For Women of Color, Career Success Is All About Mindset

Whether you’re a woman of color who’s a salaried professional, a career changer, or a business owner, when it comes to achieving career success, you must be able to maintain the right mindset.

As women of color, we’ve been socialized all our lives to be a particular way.

Keep our heads down and work hard. Put family and community needs ahead of our own. Do as we’re told. Don’t talk back. Follow the traditional paths to career “success” and climb the corporate ladder. Make our people proud.

Then, in school, college, and the workforce, we find ourselves in situations where we’re made to feel like we don’t belong because we’re the only – or the first – woman (or person) of color. We’re treated like we’re “less than,” imposters, dismissed as diversity hires.

So when we dare to dream bigger than the expectations placed upon us, it can be incredibly stressful.

We may face deep insecurities, or succumb to internalized voices of family members telling us what we should or shouldn’t do. We become terrified of failure. And feelings of shame can be paralyzing too.

In short, it’s a lot.

As a career coach for women of color, I’ve worked with nearly a hundred individual clients and hundreds more in workshops and courses. What I’ve found to be the most important factor in whether a woman of color successfully reaches (or exceeds) her career goals is the strength and resilience of her mindset. If you want to make your career dreams a reality, you must believe – in your very core – that you will find a way to do that.

It’s not about this career tip or that work hack. What it comes down to is outlook and attitude. If you have the ability to turn a negative mindset into a positive one, a fixed mindset into a growth mindset, a scarcity mindset into an abundance mindset, you’re more than 80% of the way there.

So how do you develop and maintain such a mindset?

It’s nothing more than developing a habit of shifting your thoughts – over and over – until you no longer need to. Every time you find yourself worrying:
I can’t do this.
I’ll never find a job I like.
I’m too ________ for this.
I can’t change careers.
first recognize that you’re experiencing this thought.

Then replace it with a neutral or positive one. Like:
I will do my best and that will be enough.
I know things suck right now, but they’ll get better.
I will keep trying my best; I know that each day brings me closer to my career goals.
I can become my own boss.
I trust the timing of my life.
I will remember that things could turn out better than I expected.
It’s really pretty simple – not that I’m saying it’s easy. But you can totally do this.

If you are reading this blog post, it is within your ability to transform your thoughts, and by extension, your career.

Write down what your worst fears are about your career. And then convert them like the examples above. Write down the neutral or positive versions. And then make reminders for yourself so that you don’t forget to actively rewire your thoughts every day.

And listen. I’m not saying that we don’t face huge and systemic obstacles in our careers. We clearly do. External factors – racism, sexism, patriarchy, the old boys’ club – are definitely still a thing. So know that this mindset stuff – it’s necessary, but not sufficient. But it is necessary. Because we won’t have the stamina and the nerve to dismantle racism, sexism, and discrimination in the working world if we don’t adopt the right mindset first.