Ep. 69 - The Most Important Mindset Shift Academics Can Make

This episode dives into the single most transformative mindset shift that academics can make: moving away from a success/failure binary. We often get caught up in meeting others’ expectations and trying to adhere to narrow definitions of success in the academy. But what might be possible if you created your own definition of success that didn't rely on outcomes or performance? I give you three steps to start moving away from a lens of success versus failure and towards a mindset that embraces process, non-linearity, and imperfection. This episode brings you back in touch with your own inner guidance and intuition so you can move forward with more confidence.

Check out Leslie's website at www.YourWordsUnleashed.com!

The three ways Leslie can help you in 2025:

#1: Six-month Your Words Unleashed signature book writing coaching program. Through 8 hour-long sessions tailored to your own needs and goals, we will pinpoint what’s keeping you stuck. We’ll figure out personalized solutions and strategies so you can create direction and lasting momentum with your book writing. I’ll also provide detailed feedback on your writing throughout

#2: Four-month Career Reset Program for Overwhelmed Academics who want to reconnect with purpose. Over the course of 6 hour-long sessions, we’ll clarify your personal career vision, create space for what matters, overcome internal obstacles to change, and define what success means on your own terms so you can work less and live more.

#3: Group Zoom Workshops that balance personal well-being with writing productivity. Topics include transforming your dissertation into a book; connecting to the deeper purpose of your work; as well as boundary setting.

Check everything out on my website and if you are interested in any of these, please shoot me an email at ...

Transcript

YWU Podcast Episode 69 Transcript

The Most Important Mindset Shift You Can Make

Hi writers, I’m so glad you’re here. I wanted to take a quick moment to thank you for listening.

When I started this podcast 2.5 years ago, I was overwhelmed and terrified that no one would listen. 

I figured that there are so many millions of podcasts out there, so why would anyone tune in to mine?

But as I got more comfortable with this medium and have consistently released content, more people have been finding me from all around the world.

And, I’m very proud to say, Your Words Unleashed is now ranked in the top 5% of podcasts globally!

I recently received an incredibly nice message from a listener, which read, “As I’m going through an existential crisis in postdoc land going on the faculty job market for the first time, I came across your podcast and it.was.so.helpful. 

Thank you for sharing your story and journey, especially for the Asian women early career researchers who need role models like you.”

These messages are so gratifying for me. 

So if you’ve been listening from the beginning or this is your very first episode, thank you for being here and spending time with me and my interview guests. 

It means everything, and I’m committed to continuing to pry open the doors on topics in the academy that people are not talking about enough!

I’d also like to remind you of the three ways I can help you get a handle on your writing and career in 2025.

The first is my 6- month signature writing coaching program for book authors. Through 8 hour-long sessions tailored to your own needs and goals, we will pinpoint what's keeping you stuck. 

We'll figure out personalized solutions and strategies so you can create direction and lasting momentum with your book writing. I'll also provide detailed feedback on your writing throughout

The second is my 4-month Career Reset Program for overwhelmed academics who want to reconnect with purpose. Over the course of 6 hour-long sessions, we'll clarify your personal career vision, create space for what matters, overcome internal obstacles to change, and define what success means on your own terms so you can work less and live more.

And the third are my group Zoom workshops that balance personal well-being with writing productivity. Topics include transforming your dissertation into a book; connecting to the deeper purpose of your work; as well as boundary setting. 

Check everything out on my website at Yourwordsunleashed.com and if you are interested in any of these, please shoot me an email at Leslie@YourWordsUnleashed.com.

Okay, so I was all set to talk about something else today, but there’s one thing that’s been coming up a lot in sessions with my clients, regardless of whether they’re doing writing or career coaching.

I’ve been saying the same thing over and over again, to the point that I thought it would be useful to devote an entire episode to it.

I’ve even called this episode: “The Most Important Mindset Shift You Can Make.” 

It may sound like hyperbole, but I really think that if we were all able to do this (and this is something that I myself am ALWAYS working on), life would feel better and more manageable.

What I’m about to say is very simple. I’ve actually talked about it a lot on this podcast.

You might hear it and think, “duh, I already know that.” 

But even if you already subscribe to this perspective, like I do, it’s still something that needs to be consistently practiced each day.  

So without further ado, here it is: we need to move from a mindset of success versus failure to one that embraces process.

I’m going to talk about what inspired this episode and give you three steps for moving away from narrowly defined definitions of success so that you can start feeling better—and more successful—today. 

You can find the full transcript of this episode at yourwordsunleashed.com/69.

What Inspired This Episode

Today’s episode is actually a bit of a peptalk.

Most of you are finally reaching the end of a long, stressful semester that has been filled with all kinds of uncertainty—uncertainty that will only continue for the forseeable future.

Academics are exhausted. They are unbelievably pressed for time. 

Their own personal goals have often fallen to the wayside due to untenable workloads that they don’t feel like they have any control over.

Recently, one of my career coaching clients broke down in tears from disappointment that they weren’t succeeding in putting their own values, needs, and priorities first.

In other words, they felt like they were failing at self-improvement. 

But when we took a look at all the responsibilities this person is currently juggling, there’s literally NO way they could put themselves first right now. 

They’re teaching and serving on tons of grad committees that are culminating in exams all at the same time. 

They unexpectedly had to take on extra work from a colleague who went on leave. 

They’re also serving on a major job search committee that’s still in the interview stage.

It’s no wonder they haven’t been able to center their writing and physical and emotional health in the way they envisioned when they started out the semester.

You might also be feeling demotivated. 

Maybe you had committed to doing things differently this semester and are finding yourself overworked and resentful once again.

If this is you, let me tell you what I told my client, which is that self-growth (or, honestly, any kind of real progress on any big goal) is never linear.

There are ups and downs, ebbs and flows. However, we always need to give ourselves honest credit for what we actually HAVE done. 

And my client had taken great strides to change their approach to their career and was feeling really good about themselves a couple of months ago.

But they had reached that dreaded level of fatigue and resentment again for reasons that were really outside of their control. 

And their brain, being the jerk that it can be, tried to just erase all of the real, tangible improvements they had made and tell them that they needed to start over again from scratch. 

Talk about self-defeating! The relief in all of this is that you don’t need to believe everything you think. 

Like I said, our minds can be huge jerks and offer a set of thoughts that are not actually true but feel very true.

But if we take a mindfulness approach, we can view each thought as being like a train that’s pulling into a station. 

And if it’s a thought you know from experience will take you down a path to feeling bad or stuck, you can consciously choose not to board that train and choose a different, better-feeling one instead.

I offer more detailed instructions on how to reframe your negative or harmful thoughts in Episode 27: Prime Your Mind for Writing, so go back and listen to that one.

If you’re feeling discouraged, I want to gently urge you to NOT fall prey to seeing things only through a binary lens of success or failure.

Process is everything. And the overall trend is what we need to use to evaluate change, not how things look or feel at any one fixed point in time.

The System is Rigged

Another thing I want to mention is how much failure is individualized when it’s really the fault of larger systems.

In other words, we are often set up to fail.

Two areas in particular that I see people blaming themselves are academia and parenting. 

I’m in a lot of different online groups for academic women and parents. 

On a daily basis, people talk about how they feel like they’re failing--when really what they’re doing is trying to live up to an outrageous set of external expectations. 

They are holding themselves to standards that are unattainable to the vast majority of people.

Here’s an excerpt from a recent anonymous post that sums up many of the common frustrations that compound for academic moms:

“I feel like I’m failing at everything. Fought with partner this morning, my kid was being a typical kid (not wanting to get dressed, not wanting to eat breakfast) and I got mad at him. My paper was rejected for the second time… I feel like I'm failing at teaching my classes... I can't focus on anything, feel so much anxiety about all the meetings and events and things I have to do that I can't get any one thing done. 

And I can't have a full time job and cook decent meals and do any of the hobbies that would make me feel better. And besides, it feels like I'd be digging myself out from a giant avalanche by using a toy snow shovel, so what's the point. 

Why is the stress of my job and my life making me miss out on the most important things, like my kids? I hate that it feels like this stress and anxiety is what drives me, and that I feel addicted to it, and that I can't just f-ing BE rather than DO all the time.”

In all honesty, this person sounds burnt out to their core and probably needs to take other measures to repair their mental, emotional, and physical health.

But it’s also clear that, like most of us, this person has deeply internalized very narrow external standards of success. 

It’s gotten to the point where all they feel is stress and anxiety that I would argue comes primarily from self-judgment.

According to this post, “success” would mean never getting mad at your partner or your child, being a perfect teacher at all times, wielding total control over an insane schedule, while also cooking healthy meals and having time for hobbies.

It’s impossible!

One notable thing that’s missing here is the ability to rely on familial or community support to get any of these things done.

In the hyper-individualistic context of countries like the United States where childcare and other family-related support are not provided, you have to shoulder it all on your own. 

On top of that, the societal messaging is that if you’re not doing it to 100% standards, then you’re failing.

The same principles operate in academia. For women in particular, if you’re not publishing at 100, teaching at 100%, doing service and being a good colleague at 100%, then you must be failing.

I’ve shared the story before of how in the first semester of my job at UMass Boston, I met with the then-department chair and asked what percentage of my effort I should focus on research versus teaching versus service. 

And his answer was, “you need to perform 100% in all areas!”

When you’re being told that message directly from your boss, you aim for that to the detriment of your own health and well-being.

Or what about folks who are unable to secure a tenure-track position because there are so few to be had? 

And, studies show that 80% of tenure-track faculty members in the United States come from only 20% of PhD-granting institutions!

I’ve heard of jobs in the humanities that receive upwards of 800 applications. 

Humanities and social science departments are being gutted left and right, and the sheer reality is that most people with PhDs will not become tenure-track professors.

But talk to anyone who has recently been on the academic job market and come away empty-handed. I would bet money that they are feeling deep personal shame in not having succeeded.

Folks, the systems are rigged. 

Unhealthy environments very effectively con individuals into thinking that they are themselves to blame for structural problems.

Although you may not be able to change the system, you can change how much you allow it to determine your sense of self-worth. 

So now, let me give you three steps to do this.

Step #1: Check Your Thoughts

A lot of times we are unaware how much we are operating according to a success/failure binary. 

So the first step is to check your thoughts.

To use therapist-speak, are you always “shoulding” on yourself? 

This means you’re constantly telling yourself you should be doing things in a certain way.

Usually, these thoughts come up because you’re NOT doing the thing that your jerk of a brain has labeled the “right” way.

For example, “I should be writing two hours a day.” “Or, I should be exercising three times per week.” Or, in my case, “I should be getting my child to eat green vegetables.”

The obvious problem with this is that it sets up one—and only one—measure of success and everything else then counts as failure.

In my child’s case, I got him to try a piece of lettuce and a piece of spinach the other day. He ate the lettuce and spat out the spinach. So should that count as success or failure?

If there were only two options, then this is clearly a big failure. Because a narrow definition of success would require that my four-year-old happily chow down an entire green salad every day.

But if we use a process-oriented mindset, I can view tiny steps as big wins. And like all small, steps taken consistently, over time they accumulate into something much larger. 

Step #2: Whose Definition of Success are You Using?

Once you’re aware that you’re “shoulding” on yourself, the next step is to identify whose definition of success you have been unconsciously using.

In sociology, one of the most basic concepts is that of the “social construct.” This refers to how humans and societies take an idea or a thing and collectively imbue it with meaning through interaction.

People then forget the social origins of these categories and come to accept them as natural. 

A lot of the work of Soc 101 is to get students to denaturalize basic things they’ve see as common sensical. 

They learn how categories often treated as staunchly biological, such as race, gender, and sexuality, are socially constructed. They see how understandings of them vary widely between cultures.

Ultimately, our brains are filled with ideas that have been created from the outside. And therefore, the standards that we use to judge ourselves are by default socially constructed ideals. 

All of you listening are educated, curious people or you wouldn’t be here. But even educated, curious people sometimes need to be reminded that it’s all made up!

Even in the world of coaching, there are made-up standards of success.

One of them is to be “fully booked” with clients. The assumption is that your entire work schedule is full of client meetings. 

But what if you do a type of coaching that requires a lot of work hours outside of client meetings, like I do? Then what does fully booked mean?

Or what if you’re a stay-at-home parent who’s also running a business? What’s fully booked look like when you’re juggling clients with childcare?

So if you’re always striving to be “fully booked” according to industry standards rather than your own, then you’ll likely overwork yourself trying to fulfill a completely made-up ideal.

Therefore, in getting back to the subject at hand, if you don’t stop to do self-reflect, you will necessarily center the academy’s values, priorities, and standards of success. 

As we all know, elite academia tends to undervalue teaching and service and mentoring—in essence, all the things that help our students. 

If you’re not mindful you will likely default to using research as your primary measure of success, especially publications, citations and impact factors.

This is deeply damaging to the self-esteem of folks who love teaching and mentoring and don’t particularly enjoy doing research—which is a TON of people in higher ed!

I once had a client who had worked their entire lengthy career at a teaching institution where publications were not particularly valued.

Meaning, it was cool if people published but they didn’t need to publish much to get tenure.

This person absolutely loved being in the classroom but also carried a heavy mixture of guilt and even shame for not having published more.

When we talked, it became clear that for many years she had been using the R-1 standards of her graduate institution as her own metric of success as an academic. 

This self-judgment caused tremendous pain and made it even harder for her to let go of the very interesting papers she had written.

But until our conversation, she wasn’t even aware of this disjuncture and how much distress it caused.

And I’m happy to say that she submitted two papers for review soon after!

So, when you feel like you’re failing, it’s important to always ask yourself, “whose standard of success am I using here?” 

And if it turns out that it’s not your own, which it’s likely not, then it’s time to move onto the next step.

Step #3: Define Success on Your Own Terms

So the final step is to define what success means to you, on your own terms.

Most people, but especially academics, tend to define success in terms of outcomes performed in a specific way.

I often have this exact conversation with my career coaching clients.

Nearly everyone identifies “achievement” as a core value, which is basically a synonym for success.

Then when I ask them to define achievement, it’s always in terms of outcome.

But what if success did not hinge on either outcome or performance? Then what would it mean to you? How would you know you’re successful?

Instead, what if we treated success or achievement as a feeling of fulfillment? 

And since it’s a feeling, this is something you can access at any time. How might that change your perspective?

So here’s a quick exercise I do with my clients to figure out a personal definition of success, which takes around 10 minutes.

First, close your eyes, take a few deep breaths and imagine a moment from any point in your life when you felt your best. It can be from your personal life or your professional life.

You could have been a child or it could have been an hour ago, doesn’t matter.

Step back into that time and use all of your senses to relive it. What were you doing? Who was with you, if anyone? What emotions did you feel? How did your body feel in that time and in that place?

Now open your eyes and jot down 3-5 words that sum up that moment. They could be things like “freedom,” “curiosity,” “love,” “connection,” “discovery,” “achievement,” “creativity,” “impact,” etc.

These are your core values.

Now come up with a personalized definition of each of these values. Together, they add up to what success truly feels like to you.

Take a look at your list of definitions and write a short sentence that sums up what success means to you in your own words.

One of my former clients is a highly successful tenured professor at an R-1 school.

She carried the very common externally-derived belief of “my self-worth is dependent on my performance.” This thought was contributing to burnout and pushing her to overwork.

We used her core values to create a new, personalized definition of success that was divorced from performance or outcome. 

Some of the possibilities she came up with included "I do things that feel rewarding," "I feel happy with my own choices," and "I feel comfortable in my own skin."

She identified the feeling of success as lightness, energy and openness. 

In comparison, when she started feeling resentful, overcommitted, and exhausted, she knew she was shifting back towards external definitions of success. 

And these were now her cues to pause, reflect, and recommit to her own version of success.

Summing Things Up

So let’s sum everything up! I’ve talked about the need to move away from a success/failure mindset and towards one that embraces process—however imperfect and non-linear that may be.

I’ve given three steps to start doing this. 

Step #1: Check your thoughts.

Step #2: Figure out whose definition of success you’ve been using.

Step #3: Create a personalized definition of success.

Like I’ve said so many times, a success/failure binary is setting you up for failure because anything less than 100% doesn’t count. 

More than that, if you only maintain a very narrow definition of success, then when you achieve it, you’re likely to feel relief instead of true pride or fulfillment.

So how about we make a collective agreement to shoot for 75 to 80% in everything we do?

There will always be times when we feel like we’re failing. And there will always be times when we actually, legitimately fail at things.

But this does not make us failures. It makes us human beings.

And growing from failures is what solidifies belief in oneself.

I mean, I was in a lot of failed relationships in my 20s and 30s, but each one had its own lessons to teach me that ultimately paid off when I met my amazing partner.

So let me leave you with a couple of coaching questions to ask yourself when you’re falling into the trap of success and failure:

The first one is, if I knew I would be successful no matter what, what’s the next small step I would take towards my goal?

The second one is the same but from another angle: if I took failure out of the equation, what would that make possible for me in this moment?

Don’t make outside standards or other people responsible for your sense of self-worth.

And don’t forget that you are your own best mentor and trusted source of wisdom. 

But if you’ve fallen out of touch with your own intuition and internal guidance, reach out to me for help reestablishing that connection!

I’m booking new clients for 2025, and I would love to work with you.

Take care until next time.