3 Common Success Missteps Emotional Sensitives Make

Whatever line of work you are currently in: business owner, work for a company, or stay-at-home parent, there is a gift. Something you are meant to learn about yourself from the experience.

I can look back on the different career choices I have had: teacher, counselor, stay-at-home mom, to now business owner/coach/working parent and see how each role provided an opportunity for the exact growth I needed at the time.

It is a bit comical knowing that the line of work I’ve chosen today involves me being personally rejected at times. (Me, the sensitive soul, that can cry at the drop of a hat!). When working with personal clients, I start out telling the individual or couple “there will be a time when you might not like me. You may even get angry with me.”

What I’ve learned is that the seeming rejection is actually the brink to transformation. Their ego will roar with blame and resistance, which is really their essence begging them to take responsibility for their life. Because I’ve learned to not take their feelings personally, I can guide them to recognize that what they have been fighting is a ghost within themselves. And when those dots are connected, a deep core shift occurs.

I truly believe being emotionally sensitive is one of the greatest gifts you can have. You have so much compassion for others and truly care on such a deep level.

At the same time, being emotionally sensitive comes with a big responsibility – to be clear of your own unhealthy attachments -especially if you are in service of others (from coach to parent!). If you don’t, you will be unconsciously seeking to have your own needs met through others and this will inhibit your success & happiness.

In each of the above roles I mentioned, there was a consistency to unhealthy attachments that I had to learn to overcome.

You Can’t Get Anything Wrong

For ES people, getting things wrong equates to double trouble. Not only do you have your own strong sense of disappointment but you overly experience other’s disappointment as well. The shaming you can do toward yourself is often plain mean. You wouldn’t be so harsh to another but somehow when it comes to yourself, you have the tendency to feel you should have known better. Rather than allow yourself to learn from the situation, you want to make it better, often at your expense. You then try to show up going above and beyond to meet everyone’s needs. While that seems like a great solution, you are setting yourself up to feel overwhelmed. True soul-utions cannot come through in a state of overwhelm. If unaware, you’ll remain feeling like you are stuck on a hamster-wheel treading faster and faster but not getting any better results.

Taking other people’s feelings personally

When others are upset, your unconscious thought is “I must have done something to cause this person to feel that way.” This is especially triggering for ES folks when you are directly blamed for another person’s negative emotional state. It is then up to you to fix them by doing something that would make them happier. One of the biggest aspects of emotional growth that will directly impact your ability to be successful is to learn emotional boundaries. Emotional boundaries means you are responsible for your happiness and others are responsible for their own happiness. This doesn’t mean we shove aside others feelings. It means rather than try to fix them, instead look for understanding. Through understanding, you can have compassion for why the other person feels the way they do, without it being your fault.

Defining yourself based upon external feedback

If you haven’t been able to create the success you desire – yet, do you feel that there is something wrong with you? For instance: If you don’t get praise or acknowledgment at work, do you think you aren’t doing that good of a job? If you don’t get the love you want back from your child, you believe you aren’t that good of a parent? If you don’t have clients or customers, do you question if you should be doing this line of work? The real issue is you are making other’s responsible for your self-worth and that is always a losing proposition. The emotional side of success is shifting from self-worth based on outcome to self-worth based upon who you intrinsically are and how you decide to show up in the world. That is when you will be living the true meaning of success!