79: Are Dreamers Losers? | Dr. Zoe Shaw

Grab a cup of tea or listen as you go, ladies. This is your hour with Dr. Zoe, your life and relationship coach. With encouragement, on-point insight, inspiring guests, health tips, and advice, Dr. Zoe helps busy women keep their mind in the game by redefining your superwoman. You're listening to the Dr. Zoe Show.

Welcome to the Dr. Zoe Show, Redefining Your Superwoman. I'm your host, Dr. Zoe. I'm a licensed marriage and family therapist with a doctorate in clinical psychology. I'm a life and relationship coach and a motivational speaker, and I can work with you virtually to help you get unstuck. My passion is helping women find their superpower, learn to embrace it, and share it with the world. Connect with me by texting the word join to 38470, or go to my website at drzoeshaw.com. Today's topic, dreams are for losers. Shonda Rhimes started out her 2014 convocation speech to Dartmouth with those words, dreams are for losers. I love that speech. It inspired me and I wanted to talk about it here today. Now, let me be clear. I'm never encouraging anybody ever to call anyone, especially themselves, a loser, but I will cop to using that word as an interesting teaser, especially because I know how people speak to themselves. Plus, I like the fact that she opened the speech with those 3 simple words. Now, I'm not calling anyone a loser, but our dreams can definitely trip us up, and I'm going to talk about that in a minute. But first up, my win and my fail. Now, I just want to make it clear that I share these things with you women because our wins and our fails are so important. Because we all fail. Sometimes we think we're the only one that does dumb things. But you're not. And we also all have little wins that we need to celebrate. So my fail is that I didn't finish all the volunteer hours for my son's school that I was required to do as a parent, which means his school's gonna charge me. He goes to a private Catholic school. Parents are required to do these hours or you get charged. So I'm gonna owe money at the end of the year, and that sucks, but I'm a busy mama. And by the time I got to it and started trying to put my hours in, everybody else had already filled up the time slot and the due date is— Well, it's May 1st, but it's gone. So it's life. It happens. My win though is that I got an hour break when I was working a couple days ago. And sometimes I'll take that time and try to follow up on emails, return phone calls, things like that. But I just decided, you know what, I'm gonna go downstairs because I was doing virtual work that day, and I'm gonna take my daughter for a bike ride. So I ran downstairs and I Told her, get on your shoes, we're gonna go for a ride. And we both rode. She really just learned how to ride her bike. We rode to the dog park, we came back home, and I started my next session cuz it took us about an hour, but it was so refreshing and it was a win for me as a busy mama. And I'd so much rather choose that over doing volunteer hours at my son's school. So yeah, that's my win. So onto the topic. Are dreams for losers? I have so many clients with amazing dreams, amazing ideas, and amazing talent, and yet they're frustrated. They haven't accomplished them, and sometimes they feel like failures, and sometimes they call themselves that L word that I talked about. There's nothing like an unattained dream to foster depression. But listen up, if you have a dream, it's there for a reason. I don't believe that God puts ideas, thoughts, passions, drives, desires in our hearts and Brains for no reason. I just don't. I believe, just like Elizabeth Gilbert spoke in Big Magic, that dreams have a life and an energy all to themselves, and they're sent to you, and you're supposed to do something with them. And I'm not talking about a dream like owning a big house or buying a jet plane. That's cool, and you can dream about getting those things, but that's not the same as a dream. That's stuff, and it's really just a byproduct of. Any good old hard work. I'm talking about dreams of doing and being, not attaining stuff. Those dreams of doing and being, those are precious. They're sacred because they can only be done by a chosen few. Whatever your dream is, it's unique to you. It's unique to your talents and your abilities. And my mom used to talk to me when I was young about the whole biblical concept of talents. And I don't know why it impressed upon me so deeply, maybe because I knew that I had some pretty clear athletic talents and some other talents and abilities. And I was always worried that somehow I wouldn't harness them. Like I wouldn't express my talents and that if I didn't, or if I didn't work hard, that my talents would be wasted and I would lose them. So I did work hard and maybe that was really just my anxiety needing a place to land. But as I've gotten older and I've watched people with crazy amount of talent waste it, and I've watched those with less talent grow it, this concept has become more and more clear and valid to me. You have to be a doer. The dream is a fantasy, guys. You have to do to make the reality. I used to dream of being an academic. I used to want to be like the next Sigmund or Anna Freud. I wanted to create new theories and be known for my new psychological theory. I used to think that anybody could sit with somebody and help them share their story. Anybody can encourage and interpret. I wanted to be an academic who used impressive words. I wanted to be that Dr. Zoe. That was my dream, but that's not who I am. I'm smart, but my gift is working with real people. And now I'm honoring that gift and walking in it and growing it. My gift is in encouragement. Shonda Rhimes talked about how she dreamed of being Toni Morrison. I can totally relate to that. And a direction is great, but we can spend our lives dreaming. And when she finally let go of the dream of being Toni Morrison, and she started working on becoming the best writer that Shonda Rhimes could be, when she stopped trying to be like, to write the same way that Toni Morrison wrote, and she started doing the work of writing like herself and discovering her own writing, she broke glass ceilings and she paved new roads. And the cool thing is that she had the amazing experience of having Toni Morrison, the woman that she dreamed of being, want to meet her and have dinner with her and ask her questions about herself. Now, if she had never let go of her dream of being Toni Morrison, she never would have found herself, Shonda Rhimes. We have to start doing. And when we can let go of the dream enough to start becoming who we are, we will accomplish so much more than we ever imagined. So if you're going to bother dreaming it, take the next step and start doing. I don't care how teeny weeny little the step is, just start doing. Don't hide your talents under a dream of greatness. Stop the lie that things have to fall into place or be perfect to get started. Now that's how we trip ourselves up with our dreams. Our dreams scare us. And they should. If it's a noble enough dream, it should scare us to death. And still we need to just start. And I say this from both a place of procrastination. I just talked about my procrastinating self and how that kept me from getting the volunteer hours I needed to get. Not my dream, but, but I say this from a place of understanding procrastination and understanding doing. I've done both. I've been both a procrastinator and a doer, and doing has always paid off. And I know you've heard the saying, reach for the stars and you may land in the clouds. But believe me, the clouds are not a bad place to be. So just get started. It doesn't have to look perfect. It doesn't have to be pretty. I started this podcast having absolutely no idea what I was doing, and maybe it wasn't the best way. My audio sucked. I was bootstrapping it. Maybe I should have taken 6 months or a year to learn and research what to do, but maybe I never would have gotten it done at all. Maybe if I waited until it was perfect, I never would've had all the right answers. And guess what? I can actually still do better, and I'm working on that, but I'm not waiting. Instead, I started and I learned along the way, and I'm continuing to learn, and it's been a bumpy road, but it's growing. So if you wanna be an author or you wanna start a business or a restaurant, or you wanna be the next president of the United States, stop dreaming. It's holding you back. Just take the next smallest baby step toward that goal, and then the next one, and then the next one. And look back a year from now, 2 years from now, and you'll be amazed at how far you've come if you just start the doing now. And I know it's scary. I know it may be terrifying. Fear is actually your friend. Fear tells us 2 things and 2 things only: you're going in the right direction, Or you'd better turn and run. If you know you're not in danger, then keep walking in that direction, taking baby steps towards your best self. You've got this. Next up, health tip. I have a health tip today, y'all. Our bodies and our minds are intimately connected, and that's why I have a health tip segment. So my health tip is that sleeping with a weighted blanket helps insomnia and anxiety. A study at PTSD Journal found this. And so how does it work? Now we know about putting weighted jackets on animals to help with their anxiety. We know about putting weighted blankets and things like that during the day on kids with autism and how it helps calm the nervous system down, but who thought about doing it at nighttime? So how does it work? A weighted blanket molds to your body like a warm hug. The pressure also helps to relax the nervous system. And the cool thing is it's totally safe and it's an effective non-drug therapy for sleep and relaxation naturally. Psychiatric, trauma, and pediatric hospitals use weighted blankets to calm a patient's anxiety, and it promotes deep, restful sleep. Just like swaddling or comforting an infant, the weight and the pressure on an adult provides comfort and relief. So when pressure is gently applied to the body, it encourages serotonin production, which we know is an important chemical in our brain connected to depression. So it encourages serotonin production, which lifts your mood. And when serotonin naturally converts to melatonin, your body takes the cues to rest. How cool. So get a weighted blanket. And now it's time for Real Talk. This is Real Talk where I answer questions from my listeners and I share my own musings and encouragement. So please reach out if you have some questions you'd like me to address on the show. All questions are anonymous. I take your confidentiality seriously as if you were my own client. You can You can email me questions to zoe@drzoeshaw.com or connect with me on any of my social medias. This question was curated from my column at thegritandgraceproject.org, and you can also submit your questions directly to me. So the question is, one of my goals for 2019 was to get a promotion. What's the number one thing I can do to get noticed at work and prove to my boss that he should promote me? I hate talking about myself, but I know I'm good at my job and I'm valued in the workplace. So great question. I love helping women get promotions. I helped a client recently get a 28.5% raise and a promotion. And there isn't just one main thing that can lead to the promotion of your dreams. It's really a combination of things. So I'm going to give you the top ones. The most important thing to understand is that your value at work actually has very little to do with your salary or your promotions. I've seen it time and time again. Just like I talked about, you know, wasted talent. I've seen the scenario where the employee doing most of the work in the company is getting paid the least. And scoring a promotion is about a combination of providing value and possessing confidence. Creating value without confidence does very little except make your boss really happy and you feel angry and resentful. Possessing self-confidence without value, it might get you an edge in the short run, but it's going to come back to bite you. So, how do you create both? It seems to me that, you know, that you do great work and you feel valued in the workplace, so that's great. It's the confidence factor that you need to work on. It's time to fall in love with promoting yourself, or at least make friends with it. And this is something we women tend to have a hard time doing. Now is not the time to be humble. If you're expecting someone else to step up and promote you, good luck, because you might grow old before that happens. So yes, you have to toot your own horn, and that's not just okay, it's good. And this, like I said, is often harder for women than it is for men because we've been taught that it's not ladylike to brag, to boast, or to point out our value over someone else's. The good news though is that you can do it with a hefty serving of grace and you can still get your promotion. So here are the top things to consider when you're positioning yourself for a promotion. Number one, you do have to go above and beyond. So doing your job well makes you a great employee, but if you really want to get noticed, find out about the tasks of your desired role and start taking initiative toward that role in any way that fits within the model of your company. Then it's important that you point out what you're doing to your boss. And the best way is to ask for feedback about your tasks. So ask him or her, hey, listen, I've been doing this. Can I have some feedback on it? You know, how do you feel about it? So that way you're pointing out that you're doing it, but you're not like, hey, look at me, I'm so great. You're then asking for feedback and then be willing to take any constructive criticism and go back and let your boss know what steps you took to improve. Once you feel confident that your boss is aware of your great performance and could actually visualize you in the higher role, then now it's time to actually do the asking. Yes. If you want a promotion, the best way to get it in a timely manner is to ask for it. An excellent book that you should read if you're going through this process is called Rejection Proof by Jia Jiang. I'm saying his name right. I will put that in the notes and I've probably talked about him before. And reading this book was a game changer for me in my professional life. I learned how to ask for what I want. So number 2 is you have to know your market value. First, it's important to make sure you know exactly what the going competitive rate is for your desired position across the companies. A lot of people managed to land a promotion, but not much of a salary increase because they were focusing on title only. Take your time, do the research. When you go to your boss, this knowledge is going to help you provide a compelling argument that your boss has a difficult time saying no to. Get your numbers straight, ask for a specific percentage or dollar amount when it comes to your promotion and raise. If you're being paid less than the going rate for what you want your new role to be, That's super easy. This is basically the foundation of your argument, but if you're already being paid a competitive rate based on your desired title, then you've got a little more work cut out for you, but it's still doable. You need to be able to discuss what value you have above and beyond your title and position, what you're actually doing now and how you should be compensated for that. Most people in a position to be promoted have already started to perform some tasks with a new title. So highlight those tasks that we already kind of talked about. And highlight the ones that you are doing really well. And then number 3, you've got to make a script. Now, this might sound like overkill, but I promise you, you will not regret it. Create a script that highlights your value, past and current wins, your market value, and your specific request for the promotion and salary. Memorize it. Practice it until it rolls off your tongue. Practice it with a friend. Your script should be free of phrases like I think, or I feel, or I hope. Those are hedging words. State your phrases with certainty and authority. Sometimes that's a hard thing for women to do. State them. You don't have to put any kind of qualifying thing before you say what you say. And the last thing you need to do is watch your body language and your tone. Your confidence is persuasive. When you speak with authority, people tend to believe you. And this is so important because we communicate as much nonverbally as we do through our words. So practice power stances, look up Amy Cuddy power poses on YouTube. We'll try to get that in the link as well. If you are doing any kind of presenting, speaking, trying to sell yourself, you need to watch that YouTube video. So the steps above have been proven to get my clients raises and promotions that they want. So take them. You've got this. Thanks for tuning into the Dr. Zoe Show. New shows go up on Tuesdays. Subscribe so you don't miss a show. And if you're interested in coaching or therapy, or you just want to get a little more help, go to my website at drzoeshaw.com or any of my social medias at the handle Dr. Zoe Shaw. Join my free newsletter by texting the word join to 38470. I send out encouragement and great info. I look forward to speaking with you wonderful ladies on social media throughout the week. Have a super week.

You've been listening to the Dr. Zoe Show, redefining your superwoman with your host, Dr. Zoe Shaw. Don't forget to sign up for her monthly newsletters to get encouragement, tips, and skills for keeping your mind in the superwoman game. Connect with her now at www.drzoeshaw.com. Tell your friends and subscribe. Subscribe to her podcast on iTunes. Join us next time for another edition of the Dr. Zoe Show.