Working for Google and Uber STILL didn't make me feel good enough...

Growing up I was always fairly street smart, good in social situations and at solving real life problems 🏃‍♂️.  But as a result of being bottom of the class in an elitist French system and getting bad grades throughout most of my teenage years, I developed insecurities around my intellectual capabilities 😳.

I cultivated this limiting belief that I was intellectually inferior to most of the people around me, that I was just not good enough 😓.

When I got my first internship at Novo Nordisk (a big Danish multinational), I was so proud that I’d always make sure my work badge was visible while travelling on the train 😎. 

I had business cards made (as an intern with absolutely no need for them 🤦) and relished any opportunity to tell people where I was working. Even though it didn’t change how I felt deep down, it definitely made me feel better about myself and how I thought other people saw me. 

This was the first time that I started to identify myself with the company that I worked for. I continued to do this throughout my career, every company became a huge part of my identity and gave me a sense of being good enough 😅.

Surrounded by so many top performers, it was very easy to feel like an imposter but as long as I was working for a big corporate company I felt that (at least on the outside) people would think more highly of me and it acted as protection from how I felt about myself 👷. 

This worked for a while but I ended up being completely consumed by corporate life 😣.  I didn’t accept that there was a world outside and everything revolved around the companies I worked for (for a few years I’m pretty sure everyone in my family got Uber or Google swag for Christmas 😳🎄).

I also thought it wasn’t possible to grow any faster in my career than what was acceptable within company standards. Do the work, get promoted every few years and that’s the way to grow. The only other option would be to go to another big company 🏛️🏛️.

It’s like I had Big Company tunnel vision 🚇.  As long as I was working for one of the big tech giants I would always be safe because other companies would always want to poach me. And it also temporarily covered up my belief of not feeling good enough 🙉.

Have you ever had “Big Company TUNNEL VISION”???? (Totally just made that up.) Or been so committed to a certain way of thinking that you lose yourself in the process?

The good thing about these companies however was that they also provided me with a set of values and helped me to form short and long term performance goals 🎯 (Which was also the first time I was introduced to these concepts).

The company values became part of my identity and I was growing/learning loads professionally. This felt great for a while, I had a purpose, I felt taken care of, safe but after some time I started to feel like I was drinking the Koolaid and that deep down I was just another cog in the machine ⚙.

Unconsciously I think I knew that there was more to life than dedicating yourself to a company that says they loves you and that you are the one, but deep down you know that they could replace you in a heartbeat 💔.

Instead of listening to my intuition and afraid of showing weakness in a high performing environment, I started working harder, going after promotions faster, which was the perfect opportunity for them to squeeze as much out of me as possible 🍋. 

I took on way too many projects and continued to play the corporate political game. Although everyone around me was happy with my work, I knew I wasn’t doing my best as I was stretched too thin 😓.

Even worse, this made me feel like an imposter because everyone around me was producing high quality work with seemingly no effort. 

So the solution was to work even HARDER, RIGHT????  

NOOOOPE...I ended up pushing myself so hard that one day I couldn’t look at my screen anymore 😵. 

I had so much anxiety from trying to keep the boat afloat and not showing signs of struggle. If I did, it would compromise my chances of getting promoted and confirm that I wasn’t good enough.

I could feel how unhealthy this was for my body so I went to the doctor and she told me I was having a burnout💥.  

I was really embarrassed because it was a term that I thought made me look weak and non resilient. I cared more about what other people would think of me than the fact that my body was telling me to stop 😳. But my only option at this point was to stop working, and so from one day to the next I went on sick leave and stopped for a bit 😐.

After a month on sick leave I got approached for a job as a freelancer. The idea of leaving my safe corporate job for a better paid gig but with no security was pretty scary, but after a lot of deliberation I decided to take the leap 😅.

Even though it was a brave decision and took a lot of courage, I did it knowing that I had a 1 year contract with another big company #SmallSteps🚶‍♂️. 

But this was still the first time that I began to detach myself from the corporate world ☝. I really started to see things differently, I was no longer living by the rules of another entity 🙏.

I started to distance myself from my work and create my own identity. Unlike before, my work week was now actually 40h (anything more I would charge extra), which opened up so much time for me to take on new hobbies like Brazilian Jiu Jitsu, Yoga and Reading 🥋  🧘‍♂️  📚.  

I started to experience growth outside of work, feeling the benefits of living a healthier lifestyle and connecting with my body 🌱.  I realised the importance of my emotional environment, became less consumed by corporate gossip and politics, which led to me drastically improving relationships with my family but also my friends outside of work 💙.

I now remember to call my mum at least once every two weeks instead of once every two months 😳. 

It’s like I finally left this bubble and realised that there are so many growth opportunities out there. And not only professional but also spiritual, intellectual and physical.

I also realised how little I actually hear about these companies in the news, compared to when I worked there and it felt like they were the center of the world 🌎.

The more I invested in myself, the more I realised that I could achieve absolutely anything. I was fully in control of how clever or how “good enough” I was and not condemned by what I or others thought of myself in the past. 

I started to dream bigger and this led me to transform in ways that I didn’t think were possible 🙏.  

With this newly found belief in myself, I finally did what I had been talking about for many years. I took an “Eat, Pray Love” year off and went travelling around Asia with the ultimate goal of “Finding myself” (not sure I could be any more Julia Roberts even if I tried) 💅.

It turns out, however, that travelling is not as relaxing as you might think. Always on the move, always looking for the next place to stay.

I was also hoping to come back as some kind of zen buddhist monk but as Corona hit and I had to fly back, I realised that I hadn't meditated a single time during the trip 😓.

Refusing to give up on my goal, I spent the next 5 months by myself on the Isle of Wight. My very own silent retreat, where I decided to take on a bunch of crazy challenges.

I completely failed to learn how to handstand 🤸 and lasted only 2 weeks in Wim Hoff’s breathing / cold showers program.

However, after loads of trial and error I managed to triple my reading speed 📈, read over 50 books 📖, improve my memory 💾  (ask me 100 decimals of pi), teach myself the piano 🎹, went from not touching my toes to easily putting both hands on the ground 🙌... and to top everything off I finally found out what I wanted to do with my life 🎳.  

There are still times when old doubts about myself creep in, but then I remind myself of all I have achieved and that I’m exactly where I need to be at this moment.

I tell myself how we often overestimate what we can do in a year but underestimate what we can do in ten 🤔.

It was only when I started investing in my True self as well as in my Corporate self that I triggered the chain of events that led me to all these new possibilities and opportunities 🏄‍♂️

I genuinely believe that both can coexist and that you don’t need to take a year off to achieve this, but focusing only on your Corporate self will do more harm than good in the long run. 

Because of this I’m now on a mission to get people to invest into their True selves 🏋️‍♂️. I want people to experience the feeling that anything is possible, that there is no limit to what they can achieve in their personal and professional lives. 💪🏻 

I want people to not only feel good enough every day but LIMITLESS!

🏋️‍♂️ IS THIS something you want to experience more of in your life? 🏋️‍♂️

Are you learning that language? Reading that book? Losing that weight? Taking on that new hobby? Going for that promotion? 

GIVE ME a 🏋️‍♂️ emoji if you are INVESTING in your TRUE SELF!!!