Do you believe you have to have it all together?

One of the most common issues my clients have is that they feel that underneath they have a continuous hum of self-doubt. It frustrates them immensely, and it is the thing that, when we get rid of it, changes their lives the most. If you have wealth, influence, a public profile, you’ve got it all, right? Well, no. Life is still really hard sometimes.

I’m an executive therapist and coach to high-level leaders, and what I have learned in my role is that the higher up you are, the heavier the self-doubt weighs. High performance is often hiding high-functioning survival. Some business leaders revel in this and think it’s part of their cool identity – until they burn out, that is. I often talk about how you can look the same from the outside, but after our work clearing your old baggage, you feel completely different on the inside.

A lot of what looks like ambition is fear in disguise. A lot of what looks like composure is actually shutdown. I had a client thank me this week for putting him in touch with his feelings because it meant he had been able to be emotionally present in a very important family moment. He had shut down his feelings when I first met him due to some childhood trauma; we cleared that, and now he can feel his feelings and stay calm and in control.

Maybe you learned to hold it together or shut your emotions down early in life. You had to be the achiever, the fixer, the one who had to make sure everyone else was okay. Now you’re running a business through the same lens, and that doesn’t work. It doesn’t work in your personal life, and it definitely doesn’t work in your business!

You can be successful from a shutdown place, but only to a point—you hit a ceiling of success. Growth doesn’t come from shutdowns and holding it together. It comes from internal calm, curiosity, innovation, creativity. When success becomes your self-worth, it’s a huge problem. Downtime feels like failure, any feedback feels like a threat, and your leadership is based entirely around keeping you feeling good about yourself. Last week I had a client tell me his team had noticed that he was changing in the way he was managing them, and they really liked it!

The way out begins with self-honesty—pure honesty, I call it. You are bright; you know what you are hiding or running away from, even if you just know the symptom. So face up to it, ask for help to get rid of it, and get on with being who you really are. If you can get this far with all this baggage, imagine what you could achieve without it….