Welcome to Visionary Pursuit, a podcast where we explore what it takes to turn your big, bold ideas into reality. I'm Carolina Zuleta. I'm a life and business coach and your host for this podcast. I'm thrilled to have you here.Â
Welcome back. This is episode 29 of the Visionaries Pursuit Podcast. Today I wanna talk about something that I think it's affected most of us and it's work wounds, those situations that we've lived throughout our career that have caused pain in our lives, and that in some way they still affect us. I'm not gonna refer it to.
Racial discrimination or sexual abuse. I think those are at a different level, and my recommendation is that you seek support from a therapist and really take care of yourself. The wounds I wanna talk about today are wounds that in some way they've been normalized, but that they still hurt and create pain.
For example, you've had a terrible boss. They never set you up for success. They didn't give you the coaching that you needed. They gaslight you or they criticize you, or who humiliated you in public. Maybe you started your own business and you went more in depth than you wanted, or you got terrible customer reviews, or you made a very big mistake in front of a large audience.
Maybe you were laid off or fired, or you went bankrupt. Uh, through my years of coaching, I have had conversations that have stuck in my mind. Like one of my clients went to her boss to ask for a race, and the boss's response was, how dare you ask for more. Another of my clients was laid off because they said that position was no longer available, and two days later they saw that they were hiring for that same position.
I've heard many stories of feeling undervalued and unappreciated, working very hard, and admitting the the financial goals they wanted. I've heard people being criticized online, all kinds of situations that are part of working, that are part of working with other human beings. But that really hurt us and many of us don't talk about it.
And the reason why we don't talk about it is because in many cases they create shame and we feel terrible about ourselves. So in this episode, what I want all of us to do is acknowledge those wounds we have. From our careers, from our works, from our businesses, and I'm gonna walk you through a process on how you can reclaim your power in those situations so they don't continue affecting your future because those situations are very painful.
And the pain, it's very uncomfortable, but I think it's part of being human. My worry, my concern, where I think we all need to pay very close attention is the story we create from those situations. All of us when we go through a tough moment in our lives or in our careers. We make up a story, we give a meaning to those moments, and what I've seen from coaching people through many of these work wounds is that most of us give a meaning that is not helpful, that it doesn't make us a better person, but that it creates resentment and shame and lack of self-confidence.
One of my clients, who's a very successful entrepreneur, made a couple of bad judgment calls in her company and in the coaching session she said. Kado, you know what? I feel like I no longer can trust my instinct because I've always trusted it and look what I created. And for me, that is a very disempowering story because okay, she made a mistake, but not trusting herself.
That is big. That is major. So as you're listening to this podcast, I want you to maybe get a piece of paper and think, what have been those situations that have hurt me? And write them down and then write, what is the story I've created from it? And I'll share again some of the stories I've heard, so maybe you can relate or you can remember that that's what happened to you.
A very common story is I can no longer take risks. I have to play it safe because it's not safe for me to make mistakes. It's not safe for me to fail. I have to play small and safe in my safety where I'm not seen or they become perfectionist trying to do everything perfectly in order to not fail or make a mistake because it is so painful.
Because the story they've made is mistakes and failure are wrong, and they're dangerous. The story they've created, because the story they've created is that mistakes and failure are dangerous, that you will be publicly humiliated or publicly criticized. So we start playing small. Another common story is I'm not cut out for this.
So either we stop pursuing what we wanted or we think we have to overwork and do 10 times more in order to be validated or approved. I've also met people who instead of going into shame that there's something wrong with me, they're going to blame and they wait. They use so much of their energy.
Thinking of how the other person was wrong, how their boss was wrong, how the client was wrong, and feeling this anger and this resentment, even for some of them, thinking of how they could have revenge. I hope their company fails. I'm gonna start a competing business and take all their clients this energy that is going into blaming the people who were involved in that past situation or using our energy to think of revenge.
Doesn't serve us. I get it. I'm pretty sure I've done it in the past as well, and it's human and I don't want you to now shame yourself if you're doing that. But more recognize that that is not helpful. And the last place we go is through justification. Well, there was nothing else I could do. Well, that's the best I could do.
In that moment, they were asking for too much. I didn't have the time, I didn't have the space, I didn't have the right team. And we spend energy justifying in our head. Why that terrible situation happened. But if you listen to two episodes before where I talked about victim mentality, shaming ourselves, blaming others, or justifying ourselves are ways of thinking that keep us stuck in victim hood.
And when we have a work wound and we stay in victim hood, then we're giving our power away. Then the terrible situation is not serving us at all. It's holding us back. So my invitation today is that we go back to those terrible situations and we look at them in another way so we can reclaim our power.
So this is the thing I do with my clients. We go back and we go deep into the situation that happened. Who were the players? What did they say? When did they say it? But most important, what was your role in all of it? And not from a place of shaming my clients, of course not, but of them being able to see how they played a role in that terrible situation as well.
Even if it's a very small role, even if you still believe that the majority of the responsibility falls on other players, acknowledging that you had a part in it without shaming yourself allows you to decide that you can do it differently next time. So maybe you go back and you see that you didn't raise your hand and really advocated for yourself as much as you could have, that you allow certain behaviors to happen without setting clear boundaries.
Maybe you didn't underperform in certain things. Maybe you weren't as organized with your time. Maybe you made some bad judgements and investments on how you used the business money. Maybe you were very overwhelmed because you were thinking you had a lot of things to do. Some important task fell by the wayside.
But if you can go back and look what was 1% that was my responsibility. What was one thing that I failed to do, or I had a mistake that was part of creating the situation, and you own that. You say, you know what, yes. That was my mistake. Without shaming yourself, then you start reclaiming your power. So if you're writing this as I really suggest all of you do, and you start writing the things that you failed at, or that you fell short and you didn't perform in the way you wanted, next to that list you're going to write, what are the lessons I'm going to learn from those mistakes?
Small failures I had. For example, if you go back and you noticed. That you stay quiet in many situations where you could have spoken up and you decide that the lesson that painful situation is gonna give you is that now you know how to speak up and that you're never gonna be quiet again. I. Then what happens is you turn that awful situation into a learning process for you, and you extract all the value from that moment, and you become better.
Instead of creating the story of I can trust myself, or people are cruel, or all cultures in all companies are toxic because those thoughts don't help you. Maybe you had made a bad investment. And now you look at that and instead of feeling shame, you think, how am I gonna become a better investor because of that mistake I made?
Maybe today you're seeing that your employees are not performing at the level that you want and you're feeling really bad with yourself and. And you're seeing that because your employees weren't performing, your company wasn't performing, and that's painful. But the lesson that you extract from that is I need to become really good at having difficult conversations.
I, from now on, I'm gonna become a master at having difficult conversations and I can do it, and I can improve and I can grow. And because you use that difficult moment to learn something from it, you're reclaiming your power back. And using those lessons to get better. A woman I know experience a very tough situation that I think a lot of us entrepreneurs and creatives are really scared of experiencing, and it's being canceled online.
It's feeling like hundreds, maybe thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands of people are mad at you and are publicly saying how awful you are. This woman, what she did was, of course, she fell into shame and sadness and pain at first. But then she went and gather a lot of that criticism, and from each comment she asked herself, what is true about what these people are saying and what is not?
And what is not. She gave it back to them in her mind and said, this is trash talk. I'm not even gonna get engaged in this, but this part that you say that is true. And that was my mistake and that hurts doing that. But she didn't shame herself, she just acknowledged it. And then she said, and now I'm gonna do it better.
And because she went through that situation with so much consciousness. Allowing herself to experience all the pain, but deciding to create an empowering story from that situation, her business has doubled. She's more successful now than before she was canceled, and that is my invitation to all of you today to remember that no matter how painful, unfair, humiliating that that work situation was for you.
Today, it doesn't have to continue affecting you negatively. Today, you have the power to tell a different story, a story that is gonna make you a more powerful leader, a better creator, a better entrepreneur. Your personal power, your power to create and be a leader is yours. And because it's yours, you can give it to other people, but because it's also yours, you can reclaim it at any point.
It doesn't matter if this work wound happened 10 years ago or this morning. Right now, you have the power to tell a different story, and hopefully it's a story that will empower you to be better and to keep moving forward towards your dreams. All right. See you next time.
If you're currently pursuing a big, bold idea, we need to talk! In my coaching program, I'll teach you how to manage yourself, your own thoughts and emotions, as well as your team and your money, so you can turn your beautiful idea into a reality.
Go now to carozuleta. com slash consult, that is C A R O Z U L E T A dot com slash consult and complete the form to book a complimentary call with me. See you there!Â
