220. Becoming Better Than Before Requires Courage
- 5 hours ago
- 14 min read
Owning our growth requires genuine courage, especially for women in STEM who risk having their improvement used against them by colleagues who need them to stay small. We face specific pitfalls—the double bind, the perfectionism trap, the language audit problem, and invisible labor—that make change harder for us than for our male counterparts. By embracing strategic failure and reframing limiting beliefs, we can build the resilience needed to become unstoppable.
When you admit you're getting better at something, you're essentially admitting that you weren't as good at it before.
Are you holding yourself back from showing your growth because you fear others will use it as proof you weren't qualified before? Are you stuck in the perfectionism trap, waiting until you can do everything flawlessly before going after the opportunities you want? Are you constantly minimizing your wins and downplaying your contributions instead of owning your achievements out loud?
You'll learn that admitting you're improving actually takes more courage than pretending you already have all the answers, and that reframing failure as a necessary step—rather than something to avoid—is the key to unlocking extraordinary success in your career.
WHAT YOU WILL DISCOVER
Why the courage to own your growth is especially challenging for women in STEM
5 practical strategies to help you keep growing your career with confidence
Why reframing your relationship with failure is essential to becoming truly unstoppable in your career
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TRANSCRIPT
Welcome to the Stop Sabotaging Your Success podcast, episode two hundred and twenty. 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.
Did you know that it takes more courage to say, “I'm getting better” than it does to say, “I'm already great” because admitting you're improving means admitting there were gaps before. It means acknowledging that, in fact, you didn't have all the answers. And for women in STEM fields who are already fighting uphill battles to prove we belong, that admission can feel downright dangerous. Your growth threatens people who need you to keep playing small. But that's their problem, not yours.
In this episode, we're diving into why change is so hard for everyone, but especially hard for women who are struggling to find their place in the organizations they work for. We'll talk about the common problems and pitfalls we face when we start owning our growth, the professional consequences of not evolving, what to watch out for that could make things worse, and most importantly, the strategies that actually work to make this easier on ourselves. We'll reframe the beliefs that keep us playing small, because failure isn't something to avoid, it's actually necessary on the road to success. So, let's get into it.
So, why is it that we find change so hard? We tend to gravitate toward what feels comfortable and familiar, even when we know that what's comfortable and familiar isn't what's best for us. Sometimes, making an improvement comes with an extra layer of complexity, because you're already under a microscope. Every move you make is being watched, evaluated, and judged by people who are often looking for reasons to confirm their biases.
When you admit you're getting better at something, you're essentially admitting that you weren't good at it before. And in environments where you're already fighting to prove you deserve your seat at the table, that can feel like handing ammunition to the very people who question whether you belonged there in the first place. The fear is real. I know what you're thinking, “If I say I'm improving, will they think I wasn't qualified before? Will they use this as proof that they were right to doubt me?”.
But here's where it gets interesting. We've all spent roughly fourteen years in school learning that failing is a bad thing. We did everything we could to avoid any form of criticism, because we were taught that the very worst thing you could do in school was get it wrong. We were trained to do what we were told to do. We were trained that there was a right and a wrong answer. We were trained not to challenge their way of doing things. If you didn't do it right, you failed, and that was a very bad thing. The more you failed in school, the less successful you were going to be in life, or so we were told.
But in order to have extraordinary success in your career—especially in fields that require innovation, problem-solving, and creative thinking—you have to learn the exact opposite. You have to learn to fail and how to do it in a way that works to your advantage. We have to try all the things that don't work in order to find the thing that does. And this creates a massive disconnect between what got you through school and what will actually make you successful in your career. Your school experience, ironically, prevents you from creating new and exciting things in the world. Some of the greatest inventors and creators of our time did not do well in a structured school system, and that's not a coincidence.
So, what does this look like in practice? Let's talk about four of the most common problems and pitfalls women specifically face when we start the work of getting better:
The double bind. If you're improving, some of your colleagues—usually the most insecure ones—may use this as proof that you weren't qualified before. You know the type. The ones who seem a little too excited when you make a mistake, who can't quite hide their smirk when something doesn't go your way. When you start owning your growth, these people get uncomfortable because your improvement disrupts the narrative they're spreading about you.
The perfectionism trap. This is where we wait until everything is perfect before we submit our work for review or ask for opportunities. We think, “I'll apply for that promotion once I'm absolutely certain I can do every aspect of the job flawlessly”. Meanwhile, someone from another department applies, meeting only some of the qualifications, and gets the role because he had the audacity to believe he could figure out the rest. The bar for men is whether they have ‘potential’. The bar for women is whether they have ‘proven themselves’. It's real, it's exhausting, and it keeps us stuck.
The language audit problem. How we talk about our own work matters, and most of us are terrible at it. We minimize our wins constantly. We say, “I just pulled together a quick analysis…”. No, you spent three weeks building a comprehensive data model that has changed the team's entire approach. Or, we say, “It was nothing, really…”. No, it was something and you know it. Or, we say, “The team really did all the work…”. Okay, the team helped, sure, but you led the initiative. Breaking the habit of downplaying success is harder than it sounds, because we've been socialized to believe that owning our achievements makes us seem arrogant or unlikable. In my experience, men don't seem to have this problem.
The invisible labor. You're doing the actual work of improving your skills, expanding your knowledge, and growing your capabilities while also managing everyone else's perceptions of that growth. You're hypervigilant in meetings, constantly trying to read the room while also monitoring your facial expressions so you don't come across as aggressive when you're simply engaged and carefully crafting your emails to sound more collaborative but not too bossy. I know, it's a lot.
Recognition and reward for our hard work tend to be scarce in these environments, anyway. Now, add the complexity of trying to grow while navigating all of this, and it's no wonder so many talented women plateau or leave STEM fields altogether.
So, what should you watch out for? What are the things that can make it worse for us in our professional settings? Here are six of the most common:
Watch out for colleagues who frame your growth as “finally catching up” rather than continuously excelling. They'll say things like, “Oh good, you're finally getting the hang of this”, as if you've been struggling this whole time, when really, you've been learning a whole bunch of new skills on top of doing your regular job. Don't let them rewrite the narrative of your growth.
Watch out for the moving goalposts. You hit the target they set, and suddenly the target moves. You demonstrate the skill they said you lacked, and now there's a different skill you need to prove you've mastered. Standards that shift whenever you meet them are a sign that the game is rigged, and you need to decide whether you want to continue playing or find a new game to play elsewhere, where your talents will be more appreciated.
Watch out for isolation when you start owning your success. Some people prefer you playing small, and when you start taking up the space you deserve, they get uncomfortable. They might pull back, exclude you from informal conversations, or create distance. This is a feature of you starting to get comfortable with owning your success rather than a bug you need to fix. You're filtering out people who need to diminish your capabilities to feel good about themselves.
Watch out for the “humble” trap. Sometimes, you're told you're “too confident” when men exhibiting the exact same behavior are called “natural leaders”. If you're getting feedback that you need to be more humble or modest, while watching men get promoted for the same level of confidence you're demonstrating, you're dealing with a double standard, not a performance issue.
Watch out for the comparison culture. We tend to measure ourselves against someone else's highlight reel. If someone has been in the industry for fifteen years more than you have, and you're comparing your current skill level to theirs, that's not being fair to yourself. Also, consider that someone had advantages you didn't have—connections, mentorship, resources, or just the benefit of being taken seriously from day one—and you're beating yourself up for not being where they are. Stop that right now.
Watch out for how early experiences with shame around mistakes have fueled your perfectionism and your fear of failure. If you can trace your fear of getting things wrong back to specific moments in your childhood or education, where mistakes were met with shame, criticism, or punishment, you're carrying baggage that doesn't serve you anymore. Unlearning that pattern opens the door to growth and confidence, but first, you have to recognize that it's there.
We all have beliefs that keep us stuck because the stories we tell ourselves about what our improvement means are often more limiting than the actual circumstances we're dealing with. Perhaps some of these four common beliefs sound familiar:
Belief #1: “If I admit I'm getting better, they'll think I wasn't good enough before.” Reframe this as: Growth is the goal. Stagnation is the real failure. Anyone who penalizes you for learning and improving is telling you more about their own insecurities than about your capabilities. The best people to work with are the ones who celebrate growth, not the ones who need you to have been perfect from day one.
Belief #2: “I should already know this by now.” Reframe this as: School trained us that there was one right answer, and in the workplace we've translated that to mean that we should know all the answers. Real innovation requires trying all the things that don't work to find the thing that does. Nobody tells you that some of the most successful people in your field spent years trying things that failed before they found what worked. They don't lead with those stories, but their failures are what got them to where they are.
Belief #3: “If I fail at this, it proves I don't belong.” Reframe this as: Successful people are good at failing. They're willing to keep failing until they get the result they're looking for. If you want to have extraordinary success, you have to risk failing. You have to be willing to feel every single negative emotion that is available to us as human beings. If you can embrace feeling humiliation, confusion, disappointment, frustration, and even defeat, you will be well on your way to extraordinary success.
Belief #4: “I can't let them see me struggle.” Reframe this as: The only thing keeping you from taking action on your dreams is your anticipation of the feelings of failure. When those no longer stop you, there will be nothing you won't be willing to do to keep going until you get the results you're after. Think about that. You're not actually avoiding failure—you're avoiding the feelings that come with failure. And those feelings? They can't actually hurt you.
Here's the truth about failure in your career that nobody wants to admit. You have to do the work of failing over and over again in order to win. Think about learning how to ride a bike. For many of us, there was no success in the beginning—it was getting up over and over and over. There was a long period of time where riding the bike was not happening, just a bunch of failing. The exact same thing happens when you're striving for success in your career.
In the beginning, as you venture out of your comfort zone, there is nothing but negatives and failure. Unfortunately, this is the path to success. It doesn't feel like you're winning, it feels like you're losing right up until the point you figure out how to make it work.
So, why go through all of this discomfort and uncertainty? Is it really worth it?
I would say yes, because you build actual competence and confidence, not just the appearance of it. There's a difference between ‘faking it until you make it’ and actually developing skills through trial and error. Real confidence comes from knowing you can handle failure because you've done it before and survived.
You create a documented trail of impact, which makes you promotion-ready with evidence. This isn't your opinion or hopeful thinking. This is data based on metrics and outcomes, the stuff that's hard to argue with.
You make peace with mistakes, which opens the door to innovation and reframes failure as a necessary form of progress. Once you stop treating every mistake like a catastrophe, you free yourself up to experiment, try new approaches, and actually create something innovative, instead of just doing things the way they've always been done.
You develop resilience that serves you across your entire career. The ability to cope and adjust—as you figure out how to best navigate the challenges that life throws at you—is arguably the most valuable professional skill you can develop.
You stop waiting for external validation and learn to support and validate yourself from within. If you're constantly looking outside yourself for approval and proof that you're good enough, you're giving away all your power.
And you become someone who can embrace frustration, confusion, defeat, and even humiliation, which means there's nothing you won't be willing to do to keep going. When you can feel all your feelings and keep moving anyway, you become unstoppable.
Here are five strategies that can make this easier by focusing on what we can control in these situations:
Strategy #1: Create your “proof of progress” file. Start documenting your wins weekly, not only during performance review season, when you're scrambling to remember what you did six months ago. Collect data, not just opinions, on an ongoing basis. Track metrics, client feedback, project outcomes, problems you solved, and initiatives you led. Make it so specific that months from now you can put your fingers on exact numbers and examples. This file becomes your ammunition for those performance reviews, promotion conversations, and salary negotiations. It's also a really powerful tool for those days when imposter syndrome hits hard and you need concrete evidence that you're actually good at what you do.
Strategy #2: Do a language audit. This one's uncomfortable, but necessary. Record yourself in meetings or review your emails for a week. Count how many times you minimize your contributions, apologize unnecessarily, or deflect credit. If you're anything like me, you'll probably be horrified at how often you do it. How we talk about our own work matters. Every time you say things like, “I just threw this together” or “It's probably not great, but…” you're training people to undervalue your work. Start practicing new language like, “I developed an analysis that shows…” instead of, “I just put together some numbers…”. It might feel weird at first, but do it anyway.
Strategy #3: The “cope and adjust” framework. Identify specific goals for growth, then reflect on your work patterns—what's actually working for you and what isn't. Sometimes, we need to figure out the obstacles keeping us from making the changes we say we want to make. Find what helps you cope as you navigate these challenges. Not what works for someone else. Not what productivity gurus say you should do—what actually helps you and dedicate even just one hour per week entirely to doing things that protect and enhance your mental well-being. Just one hour where you put yourself first for a change. Because you can't pour from an empty cup, and you can't sustain your growth if you're running on fumes.
Strategy #4: Embrace strategic failure. Here's an exercise that separates the people who are good at failing from everyone else. Choose one goal, something that currently feels out of reach, that you'd love to create in your career. Then, write a list of actions you'll take that will move you in that direction, each quarter. The intention isn't to achieve the goal immediately, it's to experiment by trying things that might work, fail, learn, adjust, and engage in the process. You'll find out quickly if you're good at failing, or not. Many people who are very smart, used to knowing all the answers, and getting the wins all the time tend to quit this exercise within the first few weeks. They tell themselves it's silly to work towards something that's impossible, but really, they just can't process the emotions that come along with failing—the discomfort that will inevitably come from working on something with no clear methodology or immediate success. Each failed attempt teaches you something about what doesn't work and what does. That learning is the point.
Strategy #5: The momentum principle. As you try new things, not everything is going to go as planned. The minute what you try fails, take notes and try something else. Don't dwell. Don't spiral. Note what happened, what you learned, and what you'll try differently the next time. Then, use that momentum you've built to keep moving forward along your path. Eventually, all that failure might lead to success. You stop being so attached to the outcome and become more invested in the process.
When you're willing to keep failing until you get it right, everything starts moving faster and easier. You'll have opportunities you might have never dreamed possible, all because of your willingness to try new things and pick yourself up after you fail.
The only reason we don't want to fail is because we don't want to feel badly. We don't want to experience those emotions that don't feel good. But what if we could actually start to feel good about feeling bad? What if we learn that the part of life that feels uncomfortable is actually necessary to get to the other part of life that feels good?
It takes courage to continue improving in a system that wants you to pretend you have all the answers while you know you're still figuring things out. You doing the work to get better tends to feel threatening to the people who need the status quo to stay intact. They are the people who have built their self-worth on being better than you. So, any improvements you make, shine a light on what they aren't doing to stay ahead.
This week, I want you to start your proof of progress file. Document one win, no matter how small. Write down something you accomplished, a problem you solved, value you created in some way. Start building that evidence. And remember, the only reason we don't want to fail is because we don't want to feel those uncomfortable emotions. But your willingness and ability to fail is what helps you create the success you want in your career.
You're becoming better than before, and if you're brave enough, you're going to keep getting better.
And that's it for this episode of Stop Sabotaging Your Success. Remember to download your Guide to Owning Your Growth Without Apology at cindyesliger.com/podcast, episode two hundred and twenty.
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.
