Iman Oubou, Author of 'The Glass Ledge: How to Break Through Self-Sabotage, Embrace Your Power, and Create Your Success,' joins ChedHER to discuss what exactly the 'glass ledge' is and how to overcome negative self-perception.

chedHER

What The Glass Ledge Is and How To Overcome It

and our next guest has gone from beauty pageant queen to scientists, the entrepreneur to now helping women get past this glass ledge. I'm so happy to say joining us now is iman ubu author of the glass ledge, how to break through self sabotage, embrace your power and create your success, iman. Welcome to the show, I'm so excited to talk to you first tell our viewers what is the glass ledge and how is it different than the glass ceiling? Yeah, well thank you for having me. I'm so excited to be here and just like you said, unlike the glass ceiling, which refers to external barriers that many women have to face when they advance in the workplace, the glass ledge refers to internal battles or as I like to call them self imposed glass ceilings that may distort our belief of who we are and what we're capable of achieving. I've been many things in my life so far, I've been an immigrant and entrepreneur, a beauty queen, a scientist and now an author and in my effort to shatter glass ceiling after glass ceiling, I felt like I was internalizing a lot of the challenges I was facing as a reflection of my own potential or lack thereof. So I wrote the book um, and created this kind of concept around the glass leads to remind myself and other women that we do have the power to change our stories and circumstances faster than the outside world can change for us. Um, and I think what people don't realize is that a big part of the work being done around dismantling and deconstructing oppressive systems is the necessary analysis of oneself. It's very easy to point at people and say you've caused this trauma for me in this pain, but it's much more challenging to take an honest evaluation and objective evaluation of yourself and see how you also get in your own way. So that's really kind of what the premise of the book is about. And you hear that from women so much, Can you talk to me about your personal experience about that Glass Lederman? Yeah, well, I I definitely um experienced that a lot more when I launched my own business called sway Media. Um I think for me the biggest glass ledge or the large work that I needed to do the most was around my relationship with power. And um a lot of this self talk I was giving myself was quite negative about not being good enough to be in a room full of powerful people. And before I step into a meeting where I felt like there might be a power imbalance. I would always get in my own head and tell myself I'm not good enough or qualified or experienced to be at that meeting. And that ultimately sabotaged my own confidence and how I showed up in my meetings and how I showed up as a leader. Um I also really didn't see my femininity as a leader, um as a tool. I saw it as something I had to suppress to be taken seriously. Um and so these things like that for me, I had to realize that I was doing that to myself, But a lot of it was internalized because of what I went through. Um and the experiences I faced, what are some of the most common themes that you heard from women who are so hard on themselves. And a lot of the times self sabotage. Yeah. Well, I mean the the book has about 10 themes that I talked about. They're each they each dedicated that the chapter for each one. Um and so there's one is power. Of course, that's how I start the book because I think it's the most important um part of how we show up in life. And also basically it forms everything that you know, and we end up doing at work or in a personal life, so understanding your relationship with yourself and your relationship with other. Um and then also there's likability. Um so elevating our self worth by toning down the people pleasing. Um and there is appearance like I said, femininity for me was more of a tool and an asset that I did not really take in consideration early on in my career, there's authenticity. So authenticity. For me it's important to understand the difference between your authentic self and your adaptive self and when to lead with your authentic self and when to let your adaptive self step in and help you evolve and grow. I love that. So and other other themes are conflicts, confidence, balance, which I talk more about work life integration as opposed to balance um as well as conflict, competition, expertise and belonging. What are some tips you have for overcoming that negative self perception that so many people have, especially women? Well, I think it's important to realize that it's an ongoing process, It's not a one and one time thing and that you do and then you're done with it. Um it's an ongoing process of learning how to build your self awareness from the inside out. So really recognizing your self limiting beliefs, what are they, what is that negative self talk you tell yourself in the morning, how can you shift that to become more positive and also focus more on your strength. What are you good at? What do you think the value you bring to the table is? How do you lead with that as opposed to your self doubt? So really spending time with yourself and sitting in self reflection to be able to do the inner work needed to um create an unshakable conviction in how you show up in your life and in your work. Your book also features stories from these high profile successful women from across several industries who are some of these women, what are some of their stories you want? Yeah, Well I think one that we all know is Gretchen Carlson, She has been a very big mentor of mine. Um she's been a supporter of sway in our mission and her story. Um you know, I don't need to repeat it, but it's very inspiring because it also pioneered the Me Too movement in a way really being able to encourage more women to speak up um and speak up for other women as well, even though it might backfire for your career. I think it's very important because that's how we pay it forward and it takes a lot of courage and a lot of self awareness to be able to do that. Another one is Eboni K Williams who's an amazing woman and a friend of mine. She's also pivoted a lot of time in her career and I think she's one of the women that I admire the most because she leads with such authenticity and she's also got unshakable confidence that whatever life throws at her, she can handle it in such perfection. And so examples of these women also kind of show that what happens when you take control over your own path and show up in a way that you say I'm doing thing on this thing on my own terms, as opposed to letting the outside world lead my decisions and live up to their expectations. And I absolutely love that Now I have to ask what does success look like to you? I think for me it's pretty simple, it's waking up everyday feeling good about the woman I am and the one the woman I'm becoming, and also knowing that the work that I do matters and that it has somewhat of an important and positive impact in my community. What do you hope readers take away from your book? That, you know, I think that the post pandemic era is an era where where women are no longer fighting to bring down the external barriers, and it's the beginning of an era of a deliberate path of expanding our own perception of ourselves, because that's ultimately the most important important weapons to carry with us throughout our life experiences in our work. I can't wait to read your book. Thank you so much for your time iman ubu author of the glass ledge. How to break through self sabotage, embrace your power and create your success and be sure to grab your copy of the glass ledge. It's available now.