EP 284: What this relationship explains about why why you stay underpaid

Welcome to the Outrageous Workplace Stories series of the podcast. In these episodes, you'll see ways to handle even the toughest of workplace situations with power and impact while making humanity a priority. These stories shaped how I went from receptionist to HR manager in 4 short years without a degree, without the qualifications or experience that you would've thought I needed. This series is designed to help you turn everyday challenges into momentum for your next No matter where you're at right now. If staying grounded in your humanity and being true to who you are as a person is important to you, yet you also want to get to your next level, you want to earn more money, and you want to create a professional life you're proud of, that is also at the top of your list, I'm here to tell you that you can do both. And this is where you start. Let's go.

Welcome to day 8 of 13 outrageous work stories that you won't believe happened. I'm gonna break the rules a little bit today. And it's not a work story. It is a personal story. And first reason for that is because I had a boss who made me feel like I was never good enough. You know the kind of person I'm talking about. You work really hard, you do so much, you think you've knocked it out of the park, and then they come and look at it and they go, hmm, and then they walk away. Something like that. Or they say, hey, you missed this, or you're missing this, or they're, they're pointing out the flaws and they're not acknowledging that you spend a week, you stayed up late nights. They're not acknowledging any of the work you did. They're either Not saying much, or they're just pointing out what you didn't do right. I've had that experience. I'm sure we've all had that experience at some point. This is one of my biggest stories that I, that has completely changed who I am, was that I was in a relationship with somebody who did that, who made me feel like that for 10 years. And I didn't realize that I was not the problem, although I definitely contributed to part of the dynamic. I was there and I stayed there for 10 years, so I own my part in that. But here's what was going on, and here's what finally made me realize it. Because I realized it's what's such a big part of people being underpaid, specifically women being underpaid. There's a lot of women doing a lot of work, working late hours, putting in way more than they are being compensated for, or even acknowledged for, or rewarded for. And they're still doing it, and they're still being told that they have to do more, that they haven't done enough, and that they need to get another skill set, even though they They've been able to create the results that they've been able to create, but they don't know how to speak to those results. They don't know how to communicate those results, so they accept what people tell them, and they let other people control how much they earn. So when I started the relationship, I honestly thought that I was just not doing enough. So he would say, "You're not cleaning up the house enough. You're not contributing enough financially. You're not doing this. You're not doing that." And so I would start doing that stuff. I would say, "Okay, I will make sure that I do that. I will get the house cleaned." I even hired a housekeeper to clean up so he wouldn't have to. And I will cook and I will do everything so that you'll be happy. That was my mentality. And it was something I heard from Tony Robbins and I applied it to this situation. I said to myself, Tony Robbins says, do more than anyone else can ever expect of you. So that's what I did. I was literally doing everything. I was paying for more than half my share. I had hired a housekeeper. I was working outside the home. He was working in the home. So he would stay home, make a mess all day, and then complain that I wasn't cleaning up enough. I was taking care of his kids. I was doing above and beyond to the point where I was thinking to myself, okay, I'm doing everything that you have complained to me about. And it was hard feedback to take when he would say, you're not contributing enough, I'm the one doing everything. It was hard to take because I didn't believe that was true. I am doing all this stuff. And whenever I would say, look at what I'm doing, he would come back with, yeah, but I did this and I did that, and just overpower me with what he had done. And so I couldn't really argue. He was really good at that. So he convinced me that I was never doing enough. He had convinced me, even though we could look on paper and see that I was doing more than what he required, I was going above and beyond. I'd even hired people to do stuff that I couldn't do. He had actually convinced me though, in all this truth, that I was not enough. And there was nothing that was gonna change that perspective other than me being able to see that for myself. And until I saw that for myself, I was going to stay there and I was going to keep trying. I was going to keep going and keep trying until I realized this is futile. He's never going to be happy. He's never going to reach the point where he says you are enough because I have to reach that for myself first. It's like that concept in math called the asymptote where the line reaches the bottom of the graph but it never touches. It finally hit me. And you know what it was that finally hit me was that he got Angry because I was doing too much. Then he said, "Well, now you've taken care of everything. Now you've done everything. Now there's nothing for me to do, and I don't like that." And I realized it is not possible because now the goalpost has moved again, and the goalpost had always moved. It was always like, "Okay, now you got to do this. Now you have to do this. Now you haven't done this. You don't buy me nice enough gifts. Nobody buys me nice gifts." It was always. Something else. So I would fix everything, fix everything, fix everything, and then it would just be another thing. Then it was like, okay, now you're doing too much. So it's never gonna be that person who approves of you. You can be the best, you could win an award at making that person happy, but that person is just never gonna be happy. And that was the best lesson I ever got because that is what made me step out and see that I was bringing all the value myself. And it made me feel so empowered to be able to say, I'm so glad that I've met all these requirements that he set out for me. Because now when I walk away from this, I've become financially independent. I've increased my capacity to do so much, to handle so much. And now I can go and contribute that in a place that is actually deserving of that, a place that is actually grateful for that, a place that values that. When you have a boss who is telling you that you haven't done enough and you need to do more, you need to do more, you need to do more. First, I want you to do one thing and acknowledge that you could probably do more. You could probably improve because you know that, right? We already— we know that, right? And I knew that when I was in that spot too. Yeah, I could probably improve. And that's not a bad thing. It's not a bad thing that you would rise to that challenge. The thing that erodes the confidence Is actually when you just repeatedly get the feedback from somebody else that it's still not enough, that it's still not enough, that it's still not enough. If you tell a child that she's stupid over and over and over and over again, even if she has taught herself to speak Chinese, she will still believe that she is stupid. I was being told over and over and over again, "Oh, but you're not doing enough. Oh, but you're not doing enough. Oh, but you're not doing enough." Even though I had literally taken over every household responsibility, including that of his children, not even my children, his— my stepkids. Even though I had taken on all that, I was still convinced that I was not doing enough until it got to the point where it wasn't possible for me not to see that anymore. If you are in a situation, or you ever have been, where you feel like you have raised your bar, you've met the challenge, you've met the challenge, you met the challenge, and you keep meeting the challenges, and you still get told that, you know, you have to do more or it's not enough, you need to look at that and say, maybe my contribution isn't the problem here. Maybe the fact that I'm not seeing the magnitude of my own contribution, maybe the fact that I'm not giving myself an opinion about this that's stronger than their opinion is actually the problem. When I finally saw my value and I saw everything I was doing and I saw how much I had risen to those challenges, I was very confident to leave that relationship. I wasn't financially dependent anymore. I wasn't emotionally dependent anymore. Emotionally, he wasn't providing me with any support or any interaction either. Everything that I added value for actually came right back to me, and nobody could take that away from me. Nobody could take away the capacity that I built. Nobody could take away the lessons that I learned. Nobody could take the way that I stretched my ability to create things that I never thought I could. I stretched my ability to make money. I proved myself over and over and over again, thinking that it was for him, but really it was for me. If you have been in a situation, or you are right now, where you feel like you are not enough, or you feel like you haven't been doing enough, when somebody keeps telling you that, the only problem is that you do not see the magnitude of what you have contributed. You do not see that, or you would not still be In that place. And that's the video for today. If you want to get all 13 videos, I'm sharing stories of outrageous things that have happened at work. You can get the videos by clicking the link below. I will see you in the next one.

If you enjoyed that story and you gleaned something from it, if you want to learn how to master your professional life while being both impactful yet deeply human, join the waitlist for Professionally Human. The link is in the show notes. I can't wait for you to see what I have in store.