211. Your Future is Not in Someone Else's Hands
- 10 hours ago
- 15 min read
Our careers are often derailed not by lack of skill, but by handing decision-making power to those around us. We fall into patterns of seeking permission, waiting to be recognized, and letting others define our readiness. These habits keep us stuck, but recognizing them is the first step toward reclaiming control and moving forward on our own terms.
We've been conditioned to believe that merit alone is enough, that if we just do excellent work, the recognition and rewards will naturally follow.
Are you constantly seeking approval before making a move in your career? Are you working harder than ever yet feeling invisible and passed over for advancement? Are you staying in an environment out of loyalty or fear rather than genuine opportunity?
You'll learn that outsourcing your career decisions to managers, mentors, and colleagues is one of the sneakiest forms of self-sabotage — and that reclaiming ownership of your path, by identifying the beliefs holding you back and taking intentional action, is the most powerful move you can make.
WHAT YOU WILL DISCOVER
Why the ‘curse of competence’ traps high-performing women in a cycle of invisibility, stagnation, and burnout instead of the advancement they've earned
8 concrete strategies to stop seeking permission and start making career decisions that genuinely serve your goals
Why walking away from an environment that doesn't value you is not a failure but a strategic and courageous act of self-advocacy
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TRANSCRIPT
Welcome to the Stop Sabotaging Your Success podcast, episode two hundred and eleven. I'm your host, Cindy Esliger. This is the podcast focusing on what we can do today to take control of our careers and overcome the inevitable barriers to success that we encounter along the way.
Picture this: you've been crushing it at work for months, maybe years. You're staying late, solving problems with those projects nobody else wants to touch, mentoring the new hires, and basically holding things together with duct tape and sheer force of will. But when it comes time to make a move—to ask for that promotion, to pursue a new opportunity, to set a boundary—suddenly you're polling everyone around you, like making a decision about your career requires consensus. Your manager says you should wait another year to build more experience. Your mentor warns you not to be too ambitious because it might rub people the wrong way. Your colleague questions whether you're really ready for that next step. And before you know it, you're sitting there with a dozen voices in your head, none of them your own, telling you what you should do about your future. Your career is not a group project, and it's time to stop outsourcing the decisions that will determine where you end up.
In this episode, we're tackling one of the sneakiest ways we sabotage our success: letting other people dictate our career paths. We'll dig into why this is such a common trap for women in STEM fields, what beliefs keep us stuck in this pattern of seeking permission instead of taking ownership, and the very real consequences, both personal and professional, of continuing to hand over our power to everyone around us.
We'll explore the red flags to watch out for in your work environment that signal it's time to take back control, and give you practical strategies for reconnecting with your own goals and making decisions that actually serve your best interests. We're also going to talk about when it's time to walk away and why letting go can be the most powerful career move you make. Plus, I'm going to share the insight that most people overlook that might actually change how you think about your entire career trajectory. So, let's get into it.
Sometimes we're operating in an environment where our hard work often goes unrecognized and our instincts are routinely questioned. This creates the perfect breeding ground for self-doubt. And when we doubt ourselves—when we're constantly being told, explicitly or implicitly, that we're not quite ready, not quite right, or not quite enough—we start looking outward for validation and direction. We start treating our careers like they need external approval to move forward.
We wait for our managers to notice our contributions instead of advocating for ourselves. We let mentors give us conservative advice that we'd never accept coming from anyone else. We stay in toxic environments because someone convinced us it's what's required for 'paying your dues' or better yet, it 'builds character'. We postpone bold moves because colleagues suggest we need more experience, more credentials, more proof that we deserve what we're asking for. We seek permission before making a move, while others just do whatever they want, and simply ask for forgiveness if someone objects.
And, I hate to tell you, the better you are at your job, the worse this gets. I call it the 'curse of competence'. When you're really good at what you do—when you're the reliable one, the problem-solver, the person everyone knows they can count on—it feels safe. It earns you a certain kind of respect. People value you. They depend on you. And that feels good, right? Except here's what nobody tells you: that competence becomes a trap.
Your strengths start feeding your stress because now you're catastrophizing about what might happen if you were to step outside that role. What if you were to want something or try something new and you're not immediately excellent at it? What if people see you struggle? What if you fail?
So, you stay put, doing what you're good at, being increasingly invisible while simultaneously indispensable. And that combination, invisible but indispensable, almost never leads to advancement. Unfortunately, it leads to burnout.
You end up stuck in this vicious cycle where your fear of failure keeps you from seeking visibility, which means you never get considered for bigger, more exciting assignments. Which also means you don't build the experience that would make you ready for the next level, which reinforces your fear of trying. Meanwhile, your less-qualified but more self-assured colleagues are moving up because they're not waiting for that invitation. They're just going for it.
This pattern shows up most prominently during quarter-life or mid-life transitions, when you hit that point where you're looking around and thinking, "Is this really it? Is this what I signed up for?". You feel stuck in a funk, but you can't quite articulate why, because on paper, everything looks fine. You have a decent job. You're good at it. People respect you. But something's missing, and that something is usually your own voice in the decision-making process. You've been so busy being competent and reliable and seeking approval that you've lost touch with what you actually want.
There are five common beliefs that keep us trapped in this pattern and, until we reframe these, we are going to keep outsourcing our decisions to everyone around us.
Belief #1: "I need more experience, more credentials, to gain more approval before I can make this move." This is the belief that keeps you waiting. Waiting for the perfect moment. Waiting until you feel completely ready. Waiting for someone to tell you that now is the time. Here's the truth: you will never feel completely ready. Readiness is not something that gets bestowed upon you by some external authority. It's something you claim. It's a decision you make, not a state you achieve. Every single person who has ever done anything worth doing felt unready when they started. The difference is, they did it anyway.
Belief #2: "If I just keep my head down and work harder, they'll eventually recognize me." Oh, this was a favorite of mine. This one keeps so many talented women stuck for years. We've been conditioned to believe that merit alone is enough, and that if we do excellent work, the recognition and rewards will naturally follow. Except that's not how it works, especially in male-dominated fields. Excellence in a vacuum doesn't get promoted. You have to advocate for yourself. You have to make the right people know about your contributions. You have to put yourself forward for opportunities instead of waiting to be chosen. I know it feels uncomfortable. I know it feels like bragging or self-promotion or all those things we've been socialized to avoid. But staying invisible to avoid discomfort is a form of self-sabotage.
Belief #3: "It would be selfish or arrogant to choose myself." This is the internalized message that putting your own career goals first is somehow wrong or letting the team down. This is the guilt talking. But choosing yourself isn't selfish—it's self-preservation. You cannot advocate for other women if you've sacrificed your own growth and end up bitter and burned out. Your career advancement benefits everyone who depends on you—your family, your mentees, the women coming up behind you who need to see examples of women who prioritize themselves and succeeded. Choosing yourself is actually the most generous thing you can do.
Belief #4: "I owe it to this team, this company, this manager, to stay." This is loyalty talking, and loyalty is a beautiful thing when it's reciprocated. But loyalty is a two-way street. If your organization isn't investing in your growth, if your manager isn't advocating for your advancement, if the culture is actively holding you back—you don't owe them your future. You don't owe them unlimited patience or endless second chances. Staying somewhere that doesn't value you isn't loyalty; it's just familiarity masquerading as commitment.
Belief #5: "If I leave or push back I'm letting other people down." This one is particularly cruel because it weaponizes our desire to support each other. Listen, you are not responsible for single-handedly fixing systemic problems. You are not required to stay in a toxic environment to prove a point or pave the way. You don't owe it to anyone to suffer through discrimination so that they don't have to. Sometimes, the most powerful thing you can do for other women is model what self-advocacy looks like. Show them that it's okay to have standards. Show them that walking away from situations that don't serve you is strategic, not weak. Your presence alone is not activism, and your departure is not betrayal.
Now, let's talk about what happens when you don't take control—when you keep outsourcing your career decisions and waiting to be given permission that never comes. The personal consequences are significant. You develop chronic resentment that slowly erodes your passion for your field. You chose this career because you loved it, because you were good at it, because it excited you. But when you spend years watching opportunities pass you by while less qualified people advance, when you keep getting passed over despite doing everything 'right', that passion turns bitter.
Your confidence takes hit after hit because every time you defer to someone else's judgment about your readiness, you're reinforcing the message that you can't trust yourself. That funk you find yourself in deepens. You look in the mirror and think, "When did I become this person who's afraid to speak up? When did I start needing permission to pursue what I want?". And if you stay in this pattern long enough, you burn out. Not from working too hard—from constantly doing what needs to be done, all while suppressing your ambition. From being excellent in ways that don't matter while ignoring the things that do.
The professional consequences are equally damaging. Your career stagnates while your colleagues, who didn't feel the need to wait for permission or perfect readiness, advance. There's a real financial impact here. Every delayed promotion is lost income. Every opportunity you didn't pursue, because someone talked you out of it, is money you'll never get back. Your skills start to atrophy because staying in your comfort zone means you're not exploring new areas for growth. You get pigeonholed.
You become known as steady or reliable rather than strategic or leadership material. And the curse of competence tightens its grip. Your fear of failure keeps you from seeking visibility, which means you're never considered for the high-stakes projects that would help you build an impressive resume, which means you don't have the experience that would make you ready for the next level, which reinforces your fear of trying anything new. It's a vicious cycle that can trap you for years if you don't recognize it and actively do what you can to break free.
So, what should you be watching out for? Here are seven red flags in your professional environment that signal you need to start taking back control:
Pay attention to pattern recognition bias. If your contributions are consistently attributed to 'the team' while others' individual work gets highlighted and praised, that's a problem. If you notice that credit flows away from you and toward others, that's your cue to start documenting and communicating your wins more explicitly.
Watch out for the 'potential' trap. If you're hearing repeatedly that you have great potential, but you're never actually given opportunities to demonstrate it, that's not mentorship—that's management keeping you in your place. Potential without opportunity is just a way to keep you hopeful while keeping you stuck, like dangling a carrot in front of you that you're never going to get.
Notice the selective availability of mentorship and sponsorship. Who gets informal face time with leadership? Who gets invited to the important meetings? Who gets looped in on strategic decisions? If there's a pattern where certain people, often those people who look like existing leadership, get access and advocacy while others don't, you're seeing structural bias in action.
Moving goalposts are a massive red flag. If every time you meet the stated criteria for advancement, new requirements mysteriously appear—"Well, yes, you did X, but now we need to see Y"—you're being strung along. This is especially common for women in technical fields where there's always another certification, another project, another metric you could achieve before they deem that you're really ready.
Watch for toxic positivity. If your workplace has a culture that frames legitimate concerns as 'negativity' or tells you to 'be grateful' for what you have when you try to advocate for yourself, that's a sign that you're in an environment that prioritizes comfort over equality.
Notice the double bind. Are you criticized for being too assertive when you speak up, but told you lack leadership presence when you don't? That's not feedback you can act on. That's a sign that the game is rigged, and not in your favor.
Trust your gut. If you consistently feel diminished, overlooked, or like you're constantly trying to prove your worth, trust your instincts. Don't dismiss it. Don't let people talk you out of what you're experiencing. Your gut feeling that something is wrong is usually right.
Sometimes, the most strategic career move you can make is planning your exit. I know we don't like to talk about this. We're supposed to be resilient. We're supposed to lean in and fight and make change from within. And sometimes, that's absolutely the right call.
But sometimes—more often than we want to admit—the most powerful thing you can do is let go. There is tremendous power in walking away from situations that don't serve you.
So, how do you know when enough is enough? Here are six indicators that you shouldn't just dismiss:
When the energy you spend managing the dysfunction exceeds the energy you spend doing meaningful work, you're in the wrong place.
When you've advocated for change and been met with lip service but no action, you've done your part.
When your physical or mental health is suffering—when you're losing sleep, when you're anxious all the time, or when you dread going to work—that cost is too high.
When you're staying out of fear rather than opportunity, you're making decisions from the wrong place.
When you can no longer see a path to your goals within this environment, staying is just delaying the inevitable.
When the curse of confidence has you so tightly wound that you've stopped being able to imagine alternatives, you need to get out before you forget what possibility feels like.
Preparing for a graceful exit starts with reconnecting with your goals, not with what others think your goals should be, not what would make your manager happy, not what looks impressive from the outside. What do you actually want?
Create space for honest self-reflection. Journal on questions like: If no one else's opinion mattered, what would my next career move be? If I knew I couldn't fail, what would I try? What did I used to get excited about before I got ground down by this environment?
Then, start building your exit strategy. Update your resume. Focus on building your network outside your current organization—go to conferences, connect with people in your field, have coffee chats with former colleagues who've moved on.
Create a financial runway, if possible. Even a few months of expenses saved can give you the freedom to leave on your timeline, instead of out of desperation.
Document your achievements obsessively. You've earned them and you'll need them for your next opportunity.
And plan your narrative. When you do leave, you want to frame it around what you're moving toward, not just what you're running from. Walking away isn't giving up—it's redirecting your considerable talents toward an environment that will actually value them. It's refusing to let someone else's limited vision define your ceiling.
So, how do you actually take back control? How do you stop outsourcing your career decisions and start making choices that serve you? Let me give you eight concrete strategies to choose from:
Reconnect with your own goals through dedicated self-reflection. Set time aside—actual calendar time, not just, "I'll think about this when I have a minute"—to get clear on what you want. Not what you think you should want, not what would make other people happy, but what lights you up. What would make you excited to get up in the morning? What kind of work do you want to be doing in five years? What does success look like to you, not to your manager, or your mentor, or society's expectations of what a successful woman in STEM should look like? Get really honest about what you want.
Shift your language from seeking permission to announcing decisions. Stop asking, "Do you think I'm ready for this role?" and start saying, "I'm pursuing this role and here's my plan." Notice the difference in power dynamics? When you ask for permission, you're positioning someone else as the authority on your readiness. When you announce your decision and share your plan, you're positioning yourself as the expert on your own career. You're inviting input, not seeking approval. It's a subtle shift, but it changes everything.
Build your own personal advisory board. Choose two or three people who actually champion your growth—not people who are invested in keeping you right where you are, not people who benefit from your competence in furthering their own agendas. Look for people who push you to think bigger, who believe in you even when you don't believe in yourself, who have demonstrated that they, in fact, want you to succeed. And make sure they understand their role. They're there to support your vision, not to impose theirs. You're not looking for people to tell you what to do. You're looking for people to help you think through your own decision.
Take ownership for your visibility. Stop waiting to be noticed. This is hard, I know. It feels uncomfortable. It feels like self-promotion, and we've been trained to believe that's distasteful. But you know what's really distasteful? Watching less talented people advance because they're comfortable talking about their achievements, while you suffer in silence. Schedule regular check-ins with decision-makers in your organization. Send updates on your projects and wins. Seek out speaking opportunities at conferences or internal events. Volunteer to present at team meetings. Share your expertise. Your competence deserves an audience, and if you don't create that audience, nobody else will do it for you.
Practice choosing yourself without guilt. Start small if you need to. Say no to a request that doesn't serve your career goals. Set a boundary around your time. Apply for something you want without polling everyone around you about whether they think you should. Each small act of choosing yourself builds that muscle. The more you do it, the easier it gets. You start to realize that the world doesn't end when you prioritize your own goals. In fact, things often get significantly better.
Reframe the curse of competence as a launchpad instead of a trap. Your reliability isn't a weakness—it's proof that you can execute. Now, use that foundation to take calculated risks. The fact that you're good at your current role means you have credibility to leverage, not a reason to stay stuck. You've demonstrated competence. Now, it's time to demonstrate courage.
Embrace what you can control and release what you can't. You can't control whether your manager recognizes your worth, but you can control whether you advocate for yourself. You can't control company culture, but you can control whether you stay there. You can't control bias, but you can control where you invest your energy. This shift to focusing on what is within your control is liberating. It moves you away from the victim mentality. It puts you back in the driver's seat.
Create clear decision-making criteria for yourself. When you're faced with a decision and everyone around you is offering opinions, ask yourself whether this moves you closer to your goals. Does this environment support your growth? Is this voice in your head coming from fear or from wisdom? Is this person's advice based on your best interests or their comfort? Having clear criteria helps you filter external input rather than being swayed by every opinion that comes your way.
Your career is not a committee decision. It's not a group project. It's not something that should be put to a vote or subjected to approval by people who aren't living your life. The voices around you—managers, mentors, colleagues, well-meaning friends—can provide input and honestly, that input can be valuable. But the moment you outsource the final decision to them, the moment you give someone else veto power over your choices, you've given away your power.
And in male-dominated fields where our work often goes unrewarded and our ambitions are routinely questioned, taking control of your career trajectory isn't just important—it's essential. Because no one else is coming to save you. No one else is going to hand you your dreams on a silver platter. And waiting for permission is just another form of self-sabotage.
So, here's your challenge: choose yourself. Without guilt. Without apology. Without waiting for someone else to decide you're ready. Your future is not in someone else's hands.
Reconnect with what you actually want. Make decisions that serve your goals, not everyone else's comfort. Set boundaries. Seek visibility. And if you're in an environment that doesn't value you, give yourself permission to walk away.
And sometimes, letting go of what's not working, releasing that need for external validation, and trusting yourself enough to charge your own course—is the most powerful career move you'll ever make.
And that's it for this episode of Stop Sabotaging Your Success. Remember to download your Guide to Reclaiming Your Career Path at cindyesliger.com/podcast, episode two hundred and eleven.
Thank you to our producer, Alex Hochhausen and everyone at Astronomic Audio. Get in touch, I'm on Instagram @cindyesliger. My email address is info@cindyesliger.com.
If you enjoy listening to this podcast, you have to come check out The Confidence Collective. It's my monthly coaching program where we dig a little deeper into what's holding you back in your career and we find the workarounds. We help you overcome the barriers and create the career you want. Join me over at cindyesliger.com/join. I'd love to have you join me in The Confidence Collective.
Until next week, I'm Cindy Esliger. Thanks for listening.
