How to Rise, Fall, and Rise Again

Have you ever completely lost yourself in the so-called power, position, and prosperity of your job, role, position, title, salary, office, and your overall career? Did it rip your soul apart or wreak havoc on every aspect of your work and life, including destroying relationships and damaging your overall success? I certainly did, and it tore me apart. And at the same time, I made decisions of wanting to account for it, wanting to apologize to myself and others for it, and then to actually go on a discovery journey to help me find my real self, who I was, wanted to be, and what I needed to do to get there so I could be a much better woman overall, but also a better sister. And friend, lover, and overall better employee and employer. So today I really want to share with you a few things that I even captured in through my journey, the lessons learned, the reflections, even a simple test that you could be taking to really understand who you are right now and who you truly want to be. And it's all going to be leaning and lending itself from my book, Shedding the Corporate Bitch. I was just reviewing it recently, and 12 years later, it still stands up to not only what I went through, but also what my clients today go through and what they put themselves through. And so that's what I wanna share with you in this episode. Welcome, welcome, welcome to Shedding the Corporate Bitch. The podcast that transforms female corporate executives into powerhouse leaders by showing them how to shed the challenges and overwhelm along with any fear, insecurity, self-doubt, and negativity holding them back. I'm your host, Bernadette Boas of Ball of Fire Coaching, bringing you powerhouse discussions each week to share tips, advice, and sometimes tough love so you create the riches in your work and life you deserve. Let's do this. What were your dreams as a young girl, maybe even as a teenager, or when you're in college thinking about your career in the real world? Mine was that I did want to be like the CEO of something. My parents, if you ask them, would have said, yes, she always wanted to be the CEO of the world, of the universe. And because of the fact that I am one of 12 children. I'm a middle child. I have 6 brothers, 5 sisters, and we were kind of earning our keep from a very young age. And my parents needing to operate a household and organize and stay sane in a household of 14 people. My dad was a corporate executive. They very much ran our household as if it was a corporate organization. And so I understood those dynamics from a very early age and therefore corporate was just gonna be a natural path for me. Even business corporate was gonna be a natural path for me. So from a very early age, I knew I wanted to go into business in college, and then I wanted to find a management career. It was just a natural progression from college. I was in corporate, you know, in various roles, but somewhere along the line between college and my full-time career, I shifted. I went from what many people would describe me as a young, precocious, sassy, fiery, fun-loving, kind young girl. And I shifted into someone that was solely focused on 3 things: power, position, and prosperity. I saw it from my friends around me when I was in college. Happened to go to a very wealthy college and lived in a very wealthy community. And I saw all these young, what I'll call kids, with a lot of money. And I saw how they threw it around and I saw how they threw themselves around in their behavior and their attitude, um, to get what they wanted. And because of my singular focus on power, position, and prosperity, I saw that they were getting what they wanted, even though it was in a kind of a nasty, curd, aggressive, demeaning way, I thought, well, you know, go with the flow, right? It'll be temporary. It'll be an artificial mask that you wear in certain environments of what it is that you're going after. And then you'll remove it and be the precocious, sassy Bernadette that you typically are. Well, as many of us know, we can certainly put on a mask and it can certainly be temporary. But at the same time, there's times when almost like an actor, when that mask just seeps into every cell of your being, whether that's for a week, for a few months, or in my case, for a few decades. And so all of a sudden, my power position of prosperity turned me into a very greedy, selfish, aggressive, curt, demeaning, And some people would call me from a work perspective, either a tyrant, a bully, um, or just a mean boss. And yet I was kind of blind to it because it was getting me what I wanted. I had a very successful career. I had a big title, big bank account, big house, so forth and so on. Other people from the outside would also say, well, she's very successful, very confident. She knows what she wants. She goes after it. Inside, I was killing myself. Inside, I was just ripping my soul apart into pieces that were just ugly and hurt and pained and just loathing in who I had become. But it wasn't strong enough at the time for many, many years, wasn't strong enough at the time to really make me make a decision to change or to shift. Now, if you looked internally at my team and my bosses and my company, as I was going through these decades of what some would call a tyrant or a bitch, you would also find people that were ripped apart as well, that they weren't happy, that they weren't fulfilled, that they didn't feel valued or contributing because I was just such a control freak. Micromanager, nasty, you know, tyrant of a boss. So I really first, you know, want anyone that's listening or watching just to kind of pay attention to that. Pay attention to your own way about— you might not be demeaning and bullying and aggressive and curt and abrasive, but are you serving your, your people? Are you coaching them? Are you developing them? Are you mentoring them? Are you being kind to them? Are you empathetic and compassionate toward them? Are you in it for them versus in it for you? And it took many decades for me to kind of get slapped across the face and woken up to the fact that what I was doing and who I was wasn't working for me or for anyone else around me. I destroyed friendships. I couldn't hold on to a love relationship. My family, they probably, if you ask them, would say, yeah, we, we just kind of accepted it and tolerated it, but we knew that wasn't her. And so just consider in whatever mood of a leader you are as you go into the workplace or even into your home, just consider where am I? In where I wanna be as a leader. And we're gonna talk about a, a brief, simple test that you could take and leverage for yourself. And so it actually led to my being fired in late 2007, early 2008, just as I was kind of on the cusp of a, you know, the next huge rung on the ladder that I was so desperate and greedy to achieve, that was going to fulfill my power position and prosperity. Some would say, oh my gosh, that must have destroyed you. And that must have just sent you to bed, as they say. And I have to tell you that it certainly didn't tickle. It certainly hurt. But at the same time, remember, when the student is ready, the teacher will come. It turned out very shortly after that, it was the best thing that ever happened to me. Losing everything. And I should say, through losing everything, I found everything. So from that point, I said to myself, all right, I got here somehow, and I need to take a look at why that is and how that is. So let me do that. So I went on a personal self-discovery, what I call excavation of my soul journey. All right, fast forward, because you you can always go back to a number of our episodes where I talk about our Shift to Riches Formula. It's 5 steps I went through, through my self-discovery journey that you very easily could use for yourself in your day in, day out. All right. And so look for Shift to Riches Formula in, you know, on ballifiercoaching.com. You can look for that title in any podcast streaming service you might use, and even on YouTube. And really learn the Shift to Riches formula that you could be using every day to help shift you into a place of riches in your work and life. What I had done throughout that journey was I had decided that I wanted to capture all of it, and I wanted to actually turn it into a book to help others prevent the path that I had chosen for myself. I learned very quickly there is nothing wrong with ambition. There's nothing wrong with wanting everything, all those riches in, in life that are out there for the taking. There's nothing wrong with power, position, and prosperity. It all depends on how you leverage it, how you use it, how you optimize it as a tool that works for people and not against people, that works for you and not against you. You know, I wrote my book, Shedding the Corporate Bitch, Shifting Your Bitches to Riches in Life and Business, and I published it in 2011. It's been out there. I use it quite a bit when I am working with clients, when I am doing any type of speaking or training. I use it quite a bit, but I happened to pick it up recently and I went back to the back and I thought to myself, 12 years later, these lessons, these reflections, this test still are very, very, very relevant because I do it every day. I know that a lot of women struggle to find who they are, not only in their career, but in their overall life to where they are really happy and fulfilled and feel they have a purpose and meaning to life. And that way they're just being their authentic, true, beautiful selves at work and at home. And I, as I said, I deal with it every day as an executive leadership coach and trainer. And I said to myself, well, let me share these lessons learned and reflections to all of you in hopes that you too could find a nugget. Out of all of it and see what it can do to help you. And I'm not saying you have to be in a place of being kind of that bully boss or that mean boss, but if you've ever gotten an assessment or a performance review or feedback that you're not serving your people the way they need, they need you to be more engaged, they need you to be more empathetic, they need you to bring more of yourself. To your role. If you're getting any feedback that just says that, you know, there could be a trust issue between you and the people that you work with, or that, you know, they're concerned that the way you're building your team is not very cohesive, then you might just want to spend some time and reflect on, where am I in my life growth path, meaning who I am right now and who I truly want to be. And if there's a gap, how do I get to where I truly want to be? Because whether you're 20 or 60, there's always time to really become the true, authentic, empowered, bald powerhouse woman that you're meant to be and you deserve to be. So I wanted to share some of those, those things with you. And like I said, if you can take something from it, awesome. And I'd love to know about it if you wanted to ever leave a comment or email me at BernadetteBoas@BallOfFireInc.com. All right. And I'm gonna read it right from, from the book, right from the horse's mouth, which happens to be mine. But I wanna just share with you what even 12 years ago, I was thinking about, and that still holds very true for myself and many others. So some lessons learned. Women owe it to themselves to not be like men, but to learn from them. Form alliances, mastermind groups, and girls' clubs to engage, collaborate, mentor, and rapport with each other. Now, I would probably add to that, ensure there's men in the mix. All right, because like I said in the earlier lesson, you know, learn from men. If you have issues or concerns or you feel like you're, you're being held back or held down as a result of men, then you need to understand what's going on inside their head. Encourage and promote other women openly and graciously without any ulterior motive or agenda. Huge. Serving others serves you. That's a saying. Obviously it's also from the Bible, but it's a saying that I had come across about 6 or 7 years ago. Didn't understand it at first because I thought it was selfish. Serve others as you want to be served, or serving others serves you. And yet when I really sat with it, I really realized that what that truly means is that I just need to ensure that I am indeed serving others because nothing's better than helping someone and seeing them being lifted up, being helped, being supported, and just the appreciation that they have. And then your, you know, your heart just starts glowing and therefore that's how you're being served is that, you know, their happiness, their success, their wellbeing makes you happy and you fulfilled. So I definitely encourage and promote other women graciously and openly. Use your natural talents and skills that make you unique and special. Nurturing, caring, intuitive, and dedicated. Traits of women. And therefore we need to be leveraging our traits. Say no and set boundaries as to what you are willing to do to get ahead. Huge. Say no. And we can have a whole conversation in regards to that. And if you would like to, then feel free to just reach out to me at coachmebernadette.com/discoverycall. And let's have a conversation about setting boundaries and saying no, because you can and you need to in order to then take care of yourself. You know how they say on airplanes, put the mask on yourself first before helping others. That's simply because you have to be taken care of in order to take care of somebody else. If you deprive yourself of that air, you're going to die and not be able to get it onto the other person. Okay, that's dramatic. I know. So you take care of yourself first and you're a better you to take care of other people. All right. So those are briefly some, some lessons that I had learned. That I really needed to kind of keep in mind as I was going through my excavation of my Sol journey. But there's some other things that if I were to do it differently, and I don't look at it like that, I more so say to myself, okay, so if I had tips for you and for other women that are coming up into their, in their career, or they're already there, maybe they're struggling with being the best leader they can be and/or they wanna enrich themselves as they advance. Then here are some things that I just would want you to keep in mind. Show up each and every day as you, nobody else. All right? Show up as you, nobody else. Seek out male and female coaches and mentors who you respect and admire for their own leadership style. That's huge. And that's a tip I give to my clients every day when I'm working with them. Who are you mentoring with? Or being mentored by, who you are seeking for advice, who you're seeking for counsel, who are you seeking to support you and your goals and your aspirations. And they should be a mix of male and female, and they should be those who you admire and respect for their own style. Okay? You're gonna create your own style, but at the same time, they have traits and qualities and values that you admire and you might even hold for yourself, and therefore they would be a good coach or mentor for you. Be a lifelong student, both professionally and personally. And if you lack any skills and talents, seek them out. If you have insecurities and intimidations or doubts of any kind, which in Shedding the Corporate Bitch World we call those bitches— your insecurities, fears, and negativities— then seek support, seek experience from others and challenges others might have dealt with and have overcome. And that's what Shedding the Corporate Bitch podcast and everything that we do here is all about, is providing you not only myself, but others who have been there, done that, and who can now share their own experiences in order to help you. Remember that angst, attitude, and bitchiness are merely cover-ups of something else that you feel is lacking. So do the internal work. And I would definitely express that because those 20-some-odd years, those multiple decades of me lashing out in a nasty way to not only people at work, but also in my personal life, was purely covering up my insecurities, my feeling of lack or not being good enough, or the the intimidation I felt, imposter syndrome, so forth and so on. So if you identify anything that comes up that's getting in your way of being confident and certain and secure and empowered and bold and the beautiful individual that you are, then assess it, really sit with it and try to understand where it's coming from. And when I say that, I mean dig in. To your past to figure out where is this coming from and what evidence do I have to prove that it's not right, it's not accurate, and therefore it's a fear that's just simply a lie that you're telling yourself over and over and over again. And never compromise who you are and what you believe in, no matter what. Never compromise. And certainly my story of shifting into a greedy power position and prosperity state of mind was certainly compromising. It wasn't who I was just a few years earlier. And therefore I did compromise for many, many, many years exactly who I was and who I thought I wanted to be. And thinking that, and let me know if you felt this as well, you're thinking that power, prosperity, and position are gonna make you happy. And then when you get them, You're like, okay, I'm not happy. I still feel empty. I still unfulfilled. I'm still not satisfied with my life. How could that be when I have the money, I have the house, I have materialistic things, you know, I have the type of friends I thought I wanted. I have the type of relationship I thought I wanted, and yet I'm not fulfilled. I'm not complete and happy. So you really want to be careful on compromising who you are because it's more, it's giving up more. Of yourself. It's really, as I mentioned early on, wreaking havoc on your soul. All right. Some reflections I wanted to share are that I actually, I've learned from my parents, my, even my siblings and others throughout my journey. Uh, you can sink or swim. Always choose to swim regardless of the tide or the conditions of the water. You can always wear a safety vest. You can always wear a safety vest. Laugh at yourself. Laugh at yourself. If you can't laugh at yourself, you miss out on appreciating who you really are. Let's see. Don't go it alone. Create a support system of family, true friends, and mentors that only want the best for you. Fire anyone who is bad for business or for you. Let go of anyone in your life who doesn't support, inspire, and motivate you. Don't allow toxic individuals into your life. Okay. Some reflections. And keep in mind, this is straight from the book. Keep in mind the grass isn't, isn't greener on the other side. I used to comment a lot on Oprah because she talks about her own journey a lot, even to this day. And so when she was in her heyday, she would talk about how she had everything. I mean, you know, she had billions of dollars. And yet there's were periods in her life as she was even coming up in her own career and her own personal life where she was very unhappy, very unfulfilled. She admitted and acknowledged that it was where her weight issues came from. And so she had to do her own work on herself time and time and time again. And so if you've even started work on yourself, and you didn't accomplish what you wanted or you didn't find that happiness and that, you know, fullness, keep trying, keep learning, keep growing. Don't— it's not a one and done. Personal growth is a lifetime of learning. And that's why I also had mentioned in Lessons Learned to become a lifetime student, both professionally and personally. All right. And there are some others that you can certainly take a look at. In the book should you wanna pick it up on Amazon. I also had provided in here, and this is what I initially went to, to kind of look at just a week or so ago that drew me back into kind of the ending of how I captured, uh, my journey in this book. And I provided a corporate bitch test. Now don't get all in your head about the word bitch. It's simply, again, looking at your fears, insecurities, negativities, even your positivities and your confidence and, and strength. Um, but it's meant to really allow you to kind of do a benchmark of where you are right now in your head and heart and where you want to be. So for me, the questions I constantly ask myself is, who am I? Who do I want to be? And what's the gap? What do I need to do to fill that gap, to shift from who I am right now and who I want to be? And that's what the Corporate Bitch Test is also meant to allow you to do. So this really allows you to just simply say yes or no to these statements to understand where are your motivations, your behaviors, your attitudes coming from, your, even your words and your actions coming from. And for me, it was hard to take this test, uh, for myself because it really pulled out that power position and prosperity greedy attitude and behavior that I had. For many years. But once I saw it, I was able to then account, forgive myself, and come up with a plan for moving forward from it. So here are some things you can consider for yourself and answer yes or no to. So outwardly, yes or no, I intimidate or dominate employees, peers, and managers. Yes or no, I man up. Or act as a bitch in order to compete. I find myself standing alone or avoided at social events. Yes or no? I find myself standing alone or am avoided. I position myself as if I'm better or superior to others. That's a conversation I have quite often with some folks that I work with is just what is their attitude when they're amongst not only their peers and superiors, but also their employees or even subordinates under their employees. I eat, drink, smoke, or have other compulsions. One thing I definitely, definitely had to take a hard look at for myself is how I was medicating, how I was soothing, how I was covering up all of those bitches of fear, insecurities, doubts, and negativities. And it was smoking, eating, and drinking. For many, many years. Okay. Inwardly, yes or no? I'm not always convinced I have what it takes. Imposter syndrome. I'm not always convinced I have what it takes. I feel insecure standing up and asking people for things. Yes or no? I don't feel worthy to obtain what I want. I feel angry, uptight, intense more often than I feel happy. I have a hard time thinking positively about myself. Now that is as short and sweet as I made it for the Corporate Bitch Test. I have now an assessment that makes up many more questions, but those were things that I also had to answer very honestly for myself as well. And a lot of those were yeses. Very few, if any, were nos. But what do you do with that? What do you do once you have that type of information? Well, even here, and of course in the work that I do, I provide you a template for you to come up with your own, what I call a Shift to Riches Plan. Back then in 2011, it was called just your Shift Plan. So I have you identify 3 to 5 things that you responded to that you would wanna shift from. That you aren't happy it being that yes or that no, and you would wanna shift from. And then list what actions you could be taking in order to make those shifts. One action, one action can change your whole outlook. One action can change your whole behavior. One action can change your whole mindset, and it can be done in 5 minutes. Now, of course, there's You know, sustainability and reinforcement of that change or that shift. But at the same time, I can guarantee you that once you do that and you recognize, cuz you do have to pay attention, you recognize the, the transformation that you've been through inwardly, let alone outwardly, maybe from other people, you'll continue to wanna take actions toward it. Okay. And then, you know, I talk about, so what riches would you wanna gain from the work that you would do on yourself? So again, the riches, I used to think it was power, position, and prosperity. I used to think it was the materialistic things. And through the years, completely, you know, turned that on its head. And I'm looking for fulfillment, happiness, self-love, appreciation, kindness. Then I'm looking for friendships and relationships and deep love. Everything but. Now, money, money and position and comfort are not things that someone should balk about. They're not bad things. But I'm sure if you're anything like me and you have goals and aspirations of your own, it is to be the best leader you can be, the best and most powerful, empowered individual that you can be. And that's what I hope, uh, sharing my story as well as some lessons learned and some reflections and, and even that corporate bitch test can help you to kind of consider for yourself and begin your own self-journey. Call it your discovery journey, call it your excavation of your soul as I did, but I just would hope that you can relate and know that I too have kind of been in the shit and kind of recovered from it. And if you have any challenge that you're dealing with and you're looking to make that shift in your own life, then you absolutely can do that. You know, I am just wanting that these tools or these tips and strategies would be helpful to you as you go on that journey. And should you, should you want to discuss what your personally dealing with and get some tips and strategies that are directed and personally for you, then definitely book a call with me at coachmebernadette.com/discoverycall and let's have a conversation. All right. So what did you take away from this conversation? What did you make note of? Even if it's one thing that could change where you are today and where you want to be. I'd love to know. And so you can also reach out to me at BernadetteBoas@BallOfFireInc.com. But at the same time, thank you so much for being here and be sure to go to SheddingTheCorporateBitch.com for all of our previous episodes with experts and great topics. And join in each and every Tuesday for a new episode of Shedding the Corporate Bitch. I will see you again soon. Bye.