In 1958 my mother was told if she was very good and bright she might aspire to become a secretary someday.* She still remembers coveting the leather gloves that secretaries would wear, she’d try them on and dream of typing.

Several decades later when I graduated high school my mother was the top executive recruiter in the nation for her boutique firm.

Every year she would board a plane to the company’s annual conference in Omaha and bring home a new addition to her collection of glass trophies etched with her name and her title: “Top Executive Recruiter.” Typically designed in an eye-catching geometric shape like pyramid or diamond these little bits of her corporate life lived next to the porcelain kittens and thrift store coffee table books on Monet.

Her mother (my grandmother) didn’t make it to high school and went hungry growing up in the tenements of Brooklyn’s Lower East Side. Her father (my grandfather) didn’t go to college. There was housing instability and certainly no professional role models in my mom’s childhood.

When a new client presents the major failure of his or her career such as: “I didn’t get a Masters degree” or “I’ve never managed a team” or “I burned every bridge from here to kingdom come when I marched out of that office in my very tall heels,” it seems like they’re worried I’ll agree with the terrible voice inside of them –the one that has already evaluated their potential as somewhere between barista and lunch lady.

For new clients there can be a fear that once I learn about your weak spot I’ll say: “Oh I see. Well in that case we’ll have to set really small goals for you.”

But I like your odds.

There are so many ways that you may come to feel ashamed about yourself, and the feelings can grow strong over time. This can eventually manifest itself in feeling burned out at work and underselling yourself in performance conversations. As many of you have heard me say in life coaching session: Although the feelings may be potent, they may not necessarily be true.

It’s a great choice to bet on yourself.

Look at how far you’ve come, think of the barriers you had to overcome to get here. You’re just getting warmed up.

My mom was single with me in Los Angeles, filling out welfare forms when she landed her first office job in the mid 80s. I’ve seen and quarterbacked many rocket-fueled career and business trajectories since then. It’s been my honor –supplying the strategy, life coaching and elite guidance that gets the results you hadn’t dared to dream of.

*As a working class girl mom was encouraged to think about working for a living. As a white Jewish girl in the 50s the option for office work existed for mom. Most women of color were still expected to work full time, exclusively in the domestic sector. Nowadays the opportunity to eat doughnuts under fluorescent office lighting is greatly expanded and this is referred to as progress.