Negotiate What You’ll Tolerate in Your Career—and What You Won’t

Have you ever had a moment where the constant ringing or pinging of your phone makes you want to toss it out the window?

The pressures of a demanding job are stressful enough during “normal” times. Compounded with the challenges of a pandemic that has disproportionately impacted women, it’s easy to feel like you’re drowning with no rescue in sight.

Boundaries between work and home life are more blurred than ever, with many women working and living in the same space. And when you’re hooked into work every moment of the day (and night), the demands of email, Zooms, phone calls, and Slack are a never-ending burden.

Constrictive Gender Norms Pressure Women to “Do It All”

Women tend to accept the inevitability of impossible deadlines and a mounting to-do list, weighed down in part by the old, sexist mantra that a woman must work twice as hard as a man to achieve the same recognition and respect. We’ve been conditioned to do everything: from working a full-time job to running the house to looking after the kids.

While it can feel like a badge of honor to keep all those balls in the air, your beliefs may be holding you back from setting reasonable expectations for your workload. That’s right: the first step in dealing with overwhelm at work isn’t to cut your hours, ask for more time off, or ask your manager to revise your job description. Those asks can be an extremely important part of your plan to negotiate what you’ll tolerate in your career, but the first negotiation you need to have is with yourself.

Renegotiating Your Mindset About Your Career

I’ve written a whole series about negotiating your mindset, and how your negotiation with yourself is truly the most important one you’ll ever have. Before you can go to your employer, or your clients, and ask to make a change in your relationship with them, you need to understand what it is that you really want.

In other words, what are you willing to tolerate at work? Are you willing to work weekends so you have flexibility during the week to go to your favorite yoga class? Are you willing to take early morning calls as long as you can pick your kid up from daycare by 3 pm? Are you willing to spend 20% of your time on administrative tasks that bog you down as long as 80% of your time is spent doing fulfilling work you really love? The answers will be different for everyone.

I’d also invite you to consider what you won’t tolerate: more work than you can reasonably handle, unrealistic expectations about deadlines, colleagues and managers who don’t treat you respectfully.

And finally, bring your negotiation back to how you treat yourself. Can you give yourself permission to not say yes to every request you get from your team? To be less than 100% polished and prepared every now and then? If so, you’re in the right headspace to take tactical steps toward negotiating a work life that’s less stressful and more enjoyable.

6 Practical Ways to Feel Less Overwhelmed at Work

There are practical ways to manage work-related stress and burnout, from mindful coping mechanisms that get you through a tough day to holistic preventative solutions. These tips will help you negotiate work life, home life, and even some time for yourself.

I advise the powerful women I coach to:

• Practice mindful breathing. Focusing your attention on your breath is one of the most powerful ways to ground yourself when you’re feeling overwhelmed. Best of all, you can practice this calming technique right in the middle of the office and your colleagues will be none the wiser! In my programs, I teach the 4x4x4x4 technique, otherwise known as box breathing: breathe in for four counts, hold for four counts, exhale for four counts, hold for four counts, repeat.
• Get out in nature. When you’re struggling to find calm within yourself, getting out in nature can help you find your center—and you only need five minutes to reap the stress-reducing benefits! Touch a tree or feel the grass with your bare feet. This tactile sensation reconnects you with the earth, literally grounding you and producing feelings of deep relaxation.
• Create a plan of action. When you work a demanding job, it can be hard to step back and look at the bigger picture, but setting aside time to plan will actually help make you more efficient. It will make it easier for you to stay focused on your priorities instead of inadvertently taking on somebody else’s agenda. You’ll also train your mind to focus on the positives and set achievable goals.
• Use the 80/20 rule. Once you’ve figured out your plan of action, use the 80/20 rule to prioritize tasks that have the greatest impact on your future. The idea is that 20% of the activities we do stand for 80% of the results we produce. For example, if you have a list of 10 actions, 2 of those actions will have a more significant effect on your future than the other 8 combined. Start by identifying a high-priority task and commit to completing it.
• Delegate your work. Women often fall into the trap of taking on more than they can practically handle—at work and at home. While it can be empowering to feel like you’re superwoman, trying to do too much easily leads to burnout. Passing on tasks that you know someone else can accomplish frees up your time and your mind.
• Eliminate what isn’t necessary. Do you really need to complete your to-do list today? You can feel a sense of failure if you don’t finish everything you have written down. If the work you have to complete isn’t urgent and time-sensitive, give yourself a moment to come up for air.

Tapping into your own natural skills to negotiate your work-life balance can ease the feeling of being overwhelmed, empowering you to push past limiting beliefs that may be holding back your potential. You’ll probably even feel less inclined to throw your phone out the window!

If you’d like additional guidance on reclaiming your power, let’s connect. I can’t wait to hear from you.

Do you suffer from the curse of ‘not enough’? If so, you’re not alone. This curse shows up in a number of ways – from how you value yourself to what it takes for you to feel fulfilled. Because the feeling is uncomfortable, chances are you don’t deal with it … or even acknowledge it. This is a mistake. Unresolved issues around your worth will dog you and hold you back from reaching your full potential. Like a governor on a snowmobile, it will slow you down.

It will translate to a lifetime of self-sabotaging behaviors.

On the one hand, many women are held back in their businesses and in life by baggage around worthiness. It’s no surprise considering it’s still recent history that women weren’t allowed to own property, hold credit, vote or even be recognized as persons in the eyes of the law. When you’re treated as ‘less than’, it’s easy to buy into a belief system that you are ‘less than’.

If you take a moment to think of the consequences of that conditioning, it’s easy to see that if you succumb to feelings of ‘not enoughness’ you aren’t likely to command the pricing, salaries, compensation, clients or relationships you deserve in life. If you can’t own your worth and value internally, how do you expect to project it externally to attract and negotiate for more of what you desire and deserve?

At the other end of the ‘not enough’ dilemma, if you don’t own your internal value with unshakable conviction, you’re likely to go through life trying to get more ‘things’ to establish your merit. Many suffer from the misguided ‘If I just had more, I’d be worth more’ delusion. This scarcity mindset typically results in a lifetime of dissatisfaction as no matter how much you amass, it will never seem to be enough. You will fall into a pattern of comparison where you always see yourself coming up short in some way. Tied to that, is often a fear mindset pattern – fear of losing what you have, fear of not having enough, fear of the unknown, fear of being judged inadequate or ‘not enough’.

I noticed recently that this issue keeps coming up in my interviews for my Art of Feminine Negotiation™ PODCAST series. That’s a sure sign of the significance of the issue. Many of the experts in the women’s empowerment and/or women’s entrepreneurship thought leadership space speak to the critical importance of owning your worth as the starting point to all success.

Check out these episodes to get your healthy injection of self-worth and how to use it to up-level your success in life.

Master Business Coach, Jeanna Gabellini, spoke to the importance of mastering this mindset in our recent Negotiating Your Pricing and Winning Over Ideal Clients episode. Check out that episode to uncover how to liberate yourself from the curse of ‘not enough’ and other game-changing mindset shifts to catapult your business to the next level of success.

Heather Hansen, CEO of Advocate to Win, uncovers how to develop your credibility as the antidote to ‘imposter syndrome’ and tips on ways to improve your self-advocacy, increase your belief in yourself and choose how you show up every day in our Negotiating For Yourself: You Are Your Own Best Advocate episode.

Billionaire brand queen, Tracy Holland shared secrets on how to up-level your powerhouse mindset in our Negotiating Your Way to Powerhouse episode. Discover how to get CEO-level confidence, coming from a place of feminine power. Uncover the key to negotiating with yourself first and how to avoid split energy holding you back from your most powerful self and success.

The Investor Warrior, Kari Lyke, opened us to the possibility of powerful real estate investment using feminine strengths to your advantage for authentic acquisition and exit strategies in our Negotiating to Success as a Woman Investor episode.

CEO of Worth International, Dr. Kelly Schuh, is igniting a Women’s Worth Worldwide movement committed to women entrepreneurs claiming their true worth. In our A Woman’s Worth: Non-Negotiable episode, she shared secrets from her Queen of Worth Sales System, teaching women to grow their businesses while playing to their feminine strengths of faith over fear, collaboration over compensation, and abundance over scarcity. Uncover the obstacles holding women back and how to address them to break through the glass ceilings of what’s possible.

In our Negotiating Your Confidence by Seeing Your Own Beauty episode, award-winning photographer, Marta Perales, shares her insights on why women lose confidence in themselves and a unique way they can reclaim their unshakable confidence.

Mother of 9 and powerhouse CEO of Local Choice Spirits, Paula Dezzutti, blew us away with her insights in our Negotiating Your Value in a Male-Dominated Industry episode. We explored everything from living life on purpose, to feminine innovation, being heard, negotiating value, raising capital and balance in life.

Clearly, there’s a lot to think about when it comes to standing in our value and owning our worth. If any of these episodes resonate with you, and you’re ready to soar to step into your best self, be sure to check them out, share them with other powerful women who could benefit and subscribe to the podcast so you don’t miss future episodes. And, of course, we wouldn’t say no to a 5-star rating or review.

And so, we come to the last installment in our Negotiating Your Mindset series. Not that there isn’t more I could write about … there are multiple books worth of content on this important issue … but my aim was to highlight this oft-forgotten negotiation so you can start taking steps now to take control of your mindset. When you do so with intention, you take control of your life.

If you missed Parts I – III of the series, I invite you to check them out here.  Part I  Part II  Part III

So far, we’ve tackled:

• Choice and Control
• Gifts of Gratitude
• Strength in Service
• Power of Thoughts
• Loving Yourself Unconditionally
• Living Fully Present
• Direction of Your Focus
• Abundance Mindset
• Perspective
• Letting the Universe Inspire You
• Releasing Worry

Today, I’ll share a few final tips and strategies that you can use on your journey to take back control of your life.

Choose What You Tolerate

You get what you tolerate in life. This holds true in your negotiation with yourself. What you are tolerant of and tolerate for yourself is what you’ll get.

If you stay in your comfort zone, afraid of the unknown, of pushing your limits, of challenging the status quo or your beliefs, you won’t reach your full potential. You won’t fulfill your vision by hanging back in your comfortable space. Most end-of-life regrets are for chances not taken and experiences not lived. You’re not likely to reach the end of your life feeling relieved at having played it safe.

The good news is that it only takes a simple mindset shift. Simply make a decision that you won’t tolerate mediocrity from yourself anymore. Decide what you want in life and make a pact with yourself that you won’t tolerate anything less. You don’t need to turn your world upside-down overnight. But start. Take one step outside your comfort zone, towards a larger vision for yourself. And then another. Every journey, big and small, starts with a decision to take a step in that direction.

In addition to your internal negotiation about what you’ll tolerate of yourself, I invite you to start the internal dialogue about what you’re prepared to tolerate of others. You set the tone for how you will be treated. Take ownership of that. If you find yourself wishing that someone in your life wouldn’t treat you a particular way, maybe it’s time you turned the lens on yourself. Why have you been tolerating it?

I come to you with these nuggets having learned on the hard road of experience. I spent many decades training people in my life to take advantage of me. It caused me much heartache and many lost relationships. And it also cost those I thought I was being generous to. They became smaller versions, unable to achieve their full potential.

Ask yourself today, what are 3 things that you’ve been tolerating that don’t serve you … and brainstorm how you’re going to change that pattern.

Invoke the Power of Questions

If you ask bad questions, you’ll get bad answers. The opposite is also true. If you ask better questions, you’ll get better answers. Maybe it’s time to reframe the questions you’re asking yourself. To ask better questions.

These questions are usually based on the stories we tell ourselves. Stories about why we’re not good enough, or strong enough, or smart enough … or just plain not enough. We’ve usually carried these stories and narratives since childhood and we continue to repeat them even though they don’t serve us.

Flip your stories, flip your life. Why not decide today to start challenging those old stories? And as you challenge your stories, get intentional about the questions you ask yourself. Instead of “Why is this happening to me?”, ask “What lessons can I continue to learn and share even more deeply in this moment?”  or “What opportunities are waiting for me to discover them in this moment?”

Can you feel the difference? Feel the power in that shift. These simple reframes allow you to come from and show up in a place of potential and possibility instead of fear. Your brain tries to give you what it thinks you want. When you ask negative questions, your brain will look for examples to support that negativity … as that’s what it thinks you want. Why not train your brain to expect the best, to look for example of the best the world has to offer and to give you the best.

Train yourself to ask more empowered and empowering questions to get more empowered and empowering answers and in so doing, to lead a more powerful life.

As we come to the end of this series, I hope I have opened you up to reframe how you think of negotiation. Specifically, it was my intention that you start to think of your internal dialogue as a negotiation. And that you recognize it as your first and most important negotiation. By seizing control of your inner chatter and choosing your mindset with intention, you can stay out of the quicksand and stay unsinkable even in challenging times.

For more powerful tips on how to negotiate your mindset to lead a more powerful life, check out my book, Negotiate From Fear to Powerful Resilience: Shining light in the dark.

The last couple of weeks we’ve been talking about negotiating your mindset and why it’s your first and most important negotiation. As promised, we’re going to continue exploring simple techniques you can use to take control of your mindset and in so doing, take control of your life.

If you missed the first two parts of the series, you can check them out here. Part I  and Part II

Choose the Direction of Your Focus

Let’s talk about the law of attraction and why getting intentional about your focus is key. Your point of attraction will become your reality. Simply put, you will attract more of what you focus on … even if it’s what you think you’re trying to repel. If you continue to focus on what’s wrong in your life, you will continue to get more of that. The good news is that the opposite is also true. As you focus on what’s right, you’ll see more of it.

Choose an Abundance Mindset

I invite you to ask yourself whether you come at life from a scarcity mindset or an abundance mindset. Do you worry that there’s not enough … whether it’s money, resources, time or love? Or do you believe there is an infinite amount available – that we live in and have access to absolute abundance? If you accept the law of attraction as a foundational starting point, you’ll quickly see that approaching life from a scarcity mindset is self-sabotaging as you’ll never live into the abundance that’s waiting for you. Why not choose to believe you have all the time in the world you need. And that there is limitless love available to (and from) you in every moment. That the resources you need are available at your bidding … you need only tap into the outpouring.

Get a New Perspective

Another simple way to shift your focus is to shift your perspective. Take stock of your life from a new frame of reference. There are a number of ways to do this. One is to imagine yourself rising up in a hot air balloon, examining your situation from above. This higher viewpoint can give new perspective on our perceived problems.

Alternatively, you can visualize yourself in a submarine looking through the periscope at your situation i.e. taking a glimpse from below to look upward. This can help lift you from the depths and avoid tunnel vision and its associated risks. Don’t underestimate how powerful a perspective shift can be.

In addition to the perspective shift of looking down from above, or up from below, also consider a linear perspective switch. i.e. looking back to where you’ve come from and forward to where you want to go. As circumstances change, things we took for granted may now bring gratitude and things that seemed daunting or untenable may now seem insignificant.

COVID is a perfect example of this phenomenon. Think about the things you saw as problems in your life pre-pandemic. Do they still look as serious or significant? Think about the simple things you took for granted (like toilet paper, social engagement, physical touch). Are you able to renew your appreciation for them and look at them with fresh eyes – appreciate them as beautiful luxuries and evidence of abundance?

Perspective shifts allow us the opportunity to reinvent ourselves, to hit reset as we re-evaluate how we’re living and take stock of how we want to spend our time – that precious commodity. I invite you to ask yourself: what perspective can I choose to even more fully live my life on purpose and with purpose?

Let the Universe Inspire You

Speaking of perspective, have you ever lay on your back looking up at a star-studded night sky? As you let yourself relax into it, you’ll see more stars magically start to appear before your eyes. You’ll likely also feel a deeper sense of peace sweep over you. This is a beautiful analogy for life. As you allow yourself to relax in your life, to step away from the frenetic energy of a ‘to do’, task-driven mindset, you will see and feel more. You can celebrate our ultimate connectedness to each other, to Mother Earth, to the universe and beyond. Let the universe ground and inspire you.

Choose to Release Worry

Catastrophizing and running worst-case scenarios never ends well. So why do we spend so much time worrying? It’s arguably one of the most useless and destructive human emotions. We’ve already talked about controlling where your focus goes and controlling the meaning you attach to your thoughts so I won’t repeat myself. But here are a few practical tips and tools to stop casting big dark shadows over your life from worrying over small things.

If worrisome thoughts are crowding out your peace of mind, take a moment to do a quick ‘worry dump’. Jot down all the negative, worried thoughts about your ‘what if’’ scenarios. In fact, consider keeping a Worry Dump journal, so you can periodically review your worries and start to see patterns. The immediate benefit of a ‘worry dump’ is that it gets the thoughts (and their destructive power) out of your head and strips them of power.

Make sure to challenge your worries by asking yourself the following questions as you jot them down:

• Is this really true?
• Is there a more positive spin or potential outcome?
• What is the likelihood of this thing I’m worrying about actually coming to pass?
• Is this worry helping me?

This simple exercise should lead you to a more positive outlook as you chip away at the foundation of your worry.

Sometimes a simple pattern interrupt will suffice to disrupt the worry cycle. Stop yourself from hitting the spin cycle by tuning in your awareness and taking action with intention, whether it’s as simple as breathing, getting up and moving, choosing a humorous distraction … or anything that breaks the worrisome thought patterns in the moment.

Last week we started this series on negotiating your mindset. I believe the subject warrants a series as all of life is a negotiation and negotiating your mindset is your most important one. Your inner voice and inner chatter will determine the meaning you attach to things, which in turn will determine your emotional state, which in turn will determine your experience of life. Most people allow their inner critic to take centre stage in their brain and never seize control of their own internal negotiations.

If you missed the intro last week, check it out so you can build the foundation necessary to manage your mindset and choose your state with intention.

Gifts of Gratitude

A simple and powerful technique to manage your mindset and shift out of negative states is to remind yourself of things you can be grateful for now … in this moment. Even in your seemingly darkest hours, gifts abound all around you. In our busy ‘to do’ lives, we often forget to appreciate (or even recognize) these gifts. They become background white noise as we focus on what we don’t have or on what’s not going right.

If you’re having trouble finding terra firma, and want a simple step to reclaim solid ground beneath your feet, simply pause. Take a moment to think of something you are grateful for in that moment. It can be something simple (maybe the feel of the sun or wind on your face) or something more emotionally resonant (the love of someone in your life) or even the breath flowing into your lungs.

You will always find something to be grateful for if you take the time to consider it with intention. Let yourself revel in it for a moment. Breathe it in. It’s impossible to stay in a state of anger, resentment, fear, angst, disappointment (or the range of other negative emotions that disempower us) while in a state of gratitude. Feel the freedom in that gratitude.

Strength In Service

An effective sister technique to appreciating the gifts that abound around you is to also ask yourself “what gifts can I bring”? Coming from a place of service and generosity can be the most powerful gift you can give yourself. It lifts your vibration to a higher plane and releases endorphins, inspiring feelings of well-being and joy. I invite you to ask yourself what gift you can share with the world.

Power of Thoughts

You’ll notice that both the above simple techniques involve choosing your thoughts. I always advocate the importance of getting intentional about the thoughts you choose. This will always serve you, but now, during these unusual times, where we’re spending more time alone, I urge you to get serious about taking control over the thoughts you allow in. We recognize the importance of paying attention to what food we put in our bodies for our physical health. Think of monitoring your internal mental dialogue as mental hygiene.

The thoughts you allow in and the meaning you attach to those thoughts will determine your reality. Sift through the chatter in your mind and consider starting the practice of asking yourself “Does it serve me to allow this to take up space in my head right now?”

According to the Cleveland Clinic, the average person has 60,000 thoughts per day. Of those thoughts, 95% repeat each day. And sadly, on average, 80% of those repeated thoughts are negative. Consider the destructive power of that kind of defeatist repetition. Our brain believes what we tell it, which is why our expectations are so often realized (the good, the bad and the ugly). So, I invite you to expect the best. It takes no more effort.

Your thoughts are the gateway between where you are now and where you want to go. Change your internal dialogue. Change your thoughts, change your outcomes.

Love Yourself Unconditionally 

The most important starting point in monitoring your thoughts is to love yourself. Be kind to yourself. Forgive yourself your imperfections. Reconnect with yourself and get to a place where you enjoy spending time with yourself. Be self-centered – in the sense that you’re grounded and centred in and with yourself. Go out into the world from that place.

Live Fully Present

Remember that life is made up of moments. Every moment matters. So, it makes sense to be fully present in each moment. Presence is one of the most valuable gifts you can give – to yourself and to others in your life. Ask yourself if you’ve been living your life with intention in the moment. Or have you been racing toward some imaginary finish line? If you’re thinking about the finish line (whether for a particular task, project or endgame) it’s unlikely that you’re living in the moment. If you’re in survival mode, or waiting for something to ‘be over’, or waiting for ‘one day’, then you’re not fully living.

And the good news is that you can hit the reset button now. You can choose your reality by choosing the thoughts you allow in. Choose gratitude. Choose to love yourself unconditionally. Choose to live fully present in each moment.

Last week we talked about avoiding the pitfall of attachment in your negotiations. A recent coaching call had prompted the subject. But there was more to the story. I thought this week we’d extend the lessons from that seemingly simple exchange to increase your influence and persuasiveness in negotiation. Because success in bargaining ultimately depends on your ability to influence and persuade.

After my caller had determined whether she still wanted the deal, we jumped into a few of the elements of my negotiating systems to see how she could best navigate her next steps. If you recall, the parties had reached a tentative agreement in principle when the issue of value was raised. It was a trigger and caused the other party to back away from the deal.

It was time to go deeper in my No F.E.A.R Negotiating model. As we discussed last week, first I wanted to explore that often-ignored important question: “Does the deal still make sense for you?”. It’s critical to avoid getting so attached to a deal that you continue to bargain after it’s no longer advantageous for you. This consideration is the ‘A’ of the No F.E.A.R system – no attachment.

Now let’s turn back to the ‘F’ – fear. Fear sometimes drives us in our negotiations, often unwittingly. I asked my friend to consider what fears may have kicked in for her and for the other party when the issue of value came up. Fear of rejection, fear of failure, fear of losing, fear of missing out, fear of the unknown … even fear of success are the usual suspects. Recognizing these fears – in yourself and in the other party – will go a long way to informing how you ought to show up to maximize your chance of success. Recognizing your own fears will allow you to dissolve them or use them to fuel you instead of derail you. Knowing the other party’s fears can be a powerful tool in a negotiation. You can use that knowledge to diffuse the fear and build trust or, where appropriate, use their fear to get them to a better place for both of you. Considering the fears of the other party also helps to build empathy, which will affect how you show up and help build trust.

And let’s not ignore the all-important ‘E’ – ego. You lose control of the negotiation if you let ego drive you as you’ll lose control of your ability to assess information accurately and with perspective. You’ll likely fail to recognize opportunities or alternatives that could deliver better outcomes. It was clear in this case that the issue of value triggered ego on both sides of the table. Ego shows up in many ways: need to win, need to look good, inability to admit you don’t know, talking too much, and wanting to be liked, to name a few. Recognizing when your ego has kicked in allows you to check it and regain control.

In this case, questioning my friend’s value had kicked in her self-esteem issues and with it her need to look good. Acknowledging this helped her get perspective on how she had contributed to things going sideways in the negotiation. It also allowed her to see that wanting to be liked had impaired her judgment when the other party became offended (and to explore whether that offence was genuine or a manipulation). Also, considering the impact of ego on the other party allowed her to get intentional about how to show up in renewing the talks. She was able to make a conscious, controlled choice to shelf her own ego and cater to the ego of her counterpart to get talks back on track.

That control took care of the ‘R’ – reactivity. It allowed her to avoid becoming reactive again herself, and minimized the chance of the negotiating counterpart becoming reactive. It allowed for a more productive discussion to ensue.

Try applying this simple No F.E.A.R system next time you negotiate. Ideally, you’ll want to build it into your pre-negotiation prep work to maximize your opportunity for success. But as with this case, even if you haven’t done that and your bargaining goes south, you can always take a step back, regroup, and bring this system to bear to get your negotiation back on track to get what you want.