Paying Your Dues or Paying The Price?

Years into a career I'd worked incredibly hard for, I found out what a brand-new employee was making — and it was almost as much as me. My first reaction was: they should have to pay their dues. But when I sat with it, what I actually meant was, they should have to pay the same price I did. And those are not the same thing.

In this episode, I'm pulling apart a phrase almost all of us nod along to — "pay your dues" — and asking what we really mean when we say it. Because there's a version that builds real capacity, and there's a version that just asks you to accept being underpaid, overlooked, and endlessly patient. One develops you. The other just charges you a price you may have already paid.

This is about the stories we carry — that we have to struggle before we deserve success, prove ourselves before we can ask for more, earn rest, earn ease — and where else in our lives those beliefs might quietly be running the show.

In This Episode:

• 00:46 The two very different things people mean by "pay your dues"
• 02:12 Growing capacity vs suffering
• 03:18 The new hire's salary that forced me to look inward
• 05:05 The stories we carry about struggle, worth, and earning ease
• 05:39 The difference between building capacity and paying a price
• 06:14 Question to reflect on if you're in a season of "paying your dues"

Who This Episode Is For:

• Highly sensitive people, empaths, and deep feelers
• Hard workers who rarely feel they've earned the right to ask for more
• Anyone who's stayed underpaid or overlooked longer than they should have
• People untangling old beliefs about struggle and self-worth
• Sensitive high-achievers recovering from over-giving
• Anyone wondering if they're building capacity — or just paying a price
  
  

New episodes every Wednesday. Find me on Instagram at @the.energy.xchange or at justonewoo.com.

Links & Resources For This Episode:

• Subscribe to my Weekly Newsletter
• Visit My Website
• Get the Book: The Empath Detox
• The Get The Empath Detox Oracle Deck
• Book a Storyboarding Session (for Creators + Business Owners)

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:03

Welcome to the Energy Exchange, a podcast for deep feelers and quiet leaders. Here, we explore what happens when we start working with our natural energy in both our business and personal lives. I'm Colleen Wallach. I'm a highly sensitive professional who spent years untangling patterns of overthinking, people-pleasing, and playing small just to feel safe. Now, I help others like me step more fully into their power without losing the superpower of their softness. We don't have to be allowed to be seen, and we don't have to push to be powerful. Everything is energy. Let's start this exchange. Welcome into this week's episode of the Energy Exchange. I want to start today with a question I've been sitting with for a while. Do you think people should have to pay their dues? It's one of those phrases most of us just agree with on some level without really thinking about it. You know, burn your stripes, start at the bottom. But lately I've been wondering if we all mean the same thing when we say it. Because when I hear someone tell another person they need to pay their dues, I find myself asking, what exactly do they mean by that? I have a little bit of a different take on it now, in hindsight in my late 40s, than I did in my 20s and 30s, for sure. For some people, paying your dues means learning the craft, gaining experience, developing judgment, becoming the kind of person who can handle greater responsibility. And then for others, paying your dues means waiting your turn, not asking for too much too soon, tolerating a little bit of disrespect, believing that some level of suffering is simply part of the process. And how you interpret that term paying your dues probably has a lot to do with your own experience, the career you entered, the mentors you had, maybe the systems that you learned inside of. So when someone tells you to pay your dues, are they talking about developing your capacity, or are they asking you to accept something that no longer serves you? That's the conversation I want to have today. I do believe there's real value in that idea of paying our dues, learning the craft, making mistakes and then learning how to correct them and avoid them. I think also with that we tend to earn greater responsibility through demonstrated competence. And some of those things can't be rushed. Experience matters, mastery matters, but somewhere along the way, I think many of us started confusing developing ourselves with proving ourselves, where learning became suffering. Patience became waiting to be chosen, humility became staying small. And maybe that's no longer paying our dues, that's really paying a price. Some examples that come to mind are staying underpaid after you've outgrown a role, maybe tolerating disrespect because that's just how that works. And I'm using air quotes when I say that. Or waiting for permission long after you've already earned something. Those things don't necessarily build capacity. Sometimes they just reinforce a story about what we think we have to endure before we're allowed to receive more. When I entered the workforce, I had terrible imposter syndrome. I lacked confidence. I was very overweight. I did not think very highly of myself. And I also walked into my career carrying a belief that work was supposed to be hard. Everyone hates their job, right? We're working for the weekend. Everyone's underpaid. Everyone's overworked. That's just adulthood. That's what we do. That's the story that I believed. So I never questioned it. I worked incredibly hard. I always gave more than was expected of me. And I never really asked for more because I didn't think I'd earned the right to ask. And you know, eventually I worked my way up. I earned some promotions. I started supervising other people. And then one day I found out what a new employee was making, my new employee. And I remember thinking, are you freaking kidding me? It took me years to get to that salary. And someone's just walking in the door, at least 10 years younger than me, newly out of school, making almost as much as I was. And I remember very vividly my reaction was, they haven't paid their dues. But after sitting with that, what I actually meant was they should have to pay the same price that I did. And looking back now, I'm like, good for her. Me now, I don't want other people to have to struggle simply because I did. I wasn't upset with them. I was really kind of confronting the fact that I had accepted things I never stopped to question. I believed that I had to start at the bottom because that's what you do. I believed struggle was part of earning success. I believed I had to prove myself before I was allowed to ask for more. So that reaction had very little to do with the person who'd just been hired. It had everything to do with me. And that's what I find so interesting about that phrase now, paying our dues. Because once you start pulling on the thread, this conversation isn't just about our career, it's about the stories that we carry. Stories like, I have to struggle before I deserve success. I have to prove myself before I can ask for what I want. I have to earn rest. I have to earn ease. And it gets me thinking things like, where else in our lives are we still operating from those beliefs? And who decides what paying your dues is supposed to look like? If we're talking about mastery, sure, experience matters, but who decides how much experience is enough? For one person, developing competence in that skill might take a decade. For someone else, it might take one or two years. It's easy to confuse time spent with growth or time suffering with earned wisdom. So I like the idea that paying our dues isn't about proving our worth, but it's about building our capacity. And those are two very different things. So if you're in a season where it feels like you're paying your dues, I'd invite you to ask yourself: is this process helping me become more capable? Or am I continuing to pay a price that I've already paid? And if you find yourself feeling irritated that someone else isn't paying their dues, that someone got the promotion faster or the opportunity sooner or the salary you had to wait years for, that reaction is worth sitting with too. It's likely not about them at all. It's probably pointing you back to a price that you paid that maybe you never needed to. All right, I'm gonna leave it there super short and sweet this week. If this episode resonated with you, please share it. I'd love to get more like minded people in this space. Thank you so much for spending time with me today. I will chat with you next week.