You can have it all - first you have to allow yourself to

Posted on July 27, 2022 by Busisiwe Hlatswayo, One of Thousands of Career Coaches on Noomii.

I’m not talking to you. You are an ambitious go-getter, had working, Badass, Girl boss, Queen. Of course you can have it all. I’m not talking to you.

I’m talking to her, the little girl in you. The one who couldn’t join dance/netball/ballet/traditional dance/school trip/cool shoes, cool kids club because there wasn’t enough or she wasn’t enough. The one who learnt that ‘No! you can’t have it’ hurts so bad she stopped asking.

Someone said that growing up is like onion layers. All the years that you’ve accumulated are like layers of an onion. You may be 41 but there is still a layer of you that is 3, 9, 19, 25. Which one of you shows up each day may depend on the situation.

Trauma studies show that people who are traumatised stop trying, it’s called ‘learned helplessness’.

I’m not talking about the sit in the corner-take drugs all day type of learned helplessness. No, we are all professionals in this space who have created a measure of success. I’m talking to the part of you that has put a ceiling on how successful you can be. That says this far and no further.

She may look confident, look like she’s trying but not really. She is hiding, pretending, going through the motions because your Badass Boss Queen is shaming her, bossing her around.
She is passively aggressively saying ‘NO! I won’t do it’, I won’t put myself in a position where I can be rejected again.

How do we then get all parts of us to work together, instead of pulling in different directions?

We invite them into the light. We don’t force them down through discipline. We invite them to an inner family meeting, where we seek for a win win situation. When we have found it – we experience flow, there’s alignment, a beautiful orchestra.