I think behind every great success I’ve had, there has been an equally and greater wound or trauma behind it pushing me forward. Sometimes success isn’t about wanting to be great, but wanting to cover something up, and hide something by appearing great. I had a lot shame in my life. Many of my adult authority figures hated me. They were abusive, cruel, and unkind. Somehow in my journey to win their love, I thought success was a great work around to counter the activity of being belittled and dismissed as a nothing.
Gary Vaynerchuk once said he actually won the lottery with his birth. He talked about how his mother saw his true inner gifts. Despite the world seeing him as not doing well in school, and even though he didn’t do well and was dyslexic, his mother saw his gifts. She gave him authentic self-esteem because she encouraged him and helped him grow.
He stated authentic self-esteem is winning the lottery for a human birth. The real thing we hope parents do for us is to help us embrace our self-worth in order to provide us with authentic success. However, this doesn’t happen to a lot of us and many of us find workarounds that we think will help us.
The truth is, there is authentic and inauthentic success. For me, success was a way of hiding the shame I felt about being who I am. I saw being successful as a way to overcome my shortcomings of being human. In fact, according to parental authorities my shortcomings were so great, that I probably didn’t deserve to live. I wasn’t worthy of love. I wasn’t worthy of being respected or successful.
Since I didn’t win the lottery of great parenting, I used success as a way to try and win them back. As a young adult I kept thinking, “If I am great, surely they will notice me and be proud.” Instead, I was dismissed and belittled into success. They kept not noticing and dismissing my wins as luck. So, I kept trying harder and harder to win over people and parents.
I couldn’t figure out how to help them overcome their hatred of me, so I just worked harder. In order to win them over, I chose to be great at everything I did. For example, in my youth when there were two team captains and we were going to play a game of baseball.
There were only two girls in the lineup. The boys would choose boys first, one player at a time, and then only the girls were left. Then one of the team captains would say, “She’s a girl, but she’s the best girl in the bunch, so I will take her.”
This policy, I thought would help me become more successful in life. I heard them say it over and over again. “Pick Vickie! She’s a girl, but she’s the best girl in the bunch, pick her.” This was how I was going to win over the world. Eventually, my parents would “pick Vickie”, because she was the best, most successful girl in the bunch. It all seemed so logical at the time.
But it never worked. It wasn’t that I was a girl. It was that I was a homosexual girl and during my era, being gay/lesbian was significantly hated, made fun of, and judged. You could get fired from your job, not be able to get an apartment, and not even be able to get other services. Some of that still goes on today.
Evidently, there are places that don’t want you to order services from them if you’re gay. For some reason, it’s a big thing around wedding cakes. If they know you are gay, they will deny you services. Religions make you sound so bad, you should burn in hell forever for being gay. If your friends find out, you will be immediately dismissed and suddenly gossiped about.
It was embarrassing for my family All they could see was that I was gay. At times, all people can see is what they perceive as another’s shortcomings.
This still goes on today, things like:
· All they can see is that your Muslim
· All they can see is that your black
· All they can see is that you’re an immigrant
· All they can see is that you’re gay
· All they can see is that you’re wealthy
· All they can see is that you’re poor
· All they can see is that you’re homeless
· All they can see is your mistakes
· All they can see is that you’re privileged
· All they can see is that you’re not black enough or white enough
· All they can see is that you’re fat
· All they can see is that you’re an addict
The truth is, we live in a world that vilifies people based on false stories that help other people feel a false sense of self-esteem or in order to create an excuse. We focus on what’s wrong with someone and point it out in order to feel better about ourselves. Could you imagine what success the world could achieve if we stopped the habit of seeing only perceived shortcomings?
At the time, my workaround for living in all this hate was to be the best at whatever I was doing. So, even though I heard conversations from people that said, “Yes, I know she’s a lesbian but she’s the best (fill in the blank) we have,” and they would pick me.
There are privileges with being the best at something and during that era that helped me bypass their hatred. However, that does not create authenticity. That’s when I realized my life shouldn’t be a workaround for other people’s religious beliefs, fears, and hatred.
Things have gotten better over time, but it’s still not great. It wasn’t until the moment of writing this that I could share how my success became inauthentic. I have wasted my life hoping to get people who are unwilling to change, to change their mind about me, and I don’t want others to suffer that fate. Your personal leadership skills require that you value you and understand your true worth. If the divine gave you a birth into human form, you can be sure that you are worthy to be here.
Success is how we learn to access the best of ourselves and transform into the best we can be in each moment. The truth is, being loved for your success is not a lasting form of love.
Therefore, many people fail at their goals and don’t achieve anything, because they are not actually trying to achieve the goal. They are trying to achieve more likeability and acceptability by achieving goals. The one thing I’ve learned over this journey is that success is personal. It’s defined by you and it’s achieved by you.
Meaning, once I took the ugly mask of winning inauthentic respect and love away and wore my shame on my sleeve for everyone to see, I began the journey of achieving success. I suddenly realized I had the skill sets to achieve whatever success I wanted. Success skills are universal. They can be applied to anything. Once they are yours, you have them with you forever.
I still have some weak spots in me though. This means I don’t like to be dismissed or judged because of who I am, and I don’t like being blamed for something I didn’t do. I can become very defensive when this happens because I still feel vulnerable. Because of this, I often choose to remain quiet about my being gay. I am protective of me. I still feel the pain inside of being dismissed or being judged by other people without them knowing who I am.
I think that’s a disease on the planet. We judge race and religion, orientation, ethnicity of every kind without ever finding out if the person in front of us is a successfully, kind, human being. For some reason I believe when we judge another person it falsely makes us feel better about who we are. We may say to ourselves, “I may be lacking, but I’m not______ (whatever you’re judging.)”
Here’s a little success secret I learned: People who derive a false sense of self-esteem by only noticing shortcomings, have self-esteem issues that are bigger then the shortcoming they see in another. It’s so big and terrifying to them that they’re unwilling to look at it. The way they avoid looking at it is to belittle another. It takes the focus and attention off the shortcoming that they are avoiding.
For anyone, true success means that you must be willing to release any present and past shame to transform into your inner human nobility. The quality of being noble is goodness and honoring of self and others. If you cannot honor yourself, how can you honor another? Meeting and honoring your vulnerability as the powerful treasure it is, allows you to meet your tender human heart with humility and kindness.
When you stand boldly, warts and all, in a world that vilifies you, dare to chase your dreams and the things you want with humility and kindness. By doing this, you will create authentic self-esteem.
Even if that means giving up the false love from authority figures around you, challenging the status quo, and unraveling the core of the truth, so you know you are worthy of authentic love and success. Authentic love and authentic success feel good. Inauthentic love and inauthentic success NEVER feel good. Just know this, success doesn’t make you worthy, it makes YOU happy and there’s a world of difference.
Vickie Helm is a bestselling author, business and asset strategist, and the CEO of Smart Group Firm. She has improved the success of more than a thousand companies and the lives of thousands of individuals throughout her career. You can learn more about Vickie at https://thesmartlifeclub.com or https://vickiehelm.com.