Hello everyone. Welcome to another episode of Maximize Your Career. I'm your host, Stacy Mayer. Super excited, as always, to be here with you again this week.

Before we get started, I want to give an extra special thank you to you as the listener. If you are somebody who has been listening to me for over a year, applying what I am teaching on this podcast, finally getting the recognition that you deserve, or maybe this is your first episode, or maybe you've been listening to me for a month and you're starting to resonate with what it is that I'm teaching on this podcast, whatever that is for you. I really want to say thank you and I want to acknowledge you. It's because of listeners like you that I am able to move forward on my mission of bringing more diversity to the leadership table by getting a thousand powerhouse corporate women promoted into senior level leadership positions each and every year worldwide.

And if you do what I am talking about on this podcast, you will start to see a difference. You will start to go from under recognized, underappreciated and underpaid to a valued member of the leadership team.

And speaking of shout outs, I really want to thank those of you as well who have taken the time to review my podcast on iTunes. This not only helps me understand what it is that's so valuable and what's working for you as a listener of this podcast. But it also helps other people find the podcast on iTunes, which is so, so, so important. So speaking of, I want to thank Ravi for his five star review. He says:

"Every episode has provided me so much clarity and what I feel I am experiencing in my career. Stacy provides a thorough analysis and is quite point on to various situations she teaches in her course or what others have gone through. I have been applying many of these tools in my day to day. When I say each episode hits home, I feel as though Stacy and guests are talking directly to me. This podcast continues to be so valuable to me as I navigate the waters of trying to be an executive while acting as the Executive Ahead of Time."

Thank you, Ravi, so much for that five star review. I so appreciate you and I am so thankful that this podcast is giving you the tools and the insight so that you know what you can do differently.

In today's episode, I'm going to be talking about some of the challenges that you might be facing when it comes to advancing your career. And it's not always having a bad boss. You could be your own worst enemy. And I know we've thought about this before and we realize: 'You know what? It's not you, it's me. I'm the problem. I'm the problem and the solution.'

This is good news. So all of that is available for you. And we're going to talk a lot more about that in today's episode.

So thank you again for all of my loyal listeners. If you haven't reviewed the podcast yet, go to StacyMayer.com/iTunes and leave us a review today. I would absolutely love to hear it and I would love to share a thank you of your review on the next podcast episode. So please go there and do that after you listen to today's episode.

So the first reaction for a lot of clients and when I have somebody reach out to me who feels stuck in their career, it's that a lot of things from the outside are happening to them. So they're swamped, they're overworked, they feel frustrated. They're not getting the right projects. They don't have the right boss. They don't work for the right organization. They're not respected. So it's a lot of external factors. A lot of things that are happening to them.

Now, I'm not saying that these things aren't valid. They're extremely valid. And it's good to note them as circumstances and to see them. But we've also seen the opposite be true for people. And so I really want you to think about this. So you've seen people get ahead at an organization that is also laying off people.

So you've seen your co-worker get promoted while other people are getting laid off. You've seen this happen. You have seen people skip level. Jump two levels and get a promotion. You have seen people get plucked out and pulled in to other departments. You have seen people get called on executive team meetings. For their ideas and to present something and you're like: 'Wait a second, what about me? I'm right here. You guys said I was high potential. Pick me. Pick me.'

You've seen this. And it can be extremely frustrating. But what I want you to know is that it's not your fault. It's not because of where you work. It's not because you have a bad boss. It's not because there's this terrible situation in the world. It's actually because they're doing something different than what you're doing. They are taking steps to deliberately manage their career and their life. And as a manager, whether you're a senior manager, director or even a vice president, if you're not focusing on what it's going to take to truly get that voice at the table, to truly start to make that bigger impact at your organization, if you're not actually doing the tools and the steps that I talk about on my podcast, you are going to continuously find yourself stuck. You're going to continuously find yourself getting called on in the middle of the night to put out fires. You're going to keep getting thanked for all of the projects and the ways that you stepped up to the plate. And it's going to feel like a big slap in the face because you want to get paid for your ideas and not just the hours that you work.

So everything that I teach on my podcast is all about getting you that real impact that you actually want to be making at your organization so that you're part of the bigger leadership conversations so that you can actually change. Your company from the top down. You can implement those changes, you can be the change that you want to see at your organization, that is what I'm talking about here. And so when I say you are the problem and the solution, I really, really mean that. You have the capability in your hands yo make a different choice right now to do something different. And in today's episode, I want to say that that's something different is actually. Stop tolerating excuses. Stop tolerating bad behavior from your self. You are better than that, you are the executive. You are ready for a higher executive leadership role. And the way that you're going to prove that to yourself is you are going to stop tolerating your own crap.

And I'm going to show you what that means and how to stop doing it. In today's episode. So I came up with the idea of today's episode, actually, because I kept hearing these excuses inside of my Executive Ahead of Time program.

And they really are just excuses. Which is: 'I know what I need to do. I'm just not doing it.' And you've probably said this before. And I've said this before, especially when it comes to weight loss. I've thought: 'Well, I know what I need to eat. I'm just not doing it.' But that thought in and of itself, that thought: 'I know what I need to do, but I'm just not doing it,' doesn't it actually get me closer to my goal of losing weight? It keeps me exactly where I am. And not only that, it probably sends me backwards.

So once you can make a decision to stop tolerating bad behavior from yourself, you are going to notice huge, huge changes, You're going to see yourself being able to do things that you never even thought were possible, just simply by asking yourself, what am I tolerating right now? And stop it, just stop it.

Stop tolerating the crappy behavior. So when we're looking at crappy behavior, it falls under three categories. These are the three main areas. And I think it's a good way to look at it for yourself. Usually when I see corporate leaders tolerating bad behavior, they fall under indecision. They fall under lack of control and isolation.

So what does indecision look like? What you will know that you are tolerating indecision if you are saying things like: 'I just don't know what to do next. If I just had a better idea of where I wanted to go, then I could get there, even if I did get a meeting, I don't know what I would say. It's just really hard for me.' Each one of these are just excuses that keep you in this tolerating bad behavior from yourself, and if you're still listening to me, then that means that you're at least willing to stop tolerating bad behavior.

So the first step right now is to identify what sounds like you. So you're going to as I'm giving you these examples, you're going to start to say: 'Ok, that's me, that's me.'

So the second one is lack of control. So if you're tolerating lack of control, that looks a little bit like: 'Now is just not the right time for me. My company is just not that type of company. I know what I need to do, I just need to do it.' So that's saying: 'it's outside of my control. I don't have control here. When there's a better time then maybe, but not now.'

And then the third category is isolation. So it means I'm trying to do everything myself. So my boss just doesn't like me. I need more resources. Our culture is too political to do XYZ. That means that you are tolerating figuring it all out by yourself. It means that you are tolerating isolation.

So the first goal of this podcast episode is for you to start to recognize what crappy behavior are you tolerating. So get get familiar with your excuses. We're not going to beat ourselves up about it. I actually find this extremely humorous. When I could laugh at myself and I can say: 'Oh my God, Stacy, there you go again. You're just tolerating your excuses.'

Now I have the choice to do something about it. So let's say that you are tolerating indecision, so you just find yourself in that whole 'I don't know what to do' category. I just don't know what to do. I'm not sure what to do next. I just don't know what I want.

So you're in that category and you're just fine yourself. That's the dominant category. What are you going to do? Make a decision. Senior executive leaders are making decisions all the time, big decisions that have big, costly outcomes. Both positive and negative.

So when we're talking about becoming the Executive Ahead of Time in terms of deliberately managing our career, we are also learning how to make executive level decisions. So you're going to take something like: 'I just don't know what to do next,' and you're going to answer it for yourself. You're going to say: 'Well, if I did know what to do, what would it be?' It's that simple.

So the first is recognize I'm going to stop tolerating bad behavior for myself and then you're going to frickin make a decision. 'If I did get that meeting, I don't know what I would say.'

Figure out: 'Well, what would I say? I don't know, Stacy. I still don't know what I would say.'

Well, what does somebody else say in the meeting? Maybe start with that.

And the great news is that you don't even actually have to say the thing. I'm just wanting you to make a decision about what you would say. So we're just taking these little baby steps forward that are going to start to help us see the light at the end of the tunnel, start to find our way out of this tolerating behavior. Because you guys are all really powerhouse leaders and the time is now to just stop it. If you were tolerating lack of control, like: 'This is just not the right time, or this is not the right company, or if I had a better boss, or I know what to do, I just need to do it.' Like everything is outside of your control. 'After covid, after we get back in person.'

No, you are regaining control now. And the mantra that I want you to try on for size here is that you are always, always in control. You control yourself, we never control other people. That's just not even true. No matter how much we change our own behaviors, we can't control what other people do, but we can control how we behave.

We can control the shitty behavior that we are tolerating from ourselves. So even if it's I know what to do, I just need to do it.

Here's the deal. I actually did this recently with weight loss. Because I found myself making this excuse over and over and over again and just saying: 'You know what? I know what I need to do. I just need to eat better.' And I've decided to stop it, and I was actually going to make a commitment for one week and I decided to make a plan of what eating better looked like.

And I was going to write out everything that I was going to do to actually start to eat better. And all that that happened was I just decided to stop tolerating the excuse for myself and just start taking action. Even the smallest, simplest actions create results.

The only thing that doesn't create results is spinning and feeling out of control. So you have to find the ways that you are in control and start going after them. If your boss is it supporting your promotion, you're probably focusing on the wrong person.

Let's not fix that one person who doesn't like us the most. Let's figure out who else supports us, what other advocates we can create. Let's start showing up stronger at the leadership team meetings so that we can start to be seen as that executive so other people can start speaking up on our behalf. That is what you can control. You can always control something.

And so I just want you to start to think about what that something is and then isolation. This one is so, so, so good. If you find yourself sticking your feet in the mud, feeling very stubborn, trying to figure it all out yourself, you are just tolerating isolation. We cannot do this alone. Senior executive leadership positions require that you rely on other people if you could succeed at the c-suite level by doing it all yourself. You would actually be doing it already? The problem is that you can't do it all yourself, because if you were in the c-suite and you were trying to do it all yourself, you would be working 80 hour weeks. And you're not interested in that because you actually want to have something outside of your career. You want to give back to the community. You want to be there for your family. You're doing this at your work for a reason to have a more fulfilling life, not to just put everything you have into your work. So you don't go after it. That is an example of tolerating isolation.

So what I want you to do instead is you were going to start to figure out what are those resources that I have available to me right now? Who are those supporters? Who are those advocates you're going to start to do 15-Minute Ally Meetings, you're going to be building up this leadership foundation so that you are constantly surrounded by other people who lift you up, who encourage you, who help you become a bigger, bolder, badder in a good way a version of yourself. Because you are so incredibly powerful and you are ready to go for those senior executive leadership positions. You just have to stop tolerating bad behavior for yourself.

So this was a short and sweet episode because I really... That's it. It's really that simple. Make the decision to stop tolerating bad behavior for yourself and then start moving forward. So whether you're tolerating indecision, lack of control or trying to do it all yourself, whatever that is, you can make the choice today to move forward in a different direction.

You are ready. You are amazing. Now you just have to start using these tools that I teach to get yourself into that senior executive leadership position.

Thank you so much for listening. And I'll see you next week.

Bye!