What are you afraid winning will do to you?

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

Society rewards men for success and punishes women for the same. Success basically messes with a woman’s relationships, the one thing that is very important to a woman.

Women who are successful have to think about it’s impact on their marriages more than men do. What we don’t talk about enough is the impact on friendships when one friend becomes more successful than the other

I was listening to Esther Perel’s ‘ How’s work’podcast yesterday.

The two ladies in this one episode; are friends who work at the same place. They started around the same time. One gets a promotion and the other is hurt that the friend should have considered how she would feel about it and effectively choose the friendships over the promotion, – that’s what she would have done – she says . Of course there are nuances but she was so hurt she was ready to leave that workplace.

Imagine the emotional burden placed on the successful friend

Besides regular encounters like the above, it is in our psyche, imprinted into our subconscious. Passed on from generation to generation that success is not safe for a woman.

Success for a woman requires not just courage but vigilance. The ‘enemy’ is not just without but within as well.

When success feels unsafe, we will do everything subconsciously to sabotage that. Until we have released the fear of what we think success will do to us.