Being an impactful leader of a team and business starts with how we lead ourselves and becoming emotionally intelligent is how we shift from survival mode to self-trust.
I used to be the kind of person that rushed through their life. From an outsider’s perspective, it looked like I was thriving – doing so well at work that I got promoted 3x’s in 6yrs, featured on a billboard in Times Square and a segment on The Muse; building a side business where my expertise was quoted in HuffPost and CNBC; and paying it forward through mentorship and non-profit board service that impacted career/economic mobility for first-gen students.
I was living my best life! Except, I wasn’t. I was performing leadership – doing all of the things I saw others doing to get ahead in their career and life – in order to quiet the internal voice that often said, “It’s not enough. You’re still behind.”
I knew that feeling came from having grown up an immigrant kid in a low-income household. I checked all of the boxes that were supposed to lead to success – undergraduate degree, graduate degree, professional career, high income earnings. But when you’re the first to accomplish all of those things in a market where the large majority of people have also accomplished them with a greater degree of support and financial backing, you can’t help feeling like they’re a few laps ahead and you can’t catch up. The measure of success becomes how far you can get from where you started which inevitably means doing more.
In order to do more, you have to find ways to hype yourself up. Pa’lante! – a colloquial contraction of “para adelante” which means keep going forward. It comes from a Puerto Rican dicho “Pa’lante que pa’tras ni para coger impulso.” Since Cuba and Puerto Rico are the “dos alas del mismo pajaro” us fellow Cubans use this saying after one of our fave words “Dale!” which means to go ahead.
Dale! Pa’lante. Go ahead, forward. A mindset that suggests you must always be in constant momentum, in order to survive. That was my motto while I was pushing through all of the chaos of balancing career, business, volunteering and care taking for a mother with a neurological disorder.
You see, I had decided to launch my business at the peak of my corporate career when I thought I had figured out how to make great money doing something I loved, and wanted to help other first-gens do the same. As a behavioral science major, I wanted to understand the psychology of why many of my clients were stuck in unfulfilling careers. This brought me back to “Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs” which helped me connect the dots: when we’re the child of immigrants, survival mode is deeply ingrained through social conditioning because we see our family members work really hard and make tremendous sacrifices often to meet basic physiological and safety needs (newer research by Dr. Mariel Buqué suggests it’s also biologically inherited; generational trauma) AND when we’re the first to navigate systems (education) and spaces (workplaces) without a blueprint, we’re also in survival mode.
Although in my 30’s I wasn’t living paycheck to paycheck like my mom was in her 30’s, I was still very much in survival mode, trying to make her proud (love and belonging), earn recognition through work/business achievements (esteem) and create a legacy (self-actualization) through business and board service. Many of my career coaching clients struggled with making career changes because it felt unsafe and triggered their survival mode instincts. We prefer the evil we know (unfulfilling jobs) vs. the evil we don’t know (the possibility of falling down to the bottom of Mazlow’s pyramid).
[image from simplypsychology.org]
Unlike my clients, I felt more comfortable taking career risks because of the same fear. Instead of staying safely put, I was speed climbing to the top in order to create a greater distance to the bottom. While my survival mode looked different – mostly because the “responsible” ones that parents don’t have to worry about become very good at pretending – my nervous system was very much hijacked by the same triggers.
And then a global pandemic hit and most of us were forced to stay home and slow the f down. Without a workplace, meetings and events to rush off to, I felt… empty ish. I had spent the majority of my life in pursuit of the next achievement which meant that most of my identity and sense of value was tied to doing instead of being. I was forced to go inward and reflect on where I was in life. During this retrospective time, I traced terrible decisions that had a big, negative impact (socially and financially) to moments in my life when I was very emotionally dysregulated (aka in survival mode) and unaware of its impact because I was “too busy” going forward.
[Bracelets from Little Word Project]
That was the start of the shift from survival mode to self-trust. It took a few more big failures for me to make a serious investment in my personal growth. That investment included working 1:1 with a coach, building healthier habits (from food to fitness, from resting more to better time management) and learning about emotional intelligence by taking/becoming certified in an assessment tool. The ROI of the time, money and energy to change didn’t just pay personal dividends though, it saved my business during the most challenging times.
Last year, while navigating unprecedented life curveballs and major changes, I produced the highest business sales to date. Instead of pushing through and thinking dale pa’lante, I slowed down. Instead of pretending, I gave myself permission to work through all of the feelings. Instead of oversharing on social media, I took a sabbatical to grieve privately. Instead of hiding behind being busy and pushing myself to do more, I doubled down on one business vertical. When the heavy emotions would creep up, instead of pushing them down…
I cried.
I journaled.
I paused and took deep breaths.
I prayed.
I spent time with loved ones.
I reframed.
I rested.
Less doing, more being.
Being a business founder teaches you to take better care of yourself because your business results are a reflection of you and your input. Your mindset, feelings, fears, strengths, weaknesses – all of it – show up in how you lead your business and your people, which impacts your profit. That is why today’s version of my business is HR and Leadership Development, intentionally teaching business founders how to emotionally regulate in order to make the best decisions for their people and profits.
If you’re a business founder or any leader who is rushing through life, chasing the achievements and feeling like it’s never enough…you’re likely in survival mode like I was. Instead of continuing to push through until you get to the top, I encourage you to pause and invest in your leadership development. I promise you it is what will actually lead you to self-actualization.
Instead of surviving, let’s propel on purpose.