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- Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
- Kategorie: Fachliteratur
- Sprache: Englisch
Is the life you’re leading true to you?
Do you feel like you’re endlessly striving in a world that never stops asking for more? Too often, we exhaust ourselves in pursuit of supposed ideals. We give everything in search of ‘success,’ while struggling with stress, guilt, self-doubt, and burnout. It’s time to dismantle the illusion of external validation. It’s time to embrace your inherent worth as a woman and a leader. Lead Like You is a roadmap for rediscovering the authentic you and realising a new way to live and lead.
The key to true transformation, radical resilience, and deep fulfilment lies within: learning to know yourself, care for yourself and truly be yourself, at work and in life. Lead Like You will show you how to ignite this personal and professional revolution. Through courageous stories, evidence-based practices and insights from psychology, author Jo Wagstaff shares indispensable tools for forging a profound connection with — and caring for — the self. Learn how you can lead your career and lead yourself with more purpose and power.
- Understand and overcome the external and internal forces that limit your potential
- Increase your self-awareness and identify your motivations, limiting behaviours and boundaries
- Discover the strength and power in mindfulness, self-care and self-compassion
- Learn how to forge authentic connections and healthier, more meaningful relationships
- Access and leverage the advantages of authentic leadership to make a difference within your organisation and the world
Lead Like You shares the tools and knowledge you need to feel calm, confident, and empowered as a female leader. You’ll discover how to find power in vulnerability and return to your true values and purpose. This book will inspire you to do the inner work and redefine your vision for success — so you can live and lead true to yourself.
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Seitenzahl: 485
Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2024
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Table of Contents
COVER
TABLE OF CONTENTS
TITLE PAGE
COPYRIGHT
DEDICATION
PREFACE
INTRODUCTION
PART I: Know yourself
CHAPTER 1: Why is it so hard to live true to ourselves?
How our histories shape us
It starts at the beginning
Then everything changed again
The challenges of instability
Learning to ‘earn’ my worth
How trauma shapes us
But my childhood was normal
We are not meant to do it alone
CHAPTER 2: Learning to get our needs met
Why are we working so hard?
Three unconscious strategies for getting our needs met
The root of all three tendencies
Awareness. Acceptance. Action. Afterburn.
CHAPTER 3: Learning to dance in relationships
Learning to dance
‘Good enough’ parenting
Dancing blindly
How do you dance?
Resolve your trauma to heal your attachment style
Attachment in the workplace
Hold your heart gently
CHAPTER 4: The many forces that hinder our authenticity
Our brain is wired for survival
Our internal threat, drive and soothing systems
Dependency and interdependency
Adult stages of development
Our core beliefs colour how we see the world
Getting stuck in identity and our narrative
Who am I without my identity?
The gift and challenge of being a mum
Perimenopause and menopause
The reality of a patriarchal, white-privileged and outwardly focused society
#metoo
Workplace gender bias
Moving forward
Good enough
Changing our template
PART II: Care for yourself
CHAPTER 5: The challenge and gift of being our own best friend
Becoming our own best friend with self-compassion
Learning to love myself
But isn't it just self-indulgence?
How shame cripples us
Why do we resist self-compassion?
Replace the inner critic with the inner coach
CHAPTER 6: Finding our boundaries
The need for compassionate boundaries
Get clear on your priorities
CHAPTER 7: Tuning into our needs
Tuning into your unmet needs
Metta meditation
Tend and befriend
Self-care is about valuing and respecting ourselves
Prioritising self-care
CHAPTER 8: Getting practical with self-care
Gut health, stress and burnout
Hustling to prove my worth
Managing gut health with lifestyle choices
Essential practices
Start slowly
Ten wellbeing practices
Create daily rituals
CHAPTER 9: Financial self-care
Confronting my financial demons
Learning to respect and value ourselves
Exploring our beliefs and assumptions about money
Valuing ourselves at work
Three financial self-care practices
PART III: Be yourself
CHAPTER 10: Finding our authentic selves
What is authenticity and how do we become truly authentic?
CHAPTER 11: Finding our authentic values and purpose
A reflection for discovering your core values
Purpose makes our lives meaningful
Seven steps for discovering your purpose
Forget the grandiose purpose
CHAPTER 12: Translating our values and purpose into vision
Create your life vision
Ignite new possibilities
CHAPTER 13: Being ourselves in relationships
Why are relationships so difficult?
The past is intimately connected with the present
The five core human needs
Transference
The shadow mirror of our triggers
CHAPTER 14: The art of being both soft and strong
Five practices for cultivating the art of soft and strong
CHAPTER 15: Redefining success
The quality of our future lives depends on the choices we make now
Slowing down and shifting from burnout to balance
Comparison kills our innate confidence and sense of success
Cultivating satisfaction and joy is an inside job
Grace, faith and letting go
The gift of prayer
CHAPTER 16: Leading true to ourselves
Embodied leadership presence
Support your nervous system to stand in your power
The feminine leadership advantage
A FINAL REFLECTION
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
RESOURCES
REFERENCES
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 16
END USER LICENSE AGREEMENT
Guide
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Preface
Introduction
Table of Contents
Begin Reading
A Final Reflection
Acknowledgements
Resources
References
End User License Agreement
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‘Jo Wagstaff shows us a revolutionary new way of living, leading and working based on authenticity, wisdom and self-awareness. Using cutting-edge, evidenced-based tools and practices and insightful stories and guidance, she shows us how to escape the trap of hustling, stressing and burning ourselves out trying to prove our worth; and provides a clear path to a life of true success — a life where we are able to achieve great things but more importantly also find meaning, purpose and deep satisfaction in life. The world is in need of this kind of wisdom. This is a book whose time has come’.
— Melli O'Brien, Co-founder ofMindfulness.com
‘Jo Wagstaff has captured my attention like few others, with her real-life examples mixed with her personal journey and experiences. I recognised myself in many of her stories and felt supported on my journey to live more true to my purpose. More importantly, I've realised we are never done with self-development and self-interrogation, and I absolutely loved her tools and journaling prompts. It has allowed me to gain more clarity on what I am about holistically, and it has given me the strength and inspiration to embrace all of me’.
— Peggy Renders, Chief Customer Officer, Telstra Enterprise
‘This book starts like an Eat Pray Love of the corporate world, but it takes you somewhere deeper and more practical. It offers teachings, wisdom and guidance through one's own history, upbringing, and present life. Thank you, Jo, for opening your heart and offering your story so that we can all learn how to be true to our authentic selves. Lead Like You is a must-read for anyone on a journey of self-discovery, be it career-orientated or not’.
— Karen Taylor, Chief Executive Officer, Hourigan International
‘What a gift Lead Like You is. Through Jo Wagstaff's story, guidance, and insights, you feel seen, understood, and held. But, more than that, Jo shows you a path through the challenges, the glimmers of good on the other side and the gifts from lessons you learn along the way’.
— Mel Ware, Head of Marketing and Brand, Zurich Australia
First published in 2024 by John Wiley & Sons Australia, Ltd Level 4, 600 Bourke St, Melbourne, Victoria 3000, Australia
© John Wiley & Sons Australia, Ltd 2024
The moral rights of the author have been asserted
ISBN: 978-1-394-24870-4
All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the Australian Copyright Act 1968 (for example, a fair dealing for the purposes of study, research, criticism or review), no part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, communicated or transmitted in any form or by any means without prior written permission. All inquiries should be made to the publisher at the address above.
Cover design by Wiley
DisclaimerThe material in this publication is of the nature of general comment only, and does not represent professional advice. It is not intended to provide specific guidance for particular circumstances and it should not be relied on as the basis for any decision to take action or not take action on any matter which it covers. Readers should obtain professional advice where appropriate, before making any such decision. To the maximum extent permitted by law, the author and publisher disclaim all responsibility and liability to any person, arising directly or indirectly from any person taking or not taking action based on the information in this publication.
For all the women I have had the privilege of working with.
Thank you for your vulnerability and trust in undertaking this journey with me.
Thank you for sharing who you are and showing me who I am.
PREFACE
Thank you for picking up this book and, with it, accepting an invitation to explore a revolutionary new way to live, love, lead and succeed.
Have you noticed how we are living with the relentless demands of a world that never stops asking for more, exhausting ourselves in pursuit of elusive ideals and often unconsciously striving to prove our worth? Never feeling it is enough, we give everything in search of ‘success’ while often struggling with stress, guilt, self-doubt, and burnout.
For much of our lives, our need to prove ourselves, earn our worth and feel safe in this world can stop us from living and leading true to ourselves. In my experience working with thousands of professional women in many countries and across all levels, I have learned that we are not alone. Many of us have not learned how to be in a relationship with ourselves. A relationship that encourages us to believe deeply in our authentic selves and our strengths and capabilities and empowers us to step into our own lives more fully and to lead true to ourselves.
We often look outside ourselves for validation, but transformation really begins when we look inside ourselves. When we begin to gently and compassionately understand why we do what we do, what unconsciously drives us, and what meaningful success looks like for each of us. Living and leading lives true to ourselves is the foundational ingredient to thriving at both work and in life.
Let's dismantle the illusion of societal expectations and the internal and external forces that limit our lives and instead discover how to embrace our inherent worth as woman and as leaders. This book invites you on a transformational inner journey to return to yourself and the life you want to lead, one that is true to yourself.
This roadmap has been crafted in three parts:
Know yourself: This is the opportunity to deeply reflect on why it can be so hard to live and lead true to ourselves and what may be limiting you.
Care for yourself: Self-compassion, practical self-care, and boundaries as the essential foundations for radical resiliency and inner confidence.
Be yourself: Gain clarity on your values, purpose and vision and the power of authenticity to transform how you live, love, lead and succeed.
This book offers many vulnerable and relatable stories, psychological research, and tools to deepen your awareness and understanding of yourself. It also invites you to pause throughout for conscious reflections and evidence-based conscious practices. May it empower you to slow down, to centre your sense of self, to take back your innate power, to nurture and nourish yourself, to find your truth, speak your truth and live your truth, and stop trying to earn your worth, as you realise that you are born worthy. Worthy of creating the life you want. Worthy of leading from within.
I offer my story, heart, experiences, successes and failures, shared wisdom, and a vision for a new day where men and women feel equal and united, where we all know our innate worth. Where life and leadership aren't about a relentless grind but about leading and living with vitality and authenticity. Where we stop the hustle to earn our worth through our careers as a way of feeling valued or justifying our existence and instead achieve what is important to us from a place of wholeness, purpose, and fulfilment. Where we all feel safe to be our true authentic selves. Where we begin to take care of our poor over-activated nervous system. Where we reclaim the feminine principles of living deeply connected to ourselves and to each other. To live in the ebb and flow of life and be nurtured and nourished by the gift of simply being and allowing more gentleness, compassion, and beauty to saturate our lives. Where we step fully into our authentic power and live and lead true to ourselves.
May we do this together.
INTRODUCTION
I sat in my corner office on the top floor of one of the most beautiful office buildings in Sydney, staring out over the Sydney Harbour Bridge and Sydney Opera House. My assistant handed me a stunning black lace Collette Dinnigan cocktail dress and strappy Jimmy Choo shoes to change into.
I rode down the lift and slid into a black limousine that was waiting for me and was whisked off to Bondi Beach. There, I was welcomed into James Packer's magnificent beachfront apartment, where I joined my male colleagues for a cocktail party. James sat on the board of our company, and at the time, he and Kerry Packer were major shareholders in the business I worked for, as well as one of the wealthiest families in Australia.
I was thirty-two years old, the youngest on the team by some years, and the only female on the executive leadership team. We were a top 200–listed financial services company in the middle of a merger. I had spent the afternoon arguing with investment bankers and lawyers about how we were going to communicate the merger to our staff, shareholders and clients. I had some good wins and was feeling pumped.
It was a heady experience being surrounded by so much masculine intellectual horsepower. I had always been both attracted to and intimidated by intellect — especially intellectual men. And with that, I often underestimated and undervalued my own skills, talents and intellectual capacity. The men I was working with were, unquestionably, some of the brightest around.
I was also attracted to power, and unconsciously, I associated male intellect and success with that power. And I wanted some. I found it exciting to both be a part of and, at times, to go up against it. Ultimately (and I say this with great self-compassion and no awareness of it back then), to try to manipulate them, and in some way, take my power back.
I was desperate to feel safe, to feel equal, to not feel powerless. To feel seen and acknowledged, to belong, to feel enough. Alternatively, I would try to compete with them, try to be like them — just one of the boys, living my masculine traits of doing, striving, achieving, competing. I would tell myself I had to toughen up and hide my feelings. I would often stay silent about things that really mattered to me. I vacillated between what I would call my ‘immature feminine’ and my overly identified, extreme ‘immature masculine’.
It didn't help that I had no qualifications, which meant I spent my working life feeling like an imposter. And here I was, in the financial services industry, which was arguably one of the most male-dominated and intellectually challenging at the time. I made my way to the top echelon by the age of thirty-two.
I remember how awe-struck I felt as James took me for a tour of his home. I had made it.
I had a husband who had been a vet and was now an investment banker — what a combo! A gorgeous, healthy, fourteen-month-old son. We were building a beautiful big home on the leafy lower north shore. I had all the material things I could want. I drove a brand-new BMW, for which I had paid cash with my last bonus. I wore all the designer labels and sat at the front of the plane when I travelled. Finally, I had everything that I believed I needed to be happy, to thrive, to feel important and powerful.
I vividly remember excusing myself from the group, walking past a huge, stunning fish tank and entering the powder room. I looked at myself in the mirror, but this time was different. It wasn't a superficial glance to check if I looked attractive enough. I looked deep into my own eyes, and said out loud, ‘You've made it honey. You did what you set out to do. You showed them.’
But looking back at me were the saddest, loneliest eyes I had ever seen.
In that moment, while I was not yet ready to admit it to myself, I saw the truth. I had dishonoured and abandoned myself in my need to feel liked, loved, important, successful, powerful and, ultimately, safe, particularly in a very male-dominated world. It had been a high price to pay.
That was the day it all began to unravel.
That year, my marriage ended and my dad got sick and died of cancer. I found new ways to numb my grief — both the grief of the present and the past. I worked harder. I drank more. I used drugs for the first time. I spent a small fortune as a way of pretending I was thriving. I found the most dysfunctional relationship I could as an unconscious way of punishing myself and replaying my attachment pattern, which had been established in my childhood.
To the outside world, even to my family and close friends, it still looked like I was thriving. I was so high functioning. I was the consummate swan, looking like I was gracefully gliding across the pond to the outside world. But underneath, I was kicking my feet a hundred miles an hour and barely staying afloat. Living on adrenalin and high-functioning anxiety.
And the ‘universe’, for want of a better term, knew that. As long as I stayed busy and used money and success to avoid myself, I was never going to stop and face what I needed to face. Myself. My truth. My needs and wants. My dreams.
A couple of years later, I was offered a lucrative voluntary redundancy and walked away from my corporate career thinking I was financially secure and just needed a ‘bit of a break’. But I was never good at resting, and at one point in my on-again off-again ‘break’ I tried spending a week at a health retreat. They had a labyrinth, and while I was not particularly spiritual at the time, I decided to do a bit of a ceremony for myself. Late at night, under a full moon, I walked the labyrinth, which slowly wound its way to the top of a small hill.
At the top, I got down on my knees and prayed. This was not something I had ever done much of and I had no real sense of what to pray to, so I prayed to the moon. In that prayer, I surrendered. I turned my life and will over to a power greater than myself. I said, ‘I am all yours. I don't know what I want or need. I don't know what is wrong with me. I just know I am deeply unhappy and I am tired. Oh, so tired. Please show me the way. I surrender.’ In hindsight, I love that I prayed to the moon, as it is said to be a feminine symbol. Ultimately, that is what I had lost touch with: my feminine nature.
Within weeks of my surrender, the share market crashed, and with it, the second tranche of the options I had received disappeared. They had been considered a ‘sure thing’, and given this, I had bought a home in Balmoral Beach, one of Sydney's most expensive beachside suburbs, in advance of them vesting. Outside of my son, the most important thing to me, the only way I truly felt safe in the world was by having money. It gave me the illusion of control. Having a home was also super important as I craved the stability I had not had as a child.
In a moment, both my home and much of my money vanished. The rug was pulled out from under me. I was fully on my knees, with nowhere to go. And in hindsight, thank god!
I had spent much of my life searching. When I look back now, I am not even sure what I was searching for. At different times, money, control, validation, success, excitement, freedom, power, safety, family, love. But most of the time, what I was really doing was running away from myself: from my feelings, my fears, my hurts, my reality, my deep sense of unworthiness. I was also often denying my true self, including my own values, dreams, purpose, femininity, strengths and talents.
Now it was time to come face-to-face with it all. I had worked so hard to try to earn my worth and self-esteem and it hadn't worked. The life I was leading was not sustainable.
As a woman living in a patriarchal culture, and as a female leader working in a patriarchal culture and industry, there were so many ways I had abandoned myself and been silent. I had lost my way, which is so hard when you think you are meant to know your way and be perfect within it.
I spent the decade following my surrender coming home to myself. Reclaiming my strong feminine. Rediscovering the love and life I needed to truly thrive, rather than barely survive. Learning how to live, love, lead and succeed true to myself.
This is the story of me realising my intrinsic worth. Of learning I am enough. You are enough. We are enough. Just as we are.
My sincere hope is that you will find meaning in my story and the stories of many other women and that they support you to find your authentic voice, your value, radical resiliency and both fulfilment and meaning as a woman in the workplace and in life.
Ultimately, this book offers a roadmap to help you explore your story and realise your worth. It is about exploring the groundbreaking concept that true and sustainable success is not about working harder, but is about living and leading true to yourself. About leading your life and career from the inside out, from a sense of wholeness. About how you show up for yourself and how you show up with others.
This is the roadmap that, when consistently and compassionately practiced, will show you how to reclaim your true self and the life and career you want to lead. It will empower you to embody your inner confidence, calmness, and purpose. This is the roadmap for the inner work of extraordinary sustainable leadership, not just in the office but in every facet of life.
Content warning
As we commence on this journey of self-awareness, care, authenticity and empowerment together, it is important to look after our emotional wellbeing. Please be advised that some chapters explore subjects that may be uncomfortable for some readers, such as sexual abuse and childhood trauma (Chapter 1), birth trauma and postnatal depression (Chapter 2) and substance use (Chapters 3 and 5).
PART IKnow yourself
CHAPTER 1Why is it so hard to live true to ourselves?
Have you, like me, ever struggled to live true to yourself? At work, in life? To step fully into your power and create and lead the career and life you most want to live? Why can it feel so damn hard?
We human beings are very complex creatures. There are a number of factors, both internal and external, that can make it hard to speak up, believe in ourselves, love ourselves, and live and lead true to ourselves. Some of these factors are cultural, some biological and some come from our childhood and the subconscious beliefs we developed then.
In this chapter, we will begin by exploring the role our upbringings and histories play in shaping how we feel about ourselves, and how we show up and behave in the world as adults today. This is where I begin my work with all my clients; by supporting them to increase their awareness, understanding and acceptance of themselves. I share my own stories here as an invitation for you to reflect on how significant events, people, experiences and potential traumas from your past may have shaped you today.
How our histories shape us
We all have different histories and family roles that set up our patterns of behaviour and shape how we show up in the world and go about trying to find our self-worth. As children, we are all born worthy of love. But when this is not consistently mirrored back to us, however subtly, however naively or accidentally, this sets up a slippery slope for our self-worth. Our childhood attachment histories seriously impact our ability to speak up, to live true to ourselves and to develop a strong sense of self-worth.
If we felt safe in our families, felt we were able to be our own person and have our own thoughts, feelings and beliefs without being shamed, criticised or ignored, it would feel more natural for us to ask for and meet our own needs as adults. If we didn't feel protected, felt we had to compete with siblings, or felt like we had to ‘earn’ our family's love, then our fear of abandonment, rejection or enmeshment will severely impact our innate sense of worthiness. It impacts our natural ability to be true to ourselves, to speak our truth, to love and believe in ourselves. All of this is very likely to shape how we show up in our life, work and careers.
Many of us struggle with a feeling of dissatisfaction within ourselves, our work and our lives. Many of us feel pulled in a million different directions in a world that is constantly demanding more of us. How do we stop working so hard to prove ourselves — trying, striving, perfecting our lives, constantly busy, trying to be ‘good enough’ at everything we do?
I have worked with thousands of people who have struggled with this same question. If only there was a simple answer!
As a result of how my upbringing has shaped me, I have found it almost impossible to be true to myself, to believe in myself and, ultimately, to love myself — although it has often not seemed that way to others. I often move from one extreme to another. At one extreme, I will bury my feelings, needs, values, dreams and words to please people, which results in me feeling resentful, and then in turn, behaving passive-aggressively. Then, I can move to the other extreme of finally speaking up, but I'm full of anger, judgement and blame, which means nobody can really hear what I am saying. Slowly, gently, I am finding a middle way, a way that creates understanding and unity rather than more conflict and separation.
It starts at the beginning
As I share my story, I encourage you to reflect on your own childhood with gentle curiosity and great self-compassion, and consider the pivotal experiences, events and significant people that may have shaped your patterns, beliefs and behaviours, which all influence how you show up in the world today.
I was born to two twenty-year-old, newly married, impoverished university students. They were still children themselves, with desires, dreams and plans of their own — and those did not include me.
My mum had travelled overseas on an exchange program twelve months earlier, and aspired to complete her degree and apply for a job at the United Nations in New York. My dad, having been head prefect and captain of the First XV Rugby team, and forever overwhelmed by the pressure he felt from his parents to be ‘someone’ in the world, aspired to finish his degree and go overseas as a diplomat at one of the New Zealand Government agencies. They had both been the golden child in their families, the ones who were going to do well, and they felt responsible for making their parents proud.
As you can imagine, my parents and grandparents were not very excited initially when I came along. I had thrown a spanner in the works! There was a lot of disappointment and shame around my mum's pregnancy, and in New Zealand in 1970, abortion was illegal. Many girls were sent to special homes for expectant mothers in their last trimester and had their babies taken for adoption. My grandfather wanted this, but thankfully, my dad stepped in and said they would get married and do their best to give me a family. Research now suggests that, even in the womb, we can pick up and take on our parents’ emotional states.1 So, there they were, in an unplanned marriage with a newborn baby, aspirations derailed, no money and very little support — not an easy place from which to start your adult life.
I was also born underweight and had to stay in a special unit where I was mostly on my own. I imagine that was a very lonely existence for me, a little baby needing to be held and comforted and to bond with my mum.
Today, attachment theory tells us this is not the way to set up a secure attachment between baby and parent, which is what we need to establish our worth, have healthy functioning adult relationships and thrive in life. We initially learn how to love, both ourselves and others, from how we experience love (or the lack of it) in our childhoods.
Thinking back, I didn't have a very good run with hospitals. At the age of two, my young parents took me camping with their friends, and mum's girlfriend fell over while carrying me and landed on my leg. It took them two days to take me to the hospital. Perhaps I had already learnt the importance of staying quiet and not making a fuss. Finally, the doctor confirmed it was broken, and suggested I stay in the hospital, while my parents went back and finished their camping trip.
It is hard for me to fathom now what that must have been like for me. My mum told me the nurse said I was very well-behaved (no surprise there), but I can't imagine any two-year-old not wanting to be with her mum and dad after breaking a leg.
When I was two-and-a-half, my darling little brother came along. I loved him with all my heart. From a very young age, I felt responsible for looking after him and protecting him. When I was five, my dad got a job offer, which he thought was a great opportunity to further his career, and we moved to Sydney. I felt devastated about this move, as it meant leaving my grandma Patsy (my dad's mum), who often looked after me, in New Zealand. Being with her gave me such a sense of comfort. She was my safe place, so moving to what felt like the other side of the world ripped my little heart out.
When I left, I remember her hugging me and giving me a beautiful necklace made of different coloured stones. When I got to my new home in the leafy suburb of Wahroonga, I hung it around my lime green–painted iron bedhead so I could look at it every night.
One morning, only two weeks after we had arrived in Sydney, I walked out of my bedroom and saw my dad sitting on the ground crying. I don't remember seeing him ever cry before this. He opened his arms, and I ran to him.
He whispered in my ear, ‘Patsy died’.
In that moment, my heart felt shattered. I felt lost. My family was not religious at all (in fact, my dad was a staunch atheist), but after she died, I started getting down on my knees each night in front of the necklace she gave me and praying to my grandma Patsy. I imagine this was my way of trying to stay connected to her.
Then everything changed again
A couple of years later, at the age of seven, our family moved to live in Adelaide, again due to dad's work. One afternoon, just as I was starting to settle into this new life, Mum and Dad asked my brother and me to come into the lounge room. I remember feeling both excited and nervous. Did they have something wonderful to tell us? Perhaps we were finally getting that puppy I had always wanted. Or were they going to tell us we were moving to another state or country again? I didn't want to move again.
But instead, as we sat staring at them on the couch, they told us that they were separating. While they both looked scared and sad, my dad looked completely devastated. I remember feeling confused and wondering what this would mean. I was angry that, once again, just as I started to feel settled and safe in my new home, everything was going to change. I was scared that maybe I had done something wrong. I had tried so hard to be good, to be perfect, to act happy all the time, but Dad was still leaving. Something froze in my heart that day.
The breakdown of my parents' marriage, which I suspect had never been a good one, had a profound impact on me, particularly when my dad decided to leave Adelaide for a few years and work interstate and overseas. As a young girl, it felt impossible not to take this personally. And as a parent myself now, I don't think it was okay either.
My dad was so caught up in his own pain and his own needs that he was rarely, if ever, available for ours. He was also quite introverted and struggled with relationships and communicating in general. And he was deeply, bitterly angry at the world. Actually, mostly at his mother, although nobody in my family can explain why that was.
Don't get me wrong, he could be very charming and was very intellectually interesting and loved to philosophise. But he had a temper on him that could go off at any time. He said things that cut me to the bone and could annihilate my sense of self in one sentence, which is a problem when you are still trying to develop one. He could be both emotionally and physically violent.
I loved him as only a child can love their father, and at the same time, feared him, never knowing which dad I was going to get. The charming one, the distant one, the angry one, the one who always left? When he was living interstate, I would miss him desperately. He would tell me he missed me too and then when I saw him, he would often be cold, distant or simply awkward.
He seemed to be forever leaving, and even when he was with me, not emotionally present or available. I learnt to try to please him, to try to make him happy, to do anything to stop him from getting angry at me and, especially, at my little brother who he took a lot of his own insecurities and regrets out on. He would never say sorry or acknowledge his feelings and behaviours and their impact on us.
To further complicate my relationship with him, my dad also had a good heart, albeit a sad one. I know he did not intend to cause the damage he did. I know he loved us. I experienced, firsthand, just how hard it was for him to love and be loved.
I am also forever grateful to my dad for introducing me to his love of the ocean and nature. The only times I felt truly close to him were at the beach, exploring the rock pools, playing in the waves, and camping and walking in nature. That was when he was most at peace, where, for short periods, before his internal pain and anger kicked in, we were able to connect. The ocean and nature have become my great loves too.
The challenges of instability
By the age of twelve, I had been to four schools, lived in three different cities and eight different houses. On the upside, my resiliency training had started early. On the downside, I had very little physical, emotional or financial stability in my younger years. I had to learn to both make friends quickly and be prepared that I would leave them, so not to get too close.
I struggled to focus at school. I was always way too young compared to the rest of my class, being just sixteen when I matriculated in my final year of high school. I didn't have the emotional maturity or support I needed. I was swimming in pain, fear and anxiety, but didn't know it. Perhaps it stemmed from the lack of stability I had experienced. My dad was often impatient and irritable when I could not work out how to do something. I still remember physically cringing and my heart beginning to beat super fast as his voice began to rise. He would seethe with frustration and contempt as he snarled, ‘Are you stupid?’ I soon learnt I needed to get things right to avoid his disapproval.
From my struggles at school and the reactions of my teachers and parents, I took on the beliefs, which ultimately became ingrained in me, that I was both stupid and unlovable as I was. From a young age, I felt I had to find a way to ‘make up’ for being stupid. I felt I had to find a way to be worthy of my parents and other people's love. I had to prove myself.
In hindsight, I was far from stupid, and I know now that I am smart, tenacious and resilient. I quickly figured out that if I looked good, worked hard to look successful and was a ‘good girl’, I had a chance of proving I was worthy of attention, acceptance and love.
It used to surprise me how often I heard similar underlying, albeit sometimes unconscious, feelings from my clients. They were different stories but very similar feelings: perhaps an older sibling who was super smart that they unconsciously competed with, or being brought up in a family or community that put a lot of emphasis on education/intelligence/good marks at any cost, or a pervasive message of the importance of hard work over anything else, or judgement around failure or not looking good in the eyes of others. These are all experiences that set up, often unconscious, beliefs and assumptions that can still run our lives.
My relationship with my dad created a huge abandonment wound in me. It's a wound that I now accept will never be fully healed, not by anyone or anything outside of myself. It is a wound that I have learnt to love, nurture and honour when it gets triggered. I am eternally grateful that, with a lot of therapeutic support, it no longer runs my life. But for most of my life, it did. It created a pattern of how I behaved in all my relationships, the type of people I unconsciously chose, and especially my relationships with men, personally and professionally. It set up my attachment dynamic.
My mum was twenty-eight years old when my parents broke up. Since Dad did not financially support us, Mum was left on her own to find work for the first time and support us. She did an amazing job of creating a new life from scratch. Life was not easy for her. Adelaide was an incredibly parochial city at that time, and if you were not in a relationship, it was hard to fit in. For years, I held onto the hope that my parents would get back together. I believed deep down that they really loved each other, and if Dad wasn't so difficult, they would get back together. It felt easier to believe in a fantasy than to accept the truth.
From the time my parents broke up, my mum’s career became very important to her. She also struggled with depression at times, like her mother did, and I have too. As a result, I felt like I needed to try to look after her emotionally. While I now understand why her work was important, at the time it had a big impact on me, as did Dad's decision to leave the state. I made up the story that work was more important than I was, that work was more important than being a mum, that making money was more important than family, and I grew up way too early by taking on a lot of responsibilities.
I felt very responsible for looking after my brother, like I was his mum. In a lot of ways, it felt like it was him and me against the world. Every Christmas holiday, my mum would put us on a plane to go to stay with our Auntie Trish and then our grandparents in New Zealand for six weeks.
While those holidays were filled with many wonderful adventures in nature and great times with my cousins and friends, they were also deeply painful times for me. It was a long time away from home. I already felt like I had lost my dad, and now I felt like Mum didn't want us either. Would she even be there when we got back? Even now, the Christmas holidays can bring up great sadness for me and an old sense of loneliness.
My maternal grandfather, Bob, was also incredibly difficult. He had been through World War II as a young man, was old school around manners (Children should be seen and not heard), and was quick to get verbally and physically harsh (not unlike my father). I often felt unsafe in that house, and often late at night, my grandma would find me sitting at the bottom of the stairs, shivering in the cold and crying because I did not want to go to bed. I wanted to sit in front of the fire with her arms wrapped around me.
I loved my nanny, even though she constantly complained about her life. Nanny and Bob were also constantly talking about other people's achievements, wealth and looks; about how much Mr Jones earnt in his job; what promotion the neighbour's son Peter had just got; how successful Evelyn was; how much money Dr Smith was making; how much weight the neighbour down the road had put on — constant comparisons, judgements, criticisms and super racist statements.
My mum had grown up with this, and there is no doubt in my mind that it played a big part in the lens through which she and I started to see the world. It was why I felt so much pressure to perform, look and be perfect, and be successful. It seemed that is how people got love and approval in our family.
Eventually, Mum started a ten-year relationship with another man, and we moved in with him. He was a heavy daily drinker, very emotionally unavailable, and often sexually inappropriate in his comments to and around me as a then-teenage girl. There was not a lot of good, healthy, functional male role modelling or relationship modelling going on in my life. And I remember Mum telling me, from a place of genuine care due to her own bad experiences, ‘You should never rely on a man to look after you’. This fuelled my belief that I could not trust or rely on someone else, which can create a lonely way of living. And while my mum worked hard and became very externally successful, she also had many of her own insecurities and patterns from her upbringing, which became mine.
That said, Mum was a trailblazer in her career, and I am very grateful that she taught me how to look after myself and how to set goals and be independent, and she always encouraged me in my career.
Learning to ‘earn’ my worth
As with many of us, one of the key messages I ‘heard’ in my family was that I had to earn my worth. Not consciously, not because my parents were trying to be cruel, but because they did not know any better themselves. They were simply doing what they had been taught by their parents.
It is a strong and pervasive message in society. There are many ways we can learn how to earn our worth. Mine were to please others, work hard and be successful, and try to be (or at least look) perfect.
Throughout much of my career, my need to prove myself and earn my worth has had me say ‘yes’ many times when I really wanted to say ‘no’. It has had me stay when I wanted to leave. It has had me burn myself out in the hope of controlling the outcome I wanted. It has had me abandon my needs and my family's needs for those of the organisation. Not only was I not being truthful with others, but I was also often not being honest with myself. To be fair to myself, most of the time I didn't know any of this, as I was living in survival mode.
I was eighteen when I was offered my first real job. I was beyond excited to earn my own money, to feel independent and move forward in life. I had decided to study for a hotel management certificate because it sounded achievable and kind of glamorous. At the end of my training, I was offered an internship at the Adelaide Hyatt Hotel. After my internship, I was offered a role as the local marketing coordinator for another international hotel chain.
I felt like I had really landed on my feet. This was the beginning of a new life for me. I loved and looked up to my boss. She was everything I wanted to be: kind, attractive, successful. I started to dress like her, and outwardly, I looked confident and like I had it all together. Yet, inwardly, I had very little sense of self.
It all seemed to be going so well — until it wasn't. My boss and I were situated in a small building that was separate from the hotel. My desk sat outside her office. One day she had gone out to see a client while I was in the office alone and ‘Scott’ walked into our building. Scott was a senior member of the hotel's management team. He was incredibly handsome and charismatic — but was also more than ten years older than me and married with a couple of small children. There was no question in anyone's mind that he held all the power.
Scott gave me one of his usual flirty smiles and, after I told him my boss was out, he came around the desk and stood behind my chair. He started rubbing my shoulders and asked me how my job was going.
I froze and had no idea what to do. Part of me loved the special attention — after all, I had wanted to feel special my whole life. Yet, I knew it was wrong. What option did I have? Should I say, ‘No, take your hands off me’, and potentially lose my job — a job that was giving me a sense of worth for the first time in my life? Should I say ‘yes’, encourage him and use him to feel safer and more secure in my job, and get back some of the power I felt had just been taken from me? Or do neither and sit in the fear and uncertainty of what might happen next?
Before I had a chance to decide, my boss walked back into the office. I was sitting there frozen, still with a smile on my face, as I had learnt to do many years ago. He removed his hands, but she saw. And I saw that she saw. Later, she asked me if something had been going on. But the way she asked it and the tone she used made me feel like it was somehow my fault. I felt like I was being accused of something that, at the time, I did not even understand.
As I reflect on it now, I am not sure who I felt most upset and disappointed with: the man who felt he owned me because I worked for him, or this woman who I loved and admired who was now looking at me in a way that made me feel grubby.
Looking back as a woman in my fifties now, with great self-compassion, I am probably most disappointed with myself. I stayed quiet and abandoned myself, in the same way I had felt abandoned by every person I had ever loved. This was a pattern that played out in my life repeatedly. Of course, at the time, I felt like I was protecting myself, and perhaps I was. Perhaps I would not have been believed, perhaps I would have lost my job. He was certainly more ‘important’ than I was. Or at least, that was my assumption — an assumption that has run me all my life and has stopped me from being true to myself, over and over again.
For much of my life, my need to prove myself and earn my worth to feel safe in this world has stopped me from living true to myself. I am deeply grateful that I eventually woke up and began the journey of coming home to myself, the journey of cultivating my worth from the inside out rather than the outside in.
Whatever our histories, many of us have not learnt how to be in a relationship with ourselves that encourages us to learn and grow and believe in ourselves. A relationship that empowers us to step fully into our lives. We often spend so much time looking for the answer outside of ourselves. But before we look outside ourselves, we can begin by looking inside ourselves. We can begin gently and compassionately understanding ourselves and what it looks like for each of us, individually, to live true to ourselves as the foundational ingredient to thriving, at both work and in life.
Conscious reflection
What did ‘earning your worth’ look like in your family, school, community? Can you remember times you may have abandoned yourself in the hope of being liked, loved, successful?
How trauma shapes us
I have worked with hundreds of clients in the corporate world who have experienced trauma, but who show up as very high-functioning and successful executives. I have noticed that few of my clients have referred to their experiences as trauma. Instead, many of us walk around unconscious of, or in denial of, our trauma, despite it having a significant impact on our relationships with ourselves and others.
In its simplest dictionary definition, trauma is a deeply distressing or disturbing experience. It can be physical, mental, emotional, spiritual or all four. It can include very common events, such as divorce, accidents, the loss of someone close to you, an illness, a difficult birth experience (for you or your child), neglect, witnessing something terrible happening to another, etc. Or it can be more extreme events, such as physical and mental abuse, domestic violence, war, rape, torture, and so on.
In addition to divorce, neglect, and emotional and physical abuse by my father, I also experienced sexual abuse as a child. It is still hard for me to write about, to comprehend that a human being can do this to a child. I know, intellectually, that those who sexually abuse are sick, and statistically, they were likely sexually abused themselves, but that does not make it okay — nothing makes it okay. It is the ultimate betrayal on every level: physically, mentally, emotionally and spiritually. It disconnects us from ourselves and often prevents us from being able to believe there is a power greater than ourselves that is good and loving.
When I was sexually abused, I decided not to tell anyone. Somewhere deep within me, I believed either nobody would believe me, or if they did believe me, they would not stick up for me. That would have been almost as devastating as the abuse itself. So I stayed silent. I have since learnt that this is very common for victims of sexual abuse. We often take on the shame of our abusers. Furthermore, my abuser also threatened my life if I were ever to tell anyone. Through much of my teenage and adult years, I slept with a knife under my bed because of this threat.
The only way I could hold this level of pain was to deny (even to myself) that it had happened. It was not until my early forties, after I had stopped all the things I had previously used to run away from and numb my pain (workaholism, dysfunctional relationships, food, alcohol, sleeping pills, recreational drugs) and had been in therapy for a few years, that I finally felt safe enough to admit what had happened. To say it was painful to start to get in touch with, first the body memories and then eventually the flashbacks, is a major understatement. I had told myself for so long that it was not true as a way of coping. My head can still try to tell me that sometimes, as coming into my truth has, at times, felt annihilating. But as trauma expert Dr Bessel Van Der Kolk's book title so beautifully expresses The Body Keeps the Score.
I spent years trying to avoid it. But as I have learnt the hard way, we can't go over, under or around the pain of our past. We can try — and I gave it a damn good try! Ultimately, we can only go through it. This is so important, because if we don’t learn to embrace all the parts of ourselves, especially the parts we have tried to silence and disown, we will struggle to heal and feel integrated and whole.
I now vividly remember, at the time of my abuse, leaving my body and watching what was unfolding from the top of the ceiling, fully dissociated from what was happening. Yet, I was also feeling angry at the body I saw on the ground, my body, which was frozen and not fighting. As I went on to deny my truth, I also had no outlet for my hurt and the anger and rage that covered it up. So, I turned it in on myself. I spent years, most of my life, unconsciously blaming and hating myself. Not just for my sexual abuse, but for everything else that had unfolded in my childhood.
Because of the abuse, and the people who didn't protect me from it, my trust in human beings completely shattered. And my trust in myself also shattered because I didn't fight back, and I blamed myself.
But now I see that I did fight. While my automatic freeze response kicked in during the act, afterwards, there was something incredibly strong inside me that said, ‘This will not beat me. I will show them.’ Remember in the introduction when I stood in the mirror and said, ‘You showed them’? I believe that is what I meant. I would never let ‘them’ beat me.
But spending your life unconsciously fighting for your life, your sense of self and your identity, after having it all annihilated, is absolutely exhausting. It is about just surviving from day-to-day. What I really needed was to learn how to thrive. And when you have a history of self-neglect, self-abuse and caring for others more than you do for yourself, then it is a long journey home to develop deep self-care, to love yourself and thrive.
Although it has felt like it at times, my experience of sexual abuse does not define me. When I occasionally get really triggered, it can still feel like it does. It has, however, had a huge impact on me, especially on my ability to trust myself and others.
This book is not about sexual abuse, and yet it is an important part of my story. This book is about the many different things that can impact our ability to show up fully in the world. To be true to ourselves, to believe in ourselves, to love ourselves, to feel worthy. This book is about finding a path forward to freedom, to thriving despite whatever trauma we've experienced in the past.
