Factors that Hold Women Back From Success and What to Do About Them

As women, there are numerous pitfalls, distractions, and obstacles we face in our professional lives. Some of these are self-imposed, while others are external and a result of societal norms, misunderstandings, and outright discrimination. While I feel strongly that the external factors must be addressed, I’d like to discuss those internal, self-imposed obstacles, and how to overcome them.  

I founded the Creating Your Success Plan (CYSP) system to help women become intentional about their careers and develop a strategic plan to reach their goals and aspirations. However, none of that work can be done if we let internal obstacles rule us. Those include the fear of failure, limiting beliefs, and the myth of perfection. In this article, I address each of these and discuss tactics to overcome them.

One of the primary factors that hold women back from achieving success is fear. Specifically the fear of failure. This can take many forms: doubting your ability to be successful in the first place; worrying that after you spend a lot of time and thought creating a strategic plan for your career, you won’t be able to make it happen; fearing criticism from others or the possibility that you’ll encounter obstacles along the way that will cause you to fail. 

Consider that failure isn’t the end. It’s actually a new beginning because whenever something fails or doesn’t work, we learn something, right? Some of the best and most useful lessons are learned by failing. Some of the most successful and innovative organizations actually value failure. Fail fast, fail often, and learn. That’s how we should frame failure. It’s really a GOOD thing. It might sting a bit, but you just need to learn the lesson failure is offering, then pick yourself up, dust yourself off, and try differently.

So, if one of your sticking points has to do with fearing failure…STOP IT. Embrace the possibility of failing because it will most definitely take you further down the road to eventual success!

Sometimes we are held back from success by what I like to refer to as limiting beliefs. Think about that for a minute. These are silent but toxic thoughts you might not even be aware of – they’re typically hidden deep inside your subconscious mind, and they’ve probably been in place, holding you back from success, for many years.

Somewhere deep down inside, you might think you don’t deserve success. That’s a big one many of us face. You might have seen a parent or other influential person in your life struggle to succeed, and subconsciously believe success just isn’t in the cards for you.

To help you determine if limiting beliefs might be impacting your success, let me describe how they can manifest in your life. Again, these are thoughts you are not aware of, so they show up in strange, stealthy ways. One woman I worked with found that she was continually sabotaging her career and wanted to stop, but didn’t understand what was going on. She would land an awesome job, quickly achieve impressive results, get promoted, and seem to be heading in the right direction. Then, systematically, and usually within two or three years, she would turn the situation into a negative experience. Suddenly, she would disconnect from her peers, become suspicious of her leaders, and decide that her job was awful and that she needed to leave.

This happened again and again, and she was finally getting tired of it. She started to realize that she was doing this to herself and jeopardizing her career by continually burning bridges.

But why?

We spent a good bit of time discussing this, and I asked her to think deeply and journal about why this might be happening. The result? She discovered that something her parents did to discourage her from following an idea she had when she was about 10 years old led her to think she didn’t deserve success. Wow. All those years living with that limiting belief! She dropped it, and from that point forward, her career has soared. 

If you find yourself feeling like you can’t be successful, take some time to sit with that and understand why. I’ll bet that if you really look at what might be holding you back, you’ll realize how silly it truly is. 

This is a huge issue for women. There are many perceived pressures on us to look perfect, walk and talk perfect, be the perfect partner, mom, daughter – the list goes on and on. In our professional lives, it’s even worse. We think, “if I can’t do it perfectly, what will they say about me?” “If I speak up and say the wrong thing, I’ll never live it down.” “What if I ask for that promotion and they laugh?” “If I ask for a raise, they might think I’m pushy.”

The impact this has on us is stifling, to say the least. We hold back, waiting to be sure we can “do it” perfectly, and miss opportunities time and time again.

If so, join me in taking action:

Since we are truly all in this together, it’s crucial to implement these tactics when addressing these obstacles to success. The strong, female-centered community at CYSP can help women as they navigate their current career and start down new paths. I firmly believe that 2021 is going to be a great year for women in business!