98. Superiority
Today’s topic actually came up in a therapy session I was in recently.
My therapist and I were talking about something and it got me thinking about the desire to be superior and why it even matters to us.
As humans, we look around at other humans and try to rank ourselves.
But I had this moment where I thought to myself, “ok but what is the point of superiority?” Why are our brains so interested in it and what do we think we’re going to get out of it?
Then, I had this moment where I wondered if superiority was actually just about wanting to be loved and safe. Like, if we thought we’d be loved, safe, and belong, would we even care about superiority?
Of course, only you can answer this question for yourself.
But for me, that’s what I think the drive to be superior is all about - wanting to be loved, to be safe, and to belong.
And I think this concept is as applicable in a career setting as in any other setting.
We might not call it “feeling loved” at work.
We might call it “feeling valued.” Or “feeling secure in our role.” But what if it’s the same thing - wanting to prove ourselves so that we can feel safe, so that we can feel like we belong?
If you find yourself overworking and wanting to prove yourself to others in your career or the rest of you life, be sure to catch this week’s podcast. Even if superiority doesn’t seem like something you struggle with, this concept may still prove very useful for creating more career and life satisfaction (and delight).
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!
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WHAT YOU’LL LEARN FROM THIS EPISODE:
Why I love coaching, but it isn’t the only resource I use in living a satisfying AF life.
How our human brains become obsessed with superiority and being superior.
Why the idea of superiority plays a huge role in work dynamics.
Where safety comes from and why it doesn’t come from superiority.
Why you could actually have the superiority you’re craving right now but not even know it.
How to see where your desire for superiority is coming from, and how you can approach it differently.
LISTEN TO THE FULL EPISODE:
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FULL EPISODE TRANSCRIPT:
This week we’re talking about superiority.
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 coaching and guidance you need to start loving your work today. Here’s your host, Career Coach, Kori Linn.
Hey y'all, Happy Wednesday. This week, I want to talk to you about something that actually came up in a therapy session I was in, I think it was last week. So I have a lot of service providers. I have several coaches, I have a therapist, I read a lot of books about the brain and self-help and all kinds of interesting stuff. And I have a lot of different sort of methodologies that I use to help me figure out how to live a life that's satisfying as fuck.
And I want to tell you about that because I'm a coach and I obviously am obsessed with coaching. And I think it's an amazing, amazing, truly life altering toolkit to have. And it's not the only toolkit I work with. And it's not the only resource that's useful. Life is long, and complex, and full of like lots of interesting bits and pieces. And I think having a lot of tools and a lot of different methodologies to use on those pieces is a really beautiful thing.
It's kind of like there's food that I love that I eat every day. Like as many of y'all know I'm obsessed with roasted broccoli and cauliflower. It is my favorite, I call it broccoli collies. I have it in the fridge literally at all times. If I have to go like a meal without it I become like very emotional. It's actually a way that I'm like very rigid.
I like it a very specific way that I do at home with the roasting. And so, to me, that's like the equivalent of coaching. It's like this is my thing that I love, that I'm obsessed with, that I use all the time or that I eat every day. It's very nourishing to me, it's nutritious, it's great. And there's like lots of other food that's really good and lots of other food that's really nutritious.
And if all I ever ate or broccoli collies I’d probably be pretty healthy because that's pretty great for you in a lot of ways. But it doesn't have some of the other stuff I might be looking for, like protein. And sometimes I like to go out to like a fancy restaurant.
Okay, let's be honest, I like to go out to a fancy restaurant all the time. Many times I like to go out to a fancy restaurant and eat all kinds of interesting stuff that I don't make at home, whether it's made of broccoli and cauliflower or not. And sometimes when I go out to restaurants I don't even get broccoli and cauliflower because I like the way I make them, often better than I would like the way the restaurant made them.
Okay, so all of that is sort of just like a metaphor to explain that while I'm a coach and coaching is the toolkit that I chose to practice as a service professional, it's not the only thing I use, it's not the only thing I recommend. And it's just one piece of a wildly satisfying life and a wildly satisfying career.
Okay, so I was talking to my therapist who is amazing, I just absolutely adore her. And we were talking about, and I don't even remember why this came up, but once the idea did come up I was like, oh my god, I'm obsessed with this, I have to tell my podcast listeners, and my Instagram followers, and fucking everybody, and my clients. I’ve got to scream this shit from the rafters.
So I was thinking about the desire to be superior, the desire to be better than others. Whether that's like a desire to be better than others at a very specific task or skill, or just in general. And the way that humans are often, like we're like ranking ourselves. We look around at the other humans and we try to rank ourselves and understand where we fit in the ranking and who we’re better than, who we’re not better than, who's better than us.
And I was like, I just had this moment where I was like, what is the point of superiority? What is the point of it? What is the purpose of it? Why is my brain interested in that? What do I think I'm going to get? And I had this moment where I was like, wait, if I thought that I would be loved, if I thought that I would be safe, if I thought that I would belong, would I even care about superiority?
And you get to answer that question for you. Obviously, I can't answer it for you. That would be weird if I could. But for me, I was like, oh, if I thought I would be loved for who I am, if I thought I would be safe as I am, and if I thought I would belong with my chosen other humans, and ultimately probably if I thought I would belong to like the fabric of humanity, to like all the humans, who gives a shit? I don't care about superiority.
And so to me it was just this moment, I'm like this is not a new idea I think. Even as I'm saying it to you now my brain is like, duh. But it was new in the way I conceived of it, which this is a lot of what coaching is like, is I’ll say the same thing all the time and then my client will go, wait, what? And it'll hit different for some reason in that moment. And it will allow them to have some kind of breakthrough or to see things in a different way. And that's how it was for me.
But even as I'm saying it to you, again, my brain is like, duh. But it was like this idea that brains, our sweet, adorable human brains become obsessed with superiority, become obsessed with ranking, become obsessed with like who's better than me at which things, and who am I better at which things and this, this, and that. And all of that, because we're looking for safety, belonging, and love.
And I think this really applies in career. Like people who suffer from imposter syndrome, people who are overworking, I think a lot of times when people are doing that, it's because they want to be able to see themselves as safe, as loved, and as belonging in their workplace.
And loved might not be the exact language a lot of us would use in workplaces, it's probably the language I would use because I'm like that. But for you, you might be thinking more like, oh, I want to think I'm doing a good job. I want people to like me and I want to belong on this team, right? I want to be part of the team, I want to fit in with the culture.
So I'm just saying that because it might sound different in your own head. I think for a lot of people for work it would be more about like I want people to like me, I want people to think I'm doing a good job.
But I think that's what we're looking for when we're going like so and so's work product is better than mine. Whenever she does PowerPoints her slides are so great, why aren't my slides great? We're like looking for, is it safe here? Is it safe for me here? And what do I need to do for it to be safe? And I think so much of our efforts at improvement are about trying to create safety.
Here's the thing, safety is a beautiful thing. It's great, it's actually very important, especially if you want to be able to try new things and fail, safety is really essential. But safety doesn't come from you doing a good job at shit. Safety doesn't come from you making excellent PowerPoint slides.
So when we get confused and we're like looking to superiority to create our safety, to create our belonging, and to create our sense of being liked, it's a losing battle because superiority can't do any of those things, if we're even able to achieve it. And a lot of times we're either not able to achieve it, or even if we did technically achieve it in an objective way, we don't sense that inside of our heads, right?
So like you could actually make the best PowerPoint slides in the office, but if you think, you know, Kira makes the best PowerPoint slides and hers are better, you're going to give yourself that sensation of not being as good. Even if Kira thinks you make the best fucking PowerPoint slides.
And even if you were like, oh, I do make the best PowerPoint slides, that's not necessarily going to allow you to feel safe because you have a human brain, right? Human brain as we talk about scans for what's not working, has the negativity bias.
So you might be like, well I make the best PowerPoints in the office, but that doesn't matter because PowerPoint slides are stupid. And what I really need to be able to do is I need to be able to like manage up. And then later if you read some books and like learned how to manage up your brain would be like, well, I'm still not safe because...
So a couple things here to think about, just like one, superiority doesn't create safety. I think your brain is really going to short out on this because I think a lot of us think it does. We think if I were just better than everyone, I would be safe, but it's just not true. Sometimes people are better than everyone else at something and then the other people are like mad at them for being better and gang up on them. That's not a super fun thing to talk about, but I do think stuff like that happens sometimes.
Or like sometimes you're the best at something in the office but you have an interpersonal struggle with someone and so, you know, whatever, there's always something we can be failing at, right? And even if we're the best at something, we're still going to have human struggles because we're human beings living human lives. It's very rude, I know. We'd all like a refund, please. Thank you.
Okay, so superiority doesn't create safety. It doesn't create the sensation of being loved or liked. It doesn't create belonging. When we want superiority to do those things, it's helpful just to slow down and go, wait, what do I want from being better than everyone? Or what do I want from being as good as so and so at this thing?
And if we find that what we want is safety, belonging, and like a sense of being liked or loved, that's just really good to know because that's a different project to work on, right? It's like you no longer have to stay up all night getting better at your PowerPoint slides or getting better at writing code or getting better at managing up by reading all of those books about it.
I mean, you still can get better and all that stuff, but it's not going to do the thing. So if the thing you actually want is the sense of belonging, the sense of safety, and a sense of being liked/loved, that's just a different project. You're still allowed, obviously, to get better at your skills.
I love honing and sharpening a skill. I love learning more about how to be an amazing coach. I love learning more about how to be an amazing partner. I love learning more about how to be an amazing friend. I really just geek out on learning, I'm like one of those people.
But no amount of book learning and skill building, and even the implementation of those things, is necessarily going to create something like safety. I think safety is really an inside job. There are outside aspects of safety, like if I'm in a room that can lock and I have the security of being able to have that space to myself, like literally I could be safer to like take a nap.
And there's also things like, you know, there's food safety, there's personal body safety, there's lots of different kinds of safety. The kind of safety I'm talking about right now is sort of a mental emotional kind of safety. So if you are facing physical danger, that's a whole different thing. You need a different set of tools for that. Coaching could still be useful even in situations like that, I have found, but that's not what we're talking about here.
What I'm talking about is creating your own emotional safety for yourself. So when we're afraid of being judged and rejected by other people, that can create kind of a sensation of unsafety. Like I need them to like me for me to be okay. And that's really common for people because for much of our history, we kind of like depended on each other for our safety and survival.
For a lot of us now, that's sort of less true and also still true. I mean, humans, I think, still exist in community. But we don't necessarily need everyone to like us for us to be safe, right? So it's like if you're in a workplace where you don't get along with other people, that may feel really unsafe to you. And it may not be a good place for you.
You may decide to leave that workplace. But there is a way that you can still have safety for yourself, even while you're there. Like if you are still in that workplace for a while while you're trying to get a new job there's like a sort of mental emotional safety you can create for yourself.
I feel like I'm not doing a good job of explaining this. So let me explain it actually with a story from my own life. And if you can hear some sawing, I'm sorry. I live in a house that's constantly under construction and sometimes people are sawing shit in the background. And I think that's happening today. So if you can hear it, you're welcome/I'm sorry. And if you can't, that was just a long winded explanation of nothing. Good.
Okay, so several years ago, when I was just starting out in my business I would go to all these like little networking events, right? Because I was trying to meet new people, I wanted to meet people and tell them about my coaching and try to make connections.
Not so that those people could necessarily become my clients, although maybe they could, but also so other people could know about me through them, right? It's sort of word of mouth thing. And just like good practice about telling people what I was up to and bumbling through it because I was a new business owner and felt terrified all the time.
Okay, so I remember working with one of my coaches back in the day, this was like 2019, and realizing that I felt scared to go to these networking events I was going to. They're called lesbians who tech, and I felt scared to go to them because even though I identify as queer, I'm very feminine. And I was afraid that people would think I didn't belong there.
And I was afraid that they would not want me to be there, that I had to like perform or prove my queerness. Also I identified as queer not as a lesbian, so that was like a whole little sub-genre of fear and feeling like I didn't belong in my head.
And so I was going to them anyways, but I just didn't realize that I was sort of subconsciously carrying all this fear with me and this, it's almost like I sort of like expected to be called out, or questioned, or asked to prove my validity for being there. But again, this was subconscious. It wasn't like I was walking in going like, “This is scary, I don't belong.” It was deep down in there and we dug it out in a coaching session.
Okay, so once I could see that I was like, oh, I'm safe. I'm going to these events, I'm safe. And when I say I'm safe, it's like, I'm safe, *I'm safe enough, right? Things still, for sure, could have happened there the way they can happen anywhere in human life with other humans and even if other humans aren't around.
I don't know if you've ever seen a movie Stranger Than Fiction, but the guy stays home because he's trying to be safe and a fucking wrecking ball comes through his window. So that's a scary image. Hopefully, that's not happening to any of us, but it's just an example.
So anyways, but I was safe enough, right? I'm going to these events in daylight hours, full of like lovely humans, many of whom identified as lesbians, to just have conversations with people right? I wasn't even like really putting myself in physical danger except for like, you know, I crossed some streets and had to drive there in a car which actually turns out to be a pretty dangerous thing statistically.
Anyways, lots of side notes in this episode. Once I realized I didn't feel safe there and I didn't feel like I belonged and I was afraid that that would come up, I wasn't really afraid it would come up but it was like, again, it was that subconscious like body fear, that like social mammal, like ugh. So I started on the way to these events just practicing saying to myself like, I create my own safety, I create my own belonging.
So this is like a long winded example, but basically what I'm saying is a lot of the emotional safety that we're looking for, we can create for ourselves. And we may choose to create it ourselves by the thoughts that we say to ourselves, like I was saying to myself I create my own safety, I create my own belonging.
We may also as social mammals choose to create it in collaboration with other people. Like having people who are our chosen family, our actual family, our really close friends that we sort of check in with. And I'm not suggesting you get all your validation from other people, because we've talked about that and how that doesn't really work and how outside validation is actually just inside validation you're giving away credit for.
But I also want to talk about this element because I don't want to be promoting some kind of like rugged individual, pull yourself up by your bootstraps. We're not pulling ourselves up by our bootstraps, that's like literally not even possible.
I actually read the other day that that phrase actually originated to be absurd because it literally is impossible. I think what I'm talking about here is the way you can language to yourself that you are emotionally safe. But I also do want to point out that part of how humans get that is often through connection with other people.
And I even think sometimes what people get when they're hiring a coach is a really non-judgmental, open human who has really great ideas and tools and insight and perspective. But who also is going to allow the client to have all of their shit, and then we're just going to accept them.
And we're going to be like, yeah, and you're okay. And we're going to figure this out, and we're going to put things together, and we're going to make it work, we're going to make it happen. Because a lot of people are struggling with thinking they're not good enough, which is sort of what this whole podcast is all about.
Anyways, so you can't create all the safety just on your own. You may want to create some of the safety in collaboration with other people. But also you can create some of it on your own. And one way you do that is how you talk to yourself.
And so to go back to the very beginning idea of the superiority, it's like if you notice your brain going like, “Oh, I wish I were as good as Kira is at the PowerPoint slides.” Being able to pause and be like, okay, why do I even care? I only care because I want to feel safe, be liked, and belong.
Okay, I am safe actually, right in this minute I'm in my human body, nothing's happening, no one is throwing stuff at me. I'm not in imminent danger. And the person who's actually saying the meanest stuff to me, is me. So I can just choose to stop doing that and then I'm more safe with that. So we can create our own safety in that way.
And you're probably like, but how do I create my own belonging? Isn't belonging like other people have to create that? Here's my personal theory on this, I actually think we create our own belonging. Like I said to myself when I went to those networking events after I uncovered that secret fear that was in there.
Now, again, social mammals, I think it's really beneficial to have a collection of people that you feel close with, who matter to you, and that you can be a social mammal with. And at the end of the day, what I've seen from coaching myself and coaching fuckloads of clients is that we can have like 78 people who love us and in our heads still be like, “I don't belong.”
So the prerequisite for belonging is choosing to belong. Because no matter how much you belong circumstantially, if you tell yourself you don't, you will feel that not belonging. So if you want to belong, you have to be willing to see that. And that's what I mean when I say we create our own belonging.
Again, not in a rugged individualism way. But in a, if you insist to yourself that you don't belong, that will be what you experience. If you tell yourself I create my own belonging, you'll create openness to that belonging. You'll begin to reach out and create connections with people. When you have connections with people, you'll see the belonging in it.
Like we talk sometimes about how life is 50/50, like there's fun emotions we like that feel good, there's fun experiences we like that feel good. And there's other ones that don't feel so great and we don't like so much, and that's part of a human life. I think that's also true in belonging. I have amazing humans in my life that I have belonging with, but if you zoomed in it's like sometimes I feel big, huge belonging and sometimes I feel like kind of wibbly-wobbly belonging.
So again, to say I create my own belonging is sort of to assert that I have agency there, I have authority there, and I can create it. And it's not going to be perfect. Sometimes it will be wibbly-wobbly, but I would always like to choose to lean into the side of I can create it, I can have it, I can see where the belonging exists in my life, even if it's not perfect versus the like I don't belong is just going to create a lot of us thinking that we don't belong and probably a lot of us shutting down our belonging.
And then there's the part of us that wants to be liked or loved. I think the good news/bad news on this is I think we are loved, I think we are liked. And I think often it has a lot less to do with like how good we are at shit or even what any of our actions are than we think it does.
My personal theory is that no matter what I do or don't do, half the people in the world would like love me and half the people in the world would hate me. And that that's okay. Now, the reality is most people in the world don't know who I am and don't care about me at all. And that's also okay.
But there are people in my life who will love me no matter what. There are people in the world who would not like me no matter what. And then I do think there are other people where if I did certain things they'd like me, and if I did other things they wouldn't.
And this probably isn't mathematically true, but the way I like to do it myself is like I'm just to assume that no matter how I try to manipulate that, that I can never actually get more people are like me because as I try to manipulate it some of the people would come and like me, but others would leave and not like me.
Again, that's probably not mathematically correct, but the reason I choose that is because it makes me relax and be like, well, I can't actually manipulate this. And even if I did things trying to manipulate it, some people wouldn't like that either. So since I can't really change it that much, I get to just be who I am. And then the people who like that will come and like me, and the people who like me no matter what will come and like me, and that's enough.
I also think there's space here to say like, you can like yourself. Yeah, we're social mammals, we do thrive in community, I do think it's important to have relationships with other people. I think that's a really beneficial and beautiful part of being human. And also the person you spend the most time with is you.
The person you spend the most time with is you. The person you can't hang up the phone on is you. The person whose opinions you're always going to hear is you. So I also think it's really worth it to learn to love and be kind to yourself. So again, with that drive to be superior, I think so often what we're looking for is we're looking for that safety, belonging, and love to come from other people.
And I get that. And also, I feel like that's being hungry for something where we're never going to be to get nourished enough. You can never be good enough to escape self-doubt if that's part of your thought pattern. You can change the thought pattern, but you're not going to be able to outwit the self-doubt with getting better at shit. I know, I've tried. And you know what? I bet you’ve fucking tried too and it didn't work. And so you're probably tired of trying, so the good news is you can stop with that.
So you can create your own safety, your own belonging, and your own sense of self approval. And you can also create relationships that have that in them as well. I think it's actually a lot easier to create relationships that have that in them when we're also working on creating that in ourselves.
But also, life is life and not everything goes the same direction. So some of us it happens the other way, we like meet a really amazing person who just cherishes us. And we're like, wow, what if I just saw me the way you do? Maybe I could cherish me too.
So it's definitely not like you have to love yourself to be loved by others. That's not what I'm saying, I'm just saying your perspective and how you see the world is a filter for what you will see. What will come through that perspective depends on what the perspective is.
So if you want to love and be loved, if you want to belong, if you want to feel safe, you’ve got to set up the space for that with the way you see the world. And if you want to be better than everyone at everything all the time, like I get it. I want to be the best at everything too.
I absolutely want to be superior at everything all the time. Even with the knowledge of the insight I had in therapy, I still want to be better at everything than everyone. But I'm not going to be. No matter how good I get at some stuff, I'm never going to be the best at everything. And I'm probably not the best at most things I do.
I actually was talking to a client today and I was like, “I'm probably not the best in the world at fucking anything. But who cares? I'm a good enough coach, I help my clients have amazing breakthroughs. I help them have amazing careers. I help them build satisfying as fuck lives. And I don't have to be the best coach to do that.”
And you don't have to be the best at whatever it is you're doing to feel safe, to belong, to be liked and loved, to like and love yourself. And you don't even have to be the best at it to be really fucking good at it and to create a huge impact in the world. Okay? Okay.
So that's my thoughts on superiority. And I want y’all to really think about this. And there's so many things in life like this, where we're trying so hard to get to them and they're not actually going to do anything for us. And we're trying to get to them to actually try to get to a second place, like safety or belonging.
So just something to keep in mind and to notice because it makes life a lot easier and a lot more fun when we can enjoy ourselves now and stop waiting until we're the best at everything to enjoy ourselves. Because probably that day is never coming and there's so many other days that we can just enjoy without being the best at everything.
And if you want to take this work deeper and really like dig into how it relates to you and what it can mean for you and your life and your career, I want to do that with you. So come sign up for a consult, let's talk about whether one on one would be a good fit or you can sign up for the Satisfied As Fuck waitlist, because I will be launching Satisfied As Fuck again in early 2023. And I would love to have you in the group.
All right y'all, that's what I have for you, have a great week. I will talk to you next time. 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 coaching and guidance you need to start loving your work today. Here’s your host, Career Coach, Kori Linn.
Hey y'all, Happy Wednesday. This week, I want to talk to you about something that actually came up in a therapy session I was in, I think it was last week. So I have a lot of service providers. I have several coaches, I have a therapist, I read a lot of books about the brain and self-help and all kinds of interesting stuff. And I have a lot of different sort of methodologies that I use to help me figure out how to live a life that's satisfying as fuck.
And I want to tell you about that because I'm a coach and I obviously am obsessed with coaching. And I think it's an amazing, amazing, truly life altering toolkit to have. And it's not the only toolkit I work with. And it's not the only resource that's useful. Life is long, and complex, and full of like lots of interesting bits and pieces. And I think having a lot of tools and a lot of different methodologies to use on those pieces is a really beautiful thing.
It's kind of like there's food that I love that I eat every day. Like as many of y'all know I'm obsessed with roasted broccoli and cauliflower. It is my favorite, I call it broccoli collies. I have it in the fridge literally at all times. If I have to go like a meal without it I become like very emotional. It's actually a way that I'm like very rigid.
I like it a very specific way that I do at home with the roasting. And so, to me, that's like the equivalent of coaching. It's like this is my thing that I love, that I'm obsessed with, that I use all the time or that I eat every day. It's very nourishing to me, it's nutritious, it's great. And there's like lots of other food that's really good and lots of other food that's really nutritious.
And if all I ever ate or broccoli collies I’d probably be pretty healthy because that's pretty great for you in a lot of ways. But it doesn't have some of the other stuff I might be looking for, like protein. And sometimes I like to go out to like a fancy restaurant.
Okay, let's be honest, I like to go out to a fancy restaurant all the time. Many times I like to go out to a fancy restaurant and eat all kinds of interesting stuff that I don't make at home, whether it's made of broccoli and cauliflower or not. And sometimes when I go out to restaurants I don't even get broccoli and cauliflower because I like the way I make them, often better than I would like the way the restaurant made them.
Okay, so all of that is sort of just like a metaphor to explain that while I'm a coach and coaching is the toolkit that I chose to practice as a service professional, it's not the only thing I use, it's not the only thing I recommend. And it's just one piece of a wildly satisfying life and a wildly satisfying career.
Okay, so I was talking to my therapist who is amazing, I just absolutely adore her. And we were talking about, and I don't even remember why this came up, but once the idea did come up I was like, oh my god, I'm obsessed with this, I have to tell my podcast listeners, and my Instagram followers, and fucking everybody, and my clients. I’ve got to scream this shit from the rafters.
So I was thinking about the desire to be superior, the desire to be better than others. Whether that's like a desire to be better than others at a very specific task or skill, or just in general. And the way that humans are often, like we're like ranking ourselves. We look around at the other humans and we try to rank ourselves and understand where we fit in the ranking and who we’re better than, who we’re not better than, who's better than us.
And I was like, I just had this moment where I was like, what is the point of superiority? What is the point of it? What is the purpose of it? Why is my brain interested in that? What do I think I'm going to get? And I had this moment where I was like, wait, if I thought that I would be loved, if I thought that I would be safe, if I thought that I would belong, would I even care about superiority?
And you get to answer that question for you. Obviously, I can't answer it for you. That would be weird if I could. But for me, I was like, oh, if I thought I would be loved for who I am, if I thought I would be safe as I am, and if I thought I would belong with my chosen other humans, and ultimately probably if I thought I would belong to like the fabric of humanity, to like all the humans, who gives a shit? I don't care about superiority.
And so to me it was just this moment, I'm like this is not a new idea I think. Even as I'm saying it to you now my brain is like, duh. But it was new in the way I conceived of it, which this is a lot of what coaching is like, is I’ll say the same thing all the time and then my client will go, wait, what? And it'll hit different for some reason in that moment. And it will allow them to have some kind of breakthrough or to see things in a different way. And that's how it was for me.
But even as I'm saying it to you, again, my brain is like, duh. But it was like this idea that brains, our sweet, adorable human brains become obsessed with superiority, become obsessed with ranking, become obsessed with like who's better than me at which things, and who am I better at which things and this, this, and that. And all of that, because we're looking for safety, belonging, and love.
And I think this really applies in career. Like people who suffer from imposter syndrome, people who are overworking, I think a lot of times when people are doing that, it's because they want to be able to see themselves as safe, as loved, and as belonging in their workplace.
And loved might not be the exact language a lot of us would use in workplaces, it's probably the language I would use because I'm like that. But for you, you might be thinking more like, oh, I want to think I'm doing a good job. I want people to like me and I want to belong on this team, right? I want to be part of the team, I want to fit in with the culture.
So I'm just saying that because it might sound different in your own head. I think for a lot of people for work it would be more about like I want people to like me, I want people to think I'm doing a good job.
But I think that's what we're looking for when we're going like so and so's work product is better than mine. Whenever she does PowerPoints her slides are so great, why aren't my slides great? We're like looking for, is it safe here? Is it safe for me here? And what do I need to do for it to be safe? And I think so much of our efforts at improvement are about trying to create safety.
Here's the thing, safety is a beautiful thing. It's great, it's actually very important, especially if you want to be able to try new things and fail, safety is really essential. But safety doesn't come from you doing a good job at shit. Safety doesn't come from you making excellent PowerPoint slides.
So when we get confused and we're like looking to superiority to create our safety, to create our belonging, and to create our sense of being liked, it's a losing battle because superiority can't do any of those things, if we're even able to achieve it. And a lot of times we're either not able to achieve it, or even if we did technically achieve it in an objective way, we don't sense that inside of our heads, right?
So like you could actually make the best PowerPoint slides in the office, but if you think, you know, Kira makes the best PowerPoint slides and hers are better, you're going to give yourself that sensation of not being as good. Even if Kira thinks you make the best fucking PowerPoint slides.
And even if you were like, oh, I do make the best PowerPoint slides, that's not necessarily going to allow you to feel safe because you have a human brain, right? Human brain as we talk about scans for what's not working, has the negativity bias.
So you might be like, well I make the best PowerPoints in the office, but that doesn't matter because PowerPoint slides are stupid. And what I really need to be able to do is I need to be able to like manage up. And then later if you read some books and like learned how to manage up your brain would be like, well, I'm still not safe because...
So a couple things here to think about, just like one, superiority doesn't create safety. I think your brain is really going to short out on this because I think a lot of us think it does. We think if I were just better than everyone, I would be safe, but it's just not true. Sometimes people are better than everyone else at something and then the other people are like mad at them for being better and gang up on them. That's not a super fun thing to talk about, but I do think stuff like that happens sometimes.
Or like sometimes you're the best at something in the office but you have an interpersonal struggle with someone and so, you know, whatever, there's always something we can be failing at, right? And even if we're the best at something, we're still going to have human struggles because we're human beings living human lives. It's very rude, I know. We'd all like a refund, please. Thank you.
Okay, so superiority doesn't create safety. It doesn't create the sensation of being loved or liked. It doesn't create belonging. When we want superiority to do those things, it's helpful just to slow down and go, wait, what do I want from being better than everyone? Or what do I want from being as good as so and so at this thing?
And if we find that what we want is safety, belonging, and like a sense of being liked or loved, that's just really good to know because that's a different project to work on, right? It's like you no longer have to stay up all night getting better at your PowerPoint slides or getting better at writing code or getting better at managing up by reading all of those books about it.
I mean, you still can get better and all that stuff, but it's not going to do the thing. So if the thing you actually want is the sense of belonging, the sense of safety, and a sense of being liked/loved, that's just a different project. You're still allowed, obviously, to get better at your skills.
I love honing and sharpening a skill. I love learning more about how to be an amazing coach. I love learning more about how to be an amazing partner. I love learning more about how to be an amazing friend. I really just geek out on learning, I'm like one of those people.
But no amount of book learning and skill building, and even the implementation of those things, is necessarily going to create something like safety. I think safety is really an inside job. There are outside aspects of safety, like if I'm in a room that can lock and I have the security of being able to have that space to myself, like literally I could be safer to like take a nap.
And there's also things like, you know, there's food safety, there's personal body safety, there's lots of different kinds of safety. The kind of safety I'm talking about right now is sort of a mental emotional kind of safety. So if you are facing physical danger, that's a whole different thing. You need a different set of tools for that. Coaching could still be useful even in situations like that, I have found, but that's not what we're talking about here.
What I'm talking about is creating your own emotional safety for yourself. So when we're afraid of being judged and rejected by other people, that can create kind of a sensation of unsafety. Like I need them to like me for me to be okay. And that's really common for people because for much of our history, we kind of like depended on each other for our safety and survival.
For a lot of us now, that's sort of less true and also still true. I mean, humans, I think, still exist in community. But we don't necessarily need everyone to like us for us to be safe, right? So it's like if you're in a workplace where you don't get along with other people, that may feel really unsafe to you. And it may not be a good place for you.
You may decide to leave that workplace. But there is a way that you can still have safety for yourself, even while you're there. Like if you are still in that workplace for a while while you're trying to get a new job there's like a sort of mental emotional safety you can create for yourself.
I feel like I'm not doing a good job of explaining this. So let me explain it actually with a story from my own life. And if you can hear some sawing, I'm sorry. I live in a house that's constantly under construction and sometimes people are sawing shit in the background. And I think that's happening today. So if you can hear it, you're welcome/I'm sorry. And if you can't, that was just a long winded explanation of nothing. Good.
Okay, so several years ago, when I was just starting out in my business I would go to all these like little networking events, right? Because I was trying to meet new people, I wanted to meet people and tell them about my coaching and try to make connections.
Not so that those people could necessarily become my clients, although maybe they could, but also so other people could know about me through them, right? It's sort of word of mouth thing. And just like good practice about telling people what I was up to and bumbling through it because I was a new business owner and felt terrified all the time.
Okay, so I remember working with one of my coaches back in the day, this was like 2019, and realizing that I felt scared to go to these networking events I was going to. They're called lesbians who tech, and I felt scared to go to them because even though I identify as queer, I'm very feminine. And I was afraid that people would think I didn't belong there.
And I was afraid that they would not want me to be there, that I had to like perform or prove my queerness. Also I identified as queer not as a lesbian, so that was like a whole little sub-genre of fear and feeling like I didn't belong in my head.
And so I was going to them anyways, but I just didn't realize that I was sort of subconsciously carrying all this fear with me and this, it's almost like I sort of like expected to be called out, or questioned, or asked to prove my validity for being there. But again, this was subconscious. It wasn't like I was walking in going like, “This is scary, I don't belong.” It was deep down in there and we dug it out in a coaching session.
Okay, so once I could see that I was like, oh, I'm safe. I'm going to these events, I'm safe. And when I say I'm safe, it's like, I'm safe, *I'm safe enough, right? Things still, for sure, could have happened there the way they can happen anywhere in human life with other humans and even if other humans aren't around.
I don't know if you've ever seen a movie Stranger Than Fiction, but the guy stays home because he's trying to be safe and a fucking wrecking ball comes through his window. So that's a scary image. Hopefully, that's not happening to any of us, but it's just an example.
So anyways, but I was safe enough, right? I'm going to these events in daylight hours, full of like lovely humans, many of whom identified as lesbians, to just have conversations with people right? I wasn't even like really putting myself in physical danger except for like, you know, I crossed some streets and had to drive there in a car which actually turns out to be a pretty dangerous thing statistically.
Anyways, lots of side notes in this episode. Once I realized I didn't feel safe there and I didn't feel like I belonged and I was afraid that that would come up, I wasn't really afraid it would come up but it was like, again, it was that subconscious like body fear, that like social mammal, like ugh. So I started on the way to these events just practicing saying to myself like, I create my own safety, I create my own belonging.
So this is like a long winded example, but basically what I'm saying is a lot of the emotional safety that we're looking for, we can create for ourselves. And we may choose to create it ourselves by the thoughts that we say to ourselves, like I was saying to myself I create my own safety, I create my own belonging.
We may also as social mammals choose to create it in collaboration with other people. Like having people who are our chosen family, our actual family, our really close friends that we sort of check in with. And I'm not suggesting you get all your validation from other people, because we've talked about that and how that doesn't really work and how outside validation is actually just inside validation you're giving away credit for.
But I also want to talk about this element because I don't want to be promoting some kind of like rugged individual, pull yourself up by your bootstraps. We're not pulling ourselves up by our bootstraps, that's like literally not even possible.
I actually read the other day that that phrase actually originated to be absurd because it literally is impossible. I think what I'm talking about here is the way you can language to yourself that you are emotionally safe. But I also do want to point out that part of how humans get that is often through connection with other people.
And I even think sometimes what people get when they're hiring a coach is a really non-judgmental, open human who has really great ideas and tools and insight and perspective. But who also is going to allow the client to have all of their shit, and then we're just going to accept them.
And we're going to be like, yeah, and you're okay. And we're going to figure this out, and we're going to put things together, and we're going to make it work, we're going to make it happen. Because a lot of people are struggling with thinking they're not good enough, which is sort of what this whole podcast is all about.
Anyways, so you can't create all the safety just on your own. You may want to create some of the safety in collaboration with other people. But also you can create some of it on your own. And one way you do that is how you talk to yourself.
And so to go back to the very beginning idea of the superiority, it's like if you notice your brain going like, “Oh, I wish I were as good as Kira is at the PowerPoint slides.” Being able to pause and be like, okay, why do I even care? I only care because I want to feel safe, be liked, and belong.
Okay, I am safe actually, right in this minute I'm in my human body, nothing's happening, no one is throwing stuff at me. I'm not in imminent danger. And the person who's actually saying the meanest stuff to me, is me. So I can just choose to stop doing that and then I'm more safe with that. So we can create our own safety in that way.
And you're probably like, but how do I create my own belonging? Isn't belonging like other people have to create that? Here's my personal theory on this, I actually think we create our own belonging. Like I said to myself when I went to those networking events after I uncovered that secret fear that was in there.
Now, again, social mammals, I think it's really beneficial to have a collection of people that you feel close with, who matter to you, and that you can be a social mammal with. And at the end of the day, what I've seen from coaching myself and coaching fuckloads of clients is that we can have like 78 people who love us and in our heads still be like, “I don't belong.”
So the prerequisite for belonging is choosing to belong. Because no matter how much you belong circumstantially, if you tell yourself you don't, you will feel that not belonging. So if you want to belong, you have to be willing to see that. And that's what I mean when I say we create our own belonging.
Again, not in a rugged individualism way. But in a, if you insist to yourself that you don't belong, that will be what you experience. If you tell yourself I create my own belonging, you'll create openness to that belonging. You'll begin to reach out and create connections with people. When you have connections with people, you'll see the belonging in it.
Like we talk sometimes about how life is 50/50, like there's fun emotions we like that feel good, there's fun experiences we like that feel good. And there's other ones that don't feel so great and we don't like so much, and that's part of a human life. I think that's also true in belonging. I have amazing humans in my life that I have belonging with, but if you zoomed in it's like sometimes I feel big, huge belonging and sometimes I feel like kind of wibbly-wobbly belonging.
So again, to say I create my own belonging is sort of to assert that I have agency there, I have authority there, and I can create it. And it's not going to be perfect. Sometimes it will be wibbly-wobbly, but I would always like to choose to lean into the side of I can create it, I can have it, I can see where the belonging exists in my life, even if it's not perfect versus the like I don't belong is just going to create a lot of us thinking that we don't belong and probably a lot of us shutting down our belonging.
And then there's the part of us that wants to be liked or loved. I think the good news/bad news on this is I think we are loved, I think we are liked. And I think often it has a lot less to do with like how good we are at shit or even what any of our actions are than we think it does.
My personal theory is that no matter what I do or don't do, half the people in the world would like love me and half the people in the world would hate me. And that that's okay. Now, the reality is most people in the world don't know who I am and don't care about me at all. And that's also okay.
But there are people in my life who will love me no matter what. There are people in the world who would not like me no matter what. And then I do think there are other people where if I did certain things they'd like me, and if I did other things they wouldn't.
And this probably isn't mathematically true, but the way I like to do it myself is like I'm just to assume that no matter how I try to manipulate that, that I can never actually get more people are like me because as I try to manipulate it some of the people would come and like me, but others would leave and not like me.
Again, that's probably not mathematically correct, but the reason I choose that is because it makes me relax and be like, well, I can't actually manipulate this. And even if I did things trying to manipulate it, some people wouldn't like that either. So since I can't really change it that much, I get to just be who I am. And then the people who like that will come and like me, and the people who like me no matter what will come and like me, and that's enough.
I also think there's space here to say like, you can like yourself. Yeah, we're social mammals, we do thrive in community, I do think it's important to have relationships with other people. I think that's a really beneficial and beautiful part of being human. And also the person you spend the most time with is you.
The person you spend the most time with is you. The person you can't hang up the phone on is you. The person whose opinions you're always going to hear is you. So I also think it's really worth it to learn to love and be kind to yourself. So again, with that drive to be superior, I think so often what we're looking for is we're looking for that safety, belonging, and love to come from other people.
And I get that. And also, I feel like that's being hungry for something where we're never going to be to get nourished enough. You can never be good enough to escape self-doubt if that's part of your thought pattern. You can change the thought pattern, but you're not going to be able to outwit the self-doubt with getting better at shit. I know, I've tried. And you know what? I bet you’ve fucking tried too and it didn't work. And so you're probably tired of trying, so the good news is you can stop with that.
So you can create your own safety, your own belonging, and your own sense of self approval. And you can also create relationships that have that in them as well. I think it's actually a lot easier to create relationships that have that in them when we're also working on creating that in ourselves.
But also, life is life and not everything goes the same direction. So some of us it happens the other way, we like meet a really amazing person who just cherishes us. And we're like, wow, what if I just saw me the way you do? Maybe I could cherish me too.
So it's definitely not like you have to love yourself to be loved by others. That's not what I'm saying, I'm just saying your perspective and how you see the world is a filter for what you will see. What will come through that perspective depends on what the perspective is.
So if you want to love and be loved, if you want to belong, if you want to feel safe, you’ve got to set up the space for that with the way you see the world. And if you want to be better than everyone at everything all the time, like I get it. I want to be the best at everything too.
I absolutely want to be superior at everything all the time. Even with the knowledge of the insight I had in therapy, I still want to be better at everything than everyone. But I'm not going to be. No matter how good I get at some stuff, I'm never going to be the best at everything. And I'm probably not the best at most things I do.
I actually was talking to a client today and I was like, “I'm probably not the best in the world at fucking anything. But who cares? I'm a good enough coach, I help my clients have amazing breakthroughs. I help them have amazing careers. I help them build satisfying as fuck lives. And I don't have to be the best coach to do that.”
And you don't have to be the best at whatever it is you're doing to feel safe, to belong, to be liked and loved, to like and love yourself. And you don't even have to be the best at it to be really fucking good at it and to create a huge impact in the world. Okay? Okay.
So that's my thoughts on superiority. And I want y’all to really think about this. And there's so many things in life like this, where we're trying so hard to get to them and they're not actually going to do anything for us. And we're trying to get to them to actually try to get to a second place, like safety or belonging.
So just something to keep in mind and to notice because it makes life a lot easier and a lot more fun when we can enjoy ourselves now and stop waiting until we're the best at everything to enjoy ourselves. Because probably that day is never coming and there's so many other days that we can just enjoy without being the best at everything.
And if you want to take this work deeper and really like dig into how it relates to you and what it can mean for you and your life and your career, I want to do that with you. So come sign up for a consult, let's talk about whether one on one would be a good fit or you can sign up for the Satisfied As Fuck waitlist, because I will be launching Satisfied As Fuck again in early 2023. And I would love to have you in the group.
All right y'all, that's what I have for you, have a great week. I will talk to you next time. 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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