Welcome to another episode of "Billable-Hour Burnout". Today’s topic? "The Secret to Career Success: Your Mindset". The belief that success comes solely from our actions is common (aka meaning we're only appreciated for what we do), but today's discussion highlights the pivotal role of mindset in achieving career and personal success.
Understanding Mindset and Its Impact on Career Success
Common Misconceptions
Many professionals believe that following a specific set of steps guarantees career success. While actions are important, the mindset driving those actions plays a crucial role.
The Power of Thoughts in Achieving Career Success
Your thoughts directly influence your results. Shifting your mindset can lead to significant changes in your career and personal life, paving the way for career success. If you ever find yourself thinking, "I can't take it anymore," it's a clear sign that a mindset shift is needed.
The Importance of Mindset in Career Progression
Senior Managers and Beyond
At higher career levels, saying "yes" to everything becomes unsustainable. It’s crucial to prioritize effectively and maintain a healthy work-life balance to ensure long-term career success.
Recognizing Burnout
Symptoms of burnout include exhaustion, cynicism, and decreased effectiveness at work. These issues often stem from an overwhelmed mindset, hindering career success. Many professionals reach a point where they think that they can't do it anymore, signaling a critical need for change.
Strategies for Mindset Shifts Leading to Career Success
Identifying Negative Patterns
Recognize the negative thoughts, suppressed emotions, and unproductive actions that hinder your career success.
Practical Mindset Tools
I teach my clients a mindset tool called "the model". When its used, you can gain clarity on your unconscious thoughts, feelings, and actions to create positive results and boost your career success. But in case you don't know the model, below are two other helpful ways to become aware of your mindset.
Journaling: Regularly writing down thoughts and feelings can help identify and address negative patterns, promoting a successful career mindset.
Meditation: Practicing mindfulness can improve mental clarity and reduce stress, aiding in career success.
Implementing Mindset Changes for Career Success
Control Over Thoughts and Actions
While you can’t control external factors, you can manage your thoughts, feelings, and actions to navigate challenges effectively and achieve career success.
Building Resilience
Developing a resilient mindset helps manage stress, prioritize tasks, and balance personal and professional life, all contributing to career success. For more strategies, you can read about how to build resilience at work.
Real-Life Application for Career Success
Client Experiences
Clients who embrace mindset shifts report improved work-life balance, better stress management, and increased confidence in their professional and personal lives, leading to career success.
Practical Examples
Establishing morning routines
Setting clear boundaries
Practicing mindfulness and gratitude
For more inspiration on achieving career success, you can read about another CEO success story on our blog. This story showcases how mindset transformation can lead to significant professional and personal achievements.
Tips for Career Growth
For additional tips on career growth and working towards a promotion, you can check out this external resource on how to work towards a promotion. This article offers valuable insights to help you advance in your career.
Summary
Career success starts with your mindset. Mindset is your competitive advantage in today’s demanding professional landscape. By focusing on your mindset, you can unlock your full potential and achieve your career success and life goals. Remember, overcoming burnout and achieving success is easier with the right support and mindset strategies.
Click here to join my newsletter tailored for today's women in accounting, law, and consulting. Each week, I share valuable insights and actionable strategies to help you create a mindset that helps you weather any storm. By subscribing, you can expect to feel more ease and confidence in your daily life.
Main Takeaways from This Episode:
The Power of Mindset
Signs of Burnout
Importance for Senior Managers
Strategies for Mindset Shifts
How to Have Control Over Thoughts and Actions
How to Build Resilience
Real Life Application
Full Episode Transcript:
Hi, everybody. Welcome to another episode of Billable-Hour Burnout. I am happy to be here with you. I'm all about making the most of your time. I want to make sure that you get exactly what you came for.
Today's episode is called Your Secret to Career Success: It's Mindset. Most of us believe that the solution, the answer to our problems is based on the things that we do. If I do steps one, two, and three, I'll achieve the result. Today, I'm here to tell you that it doesn't fully work like that. Join me for today's episode, where I'm talking about your mindset and how your thoughts create your results.
If this is your first episode, welcome to Billable-Hour Burnout. If you need tactical, helpful advice that helps you get the career of your dreams without the stress or overwhelm, you are in the right place. If you are ready to have and enjoy the life that you spent decades building, you are in the right place. If you're finding yourself here today, it means you're ready to experience more balance, more ease, more confidence, more work-life balance, and doing it without having to quit your job, move to a deserted island, or burn down your life.
My name is Lauren Baptiste, big four auditor and tax consultant turned life coach, and you're listening to Billable Hour Burnout. On the show, I share simple tactics and mindset strategies, specifically catered to the modern accountant, consultant, and attorney. You ready? Let's do it. Happy May. May 1st.
I love this time of year. The tulips are popping. It's Mental Health Awareness Month. It's a good time to reset. Some of us who have been hiding for the past third of the year are ready to come out of their shell. I'm here to welcome you out of your shell.
I wanted to start today as I'm thinking about what's going on for me. April was a sticky month for me. I've been experiencing some growth as a CEO, bringing on someone full-time, moving through different parts of my business that I want to shift and automate and improve upon. I've been learning so much. I will continue to share my learnings with you as I come through the other side.
As someone who's working with me, one of my clients will be like, I don't feel a difference. That's the point. It's not going to feel any different on the front end. It's just a few things on the backend that I'm changing so that I can show up even greater for you here, who's listening today, for my clients who I work with, and for the community so that we can keep making an impact in the profession.
I had a consultation this morning and we were talking about this idea that the profession feels like it's only getting worse. We're only losing more people. We're only more stressed out. Technology isn't making things easier. Without getting into a doom and gloom scenario, it's really thinking about where we are going. If we expect that things are just going to be better, we can see that it's going in a direction that we're not liking. So we need to take ownership of seeing what this circumstance is showing me.
Life is hard. Technology is moving life faster. I feel like I'm working 24/7 and I need to change how I think, how I feel, how I act about it in order to get the results I'm looking for. Let me share a client success story with you today.
This one is coming from a client who graduated five months ago. We had coffee recently and it was nice to catch up with her. She sent me an email prior to this though, and she said this was her five-month update. Actually, she's now at the seven-month post-graduation mark. She said five months ago, I'm doing well. I'm continuing with my morning practices that we laid out in our time together. I'm being more mindful and present throughout the day. I've lost weight and I'm happy. She shared that in a quick blurb with me.
But as I sat with her last week, it was like I met a whole different woman. One year ago, I met this woman. We started working together immediately. She was in a place where she was struggling in her job. She was at the same firm for 20 years, wasn't being fully recognized for her work and realized like, is this working for me? Do I stay? Do I go? What do I do?
So we spent our time together really peeling back the overwhelm that was created because of that, setting herself up for the strategy for the next steps in her career, creating healthy boundaries so that she could start to actualize what she wanted in her career and balance that with her responsibilities as a mom at home. Just to see seven months after graduating. So we worked together for six months. She graduated. Now it's been seven months.
Just to see the way that she is now, she's a whole new woman. She's competent. She has balance at work and at home where she gets to be a parent to her kids that are growing up and almost teenagers. Then she gets to have her career where she's successful and benefiting her and her clients are benefiting from her and what she does. To me, that's just the win-win. So that's not what today's about, but I will say part of her secret to success is what I'm going to be teaching you right now.
Today's episode is about empowering anyone who's listening with this understanding that the mindset is key to unlocking your full career potential, your full life potential, your full parenting potential, whatever it is for you. But mindset is key because when you're at the point in your career where you can't just keep saying yes, there's a limit in what you can do. You truly can't take on more. This is for my senior managers, my partners, my principals, those on the rise to those levels.
It's at that point where I can't just say yes anymore because in the past you used to say, okay, I will work nights and weekends. Maybe I'll make little sacrifices. I'll just keep saying yes, because if I say yes to everything, I'll position myself for that promotion next year. But now there's nothing less left to sacrifice. The little things have all been sacrificed. Now you're starting to sacrifice the big things. You're not exercising anymore. So your health is starting to get sacrificed. You're not spending time with your kids or your husband or your spouse. And then what you're starting to notice is that your marriage is suffering. You're unable to have a minute to breathe just for yourself. You notice your confidence is dipping.
So when clients come to me, what they also see is it's not just my health, my well-being, or my marriage, but for some reason now, because of the way I've been doing it, my career is at stake. So maybe you've had the same goals for years and you haven't made progress. Maybe you're feeling exhausted at work. Maybe you're starting to build some resentment or cynicism just based on the way that things are going day to day. What that means I'm hearing in that little subtleness of what I just shared, that's burnout, exhaustion, cynicism, and less effective at work.
So maybe you're too busy. You say, I'm too tired. You say, I don't have enough time to do the things that I want to do. You say, you don't have a moment to breathe. And in that you give up on your goals. You become frustrated. Then another year goes by and you're not making progress or you're killing yourself and you're not getting a bonus. You're starting to feel hopeless. You're in the middle of a busy period at work. And you're just feeling like things are only getting more challenging. The deadlines are more tight. The client is more demanding. The team is smaller and more restricted. You're thinking about quitting your job. You're thinking about moving away, going to a deserted island. You're hoping that your next bonus will position you for what you want next.
But here's what I know to be true. There's only a few reasons why you're not where you are right now. It's either the negative things you're thinking, the negative feelings that you're avoiding, and the intentional actions that you're not taking. So you're thinking negative things. You're either suppressing emotions, or you're living in extreme emotions of anger and frustration. And then you're taking that out on your family when you get home from work. And then it's leading to all these negative actions that you're taking or not taking. The overwhelm is creating a paralysis in you, where you're not even able to work out or go for a walk. You feel like you can't even clear your mind because there's so much on your to-do list, but it's creating this perpetual cycle where you're living on the hamster wheel.
So when we think of a solution, I want you to think about, well, there are the things that we've been trying to do. Maybe have a gratitude practice. Maybe try to think more positive thoughts, trying to do the best with what I can do, but you really do have more control than you think. I always like to say an affirmation isn't going to save you, and that's not going to be the case today either. So what do you have control over? Because when work is overwhelming, it can feel like we have control over nothing. But I'm here to tell you, you have control over your thoughts, your feelings, and the actions that you take. We have no control over anything else. We don't have control over how our client's going to act and behave. We don't have control over our core manager who has to take a bereavement leave unexpectedly. We don't have control over any of that. But if I can control how I think, how I feel, and the actions I take based on those things, anything's possible.
Now, when you start to make this connection, you'll start to see that it's not just about the things that you do, but it's the thoughts that drive the things that you do. Knowing the actions here isn't enough. It's not just saying, okay, step one, two, and three, but it's actually believing that steps one, two, and three is going to get you the results. It's about having a conviction. So I talked about this in a couple of episodes ago, having the belief, having the desire, having the dedication. But what if you don't really believe? Maybe you just feel like, oh, this client's out to get me, but I still have to do X, Y, and Z. There's a chance that there's subtle things that are happening in actions. There's that paralysis I mentioned earlier where you're not actually working out. You're spinning in your thoughts in the car ride home, and you can't even be present when your kid is talking to you in the car.
Knowing the actions, knowing this idea, that mindset is powerful isn't just enough. We need to build the skillset of having a mind that can manage anything that comes your way. When I work with my clients, I teach them this mindset tool called the model. It's a tool that empowers clients to have a simple way to manage hard things and create a practical pathway forward. You really get clear on the unconscious thoughts that you've been having, the feelings that it's been creating, the actions that you're taking or not taking, and then the results that you're likely not getting because something's not working. Maybe you get that promotion at the cost of personal sacrifice. Is that worth it? I want you to think about that for a second.
So often, we're coming in that if I do this, this will happen, but we're taking a step back and we're saying, if I think this, if I use my mindset to put myself in the position where I can really manage my thoughts, if I can really overcome these anxious feelings that are arising, then can I get my results? The answer is yes, it's way more likely, but solving for burnout is not a DIY project. It's not a do it yourself. Women always come to me feeling like I needed to solve this myself. And for some reason, it's still not working. And it's not working because the part of you that you can't see is the part of you that needs the shift. It's the mindset. I can't see my mindset. I just live it. But when you work with a coach like me, you learn how to see your mindset and then pivot the mindset so that you can get to the results that you're seeking.
Now, here's the thing, right? You know how to get things done. You know the tactics, you know how to do steps one, two, and three, but I'm here to tell you that while it's been successful, it's the thing that's holding now that the tactics are limiting you. And it's the mindset that's holding you back. We can't keep saying yes to everything. We can't keep making little sacrifices because we have nothing else to give.
So what I'm inviting you to think about this go around is to realize that when you start to focus on your mindset first, the tactics will naturally come when you can learn how to manage your thoughts in a challenging situation. When you can learn to work through the negative emotions of stress, frustration, overwhelm, anger, that just seems to be omnipresent in your life. When you learn how to deal with your mindset, you start to prioritize your wants, things that you actually want, right? Alongside the needs of showing up for my clients and my family. When you learn how to create a mindset that helps you, that serves you, you stop putting yourself last. You get out of the lose-lose scenario. You stop self-sabotaging. And instead, you get to have the life that you actually have worked so long for, and you get to receive the fruits of that labor.
So what does that look like? You have a confidence when you show up to any client meeting and feel really good about how you take on the situation. You have greater work-life balance where you can properly manage your time when you go on vacation and not be expected to work 12 hours each day. When you're out of the office, you find a greater sense of calm and peace because you know how to manage your stress, which leaves you giving yourself time to exercise in the morning or eat lunch at a reasonable time. You become more present with your family. When you learn how to manage your mind, you learn how to create more time. You give yourself permission to have a life that you love. You hit your goals. There's so much that happens when you start to have a mindset that benefits you. When you have a powerful mindset, you have the skillset to accomplish whatever you want.
And that's what I'm here to show you. I'm here to tell you because you're not at a place anymore where the tactics are going to work. It's not about doing the Pomodoro method all day long, or the 20, 20, 20 principle that I've talked about in the past. It's about having a mindset that gives you permission to have the life to do the things you want.
In summary, mindset is powerful. It is your most powerful play. It is your competitive advantage across all of your peers because no one's using their mind in this way. They're using their mind to be the subject matter expert. They're using their mind to try to get the most done in the time that they have, but they're not using their mindset in this leveled-up way. We were never taught it getting our CPAs or our college degrees or our masters. We were not taught it getting our certifications. It was not taught, but I'm teaching you this because what I'm seeing is that the profession is getting more intense and we need better tools to balance it.
In summary, when you solve for your mindset, you have the strong tactics to support you to achieve the goal. Once you achieve the goal, you see everything is possible for me. Anything is possible.
So the thing that I always like to share here, as we're wrapping up today is burnout is overcomable. It feels like it's not, you feel stuck. You feel like you should have been able to figure it out at this point. But what I'm telling you is that you are leveled up and your leveled-up problems are not going to be solved with old solutions. We need new solutions to address these new challenges. And that's why I love doing this work. The women that I'm working with know that their lives can be better. They know that something's got to change. They don't know how, but they know that they can trust someone like me that can help them through it. Burnout is overcomable and it's way easier, a lot faster, and a whole lot more fun when you have an expert on your side.
What I want to invite you to do today is to visit my website. I want you to go to www.acheloawellness.com. Read the articles, sign up for my newsletter. Get a feel for the work that I do. What I'm often told is like, Oh, I saw you. I'm just getting to know you. I want to know more. So I'm inviting you to get to know me more. Scroll on my Instagram account at the Lauren Baptiste, watch all of these videos on YouTube to get a feel for my methodology and how I work with my clients. Take advantage of all the free resources that are out there, which will give you a lot of nuggets of how to get there. The only way you're actually going to get out of that burnout, if you've been struggling in it for so long, is to get the support that you need to thrive. How do we do that? We work with someone who can help us not only have the tactics to be successful, but the mindset that gives us permission to implement those tactics.
Thank you so much for listening to today's episode. If you liked what you heard, if you're curious, if you want to learn more, drop a comment, hashtag replay if you watch this on the replay. Let me know. I want to hear what you're loving. I want to hear what you're implementing. I want to hear what you're thinking about because this is for you. I'm not doing this for me. I'm doing this for you. I want to make sure that you're getting the nuggets that you need to say, she hears me. She's got me. There's a way out of this because that's true. I'm here for you. I've got you. And there is a way out of this. Stay connected with me on LinkedIn, Lauren Baptiste, Facebook - Lauren Baptiste Coaching. I can't wait to connect with you. Thank you so much for listening today. If you want to know about me and my program, visit Acheloa Wellness. Have a wonderful week. Happy May. Let's make it even better just by thinking, deciding it can be better.