What's Your Work Story?

Episode 43: You have probably heard of a money story, the set of beliefs about money that were formed in childhood and shape your financial life as an adult. Career change coach Dana Stevens believes we are all carrying an equivalent work story. A set of beliefs about what work is, what success looks like, what we deserve from it and what is possible for someone like us, formed long before we had the experience to question them. In this episode she introduces the concept of the work story and explains where these beliefs come from.

In this episode you will learn:

• The three main sources of your work story and why none of it is your fault
• A set of questions to help you identify your own work story and start to see which beliefs are worth keeping and which are worth rewriting

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https://calendly.com/danastevens/initial-coaching-chat

Connect with Dana:

Website: https://www.danastevens.com/workwithme
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/dana_stevens_coach/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/danastevens1/

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And if you’re ready to design a working life that truly fits your needs and lifestyle, book a free consultation call at https://calendly.com/danastevens/initial-coaching-chat

Special thanks to @Lou_Greenaway_Music for the piano composition and performance.

Transcript

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SPEAKER_00 0:51

Today, I want to introduce you to an idea that could genuinely change how you see yourself in relation to your work. Now, you might have heard the concept of a money story. It's this idea that comes from money mindset work. And basically, the premise behind it is this: that every single one of us is carrying around a set of beliefs about money that was formed long before we had any real experience of it ourselves. Beliefs that we absorbed from watching our parents handle money, from what we heard growing up, what we overheard from the financial experiences we had early in life, maybe how much money our parents had or our families had from the cultural and generational context that we grew up in, maybe like the literal economy that we grew up in, depending on what was going on politically at the time as well. And those beliefs, most of which we never consciously chose, and many of which we've probably never properly examined, these actually shape everything about how we relate to money as adults, what we think we deserve, what we think is possible, what we do and don't do with it. The reason this concept is so powerful is that it helps people see their relationship with money as not just like this fixed part of who they are or a personality trait, but as a story, a constructed set of beliefs. And because it was constructed, it can be examined objectively, and because it can be examined, it can also be changed. And I've been thinking for a really long time about how this same idea applies to work. Because every single one of us is also carrying around a work story, a set of beliefs about what work is, what it requires of us, what we deserve from it, what success looks like, what is possible for someone like us. Beliefs that were formed by watching the adults around us work as we were growing up, and by what we learned in school about effort and reward, by what our early career experiences taught us about how the working world operates and where we might fit into that. And just like the money story, your work story shapes everything. Every career decision you've made, every time you've stayed in something that wasn't working because you thought you should be grateful, every time you've worked incredibly hard and then been baffled by why it wasn't being recognised, every time you've looked at a different kind of work and dismissed it before you've even properly considered it. Today I want to help you see your own work story. Not to make you feel bad about it, not to have any judgments about it, because you didn't choose it and none of it is your fault. But because once you see it, you have a choice about what to do about it, and that choice could change a lot for you. So your work story, in the way I see it, is typically built from three main sources, right? And none of these were typically things that you chose, right? The first is what you absorbed watching the adults around you work, whether they loved their work or tolerated it or resented it even, whether they talked about work as something meaningful or something you just did to pay the bills, whether they stayed in the same job for 30 years or moved around, whether they were ambitious or content or miserable even, whether they seemed fulfilled or ground down. You were watching all of that long before you ever had a job yourself and drawing conclusions about what work is and what it's supposed to feel like. The second is what you learned in school and academic environments about how effort and rewards works, right? Most of us grew up in a system where the formula was sort of taught to us as this fairly straightforward thing. You work hard, you follow the rules, you do what is expected to you, and you get the grade, you get the results. Success is visible, measurable, and comes directly from your effort. The lesson gets really deeply embedded that most people carry it straight into their working life without realizing that that formula doesn't actually work the same way in the world of work. I'm going to talk more about that in a minute. The third thing is what your own early career experience taught you. The first job, whether it went well or badly, your first manager, did they see your potential or not? The first time you tried for something, did you get it? Or maybe you didn't get it, right? Maybe you tried for a promotion, it didn't happen. Or maybe they came easily to you. Maybe the first time you felt like you were out of your depth or you felt out of place. Those early experiences leave marks. They teach you things about how work operates and where you fit in that you then take on board. Those lessons formed really early on and usually felt quite strongly at the beginning, they can shape your whole approach to work for decades. It's worth mentioning that absorbing these beliefs and forming these beliefs, this isn't about feeling fault with that or feeling like guilty. This isn't anything that you need to feel bad about. You didn't sit down and choose these beliefs. The context you were in, the people you were around, the systems you moved through, these formed the beliefs for you. They felt like facts about the world rather than perspectives on it. And so you've carried them with you, probably largely unexamined, unexplored, unquestioned. And maybe you've brought them with you into every job and every career decision since. But here's the thing I want to keep saying: they're not facts. They're your story, your perspective. And your story is not the same as everyone else's. That's how we know they're not facts, because everybody often thinks very differently about these things, which means it's not the objective truth. It's one perspective. And perspectives, once you can see them for what they are, can be updated. So I thought it might be helpful if I give you three specific examples of work stories that I see regularly in the women I work with. And as I describe each one, I want you to notice whether any of it feels familiar. The first one is this: this story that if I just work hard enough, I'm going to be rewarded. This is such a common work story I see, and it makes complete sense when you understand where it comes from. Like I said earlier, most of us spent our formative years in education where this formula was actually true. You worked hard, you studied, you did what was asked of you, and you got the results, you got the grades. Success was this visible thing that was at the end of the hard work. It was measurable and it seemed to come directly from your effort. The problem is that the corporate world specifically and other areas of work, they just don't really work in the same way. And nobody tells you that when you leave school and you start work. I wish they would. But no one does. And in most organizations, working hard is necessary, of course, but it's not enough. It's not usually sufficient. People around you are often really busy focusing on their own work, managing their own priorities, dealing with their own pressures. Unfortunately, lots of managers do not always notice what you are doing well. Not because they're indifferent to it, not because they don't want to, but usually just their attention is somewhere else. Maybe they're busy trying to survive in their own jobs. Maybe they're self-obsessed, not deliberately, but they're trying to just cope themselves. And meanwhile, there's lots of women heads down thinking if I just work hard, someone's gonna notice. But what really happens is that alongside doing excellent work, you have to help other people understand what you're doing. You have to tell them what you're doing, how you're doing it well, why it matters. Now, sometimes this is called managing up, sometimes it's called visibility. But what it really is, what it boils down to is you owning your achievements and then communicating them. This doesn't have to be about boasting or self-promotion in a way that feels uncomfortable, just helping the people who need to know what you're doing, how you're doing it, and help them understand the impact of what you're doing and all your hard work. And honestly, I see so often that women in particular tend to resist this. It feels like it contradicts everything they were taught about modesty or letting the work speak for itself. But really, the work can't always speak for itself or doesn't speak for itself, especially in a busy work environment or a layered corporate world where everyone is heads down, or maybe people are siloed, people are trying to manage their own busy workloads. And when you're operating from a work story that says hard work is going to automatically be noticed and rewarded, and then it's not, the conclusion that so many people draw is often something about yourself that you were not good enough, that you were being overlooked, that you need to try even harder, when actually what you needed to do was to tell people what you have achieved or are achieving, how you achieved it, why it's so valuable to them, to the business, to the project, what you want next. That's always a good one that we don't talk about. And on one level, this might sound simple, but very few people know to do this, recognize how to do this, learn how to do this effectively. The second work story I see all the time is this. I should just be grateful that I have a good job in the first place. And this one's interesting because it often comes from family or from our upbringing, from parents or grandparents who are genuinely trying to help, who were passing on what worked for them, who care about your security and want you to protect it. And for their generation, often that advice made complete sense. They grew up in a world where a stable job, ideally for life with a pension at the end of it, was the definition of security. And leaving something secure, especially for something uncertain, was genuinely risky in a way that it often isn't anymore. But the world of work has changed so much, and that advice has not always kept pace with the change. So many women are sitting in jobs that aren't right for them, feeling guilty about even wanting to leave, feeling like they should just be being grateful and counting their blessings, because the voice in their head, which is often their mum's or their father's or someone else's voice, is telling them to just be grateful. And there is often a layer of guilt here that goes even deeper. If your parents sacrificed for you, if they worked hard so that you could have opportunities that they didn't have, leaving a good job, good job in inverted commas, that can feel like a betrayal of that. Like you're throwing away what they worked so hard to give you. What is actually true, and what the parents giving this advice often don't realise, is that in the modern world of work, staying in one place is not always the most secure choice. Building a diverse skill set, gaining experience across different contexts, developing your network, these things can often create more security than staying in one place could. Moving around can be how you build the most robust and adaptable career, not a sign of instability, but of growth. And your parents aren't wrong to value security, they're just working from a different map, and you are allowed to draw a new one. Third work story is this: success means moving upwards, and anything else is going backwards. And this one is absorbed from pretty much everywhere, right? School celebrate the highest achievers, the ones who get the best results and get into the best universities, organizations reward upward progression with salary and title and status, and culture celebrates the promoted and kind of ignores many people who pivot. And so most people like absorb and take in this very linear idea of what a successful career looks like: moving up and up and up, and anything that deviates from that line, a sideways move, a change of direction, a stepping back from seniority to do something different, can be portrayed as like a failure, like a retreat, like admitting you couldn't cut it. And this story stops so many women from making changes that would genuinely serve them. They stay in a career path that's no longer right because moving sideways feels like giving up everything they've worked for. They don't apply for roles in different industries because they're not at the equivalent level. They don't explore directions that genuinely excite them because those directions are not on the upward path. What's actually true is that a sideways move made intentionally, one that takes you into a different context, builds new skills, opens new directions, is often one of the bravest and best career decisions someone can make. And the people with more interesting or resilient careers are rarely the ones who went straight up the same ladder. They're usually the ones who moved in multiple directions, accumulated varied experience, and built something genuinely their own. Moving sideways is not going backwards. But it's often how you find your way forwards. And when you start to examine and update your work story, something genuinely shifts in what you can see. If you can update the hard work story and learn how to own and communicate your achievements, you can start to be seen in the way that you deserve. The promotion that's been invisible to your managers suddenly becomes something viable. The work you were doing all along gets the recognition it deserves, not because you started doing more, but because you started helping people understand what you were already doing. If you can give yourself permission to question this gratitude story, you can stop staying stuck in a job that isn't working. You can look honestly at your situation without the guilt drowning out everything else. You can make a decision about what you actually want rather than a decision about what you think you should want. If you can let go of this upwards-on definition of success, you suddenly have access to a whole landscape of options that you might previously have dismissed before you've even considered them properly. Directions you'd written off as not for you or as going backwards or not serious enough, they suddenly become possibilities. And sometimes those possibilities turn out to be exactly right. You get to start to create your own definition of success and what that really means to you at this stage of your working life. If success isn't just measured by going up, how do you want to measure it now? What are your markers of success that are personal to you and no one else? That could be flexibility or learning or time or health or fulfillment. Your work story has been acting as a filter, letting some things through and blocking others out. Often before you might even have consciously engaged with them, right? And updating it doesn't mean throwing away everything you've learned, it means removing a filter that was limiting what you could see. So how do you start to see your own work story? It starts with getting curious rather than judgmental. You're not looking for evidence that you've been thinking about work wrong, you're just looking to understand where your beliefs come from and whether they're still serving you now. So here are some questions that you can answer, and you can either write them down in a notebook or just think about them so that you can help to figure out your own work story. What did you observe about work when you were growing up? How did the adults around you talk about their jobs? What did their relationship with work seem to be? What did you conclude from watching them and how they behaved? What did you learn in school about how effort and reward works? And how has that translated into your working life? Has the formula worked out the way you expected it to? And if not, what happened instead? And what do your family say about your job? What advice have you received about work from the people who love you? And where do you think that advice comes from? What do you believe about what is possible for someone like you in your career? Where do you think that belief came from? Is there any evidence that it might not actually be true or there might be a different perspective? And finally, what would you do or consider or explore if you did not have the work story you currently have? What becomes available if you let yourself question the beliefs you've been carrying? Now these are not necessarily quick questions to answer. You might want to take some time. You might want to really think honestly about them. You might want to write them down and come back to them over a couple of days in a notebook. But they can be such useful questions to ask yourself. Because the answers reveal the story. And once you can see the story, you can start to decide which parts of it you want to keep and which parts you are ready to rewrite. So just a little reminder before I go: you didn't write your work story on purpose. It was written for you by your experiences and your environment and the people around you and your upbringing, long before you had the context or the perspective to begin to question it. This means it's not the truth about work, it's not a fixed part of who you are, it's a set of beliefs that might have made sense at the time they were formed in the context they were formed in, and now you are probably in a different context with a different life and different possibilities and a much fuller understanding of what you actually want. And that means that you are allowed to write a new story. And maybe not everything in your work story needs to change. Some of what you absorbed is genuinely useful and worth keeping. But the bits that are keeping you stuck, the beliefs that are limiting you, that are acting as a filter on what you can see and what you allow yourself to consider, those are worth looking at, really looking at. And if you want help doing this, this is exactly the kind of work I do with my clients. Understanding what is driving their thought patterns, understanding what's setting up their mental blocks, and then helping them, teaching them to do something about it. So come and have a free consultation with me if you think career change coaching will help you. The link as ever is in the show notes. Thank you so much for listening this week. I'm gonna see you next time. Bye for now.