How our self-concept limits us

In the 1960s an American plastic surgeon named Dr. Maxwell Maltz made some unusual discoveries in his work.

During his studies in Germany he found some students proudly wearing scars from competitive fencing in their college societies.

By contrast, when he opened his practice, he noted that one patient who approached him for treatment had completely lost his confidence, tormented by a scar caused in a car accident.

There were others he treated who continued to see themselves as disfigured, even after undergoing a successful procedure.

This just goes to show you how fragile our self-concept is.

You can see the range of emotions that the people in the above stories went through:

• Pride

• Shame

• (Self) Disgust

  
  

Whether or not the scar was inflicted by accident, or by choice (the patients who willingly chose their procedures), his observation was that there was no real power in the knife itself.

The power, or the lack of it, was all in these individual’s minds.

So all your results, professionally and personally, stem from your self-concept.

Not only from your hard work.

Because there are so many women who get bypassed for career progression opportunities,

even after giving their all to their projects and teams.

(And yes, the status quo can and does insert obstacles in our path, but these are not insurmountable.)

When they speak to me I witness their emotions ranging from shame to embarrassment, from anger to disappointment and frustration.

Which I understand because after you give your all, what else can you do?

Building your self-concept might be the real answer.

That’s why I launched the Leadership Lab, as a way for early career women working in majority male industries to start embodying a more powerful self-concept to accelerate their path to leadership, and also to minimise imposter syndrome from derailing them when they land those big, career-changing opportunities.

(If you are interested in learning about this programme, please read on below.)

As an exercise, I want you to be aware of your self-concept the next time you go through a negative experience at work.

Don’t resist the emotions that show up. Let them pass through you, but also have enough detachment to recognise that the experience does not define all of who you are.

The resulting emotions do not define who you are.

But your self-concept does, and it’s not set in stone, but something that can be worked on with gentleness, acceptance, and the most important ingredient you need to start giving yourself today: self-compassion.



Join Cohort 2 of the Leadership Lab: Are you a young women under the age of 33 who is aspiring towards leadership or has just landed your first role as a leader? The Leadership Lab is a six-month online leadership development group coaching programme that helps you build the confidence, acumen and mindset to transform your self-concept into that of a leader. And the best part is that you are growing alongside a small, supportive group of maximum six other young women just like you who have the same ambitions.

Here are all the details for the programme and here is a link to book a call with me before the deadline on May 1st to find out if the programme is right for your current goals.