast for ambitious, high-achieving women who are ready to stop feeling stressed about work and kiss burnout goodbye forever. Whether you’re starting a business or staying in your day job, this show will give you the 6447coaching and guidance you need to start loving your work today. Here’s your host, Career Coach, Kori Linn.
Hey, y'all, I am so excited to talk to you today. On my end it feels like it's been so long. I know on your end I talk to you every week, but I batched some of the previous episodes. I recorded more than I needed, and I haven't recorded any for a few weeks because we had a friend of ours who just moved back from DC to Sacramento was staying in our guest bedroom.
And our guest bedroom is where I record the podcasts because even though I have my own office, the guest bedroom has better sound quality. So I started recording the podcast down here. And so she was here for two weeks. She has now moved down into the apartment below our house.
So if y'all follow me on Instagram, you may know that we, Alex, and I, about three quarters of a year ago, got this triplex in Sacramento and it has two apartments in the downstairs. And Alex has been renovating the downstairs, hiring a little bit of the work out, but really doing a lot of the work herself.
So the one apartment is almost done, it's not even quite done. But our friend went ahead and moved into it so she can have her own space. And now I can record podcasts in the guest bedroom again. So that's where we are today.
And anyways, since it's been a while since I've recorded a podcast, I was thinking about y'all. And I was like, “Oh, I miss them. I miss talking to them. It's been a while.” And I also was like tidying up my desk a little bit because my desk usually just gets covered in Post-it notes. And then I have to go through and sort of like organize all the Post-it notes.
And when I was organizing them the other day, I was like, “Wow, so many of these are just podcast ideas.” Like ideas where I'm teaching something to a client on a call, or ideas where I'm telling my coach about something and then she's like, “Write that down, that's a fucking podcast for your people.” And there were so many ideas and I'm like so excited.
So the one I want to talk to y'all about today is the idea of success. And part of why I wanted to talk about y'all with this is because I was coaching a client recently and we were talking about the idea of success. And I was like, what does it even mean to be successful? And this client did a really long thought download. And a thought download is just like when you download, or write down, all of your thoughts about a topic.
So success is really interesting, because it's one of those things that we're getting so much subtle and not so subtle messaging about in our socialization, basically from the time we're born. And so for a lot of people, their brain has all these ideas about what it means to be successful. And some of those when they look at them and examine them will like and want. They'll be like, “Yeah, yeah, I want to keep these.”
But often we have other ideas that are just like in our subconscious about what it means to be successful that we may not want to keep. That may not actually be our definition, but maybe that definition we inherited from culture. And I think it's important to mention here also, we live in a culture that has all kinds of things woven into it, right?
So I live in the United States. And in the United States we have white supremacy woven into like the fabric of our culture. We have puritanism woven into the fabric of our culture, we have capitalism woven into the fabric of our culture. We have patriarchy woven into the fabric of our culture.
We have ableism woven into the fabric of our culture. We have neurotypicalness woven into the fabric of our culture. So many things, and there's more that I'm not even thinking of. Oh, like we have heteronormativity, which I’ve spoken about before, woven into the fabric of our culture.
Now, that's not to say that there aren't like subcultures, of course there are. But it's important to know that wherever you are, wherever you grew up, whoever raised you, and like not just the people who raised you, but also the other things in your life that I'm going to say also raised you. Like when I was a kid I read like a lot of romance novels. So in a way I was being raised by my parents, but I was also getting all this information from things like romance novels.
I also read a lot of horror novels as a kid, so I got a lot of things from those. That might be part of why I have so much anxiety because my brain learned a lot of patterns about people trying to kill you. Anyways, that's for another podcast episode.
The point is, even if you don't share my inculturation, you have some kind of enculturation. You grew up somewhere, where certain things were taught to you implicitly and explicitly. And there were the things that were taught to you by your, you know, grownups, like parents or other grownups who raised you.
There were the things that were taught to you by other authority figures like teachers. There were the things that were taught to you by the books you read, the movies you watched if you watched movies, things like that.
So all of our cultures, all of our inculturation, all of our socialization, it's not necessarily going to be the same. But I'm going to speak to the ones that I have, but I want you to think about like yours might be different, but you got some, right? You got some socialization no matter who raised you. I don't even think it's possible to raise people with zero socialization.
I mean, even the idea of what's right and wrong really comes down to like what's right and wrong according to who. Like the things that I was raised to believe were right and wrong, other people from other cultures throughout the world, they might have been raised to think something else different was right or wrong. Or like something I grew up having been taught was wrong, I might as an adult decide like no, I think that's actually right, or it's neutral, or it's more nuanced, et cetera.
Okay, so let's come back around to the idea of success. Here's what I want you to do, I want you to get a piece of paper and I want you to be like, what does it even mean to be successful at the top of the paper. Or it can be a notes app, right? It doesn't have to be old school with the paper. And then I want you to like write, and write, and write, and write, and write. Here's why, we want to find out what's in there. We want to find out how your brain is defining that.
Because something I see with so many people is they're like, I'm not successful, or I'm not as successful as I want to be, or like this is what it would mean to be successful. Or like, this happens a lot with my clients, they get to a point in their career where they have everything that they had set out looking for. And so on paper they are “successful,” but they don't feel successful, they don't feel the way they thought they would. And that can be for a lot of reasons.
But what we want to think about this week is just the idea of success. And so here are some of the things that might come up. It might be about getting a certain title. It might be about making a certain amount of money. It might be about being a manager or in a position of leadership.
It might be about having a certain amount of experience. It might be about being in a certain industry. It might be about your net worth, which is different than your income. It might be about other factors, like whether you have paid off your student loans, et cetera, et cetera.
There are all these ideas, there's this like collection, this constellation of ideas your brain has about what it means to be successful. And if you don't look at those explicitly, your brain is going to be judging you against them, even though when you do look at them explicitly, you may find that some of them you're like, “Fuck yeah,” and other ones you're like, “Oh, fuck no, get that the fuck out of here. I do not want that to be how I measure the success of my life, my career, my relationship, whatever.”
And as always this is a podcast about career, but it's really a podcast about everything, right? How are you measuring success in your career? How are you measuring success in this specific job? How are you measuring success in your relationship? How are you measuring success of your life overall? Are there other little factors that your brain is saying you have to have to be successful, that when you look at them, you're like, “Oh, I don't want to include those anymore.”
And, of course, there's also the flip side of this, there may be things that you want to include in your definition of success that you were not taught to include in your socialization and the way you've been enculturated heretofore.
Okay, so first, we have the thought download, we're like dumping out the contents of your brain when it comes to the concept of being successful. We're finding out what's in there. We're finding out what your brain says, we're like looking at it, we're examining it. And let's just go ahead and be specific, we're going to be curious about it.
I mean, you don't have to be. You're obviously always, always allowed to do whatever you want. But I would deeply invite you to be curious because here's the thing, y'all, some of the shit you find in your brain is going to be upsetting sometimes. Some of the shit you find in your brain is going to like offend your current sensibilities. Some of the shit you find in your brain is going to directly contradict your chosen values and who you've decided you want to be as a person. And that can be really upsetting.
And so what I want to do with cultivating the curiosity is create space where we can look at all that shit without making it mean something about us. Without making it mean anything bad about us, without making it mean anything good about us, without making it mean anything else about us, right? Because where does your brain get ideas? Your brain gets ideas from what it's steeped in.
And again, your brain has been steeped in white supremacy. Your brain has been steeped in capitalism. Your brain has been steeped in productivity culture. Your brain has been steeped in hustle mentality. Your brain has been steeped in puritanism. Your brain has been steeped In heteronormativity. And for a lot of us it's like also our brain has been steeped in competitiveness.
I don't know if I told you all this, but recently I got coached by one of my coaches, Maggie Reyes, about my competitiveness during card games. Like card games that I'm playing casually for fun. And I apologize if I mentioned this last week or something, as I said before I recorded a bunch of podcasts and it may have been one week for you, but it's been like three weeks for me. And I'm like, I don't even remember what I said last time. So sorry, and you're welcome.
So this competitiveness is something that I learned as a child. I don't think I was born onto this planet, like, “Ooh, I want to be competitive and need to beat everyone at card games so I can feel good about myself.” I don't think I came in with that. Also, I don't know why I said that in that weird accent, that's fine. I think I learned that.
And so you may find when you're doing this thought download, when you're doing this deep dive on the concept of success, you may find competitiveness in there. And I think probably competitiveness could be seen as some of the other -isms.
Like maybe it's partially represented in white supremacy, I don't know off the top my head. I know that there are teachings about the different things that are in white supremacy, and I remember that perfectionism is one of them, but I don't know all of them off the top of my head.
But I think that competitiveness comes in with other things. I think probably it comes in with capitalism, it probably comes in with things like ableism. Anyways, my point is I wanted to call it out specifically, even though it may be contained with these other ideas, as something for you to look at. Because probably inside your idea of success, there is this idea of like being better than other people in some way. And you get to decide if you want to keep that or not.
Personally, for me, I don't think I want to keep that. I have really done a lot of work, and I'm continuing to do a lot of work around shifting from a mindset of competitiveness between people to like collaborativeness and also to this like, how do I want to say this, cherishing that people can be all incredible. And I can still pick a person and say like, “Oh, I want to work with that coach,” or like, “Oh, I want to work with that other person.”
And it doesn't have to be because like they’re “better.” It doesn't have to be about this competitive thing. It can just be like this seems like it would be fun, or this seems like it would be a good fit, or this person has expertise in something I'm interested in, whatever.
Because for my clients I see this a lot, where they're like, “Well, I need to–” It's like their brain is like you need to be better than everyone. But first of all, there are like, what, 7 billion people in the world? I think the idea that we need to be better than all of them at something to feel good about ourselves is just not a great setup for joyfulness. I also just don't think it's required.
But I think for a lot of you, you're going to find that in there, that your brains like, “Oh, I have to be better to be successful.” So that's something in particular I would just invite you to question and to think about. Like just even the way that's framed, is that something you want to keep in your brain for how you measure yourself? For how you measure your life? For how you measure the world? Maybe it is for you, you get to do whatever the fuck you want. But let's at least look at it.
Okay, I went a little all over the place with that. So we're right on track because that's what I do every week. Okay, so you got your thought download, you're like, what does it mean to be successful? Let's look at all the shit my brain says. Let's really look at it with curiosity even though some of the stuff I find in there may feel kind of icky to my current values.
Oh, and as a side note, if you haven't already, so there's a lot of writing suggestions in this podcast. But if you haven't already, it might also be useful to figure out what your values are. I could probably do a whole podcast episode on that, and I probably will. But for the purposes of this one, you may want to do just the thing on success, and then if you haven't already examined your values, maybe just think about is this who I want to be? Why or why not?
But I think a whole download on what are the values that I was taught to have versus what are the values I want to have could also be useful. It's going to be a really similar breakdown to the success, right? Because with values, it's like what were you taught to value versus what do you want to choose to value? And, I think, why?
I think the why is really important, both for the examination of success and the examination of values, right? Because there's a big difference between because this is what I was taught to do, which is like, hello, that's how you know it's socialization. Versus because this matters to me for these reasons, or this is what I want to choose because it feels yummy to me, like whatever, whatever.
But look at what's in there, think about whether it aligns to you or not, and then think about what you want to add in there that maybe wasn't socialized into you. Like for me, I was socialized heteronormative, like many people. And that's not what I want to have is in my definition of success.
And so that meant like, not only when I was looking at my definition of success as a person was I going to say like, “I don't think I'd like to keep this heteronormativity as a metric of success.’ And then in addition, I want to add something else in there, too. Right?
I want to add in something about what success looks like inside the container of romantic relationship because I'm delete, delete, deleting the heteronormativity and the heterosexuality as the success metric. So then I wanted to add something back in, like around my queer identity and really cherishing that.
And for some stuff, you may just want to delete. For some stuff you may want to add something. I don't really know what it's going to be for you, but what I want for you, what I wish and hope for you, and what I'm trying to accomplish with this podcast is that you figure out what these semiconscious or even subconscious success metrics your brain has are. And then you examine them consciously and intentionally, and you revise them to be something beautiful to you, in alignment with who you are and who you want to be.
And then, let's be clear, you’re not doing that so then you can measure your whole life against that and like feel shitty if it doesn't match. You're doing it so that that's kind of like a GPS, a guidance system to help you create a life that is successful according to you, versus your brain trying to create a life that is successful according to all that shit you were taught that you may or may not agree with.
So I think a lot of times socialization does kind of act like a subconscious GPS that's leading us to certain kinds of decisions. Like often leading us to do things like people please, or leading us to engage in perfectionism. And then we're like, why am I doing this? And then why am I so unhappy, and blah, blah, blah?
So we have to go in and look at the GPS and look at like, wait, what is this trying to do? Where's it trying to take me? Do I want to go there? Who put this programming in here? And then we're going to revise, we're going to edit.
And you may keep some of the stuff that's in your socialization. I mean, I've certainly kept a lot of it. But it's also about seeing everything that's there. I mean, it’s probably not everything, that's maybe a little perfectionistic. But seeing generally what's there and deciding on purpose versus just being driven by something that you learned like 20 years ago, 30 years ago, 50 years ago, right?
So get yourself a piece of paper and write on it what does success mean to me? What did I learn it meant as a child? What do I want it to mean? And just go to town on that and sit with it, and think about it, and ponder on it, and simmer, and have a cup of tea or whatever it is you do, like take a long walk. And just let yourself see the ideas that have been running your life and decide if you want to keep them or if you want to upgrade them.
And then once you get whatever your completed version of success is, you know, for now, like you're always allowed to revisit that shit. I would probably recommend revisiting it like minimum once a year, to just make sure it still resonates with who you are and who you want to become. And then like how do we use it as a GPS to help us get to where we want to go? Versus using it as like a measure of who we should be and then beating ourselves up with it.
So to recap, let's get really clear about what success looks like to you versus what your subconscious brain, your socialized brain thinks it should look like. And then once we get that idea of what success looks like, how do we use it to guide us? How do we use it inspirationally? How do we use it as a way to love ourselves towards that future, versus using it as something to make us feel bad?
Okay, that's what I have for y'all today. And listen, if you want to take this work deeper, I would love to take this work deeper with you. There are currently two ways to work with me. One of them is Satisfied As Fuck, my group coaching program, which is launching in July.
As of the time of recording this podcast I still have a few spaces for that. And so if you would like to snap one of those up, please go to korilinn.com/learnmore and click on the Satisfied As Fuck consult call link and get some time on my calendar. Let's talk about all the things and how we can help you create more satisfaction in your life and career.
And you could also while you're at korilinn.com/learnmore, sign up for a one to one consult call if group coaching isn't your speed and you would rather just have lots of private coaching time with me. That's an available option as well.
All right, y'all have a wonderful week, blow your own minds with what you can do and create when you rewrite your idea of success. And I will talk to you next week. Bye.
Thank you for listening to Love Your Job Before You Leave It. We'll have another episode for you next week. And in the meantime, if you're feeling super fired up, head on over to korilinn.com for more guidance and resources.
You are listening to Love Your Job Before You Leave It, the podcast for ambitious, high-achieving women who are ready to stop feeling stressed about work and kiss burnout goodbye forever. Whether you’re starting a business or staying in your day job, this show will give you the 6447coaching and guidance you need to start loving your work today. Here’s your host, Career Coach, Kori Linn.
Hey, y'all, I am so excited to talk to you today. On my end it feels like it's been so long. I know on your end I talk to you every week, but I batched some of the previous episodes. I recorded more than I needed, and I haven't recorded any for a few weeks because we had a friend of ours who just moved back from DC to Sacramento was staying in our guest bedroom.
And our guest bedroom is where I record the podcasts because even though I have my own office, the guest bedroom has better sound quality. So I started recording the podcast down here. And so she was here for two weeks. She has now moved down into the apartment below our house.
So if y'all follow me on Instagram, you may know that we, Alex, and I, about three quarters of a year ago, got this triplex in Sacramento and it has two apartments in the downstairs. And Alex has been renovating the downstairs, hiring a little bit of the work out, but really doing a lot of the work herself.
So the one apartment is almost done, it's not even quite done. But our friend went ahead and moved into it so she can have her own space. And now I can record podcasts in the guest bedroom again. So that's where we are today.
And anyways, since it's been a while since I've recorded a podcast, I was thinking about y'all. And I was like, “Oh, I miss them. I miss talking to them. It's been a while.” And I also was like tidying up my desk a little bit because my desk usually just gets covered in Post-it notes. And then I have to go through and sort of like organize all the Post-it notes.
And when I was organizing them the other day, I was like, “Wow, so many of these are just podcast ideas.” Like ideas where I'm teaching something to a client on a call, or ideas where I'm telling my coach about something and then she's like, “Write that down, that's a fucking podcast for your people.” And there were so many ideas and I'm like so excited.
So the one I want to talk to y'all about today is the idea of success. And part of why I wanted to talk about y'all with this is because I was coaching a client recently and we were talking about the idea of success. And I was like, what does it even mean to be successful? And this client did a really long thought download. And a thought download is just like when you download, or write down, all of your thoughts about a topic.
So success is really interesting, because it's one of those things that we're getting so much subtle and not so subtle messaging about in our socialization, basically from the time we're born. And so for a lot of people, their brain has all these ideas about what it means to be successful. And some of those when they look at them and examine them will like and want. They'll be like, “Yeah, yeah, I want to keep these.”
But often we have other ideas that are just like in our subconscious about what it means to be successful that we may not want to keep. That may not actually be our definition, but maybe that definition we inherited from culture. And I think it's important to mention here also, we live in a culture that has all kinds of things woven into it, right?
So I live in the United States. And in the United States we have white supremacy woven into like the fabric of our culture. We have puritanism woven into the fabric of our culture, we have capitalism woven into the fabric of our culture. We have patriarchy woven into the fabric of our culture.
We have ableism woven into the fabric of our culture. We have neurotypicalness woven into the fabric of our culture. So many things, and there's more that I'm not even thinking of. Oh, like we have heteronormativity, which I’ve spoken about before, woven into the fabric of our culture.
Now, that's not to say that there aren't like subcultures, of course there are. But it's important to know that wherever you are, wherever you grew up, whoever raised you, and like not just the people who raised you, but also the other things in your life that I'm going to say also raised you. Like when I was a kid I read like a lot of romance novels. So in a way I was being raised by my parents, but I was also getting all this information from things like romance novels.
I also read a lot of horror novels as a kid, so I got a lot of things from those. That might be part of why I have so much anxiety because my brain learned a lot of patterns about people trying to kill you. Anyways, that's for another podcast episode.
The point is, even if you don't share my inculturation, you have some kind of enculturation. You grew up somewhere, where certain things were taught to you implicitly and explicitly. And there were the things that were taught to you by your, you know, grownups, like parents or other grownups who raised you.
There were the things that were taught to you by other authority figures like teachers. There were the things that were taught to you by the books you read, the movies you watched if you watched movies, things like that.
So all of our cultures, all of our inculturation, all of our socialization, it's not necessarily going to be the same. But I'm going to speak to the ones that I have, but I want you to think about like yours might be different, but you got some, right? You got some socialization no matter who raised you. I don't even think it's possible to raise people with zero socialization.
I mean, even the idea of what's right and wrong really comes down to like what's right and wrong according to who. Like the things that I was raised to believe were right and wrong, other people from other cultures throughout the world, they might have been raised to think something else different was right or wrong. Or like something I grew up having been taught was wrong, I might as an adult decide like no, I think that's actually right, or it's neutral, or it's more nuanced, et cetera.
Okay, so let's come back around to the idea of success. Here's what I want you to do, I want you to get a piece of paper and I want you to be like, what does it even mean to be successful at the top of the paper. Or it can be a notes app, right? It doesn't have to be old school with the paper. And then I want you to like write, and write, and write, and write, and write. Here's why, we want to find out what's in there. We want to find out how your brain is defining that.
Because something I see with so many people is they're like, I'm not successful, or I'm not as successful as I want to be, or like this is what it would mean to be successful. Or like, this happens a lot with my clients, they get to a point in their career where they have everything that they had set out looking for. And so on paper they are “successful,” but they don't feel successful, they don't feel the way they thought they would. And that can be for a lot of reasons.
But what we want to think about this week is just the idea of success. And so here are some of the things that might come up. It might be about getting a certain title. It might be about making a certain amount of money. It might be about being a manager or in a position of leadership.
It might be about having a certain amount of experience. It might be about being in a certain industry. It might be about your net worth, which is different than your income. It might be about other factors, like whether you have paid off your student loans, et cetera, et cetera.
There are all these ideas, there's this like collection, this constellation of ideas your brain has about what it means to be successful. And if you don't look at those explicitly, your brain is going to be judging you against them, even though when you do look at them explicitly, you may find that some of them you're like, “Fuck yeah,” and other ones you're like, “Oh, fuck no, get that the fuck out of here. I do not want that to be how I measure the success of my life, my career, my relationship, whatever.”
And as always this is a podcast about career, but it's really a podcast about everything, right? How are you measuring success in your career? How are you measuring success in this specific job? How are you measuring success in your relationship? How are you measuring success of your life overall? Are there other little factors that your brain is saying you have to have to be successful, that when you look at them, you're like, “Oh, I don't want to include those anymore.”
And, of course, there's also the flip side of this, there may be things that you want to include in your definition of success that you were not taught to include in your socialization and the way you've been enculturated heretofore.
Okay, so first, we have the thought download, we're like dumping out the contents of your brain when it comes to the concept of being successful. We're finding out what's in there. We're finding out what your brain says, we're like looking at it, we're examining it. And let's just go ahead and be specific, we're going to be curious about it.
I mean, you don't have to be. You're obviously always, always allowed to do whatever you want. But I would deeply invite you to be curious because here's the thing, y'all, some of the shit you find in your brain is going to be upsetting sometimes. Some of the shit you find in your brain is going to like offend your current sensibilities. Some of the shit you find in your brain is going to directly contradict your chosen values and who you've decided you want to be as a person. And that can be really upsetting.
And so what I want to do with cultivating the curiosity is create space where we can look at all that shit without making it mean something about us. Without making it mean anything bad about us, without making it mean anything good about us, without making it mean anything else about us, right? Because where does your brain get ideas? Your brain gets ideas from what it's steeped in.
And again, your brain has been steeped in white supremacy. Your brain has been steeped in capitalism. Your brain has been steeped in productivity culture. Your brain has been steeped in hustle mentality. Your brain has been steeped in puritanism. Your brain has been steeped In heteronormativity. And for a lot of us it's like also our brain has been steeped in competitiveness.
I don't know if I told you all this, but recently I got coached by one of my coaches, Maggie Reyes, about my competitiveness during card games. Like card games that I'm playing casually for fun. And I apologize if I mentioned this last week or something, as I said before I recorded a bunch of podcasts and it may have been one week for you, but it's been like three weeks for me. And I'm like, I don't even remember what I said last time. So sorry, and you're welcome.
So this competitiveness is something that I learned as a child. I don't think I was born onto this planet, like, “Ooh, I want to be competitive and need to beat everyone at card games so I can feel good about myself.” I don't think I came in with that. Also, I don't know why I said that in that weird accent, that's fine. I think I learned that.
And so you may find when you're doing this thought download, when you're doing this deep dive on the concept of success, you may find competitiveness in there. And I think probably competitiveness could be seen as some of the other -isms.
Like maybe it's partially represented in white supremacy, I don't know off the top my head. I know that there are teachings about the different things that are in white supremacy, and I remember that perfectionism is one of them, but I don't know all of them off the top of my head.
But I think that competitiveness comes in with other things. I think probably it comes in with capitalism, it probably comes in with things like ableism. Anyways, my point is I wanted to call it out specifically, even though it may be contained with these other ideas, as something for you to look at. Because probably inside your idea of success, there is this idea of like being better than other people in some way. And you get to decide if you want to keep that or not.
Personally, for me, I don't think I want to keep that. I have really done a lot of work, and I'm continuing to do a lot of work around shifting from a mindset of competitiveness between people to like collaborativeness and also to this like, how do I want to say this, cherishing that people can be all incredible. And I can still pick a person and say like, “Oh, I want to work with that coach,” or like, “Oh, I want to work with that other person.”
And it doesn't have to be because like they’re “better.” It doesn't have to be about this competitive thing. It can just be like this seems like it would be fun, or this seems like it would be a good fit, or this person has expertise in something I'm interested in, whatever.
Because for my clients I see this a lot, where they're like, “Well, I need to–” It's like their brain is like you need to be better than everyone. But first of all, there are like, what, 7 billion people in the world? I think the idea that we need to be better than all of them at something to feel good about ourselves is just not a great setup for joyfulness. I also just don't think it's required.
But I think for a lot of you, you're going to find that in there, that your brains like, “Oh, I have to be better to be successful.” So that's something in particular I would just invite you to question and to think about. Like just even the way that's framed, is that something you want to keep in your brain for how you measure yourself? For how you measure your life? For how you measure the world? Maybe it is for you, you get to do whatever the fuck you want. But let's at least look at it.
Okay, I went a little all over the place with that. So we're right on track because that's what I do every week. Okay, so you got your thought download, you're like, what does it mean to be successful? Let's look at all the shit my brain says. Let's really look at it with curiosity even though some of the stuff I find in there may feel kind of icky to my current values.
Oh, and as a side note, if you haven't already, so there's a lot of writing suggestions in this podcast. But if you haven't already, it might also be useful to figure out what your values are. I could probably do a whole podcast episode on that, and I probably will. But for the purposes of this one, you may want to do just the thing on success, and then if you haven't already examined your values, maybe just think about is this who I want to be? Why or why not?
But I think a whole download on what are the values that I was taught to have versus what are the values I want to have could also be useful. It's going to be a really similar breakdown to the success, right? Because with values, it's like what were you taught to value versus what do you want to choose to value? And, I think, why?
I think the why is really important, both for the examination of success and the examination of values, right? Because there's a big difference between because this is what I was taught to do, which is like, hello, that's how you know it's socialization. Versus because this matters to me for these reasons, or this is what I want to choose because it feels yummy to me, like whatever, whatever.
But look at what's in there, think about whether it aligns to you or not, and then think about what you want to add in there that maybe wasn't socialized into you. Like for me, I was socialized heteronormative, like many people. And that's not what I want to have is in my definition of success.
And so that meant like, not only when I was looking at my definition of success as a person was I going to say like, “I don't think I'd like to keep this heteronormativity as a metric of success.’ And then in addition, I want to add something else in there, too. Right?
I want to add in something about what success looks like inside the container of romantic relationship because I'm delete, delete, deleting the heteronormativity and the heterosexuality as the success metric. So then I wanted to add something back in, like around my queer identity and really cherishing that.
And for some stuff, you may just want to delete. For some stuff you may want to add something. I don't really know what it's going to be for you, but what I want for you, what I wish and hope for you, and what I'm trying to accomplish with this podcast is that you figure out what these semiconscious or even subconscious success metrics your brain has are. And then you examine them consciously and intentionally, and you revise them to be something beautiful to you, in alignment with who you are and who you want to be.
And then, let's be clear, you’re not doing that so then you can measure your whole life against that and like feel shitty if it doesn't match. You're doing it so that that's kind of like a GPS, a guidance system to help you create a life that is successful according to you, versus your brain trying to create a life that is successful according to all that shit you were taught that you may or may not agree with.
So I think a lot of times socialization does kind of act like a subconscious GPS that's leading us to certain kinds of decisions. Like often leading us to do things like people please, or leading us to engage in perfectionism. And then we're like, why am I doing this? And then why am I so unhappy, and blah, blah, blah?
So we have to go in and look at the GPS and look at like, wait, what is this trying to do? Where's it trying to take me? Do I want to go there? Who put this programming in here? And then we're going to revise, we're going to edit.
And you may keep some of the stuff that's in your socialization. I mean, I've certainly kept a lot of it. But it's also about seeing everything that's there. I mean, it’s probably not everything, that's maybe a little perfectionistic. But seeing generally what's there and deciding on purpose versus just being driven by something that you learned like 20 years ago, 30 years ago, 50 years ago, right?
So get yourself a piece of paper and write on it what does success mean to me? What did I learn it meant as a child? What do I want it to mean? And just go to town on that and sit with it, and think about it, and ponder on it, and simmer, and have a cup of tea or whatever it is you do, like take a long walk. And just let yourself see the ideas that have been running your life and decide if you want to keep them or if you want to upgrade them.
And then once you get whatever your completed version of success is, you know, for now, like you're always allowed to revisit that shit. I would probably recommend revisiting it like minimum once a year, to just make sure it still resonates with who you are and who you want to become. And then like how do we use it as a GPS to help us get to where we want to go? Versus using it as like a measure of who we should be and then beating ourselves up with it.
So to recap, let's get really clear about what success looks like to you versus what your subconscious brain, your socialized brain thinks it should look like. And then once we get that idea of what success looks like, how do we use it to guide us? How do we use it inspirationally? How do we use it as a way to love ourselves towards that future, versus using it as something to make us feel bad?
Okay, that's what I have for y'all today. And listen, if you want to take this work deeper, I would love to take this work deeper with you. There are currently two ways to work with me. One of them is Satisfied As Fuck, my group coaching program, which is launching in July.
As of the time of recording this podcast I still have a few spaces for that. And so if you would like to snap one of those up, please go to korilinn.com/learnmore and click on the Satisfied As Fuck consult call link and get some time on my calendar. Let's talk about all the things and how we can help you create more satisfaction in your life and career.
And you could also while you're at korilinn.com/learnmore, sign up for a one to one consult call if group coaching isn't your speed and you would rather just have lots of private coaching time with me. That's an available option as well.
All right, y'all have a wonderful week, blow your own minds with what you can do and create when you rewrite your idea of success. And I will talk to you next week. Bye.
Thank you for listening to Love Your Job Before You Leave It. We'll have another episode for you next week. And in the meantime, if you're feeling super fired up, head on over to korilinn.com for more guidance and resources.
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