By admin 
It’s time to stop being so humble at work. When it comes to forging a career path in a moment that is shaped by increasing flexibility, pervasive layoffs, and less company loyalty than ever, following the old rules and quietly waiting for opportunities to be awarded will no longer cut it.
Wildly counterintuitive
The reality is that today, career success requires us to be more outspoken, vocal, and self-directed. For many of us, this feels wildly counterintuitive and deeply uncomfortable. As elder millennial and Gen X workers, we were raised inside of cubicles and taught to keep our heads down, assimilate, and pursue a slow climb up a prescribed career ladder.
Meanwhile, we watch as our younger counterparts boldly start their own companies, juggle side hustles, draw clear boundaries at work, and build their identities online. I coach executives all the time who privately express distaste at seeing professionals muddy the boundaries of what we are, and are not, allowed to say, express, or expect in work settings. It appears too entitled, or tone deaf, for these workers to think and talk about their needs and wants so much.
But the truth is, many of us struggle to self-advocate simply because we’ve lost track of what we need and want in the first place. Years of seeing this behavior as selfish has kept us locked in place until we eventually crash, crack, or simply lose ourselves altogether. It’s time for a reframe.
Getting what we want
Here is what Gen Z knows, and what we all need to learn: When we take the time to explore and advocate for ourselves more vocally at work, it helps us and our colleagues to succeed and thrive.
Running too hard up someone else’s ladder will inevitably lead to burnout and helps uphold those outdated norms that need to change and evolve. Meanwhile, knowing ourselves and pursuing what we want will ultimately lead to a healthier workplace culture that endorses individual needs and identities, rather than stifles them.
As leaders, this is something we need to practice as well as preach. So, for anyone who feels a little queasy about this change and unsure where to begin, I offer you this list of four ways to be more selfish at work.
Step 1: Revisit your past desires
The very best way to begin this process for anyone who feels adrift or unsure what they want in their careers is to look backwards and revisit the past.
I find that this is helpful because, quite often, career success makes us feel disconnected from who we are and what we really want to do. We get so fixated on one trajectory or stuck in the industry or skill sets we have cultivated that we lose sight of what’s even possible beyond that.
So, I always begin with my clients by going back to some of the earliest moments in their lives. We discuss questions like:
What were you like around age 10? What did you want to be and why?
Where did you go to college? What did you study? Why?
Where did you almost go? What did you almost study? Why did you change paths?
We are looking for early interests, then breaking them down to examine what it was that piqued your curiosity. I want to know what it was about a place or topic or theme that appealed to your identity, or what forces and beliefs and obligations led you to pick one thing over another.
Revisiting these old passions and big decisions help remind you what has motivated you in the past, and the insights will be revealing because of what has changed, or what has stayed the same.
Free writing, talking with a friend or colleague, or bringing these questions into therapy can help immensely. Make sure to take notes on observations and patterns that emerge.
Step 2: Explore favorite moments
Moving forward in time, I like to ask people to consider their favorite days or moments at work and in life. This isn’t about what you are doing so much as connecting the activity to the way it can make you feel.
Questions to consider might include:
Describe a typical favorite day at work. The kind that leaves you buzzing.
What are you doing? Are you alone? In groups? A combination?
What is your ideal weekly cadence? Is it a mix of live and virtual? High stakes and low key?
When you design your perfect day off to spend alone, what are you doing?
Why? Has this changed over time?
Personally, I did this exercise at a moment when I felt irretrievably stuck in my job and unable to divine my next steps. What it revealed for me was that, while I love people, I dislike managing them. I had conflated the two for a long time, in part because of my preconceived notions of what career success looks like.
When left to my own devices, I’d rather spend my work time alone, and my personal time with people. That insight helped unlock new angles on my goals and needs going forward.
Step 3: Seek out new inspiration
The biggest limitation that many of us face in designing our own career path is simply a lack of imagination and inspiring examples. The further we go in one industry, company, or trajectory, the more entrenched we become in one version of “how it’s done.”
So, as you spend time revisiting your past and becoming reacquainted with your desires, make sure to cast your networking reach wider to see what others are doing. Invite in new thinking, pay attention to other modes of working, and ask lots of questions.
There are two great ways to get started: First, brainstorm. Think of people whose work lives and job situations you admire. Maybe it’s a solopreneur you know, or a friend who works in a field you covet, or someone who has achieved a work-life balance you always pined for.
Reach out to these people. Ask them how they make it work, how they address the things you worry about most: money, rates, income, fluctuations. We are always constructing obstacles that stop us from pursuing big dreams. Your goal is to name those, then talk yourself through them by seeing how others have tackled these barriers.
Second, turn to LinkedIn. Curate your feed. Find people who do the kind of work you might enjoy or secretly admire and follow them. Follow who they follow. Expand your universe with people in different fields or situations and engage with them in the comments, build relationships.
Seek out advice from these people, too. Invite in new ways of thinking. It will be revealing, I promise.
Step 4: Speak up at work and beyond
As your aspirations and ideas become clearer, start putting your needs and wants in writing. Think about one step you can take to get you closer to where you want to head and start asking at work for a small but significant shift.
Maybe to begin, you just need some space. Consider a relocation, or a change in work schedule. Maybe you need accommodations to work remotely more often, or you want to try a new project on the side to build a new skill set and pilot something.
Over time, with each ask, you’ll get stronger at self-advocacy. Each time you challenge a rule that’s been set or implied about what you can and can’t have or do, you will increase your belief that you can design things in a way that works better for you.
New surroundings
For me, my first big change after nearly a decade in one job was to physically move. After my family relocated, I found it easier to dream of other things I’d like to change, as if I had released myself from a fixed sense of who I was and what I could become. I also found myself getting less afraid to try things or ask for things that I had assumed I couldn’t have.
Step by step, I left my job, built my own business, started speaking more, and built a platform to write in a way I’d always longed for. It didn’t happen overnight. But with each step I regained my confidence in my instincts and found it easier to tap into what I want and need.
Give it a try. Listen to yourself. Examine your past. Surround yourself with fresh thinking and people who believe in you. And start getting much more selfish at work.
Maybe you’ll surprise yourself with where it leads you.