Emotional privilege at work: a process for building confidence
We tell ourselves stories that shape how we show up in life, and at work. I’ve learned that these stories can either be empowering or crippling. We can improve how we live and work by owning an empowering narrative. Like most anything, getting there requires a process. Here is mine.
The process you will find in this text is based solely on my own observations and actions.
Taking a look at emotional privilege
Growing up in a post-communist country, to me privilege was about wealth and status. My parents worked long, hard hours as doctors, and got decent compensation. They wanted to make sure I had the best chance to become someone. My goal? Elite-level academic success above everything else.
To summarize my upbringing as a 90’s kid from Eastern Europe: failure, in any form, is simply not an option. Always strive to be the absolute best, or you will end up at the bottom of the food chain. There is no in-between.
In my late 20s, I started thinking about a different, more subtle type of privilege. A kind of freedom shown by a rare few. Some people were more relaxed around the idea of failure, even seeing it as a source of growth. What?! Did they have their amygdala knocked out of them? How can some people not choke with anxiety at the thought of making mistakes?
I noticed a pattern as I got to know them better: as they grew up, they were given autonomy, trust, and to some extent, options. They had a say in whom they became, instead of being shaped by their families’ vision of accomplishment. By making their own decisions and seeing that they were supported regardless of the outcome, their relationship with failure had a reasonable outline.
Me? I was not one of them. Most of my options were shaped by my parents’ best intentions, and by their idea of what success looks like. And success looks like doing more, being more, trying harder. Hard, teeth-grinding work round the clock. My relationship with failure was that if we were to ever meet, it would swallow me whole and there’d be no way back.
Here’s what I see as a form of emotional privilege — the freedom that comes from knowing (while growing up, and into your adult life) that your most important decisions are yours to make, and that you are allowed to wobble. And from knowing that most choices are reversible and failure is not a dead-end. Also ─ this is still a hard one for me to grasp: knowing that”good enough” is not a path of weakness and shame. It is one of balance and reasonable effort.
Unlike other types of privilege, this one requires no action or awareness from the privileged. They can be as they are in the world, there is no injustice for them to solve. In this particular case, it’s a gap we, the non-privileged can fill by becoming aware of it, and by owning our stories.
Emotional privilege manifests as confidence. It makes space for playfulness, aliveness at work, and trust that almost any type of error is survivable.
There is a “confidence gap” between people who grew up knowing that they were (doing) good enough, and those who’ve grown up with the feeling that they constantly had to do better.
I started to sense this gap between myself and others. I was paralyzed at the thought of making any mistakes, which in turn left no room for fun and playfulness. Once I acknowledged the gap and became interested in my thinking around success and failure, I started to close it.
I entered a re-wiring process (as I can see it clearly now, looking back) that has four steps: understanding the origins of the gap, noting the personal narrative, being curious about the other side, and drafting a new story.
1. Understand the origins of the gap
Before we dive in: I know my parents did their very best to raise me with the financial and emotional resorts they had, and this exploration is in no way retributory to their parenting.
Being able to name the chain of events that leads to your own gap is part of the process. Start digging and don’t stop until you reach that ugly truth. If it’s not ugly, it’s not the whole truth.
As a kid, I was either top of my class, or it didn’t matter. I was seen as a reflection of my school grades. Straight A’s meant I was worthy of (parental) love and praise. My feeling that I was trusted and accepted was heavily conditioned by my academic results. That was how I (and some of my generation) experienced the world growing up.
Coming from a family of doctors, I had no appeal for medicine. At 15 I wanted to be a writer, but my parents decided math, physics, and chemistry were better. My grades at all three were terrible. I was so bad at chemistry, that going to med school was never an option (a first hint that failure can be liberating).
At 19, I started two simultaneous full-time bachelors’. Incapable of keeping up with the schedule and pressure, I dropped out of one. I felt guilty for only being able to attend one University at a time.
Without serious work in understanding these dynamics in therapy, no accomplishment will have ever washed out the feeling that I am not (doing) enough. That feeling, brought by the constant fear of failure, is the origin of my confidence gap.
Being able to name the chain of events that leads to your own gap is part of the process. Start digging and don’t stop until you reach the ugly truth. If it’s not ugly, it’s not the whole truth.
2. Note your personal narrative
At 21 I was set on crushing goals. I landed a job in a PR agency straight out of college and treated it as life-or-death. I was proud of my stoic work ethics: client e-mails to be responded to within the hour; always do more than what you’re required to. Never say No. In the most toxic of projections, I saw those leaving work at 6 pm as under-achievers. Working on weekends? Great — some quiet time to solve some of the stuff that’s been piling on top of my 60-hour workweek.
At 25, long after my body had started sending signals that I need to slow down — and some many hours of therapy later — while trying to explore the source of my constant anxiety and fear of failure, I wrote the following statement:
I must prove that I’m worthy.
This was it. My core narrative. Writing it down, I felt relieved. My perspective was shifting from a victim of circumstance to someone who was becoming aware of name-able shortcomings.
I think many of us shape our workplace ethics as coming from one of two places: enoughness or inadequacy. I felt like I wrote the book on the second one.
3. Become curious about the other side
In my late 20s, as I started to observe the others, I noted that: 1. they could tackle challenges without feeling the weight of the world; 2. They could respond to conflict by addressing the real issues at hand (without becoming defensive) and 3. They were able to set healthy boundaries for themselves while maintaining the quality of their relationships. I concluded there has to be some way to acquire that lightness of being. I was determined to cross to their side.
But how?
I started by asking questions: How are you not panicking right now? That was a bold statement — how d’you have the guts to say it? What if you mess up? What do you say when you don’t have an answer? What if they don’t like your style? How do you ask for help? Where do you draw the line?
Sometimes I’d just have the questions in my mind, and just note down behavior that was different from mine. A pattern emerged: what my “subjects” seemed to have in common was knowing that if you: 1. come as you are, 2. are transparent about your skills and shortcomings, and 3. can firmly but gently set boundaries so that you maintain safety and trust, then you can navigate most situations and come out of them in one piece. HUH.
4. Draft a new story. As many times as it takes
I’m not saying that observation, questions-asking, and writing alone will magically close your confidence gap. Becoming aware of why confidence and lightness irritate you, owning your discovery process on the source of your discomfort, and naming your pain are huge steps. Behind them, there’s a lot of work, and I encourage therapy or coaching if only as starting points to light the way.
And on top of all that work, there is one particular exercise that I find powerful.
I’ve started doing this a couple of years ago, and am re-doing it whenever I feel like I’m slipping back into my old narrative. Brené Brown (which I had not read at the time), describes something similar in her book Rising Strong. She calls it the Revolution: writing a better, more courageous ending to one’s story of failure. I’m still in the process of this re-writing.
The current version of my draft is a list of statements about myself.
It’s a look back at moments of resilience. An exercise in naming my strengths. I imagine them shape into heavy trophies, that nobody could ever take away from me.
I call it “stuff that’s mine to keep”:
I am quiet but powerful. I ask real questions. I make sound decisions under pressure. I make people feel heard. I make complicated things sound easy. I’m pretty good with data. I block out noise and I focus. I have made about a hundred big mistakes in my work life and have lived through all of them. I have had clients dislike me, I have had my work rejected again and again, and have lived through it. I worked for people who did not love themselves enough to be kind to others and managed to walk away. I accepted challenges that were too big for me, and I overcame them. I did hundreds of presentations and came out knowing 80% of the time, people are too absorbed by their own thoughts to note my flaws.
This list is the opposite of modesty, but I can allow myself this much. have spent too many years of my work life taken over with anxiety, missing out on the small occasions to celebrate what a badass I’m becoming. One that is confident, playful, and calm.
Stay open
There is an unpleasant leap to make if you want to close the gap.
You get to sit with your discomfort until it becomes easier to bend. Then, dare to get close to those who live out the traits you’d like to have.
It’s a process. I hope you find yours.
