I’m curious –can you articulate your success?

You may arrive in my office feeling rumpled or in need of a nap, but I look at you and see inevitable victory.

Trained in the art of political campaigns, I pretty much start crafting your message the minute you hit my couch.
I see the banner waving behind you, complete with your elevator pitch and glorious call to action.

I’m used to this contradiction, me on one side: already hard at work mentally editing your digital profile, your in-person look and how you communicate power while you, my new client, sit opposite of me stewing in a soup of fatigue or uncertainty.

The part that never fails to amaze me is how my clients, who have so much to be proud of, can’t always tell the story of their success.

“Oh I did great, but now my boss’s boss doesn’t seem to be tracking me” they’ll say, side stepping my question,”he’s really checked out.”

Or: “Sure I’ve achieved the blue sky goal I set in action for myself five years ago, but it doesn’t feel like I’m there yet.”

Here are the three root causes of success aversion I’ve identified after hundreds of private client intake sessions:

1. Morality: You learned to equate success with boasting. The subconscious belief is that only immoral people are truly successful. Therefore in order to preserve your own sense of being a good person, the subconscious mind minimizes your actual success and that’s reflected in how you communicate.

2. Survivor’s Guilt: Your family or your friends were working class, or third world, and otherwise denied access to what you now have. They either never made this much money or they never had this much freedom and decision making power. You can feel their absence, you feel the separation between you and them. In order to feel okay about the differences, your own success is minimized.

3. Trauma: Your childhood didn’t go well. It had some nice parts, but big picture, too many things (or one big thing) went wrong. You are gaining ground with your career but you can’t always feel it because you are easily triggered by daily events. You might regularly feel that your upward trajectory is threatened or is somehow fragile despite evidence to the contrary.

In all of these cases I work with clients to deeply own and integrate the story of their real success. Together we reduce or even eliminate some of the feelings above. It’s rarely something you can address on your own, it takes a powerful listening partnership and smart frameworks to further align you with your hard earned content expertise. After our work, my clients often remark on their new belief system that has taken the place of the old.

The work we do together advances your ability to articulate your value and step into your healthy leadership role.

And that’s great, because it’s your time.

Laura Close is an executive coach to ambitious and semi-ambitious professionals and entrepreneurs. She is 50% Gen X and 50% Millenial and sees a select portfolio of new clients quarterly. When she is not in live session or remotely project managing her clients’ strategy implementation, she loves to run on Alki Beach in Seattle, WA.