Cindy Esliger discusses the difference between being good at our jobs and being easy to work with in this episode. Self-awareness is the key to career growth, and it’s not just about knowing our strengths or how we like to work. It’s about understanding how our behavior impacts others and how we’re perceived. Cindy breaks down exactly what true self-awareness looks like and why it matters more than ever. The value of accepting feedback and being easy to work with are things many of us underestimate, but which will open more doors in the long run.

There are two types of people in the world: those who think they’re self-aware and those who actually are. Those who only think they are tend not to have any idea of the impact of their actions on others. Behavior blindness is real. Cindy outlines five unpleasant consequences of not paying attention to what it’s like to work with ourselves: 1. Stalled career growth, 2. Damaged relationships, 3. Lack of critical feedback, 4. Reputational damage, and 5. Missed opportunities. If we want people to want to work with us, we have to make it a painless experience.

Being easy to work with involves following instructions, being on time, and not making things harder than they should be. External self-awareness, knowing how we’re perceived, is just as important as internal self-awareness and knowing ourselves. Cindy shares five strategies to make self-awareness easier to build: 1. Compare perceptions with actual outcomes, 2. Ask for feedback early and often, 3. Be coachable, 4. Challenge our assumptions, and 5. Practice perspective-taking. We have the power to build reputations that open doors and make people want to work with us.

Resources discussed in this episode:

• Guide to Understanding Your Impact
• Astronomic Audio
• Confidence Collective

—

Contact Cindy Esliger

Career Confidence Coaching: website | instagram | facebook | linkedin | email

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Cindy Esliger explores regret, the unpleasant emotion we’d rather forget about that can actually help us grow and gain clarity. Regret isn’t a sign that something is wrong with us; it’s actually a sign that things matter to us. It alerts us to something that didn’t align or that still needs our attention. So if we learn to acknowledge regret, it can be a catalyst for transformation. Cindy offers insight into defining, understanding, and dealing with regret so it can become a useful tool in career advancement.

Regret tends to be quite uncomfortable, so we avoid revisiting it. However, there are consequences to not reckoning with our regret, and Cindy identifies four of them: 1. Career stagnation, 2. Chronic dissatisfaction, 3. Low self-trust, and 4. People-pleasing paralysis. Cindy points out that when we dare to examine our regrets, we can turn them into strategic fuel for career growth. She names three ways we can start: 1. Reflect on past regrets, 2. Anticipate potential future regrets before making a decision, and 3. Recognize the lessons in our regrets.

Author Dan Pink identifies four kinds of regrets: foundation regrets, boldness regrets, moral regrets, and connection regrets. Understanding these can help us realize that regret does not necessarily point to something done wrong, but rather that something was challenging or we were at a crossroads. Cindy shares five powerful ways to harness the value of regret without getting stuck in it: 1. Use the future self test, 2. Sort the decisions that actually matter, 3. Reframe mistakes as data points, 4. Set our own bar, and 5. Practice self-compassion. The goal is to work with our regrets instead of against them.

Resources discussed in this episode:

• Guide to Turning Regret Into Career Clarity
• Astronomic Audio
• Confidence Collective

—

Contact Cindy Esliger

Career Confidence Coaching: website | instagram | facebook | linkedin | email

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Cindy Esliger puts the spotlight on people-pleasing and conflict avoidance in the workplace, exploring how to stop playing small to please others. If we don’t define what we want from our careers, others decide what we deserve, and we end up settling for that. We deserve better, though, and Cindy explains the cost of staying silent about our needs. She offers ways to shift from reacting to responding, how to set boundaries without guilt, and how to communicate assertively.

There is a cost to simply going with the flow and refusing to make waves. Being easygoing isn’t a strength in every situation. We need to set our own boundaries and make our needs heard. Cindy outlines five of the most common consequences of not doing this: 1. Chronic resentment, 2. Identity stagnation, 3. Invisible contributions, 4. Doing great work just earns more work, and 5. Muddled communication. We’re conditioned to think that accommodating others makes us better colleagues, but what it actually does is teach others that our time and energy are up for negotiation.

If we’re feeling obliged to say yes, saying sure and rearranging our schedules, waiting to be recognized without advocating for ourselves, thinking our needs and wants are too much, or thinking people should just know what we need, then we’re already in the trap of people-pleasing and letting others decide our path. Cindy shares five strategies on how to ask for more without burning bridges in the process: 1. Shift from reacting to responding, 2. Name what we actually want, 3. Communicate clearly, 4. Set boundaries and stick to them, and 5. Repair, don’t resent. The key to change isn’t becoming louder or more aggressive; it’s in becoming more intentional.

Resources discussed in this episode:

• Guide to Laying Claim to What You Want
• Astronomic Audio
• Confidence Collective

—

Contact Cindy Esliger

Career Confidence Coaching: website | instagram | facebook | linkedin | email

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

In this episode, Cindy Esliger confronts self-doubt and explores what it takes to counteract it in our careers. Self-doubt shows up quietly, like a persistent undercurrent, and if we’re not careful it will chip away at our confidence while feeling logical. How do we reshape our response to self-doubt? Cindy discusses how a subtle but powerful mindset shift can lead to the kind of career growth we didn’t let ourselves believe was possible. Believing in ourselves is choosing to build the version of our career that we really want to experience.

When self-doubt takes hold of us, it appears as a slippery, sneaky voice that whispers we’re not ready or not qualified, and left unchecked, that limits our career growth. It convinces us to stay in our lane and keep quiet. There are systemic inequities at play and performance pressure that contributes to this doubt. But we sometimes can’t identify that it’s happening. So Cindy points out the five most common red flags that self-doubt may be showing up: 1. Waiting to be picked, 2. Discounting praise or deflecting credit, 3. Over-apologizing or hedging our ideas, 4. Passing on opportunities, and 5. Mentally beating ourselves up for not being perfect.

Cindy immediately counters these red flags with five effective strategies for combatting self-doubt: 1. Reframe failure as growth, 2. Get out of our head and into motion, 3. Focus on one brave action at a time, 4. Shape our mindset to be more encouraging, and 5. Practice a little positivity. Cynicism often feels safer because it protects us from disappointment, but Cindy urges us to believe in ourselves instead. After all, what do we have to lose? Countering self-doubt is about choosing to take action even when we don’t yet feel confident.

Resources discussed in this episode:

• Guide to Counteracting Your Self-Doubt
• Astronomic Audio
• Confidence Collective

—

Contact Cindy Esliger

Career Confidence Coaching: website | instagram | facebook | linkedin | email

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

In this episode, Cindy Esliger unpacks what burnout really looks like when we’re still functioning at a high level. Burnout doesn’t happen all at once; it sneaks in quietly. On the outside, everything looks fine, except it isn’t fine. The joy is gone, the spark isn’t there, and we’re barely holding it together. Cindy explains how to recognize the early warning signs of burnout, what the long-term personal and professional consequences can be, and how to step back from the brink of burnout. She wants us to reclaim control, protect our well-being, and build a version of success that doesn’t require continued self-sacrifice.

True burnout shows up as us continuing to do the job we’re paid to do until we simply can’t. We become completely physically and emotionally depleted, develop a detached and cynical attitude towards everything, and we desperately try to hide how ineffective we feel. We miss the signs of burnout until we finally realize we’re ready to collapse. Cindy draws on her personal experience with burnout to explain how it shows up incrementally, worms into every aspect of work, takes us down, and how the road to recovery is a very long journey.

The consequences of burnout are real, and Cindy points out five of the most common outcomes: 1. High-functioning depression, 2. Cognitive decline, 3. Damaged reputation, 4. Isolation and shame, and 5. Erosion of self-worth. There are strategies we can set in place to help avoid burnout, and Cindy identifies several. Overall, however, we may need to take stock of whether or not we’re in a toxic work environment or a career that simply doesn’t align with our values. Burnout recovery is possible, and we can choose to protect our well-being and success. Cindy is here to guide us through.

Resources discussed in this episode:

• Guide to Recognizing the Career Cost of Pushing Through
• Astronomic Audio
• Confidence Collective

—

Contact Cindy Esliger

Career Confidence Coaching: website | instagram | facebook | linkedin | email

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

In this episode, Cindy Esliger addresses perfectionism and why the drive to be perfect quietly sabotages us, fuelling procrastination and self-doubt. The pursuit of flawlessness seems like a noble quest, but it proves to be a cleverly disguised trap that delays progress and increases our stress. What is the alternative to perfectionism? Cindy explains that sustainable excellence is what we should strive for over perfection. It’s a balance of ambition with self-compassion that protects our mental health and rebuilds confidence.

Perfectionism becomes a loop that urges us to set impossibly high standards, feel anxious about meeting those standards, avoid the task due to the pressure we created, finally get the task done in a panic, and then, exhausted, still believe we could have done better. Flawlessness is damaging and drives us to constantly outdo ourselves. Cindy points out five ways in which perfectionism messes with our performance, well-being, and career growth: 1. Expectation, escalation, and burnout, 2. Mental health fallout, 3. Inconsistent performance, 4. Refusal to delegate, and 5. Plateaued growth.

Cindy advises that we shift our energy from being perfect to being more strategic. She explains intentional imperfection and how it involves choosing where to be excellent and where to be average on purpose. She offers five strategies for moving away from the perfectionism trap: 1. Use time, not outcome, to set boundaries, 2. Get honest about the trade-offs, 3. Practice planned procrastination, 4. Recalibrate what enough means, and 5. Intentionally choose where to excel. It’s okay to want to be great, but greatness doesn’t come from being perfect. It comes from showing up consistently and learning through missteps.

Resources discussed in this episode:

• Guide to Letting Go
• Astronomic Audio
• Confidence Collective

—

Contact Cindy Esliger

Career Confidence Coaching: website | instagram | facebook | linkedin | email

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

In this episode, Cindy Esliger discusses the pattern of catastrophizing that keeps us stuck in inaction and blocks career opportunities before we even give ourselves a chance to succeed. Catastrophizing - the anxious thought patterns that only allow us to imagine the worst-case outcome of any situation - is an exhausting form of self-sabotage that is keeping us stuck in place. But it can be disrupted, and Cindy breaks down how to identify when we’re engaging in catastrophizing, and how we can learn to challenge those thoughts before they drag us down.

What does catastrophizing look like? Cindy identifies the five most common cognitive distortions that feed our spiraling: 1. Catastrophizing, 2. Magnification, 3. All or nothing thinking, 4. Overgeneralization, and 5. Blaming. These distortions keep us locked in a loop of stress and stalled momentum. How do we know if we’re falling into these patterns? Cindy offers five red flags to watch for: 1. Avoiding new opportunities, 2. Overpreparing or aiming for perfection, 3. Reacting emotionally to changes, 4. Looping negative thoughts, and 5. Discounting our wins.

Catastrophizing is anticipating the worst that could happen without ever considering a neutral or even positive outcome. We need to learn to break the cycle. Cindy suggests practical strategies like a thought audit, reframing the situation, experimenting with action, and tracking our growth. Negative thought patterns don’t make us weak; they make us human. But they are survival strategies that have overstayed their welcome. We may not consciously choose to spiral, but we can consciously choose to overcome catastrophizing with Cindy’s guidance.

Resources discussed in this episode:

• Guide to Dismantling the Disaster Mindset
• Astronomic Audio
• Confidence Collective

—

Contact Cindy Esliger

Career Confidence Coaching: website | instagram | facebook | linkedin | email

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

In this episode, Cindy Esliger addresses the myth that managing people is the only way up the career ladder. We’re often told that stepping up into management is the only way to advance in our workplace, but shoving people into management roles unprepared can come with devastating fallout. Both the managers and employees find that the move exacts a painful toll. Cindy explains why it’s critical to rethink how careers can grow and employees can advance beyond people management. Leadership and success do not have to be synonymous with managing people.

Managing people requires a very different set of skills than most people imagine. Cindy breaks down four of the key things managers are responsible for: 1. Morale, 2. Performance, 3. Retention, and 4. Culture. As Cindy notes, “a great manager is in the trenches with their people, shaping how employees experience the workplace”, and not everyone is cut out to do this. We’ve all had bad managers, and they may have been people promoted into management positions without preparation, told that it was the only way to advance.

If we do end up in a management role, Cindy offers six strategies to add to our toolkits: 1. Have people create informal personal operating manuals, 2. Ask the right question, 3. Balance, 4. Practice presence and curiosity, 5. Brush up on conflict resolution and stress management skills, and 6. Set and enforce boundaries. But if we aren’t ready for managing people, Cindy urges us to ask where we can thrive and how we can make the biggest difference on an alternate path. Roles like Principal Engineer, Distinguished Scientist, and Senior Strategist are designed for those who want to deepen impact without taking on direct reports. The goal isn’t just climbing higher, it’s building the career we actually want.

Resources discussed in this episode:

• Guide to Redefining Career Growth Beyond Management
• Astronomic Audio
• Confidence Collective

—

Contact Cindy Esliger

Career Confidence Coaching: website | instagram | facebook | linkedin | email

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.