"Am I being mediocre?"
I went to college at Harvard – where 1600 driven, high achievers from all over the world are brought together each freshman year. One of the most crushing insults thrown around there was to call something or someone “mediocre.”
Still to this day, imagining myself as mediocre elicits the same disturbing response in my body and my mind as imagining a complete and utter public failure.
I was speaking to a successful senior executive this past week who is plagued by a similar fear – “After all these years of priding myself on being creative and transformational, I find myself not even wanting to try. A new idea comes in and just as quickly the thought of suggesting it or implementing it exhausts me. Am I becoming the mediocre executive I was determined never to be?”
To be consistently successful and effective we have a whole bunch of tactical job skills to learn. Then we have a variety of experiences to collect so that we become faster and better at detecting patterns in our environment.
Along the way, we also have to learn to manage our own energy and mindset in a wide variety of situations. Resilience. Perseverance. Determination. Emotional Intelligence.
We tend to know what to do when we have to cultivate “classic” skills – project management, relationship management, data analysis.
It often feels foreign, but reaching a new threshold for mindset skills isn’t so different.
When we feel stuck in our attitude, we’ve found some limitations to how we interact with our circumstances. It’s an invitation to up level our mindset skills.
The more responsibility we take on at work, the more we must rely on our own energy and mindset and the fewer people we can count on to set that tone for us. As a result, it’s not uncommon for a mindset “crisis” to arrive when we don’t have a supportive boss or mentor available.
As frustrating and startling it is to feel stuck in a mindset of exhaustion, discouragement, or even mediocrity…. It’s a doorway to our professional growth.
If you feel really stuck (as I once did) a coach can get you the support you aren’t finding at work.
People I work with often start out feeling some combination of exhausted, stuck and mediocre but then discover on the other side of it a big expansion. They see results, like:
I manage a team that is 300% bigger than before.
I doubled my salary.
I’m exceeding expectations in areas I previously had little to no experience.
I’ve transformed my relationship with my board/boss.
I have a career in a totally different industry.
I left a job I hated for my dream job.
If you are interested in whether a coach can help you up level right now, start with a free explore coaching call to find out more about what it’s like to work with me and if it would be a good fit for your situation.
Much love,
Marijke Ocean