50. You're Successful, So Why Are You So Resentful?
Fighting tooth and nail for a well-deserved bonus, building the case, advocating beyond a doubt… and then feeling exhausted instead of victorious. This familiar pattern shows up for women in male-dominated spaces who work harder to prove themselves, only to find the win doesn't feel like winning.
This resentment trap - where success feels hollow because you're carrying the story of the struggle into the victory - stems from internalized beliefs passed down through generations. Women learn that success has to be hard and comes with sacrifice. Most leadership advice misses this entirely by telling you to skill up or hustle harder, when in reality, skill isn't the problem.
If you find yourself resentful and exhausted, even when you’re successful, this episode is for you. You’ll learn the three steps of the Self-Empowered Leadership Formula that will transform how you process challenges, helping you interrupt old patterns and choose empowerment over resentment or waiting to be valued.
Interested in working with me? Book a free 1:1 consultation here!
What You’ll Learn from this Episode:
Why resentment becomes a familiar pattern for successful women and how it drains your energy.
The difference between validating emotions versus amplifying the victim story.
How unconscious narratives from family and culture shape your leadership lens.
3 steps to shift from resentment to ownership using the Self-Empowered Leadership Formula.
What the "Princess Complex" is and why neither extreme of resentment or waiting works.
Listen to the Full Episode:
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25. Pain vs. Suffering: The Leadership Skill No One Talks About
Full Episode Transcript:
Have you ever fought for what you deserve? Whether that's a bonus, recognition, a promotion, or a seat at the table. And instead of feeling victorious, you felt drained, resentful, maybe even questioning if it was worth it. You're not alone. Women in male-dominated spaces are taught to fight harder, prove more, and adapt faster. We win, but it doesn't always feel like winning. Why? Because we're carrying the story of the struggle into the victory. And here's the truth: it doesn't have to be that way. Today, I'm going to show you how to stop resenting your success and start owning and enjoying your power using my self-empowered leadership formula. This is the work that's helped hundreds of high-achieving women shift from performing to commanding without burning out. Let's dive in.
Welcome to The Balanced Leader, hosted by Yann Dang, a Leadership and Life Coach with over 20 years of corporate experience. Drawing from her journey as a former global finance leader and second-generation immigrant, Yann understands the unique challenges women face in male-dominated workplaces.
Each episode offers insights on balancing masculine and feminine energies, mastering soft skills, and building emotional intelligence. Join us to transform frustration into empowerment and unlock your authentic leadership potential.
Hey podcast listeners, I have a very important episode about how to stop resenting your success and start owning your power. This is something that I have noticed in myself over my years of living and winning and losing and winning, and also in relationships that I have with people and a thing that I have seen with a lot of women that I have encountered, both in coaching, in my day-to-day life, in my family. It is this idea that resentment is something that comes up for a lot of people when we feel like we're owed something or we should have already been somewhere or that we are struggling and we're in this constant struggle.
So I'm going to dive in today with a story from one of my clients. So, my client, let's call her Catherine. She fought tooth and nail for a well-deserved bonus. She built the case, she advocated, she proved herself beyond a doubt she had earned it, and she won. And here's the thing, she also often feels like she's fighting harder for things than her peers who tend to be men, right? She's the only female on her leadership team.
So when we spoke about this afterwards, she wasn't celebrating. She was exhausted. Her focus was on how draining the process had been, how much she had to prove, how little recognition she got along the way, how difficult it is to get her point across.
This is what I call the resentment trap. You get the win, but it doesn't feel like a win. It feels like a reminder of how hard the fight always is. And the cycle leads to burnout, disconnection, and a constant sense of never enough.
Now, I want to share that if you're feeling this way, this episode is not to shame you or to blame you. It is simply to shine a light on this familiar thing that happens, which I call the resentment trap, because in society and in our socialized world where there are definitely gender norms and there is definitely a narrative that happens in the world, there's a lot of unconscious beliefs about the way things should be versus the way things are. And we also have a lot of programming from women around us.
So I don't know about you, but my mom had a really hard time enjoying anything that my dad did. She resented the crap out of him, and for good reason. I will have to say there were probably really good reasons. But why I'm sharing this story with you is I was brought up to resent men in some ways, to feel like they're never enough. And I know this because it has shown up in my relationships with men where one man had actually told me once that I am utterly unsatisfiable. And it didn't feel good. It didn't feel good to hear this from this man because I want to be somebody who's satisfied. I want to be someone who enjoys her power, who enjoys the good things that come her way, right? I don't want to be a bitter woman who is constantly resenting my life. And even when it's successful on the outside, a lot of this resentment can be brewing on the inside.
And what I want to share here today is really that this resentment oftentimes is a familiar pattern that has been passed down to us from generation to generation, often unconsciously, often without the intentionality of you carrying this pattern with you. But as women, we've internalized the story, right? Success has to be hard. It has to be earned twice over. It comes with sacrifice. Even when we succeed, we minimize the win and magnify the struggle. And most leadership advice misses this.
They tell you to skill up, lean in, hustle harder, but skill isn't the problem. Identity is. The lens you're leading from, if your identity is still rooted in proving every win will feel like another battle scar. And those scars over time will feel more like a heavy lift, an uphill battle, and less like winning, less like being part of a team, less like achieving, right, less like empowerment, and more like struggle. It's that idea that life is always a struggle and it will always be a struggle, no matter what. And resentment breeds that. It's the breeding ground for more and more of this.
I'm going to share about my own story and what this was like for me and how I shifted this perspective for myself. But I remember getting promoted to the leadership team, and on paper, it was everything I wanted. But instead of feeling proud, I felt the weight of every battle. I was actually told behind the scenes that I had six months to prove myself, even though they had openly shared this with the company. They wanted everybody around me to know that I had gotten this role. But behind the scenes, I was told that I would get a coach to support me, but that I really needed to prove myself in this role and really prove myself in a room full of men and to be able to own the role. And because I was still carrying the story of the struggle in the beginning, I couldn't feel the pride. I actually just kind of felt like, what if I lose at this? And how unfair is this? I couldn't see myself as powerful. And I saw myself as tired.
That's when I realized if I didn't change the lens, success was always going to feel hollow to me. And the reality is, the more I stayed in this constant state of resentment and struggle, the more I wouldn't actually enjoy the power that I had. And the less I would actually want to perform well because part of me would be like wanting to be right and saying this is a hard system, I'm never going to win at this. So I actually really worked on shifting myself, shifting myself out of feeling resentment and into taking ownership. And instead of thinking like this is something for me to be tested on, I really thought about that this was a privilege for me to be able to show up, to be invested in, to be chosen, and to be supported.
Of course, you could look at it two different ways. You could say, well, they gave you the promotion, but they really expected you to lose. Of course, you could say that. But for me, if I was thinking about winning and if I was thinking about enjoying the journey, my focus wasn't about the end state. My focus was, how can I learn and grow from this? What can I make of this? How can I enjoy this in the here and now?
But it took a lot of consciousness for me to think this way and to shift myself in this way. And I want to share that this is not an easy thing, especially of the way that we've been brought up and the stories that we've heard from other women. Whether the struggle is real, which we want to be seen in, but also feeling like a victim to it can also be very limiting for you and very draining energy-wise, right?
So, I want to also talk about the Princess Complex versus the self-empowered leader. So, here's another trap. What I call the Princess Complex, and I think it's wrapped up in this resentment because it's a belief that leadership should be easy, fair, or handed to us when we're good enough. And when it's not fair, we feel victimized. So neither extreme works. Either you're resenting things because you feel like you have to work so much harder, or you're waiting to be noticed, or you're waiting to be valued, or you're waiting to feel worthy in some way. Something external to you needs to happen, right?
And what I want to offer today is an alternative solution that I have created, that I have used on myself and the hundreds of women that I've coached. And it's called the Self-Empowered Leadership Formula. It's about owning your path, your struggles, and your wins without apology. It's saying, I will make this happen. I'll own this fight and I will own the victory.
That's why I created this formula. It's anchored in four primary steps and I'm going to walk you through it, but it will help you ground you, be the compass for you in every room. So you stop defaulting to flight, freeze, or waiting, right? It's really about igniting you and having grounded presence around you and taking ownership of those unconscious narratives that we might have been fed over the years by our mothers, by other women in our lives, by other women in leadership, even by the men. Men might often times tell me, I remember when I was dating, and men would tell me like, oh, it must be really hard for you. You're highly successful, you make lots of money. This must be really hard. It's really threatening to other men.
And I could own it. I could say, it is hard to be dating in the world where you are so highly successful and men are intimidated. But once I find that man who's not intimidated, how lucky am I? So do you see how I quickly just change the script on things? Instead of being like, poor me, I'm going to wait for somebody. I was like, that guy's going to be out there. And when I meet him, he is going to be great because he's not going to be threatened by my independence, he's not going to be threatened by who I am. I'm not going to have to pretend that I'm somebody that I'm not, because my professional and personal life has already shown it and proved it to be true.
And so instead of feeling like a victim, I'm like, well, I've already arrived, right? I'm not going to be a person that falls in love with somebody and then as my career grows and changes, the whole relationship dynamic changes. I've already arrived. I'm already who I am. And so when I change it in that way, right, I start owning my power instead of resenting my success because if I really kept on that story that a lot of men would tell me, I would just be like, "Oh, poor me, it's so hard for me to find someone." Well, guess what? If I'm like, "Poor me, it's so hard for me to find someone," it's going to be even harder for me to find someone. Nobody wants to be around a victim. Nobody wants to be around somebody who feels like poor me, the world owes me, right? I'm so highly successful. I can't find someone.
Well, my script was, I'm highly successful. I'm a big catch. I'm going to find somebody who's just as big of a catch as me and I'm going to own that power. But it took a lot to get to that place in my mind. And today I'm going to break down what those three steps are.
The first step is context and curiosity. It's really about understanding yourself and seeing how you're processing the world. We take the things that happen outside of us and we choose how to process them. So all of that processing typically happens from programming that we've gotten, mostly from our family, but from society, from culture. So you want to notice those narratives because the more we notice those, the more we can actually interrupt that pattern. But let's walk into this example. So a client of mine realized every time her male boss cut her off, she told herself, he doesn't respect me. He doesn't value my ideas. And from that place, what would happen when she would think that way is that she would shut down, she would be annoyed, she'd leave meetings, she'd think about finding a new job.
But what I invited her into was the curiosity about this and getting a better context for her. And I asked her, what else could be true? And that shift stopped her from spiraling into resentment. Just her getting more curious about what else could be true helped her to see that there could be another possibility. She actually said to me, well, I actually notice he interrupts other men that he respects. And I did ask her, even though he interrupts you, have you seen a track record where he actually listens to your advice and values your opinion? And she took a bit of time, but she said, yes, actually, I've told him things in the past and I've seen that he has taken my idea seriously and he has moved them forward and he has valued them. And so I asked her, you know, what other thing could you be thinking about if you were more curious about this, right? Because your mind is focused on the resentment piece and that upset. But if you thought what else could be true? Well, she did say, I think he has a habit of doing this. I actually, as I think about it and I zoom out, I think that he just does this. It's his way of working with people.
But when I asked her, why do you think you take it so personally? She said, well, in my family, when I grew up, my dad would never let me speak first. He always had to have the first word and the final words, and I always felt trapped in that. And I said, wow, could it be that your old narrative of dealing with your dad is playing into how you are with your boss now? And when she stepped back, she could see how all of these patterns came together. I mean, this is really the power of reframing things and diving in to really zoom in to understand how you are contextualizing the world and then zooming out with curiosity. And that insight, right, because that insight helped her see, wow, this isn't my dad. I am a grown adult woman. I see that this happens with other men that my boss works with. And I can also see that I am really thinking and really triggered by this because of my dad. And so with this, the next step is choice. You can either carry the weight of the fight and the old story, or you can claim the power of the victory.
And so I had asked her, what would it look like to interrupt him and to say what's so for you and to instead of focusing on how he doesn't respect me, really focus on where he is taking your lead. And so with this choice, the next time it happened, because of course these things happened to us a lot of times and we get triggered because we're like, oh my gosh, it's happening to us again. Here it goes, right? And usually the tone of voice in your head is like, oh, here we go again. He's going to interrupt me. He's not going to listen to me. So instead of allowing her boss to cut her off, she made a choice to speak up and said, please, can I finish? And sometimes she would say please, sometimes she would just interrupt back and finish, right? So this was her process. But this is her making a different choice versus spinning into that resentment spiral or waiting to be heard, right?
That's the princess complex. In that way, she got to choose for herself how she wants to be. And instead of focusing on all of the times where she felt like she was undervalued, she actually started finding evidence for herself of where her thoughts and ideas were being valued and how important it was for her to learn how to interrupt other people, especially in their culture. So I just want to zoom out. I know that some people's culture is like interrupting is really bad. I want to say from where I worked in my corporate culture, interruption was sort of the culture there, right? And nobody did it. Well, let's see. I was going to say nobody does it in like a demeaning way or an intentionally ill-willed way. And actually, I would say that for 90% of the people, that was true. I would interrupt other people, but it wasn't also from a place of ill will. It was trying to get my point across, right? And we're all kind of learning how to get our point across in the context of our culture. So, making this choice for her, she was more focused on the value that she has to be sharing, how she's learning and growing as a leader.
And this is really that third step. It's anchoring into your future self, the leader you're becoming. Because the leader you're becoming five years from now isn't complaining about feeling not respected, feeling interrupted. The leader that she was becoming, she's visualizing her walking into the room, how she speaks up, how she holds her seat. That's who you commit to being regardless of who's in the room. And this commitment, right, fuels your choice over and over again. So yes, you may have some thoughts in your head like, oh, here we go again. But if you look to your future self who's like, it's me five years from now being this empowered leader who loves to win, who's looking out for herself, who's owning her power, how does she react to this current situation? How does she react to her boss cutting her off? Because this is in the here and now where you can make those choices that will define who you are in the future.
This is how the three-step process works with the self-empowered leadership. It's called the Self-Empowered Leadership Formula because at the end of it, you are empowering yourself. You're not waiting for somebody, right? You're not sitting with resentment. You're choosing consciously how you want to think and feel about a certain situation. You're even reframing the past for yourself so that it doesn't continue to hold onto you and have you spiraling into resentment or waiting like a princess for somebody to come save you. It is truly about you taking ownership and taking leadership of yourself and your life.
And so those are the three steps. First, it's context and curiosity. Secondly, it's that choice, making that choice, understanding your programming and knowing that you have a choice in this moment to decide how you want to think and feel about this specific situation. So like for me, in that promotion, instead of thinking about it like, oh great, I've got to prove myself again. I thought about it as like amazing. This is a great opportunity for me. I am going to take the reins of this and I'm going to make the most of this no matter what happens. It's really about having your own back, too.
And just like my client who was really upset about fighting for that bonus, it's like, yes, I fought freaking hard for that bonus and I got it. I made it happen and I'm going to sit and savor in the victory that I got and the power that I have because I'm so awesome at creating a powerful case for me without over-explaining. And I am so good at learning how to communicate in spaces that weren't built for me. And again, that's that commitment to yourself. You're like, I am a badass, or I am a powerful female leader that does not entertain drama or resentment or princess complex. And I'm not saying that if you do from time to time, you're a bad person. I'm just saying you have a choice of how you want to use your time and energy. And you can make conscious choices about that.
And you know if you've been listening to my podcast, I want to validate your emotions. There's validating the emotions versus amplifying and getting yourself stuck into the victim story. I actually I'll have them put on this podcast link to pain versus suffering. Pain is feeling the emotion. Suffering is the story behind it. And if you think about it, this episode is about the resentment piece, always fighting for things. It's the suffering side versus choosing something else, choosing to just feel the pain and then own the success. That's a choice that you can make.
So, I want to leave you with this. It is really about instead of feeling burnt out by life, feeling burnt out by all the things you have to do, this is your call to action to a bright torch instead. This is a George Bernard Shaw quote. This quote is, you know, one of the ways that I choose to live my life and this is how I coach women in these spaces that weren't made for them, high-stake spaces, right? So this is what he said, "Life is no brief candle to me. It is a sort of splendid torch. And I want to make it burn as brightly as possible before handing it to future generations." So I'm going to say it one more time. "Life is no brief candle to me. It is a sort of splendid torch and I want to make it burn as brightly as possible before handing it to future generations." This is a choice, right? This is why the self-empowered leadership formula is so powerful. You get to slow down and decide what choice you want to make and how you want to live your life and what you want to be celebrating and what you want to be owning versus what you want to unconsciously continuing to give to yourself or to future generations in terms of resentment and a princess complex that waits for others to take charge.
A client of mine lived this shift. I shared this quote with her and she started moving from resenting every meeting and feeling drained by the politics to leading with confidence and clarity. She started using her life as an experiment and she started walking into rooms with energy and choosing, I belong here. I choose to show up in this moment, right? And the difference that it made for her is she wasn't waiting for the system to validate her. She wasn't waiting for people around her to change. She was leading within and she was burning brightly.
So here's my challenge to you. Next time you overcome something big or small, pause and instead of saying, that was hard and I'm exhausted, say, this proves who I am as a person and as a leader. This makes me more powerful. That's what it means to be self-empowered. That's how you stop resenting your success and start owning it.
The system may not have been built for you, but with the right formula, you don't need it to be. You are the leader who changes the room. That's what the self-empowered leadership formula makes possible. And this is something that is totally 100% available to you. You can start doing this work right now and start really understanding the narratives that you are running your life by and take control of them.
Thanks for tuning in today. If this resonated with you, I'd love to hear your takeaways. Feel free to connect with me on LinkedIn or leave a review of this episode. Let me know what success you're ready to start owning. And if you're ready to put the self-empowered leadership formula into practice, reach out. This is the work I do every single day with women who are done with proving and ready to lead with power. Until next time, lead from your power, not your struggle. Have an amazing day. I'll see you next week.
Thank you for being a part of The Balanced Leader community. We hope you found today's episode inspiring and actionable. For more resources and to connect with Yann, visit us at aspire-coaching.co. Until next time, keep leading with confidence and purpose.
Welcome to The Balanced Leader, hosted by Yann Dang, a Leadership and Life Coach with over 20 years of corporate experience. Drawing from her journey as a former global finance leader and second-generation immigrant, Yann understands the unique challenges women face in male-dominated workplaces.
Each episode offers insights on balancing masculine and feminine energies, mastering soft skills, and building emotional intelligence. Join us to transform frustration into empowerment and unlock your authentic leadership potential.
Hey podcast listeners, I have a very important episode about how to stop resenting your success and start owning your power. This is something that I have noticed in myself over my years of living and winning and losing and winning, and also in relationships that I have with people and a thing that I have seen with a lot of women that I have encountered, both in coaching, in my day-to-day life, in my family. It is this idea that resentment is something that comes up for a lot of people when we feel like we're owed something or we should have already been somewhere or that we are struggling and we're in this constant struggle.
So I'm going to dive in today with a story from one of my clients. So, my client, let's call her Catherine. She fought tooth and nail for a well-deserved bonus. She built the case, she advocated, she proved herself beyond a doubt she had earned it, and she won. And here's the thing, she also often feels like she's fighting harder for things than her peers who tend to be men, right? She's the only female on her leadership team.
So when we spoke about this afterwards, she wasn't celebrating. She was exhausted. Her focus was on how draining the process had been, how much she had to prove, how little recognition she got along the way, how difficult it is to get her point across.
This is what I call the resentment trap. You get the win, but it doesn't feel like a win. It feels like a reminder of how hard the fight always is. And the cycle leads to burnout, disconnection, and a constant sense of never enough.
Now, I want to share that if you're feeling this way, this episode is not to shame you or to blame you. It is simply to shine a light on this familiar thing that happens, which I call the resentment trap, because in society and in our socialized world where there are definitely gender norms and there is definitely a narrative that happens in the world, there's a lot of unconscious beliefs about the way things should be versus the way things are. And we also have a lot of programming from women around us.
So I don't know about you, but my mom had a really hard time enjoying anything that my dad did. She resented the crap out of him, and for good reason. I will have to say there were probably really good reasons. But why I'm sharing this story with you is I was brought up to resent men in some ways, to feel like they're never enough. And I know this because it has shown up in my relationships with men where one man had actually told me once that I am utterly unsatisfiable. And it didn't feel good. It didn't feel good to hear this from this man because I want to be somebody who's satisfied. I want to be someone who enjoys her power, who enjoys the good things that come her way, right? I don't want to be a bitter woman who is constantly resenting my life. And even when it's successful on the outside, a lot of this resentment can be brewing on the inside.
And what I want to share here today is really that this resentment oftentimes is a familiar pattern that has been passed down to us from generation to generation, often unconsciously, often without the intentionality of you carrying this pattern with you. But as women, we've internalized the story, right? Success has to be hard. It has to be earned twice over. It comes with sacrifice. Even when we succeed, we minimize the win and magnify the struggle. And most leadership advice misses this.
They tell you to skill up, lean in, hustle harder, but skill isn't the problem. Identity is. The lens you're leading from, if your identity is still rooted in proving every win will feel like another battle scar. And those scars over time will feel more like a heavy lift, an uphill battle, and less like winning, less like being part of a team, less like achieving, right, less like empowerment, and more like struggle. It's that idea that life is always a struggle and it will always be a struggle, no matter what. And resentment breeds that. It's the breeding ground for more and more of this.
I'm going to share about my own story and what this was like for me and how I shifted this perspective for myself. But I remember getting promoted to the leadership team, and on paper, it was everything I wanted. But instead of feeling proud, I felt the weight of every battle. I was actually told behind the scenes that I had six months to prove myself, even though they had openly shared this with the company. They wanted everybody around me to know that I had gotten this role. But behind the scenes, I was told that I would get a coach to support me, but that I really needed to prove myself in this role and really prove myself in a room full of men and to be able to own the role. And because I was still carrying the story of the struggle in the beginning, I couldn't feel the pride. I actually just kind of felt like, what if I lose at this? And how unfair is this? I couldn't see myself as powerful. And I saw myself as tired.
That's when I realized if I didn't change the lens, success was always going to feel hollow to me. And the reality is, the more I stayed in this constant state of resentment and struggle, the more I wouldn't actually enjoy the power that I had. And the less I would actually want to perform well because part of me would be like wanting to be right and saying this is a hard system, I'm never going to win at this. So I actually really worked on shifting myself, shifting myself out of feeling resentment and into taking ownership. And instead of thinking like this is something for me to be tested on, I really thought about that this was a privilege for me to be able to show up, to be invested in, to be chosen, and to be supported.
Of course, you could look at it two different ways. You could say, well, they gave you the promotion, but they really expected you to lose. Of course, you could say that. But for me, if I was thinking about winning and if I was thinking about enjoying the journey, my focus wasn't about the end state. My focus was, how can I learn and grow from this? What can I make of this? How can I enjoy this in the here and now?
But it took a lot of consciousness for me to think this way and to shift myself in this way. And I want to share that this is not an easy thing, especially of the way that we've been brought up and the stories that we've heard from other women. Whether the struggle is real, which we want to be seen in, but also feeling like a victim to it can also be very limiting for you and very draining energy-wise, right?
So, I want to also talk about the Princess Complex versus the self-empowered leader. So, here's another trap. What I call the Princess Complex, and I think it's wrapped up in this resentment because it's a belief that leadership should be easy, fair, or handed to us when we're good enough. And when it's not fair, we feel victimized. So neither extreme works. Either you're resenting things because you feel like you have to work so much harder, or you're waiting to be noticed, or you're waiting to be valued, or you're waiting to feel worthy in some way. Something external to you needs to happen, right?
And what I want to offer today is an alternative solution that I have created, that I have used on myself and the hundreds of women that I've coached. And it's called the Self-Empowered Leadership Formula. It's about owning your path, your struggles, and your wins without apology. It's saying, I will make this happen. I'll own this fight and I will own the victory.
That's why I created this formula. It's anchored in four primary steps and I'm going to walk you through it, but it will help you ground you, be the compass for you in every room. So you stop defaulting to flight, freeze, or waiting, right? It's really about igniting you and having grounded presence around you and taking ownership of those unconscious narratives that we might have been fed over the years by our mothers, by other women in our lives, by other women in leadership, even by the men. Men might often times tell me, I remember when I was dating, and men would tell me like, oh, it must be really hard for you. You're highly successful, you make lots of money. This must be really hard. It's really threatening to other men.
And I could own it. I could say, it is hard to be dating in the world where you are so highly successful and men are intimidated. But once I find that man who's not intimidated, how lucky am I? So do you see how I quickly just change the script on things? Instead of being like, poor me, I'm going to wait for somebody. I was like, that guy's going to be out there. And when I meet him, he is going to be great because he's not going to be threatened by my independence, he's not going to be threatened by who I am. I'm not going to have to pretend that I'm somebody that I'm not, because my professional and personal life has already shown it and proved it to be true.
And so instead of feeling like a victim, I'm like, well, I've already arrived, right? I'm not going to be a person that falls in love with somebody and then as my career grows and changes, the whole relationship dynamic changes. I've already arrived. I'm already who I am. And so when I change it in that way, right, I start owning my power instead of resenting my success because if I really kept on that story that a lot of men would tell me, I would just be like, "Oh, poor me, it's so hard for me to find someone." Well, guess what? If I'm like, "Poor me, it's so hard for me to find someone," it's going to be even harder for me to find someone. Nobody wants to be around a victim. Nobody wants to be around somebody who feels like poor me, the world owes me, right? I'm so highly successful. I can't find someone.
Well, my script was, I'm highly successful. I'm a big catch. I'm going to find somebody who's just as big of a catch as me and I'm going to own that power. But it took a lot to get to that place in my mind. And today I'm going to break down what those three steps are.
The first step is context and curiosity. It's really about understanding yourself and seeing how you're processing the world. We take the things that happen outside of us and we choose how to process them. So all of that processing typically happens from programming that we've gotten, mostly from our family, but from society, from culture. So you want to notice those narratives because the more we notice those, the more we can actually interrupt that pattern. But let's walk into this example. So a client of mine realized every time her male boss cut her off, she told herself, he doesn't respect me. He doesn't value my ideas. And from that place, what would happen when she would think that way is that she would shut down, she would be annoyed, she'd leave meetings, she'd think about finding a new job.
But what I invited her into was the curiosity about this and getting a better context for her. And I asked her, what else could be true? And that shift stopped her from spiraling into resentment. Just her getting more curious about what else could be true helped her to see that there could be another possibility. She actually said to me, well, I actually notice he interrupts other men that he respects. And I did ask her, even though he interrupts you, have you seen a track record where he actually listens to your advice and values your opinion? And she took a bit of time, but she said, yes, actually, I've told him things in the past and I've seen that he has taken my idea seriously and he has moved them forward and he has valued them. And so I asked her, you know, what other thing could you be thinking about if you were more curious about this, right? Because your mind is focused on the resentment piece and that upset. But if you thought what else could be true? Well, she did say, I think he has a habit of doing this. I actually, as I think about it and I zoom out, I think that he just does this. It's his way of working with people.
But when I asked her, why do you think you take it so personally? She said, well, in my family, when I grew up, my dad would never let me speak first. He always had to have the first word and the final words, and I always felt trapped in that. And I said, wow, could it be that your old narrative of dealing with your dad is playing into how you are with your boss now? And when she stepped back, she could see how all of these patterns came together. I mean, this is really the power of reframing things and diving in to really zoom in to understand how you are contextualizing the world and then zooming out with curiosity. And that insight, right, because that insight helped her see, wow, this isn't my dad. I am a grown adult woman. I see that this happens with other men that my boss works with. And I can also see that I am really thinking and really triggered by this because of my dad. And so with this, the next step is choice. You can either carry the weight of the fight and the old story, or you can claim the power of the victory.
And so I had asked her, what would it look like to interrupt him and to say what's so for you and to instead of focusing on how he doesn't respect me, really focus on where he is taking your lead. And so with this choice, the next time it happened, because of course these things happened to us a lot of times and we get triggered because we're like, oh my gosh, it's happening to us again. Here it goes, right? And usually the tone of voice in your head is like, oh, here we go again. He's going to interrupt me. He's not going to listen to me. So instead of allowing her boss to cut her off, she made a choice to speak up and said, please, can I finish? And sometimes she would say please, sometimes she would just interrupt back and finish, right? So this was her process. But this is her making a different choice versus spinning into that resentment spiral or waiting to be heard, right?
That's the princess complex. In that way, she got to choose for herself how she wants to be. And instead of focusing on all of the times where she felt like she was undervalued, she actually started finding evidence for herself of where her thoughts and ideas were being valued and how important it was for her to learn how to interrupt other people, especially in their culture. So I just want to zoom out. I know that some people's culture is like interrupting is really bad. I want to say from where I worked in my corporate culture, interruption was sort of the culture there, right? And nobody did it. Well, let's see. I was going to say nobody does it in like a demeaning way or an intentionally ill-willed way. And actually, I would say that for 90% of the people, that was true. I would interrupt other people, but it wasn't also from a place of ill will. It was trying to get my point across, right? And we're all kind of learning how to get our point across in the context of our culture. So, making this choice for her, she was more focused on the value that she has to be sharing, how she's learning and growing as a leader.
And this is really that third step. It's anchoring into your future self, the leader you're becoming. Because the leader you're becoming five years from now isn't complaining about feeling not respected, feeling interrupted. The leader that she was becoming, she's visualizing her walking into the room, how she speaks up, how she holds her seat. That's who you commit to being regardless of who's in the room. And this commitment, right, fuels your choice over and over again. So yes, you may have some thoughts in your head like, oh, here we go again. But if you look to your future self who's like, it's me five years from now being this empowered leader who loves to win, who's looking out for herself, who's owning her power, how does she react to this current situation? How does she react to her boss cutting her off? Because this is in the here and now where you can make those choices that will define who you are in the future.
This is how the three-step process works with the self-empowered leadership. It's called the Self-Empowered Leadership Formula because at the end of it, you are empowering yourself. You're not waiting for somebody, right? You're not sitting with resentment. You're choosing consciously how you want to think and feel about a certain situation. You're even reframing the past for yourself so that it doesn't continue to hold onto you and have you spiraling into resentment or waiting like a princess for somebody to come save you. It is truly about you taking ownership and taking leadership of yourself and your life.
And so those are the three steps. First, it's context and curiosity. Secondly, it's that choice, making that choice, understanding your programming and knowing that you have a choice in this moment to decide how you want to think and feel about this specific situation. So like for me, in that promotion, instead of thinking about it like, oh great, I've got to prove myself again. I thought about it as like amazing. This is a great opportunity for me. I am going to take the reins of this and I'm going to make the most of this no matter what happens. It's really about having your own back, too.
And just like my client who was really upset about fighting for that bonus, it's like, yes, I fought freaking hard for that bonus and I got it. I made it happen and I'm going to sit and savor in the victory that I got and the power that I have because I'm so awesome at creating a powerful case for me without over-explaining. And I am so good at learning how to communicate in spaces that weren't built for me. And again, that's that commitment to yourself. You're like, I am a badass, or I am a powerful female leader that does not entertain drama or resentment or princess complex. And I'm not saying that if you do from time to time, you're a bad person. I'm just saying you have a choice of how you want to use your time and energy. And you can make conscious choices about that.
And you know if you've been listening to my podcast, I want to validate your emotions. There's validating the emotions versus amplifying and getting yourself stuck into the victim story. I actually I'll have them put on this podcast link to pain versus suffering. Pain is feeling the emotion. Suffering is the story behind it. And if you think about it, this episode is about the resentment piece, always fighting for things. It's the suffering side versus choosing something else, choosing to just feel the pain and then own the success. That's a choice that you can make.
So, I want to leave you with this. It is really about instead of feeling burnt out by life, feeling burnt out by all the things you have to do, this is your call to action to a bright torch instead. This is a George Bernard Shaw quote. This quote is, you know, one of the ways that I choose to live my life and this is how I coach women in these spaces that weren't made for them, high-stake spaces, right? So this is what he said, "Life is no brief candle to me. It is a sort of splendid torch. And I want to make it burn as brightly as possible before handing it to future generations." So I'm going to say it one more time. "Life is no brief candle to me. It is a sort of splendid torch and I want to make it burn as brightly as possible before handing it to future generations." This is a choice, right? This is why the self-empowered leadership formula is so powerful. You get to slow down and decide what choice you want to make and how you want to live your life and what you want to be celebrating and what you want to be owning versus what you want to unconsciously continuing to give to yourself or to future generations in terms of resentment and a princess complex that waits for others to take charge.
A client of mine lived this shift. I shared this quote with her and she started moving from resenting every meeting and feeling drained by the politics to leading with confidence and clarity. She started using her life as an experiment and she started walking into rooms with energy and choosing, I belong here. I choose to show up in this moment, right? And the difference that it made for her is she wasn't waiting for the system to validate her. She wasn't waiting for people around her to change. She was leading within and she was burning brightly.
So here's my challenge to you. Next time you overcome something big or small, pause and instead of saying, that was hard and I'm exhausted, say, this proves who I am as a person and as a leader. This makes me more powerful. That's what it means to be self-empowered. That's how you stop resenting your success and start owning it.
The system may not have been built for you, but with the right formula, you don't need it to be. You are the leader who changes the room. That's what the self-empowered leadership formula makes possible. And this is something that is totally 100% available to you. You can start doing this work right now and start really understanding the narratives that you are running your life by and take control of them.
Thanks for tuning in today. If this resonated with you, I'd love to hear your takeaways. Feel free to connect with me on LinkedIn or leave a review of this episode. Let me know what success you're ready to start owning. And if you're ready to put the self-empowered leadership formula into practice, reach out. This is the work I do every single day with women who are done with proving and ready to lead with power. Until next time, lead from your power, not your struggle. Have an amazing day. I'll see you next week.
Thank you for being a part of The Balanced Leader community. We hope you found today's episode inspiring and actionable. For more resources and to connect with Yann, visit us at aspire-coaching.co. Until next time, keep leading with confidence and purpose.
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