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Transcript below:
Erica D'Eramo 0:10
Hello, and welcome to the Two Piers Podcast. I'm your host, Erica D'Eramo. And today we have a guest joining us to speak about "The Success Wound." So her name is Brooke Taylor. She's a transformational career coach for women and a former marketing leader at Google. She was named a top Career Coach by the Australian Business Journal, and has served as in-house coach for female executives at Google, McKinsey, and Uber. She's also been featured in Forbes Entrepreneur, Business Insider and Body and Soul. So we're quite lucky to have her joining us today and sharing all of her insights. She's joining us from Los Angeles where she lives with her husband, and we can't wait to hear what she has to say.
So thank you, Brooke, for joining us today.
Brooke Taylor 1:15
I'm so excited to speak with you. Oh, thanks, Erica.
Erica D'Eramo 1:17
Yeah. So, you know, beyond your very impressive resume, just tell us a little bit about yourself and kind of what brought you to this work.
Brooke Taylor 1:27
So I grew up in the Bay Area and Silicon Valley before it was the Silicon Valley that we know today. Before it was like self driving cars and free lunch, it was this area where the nerdiest rock, like the nerdiest programmers from around the world could come and become rock stars, they could become these godlike figures and my parents were moved to Silicon Valley, through the kind of the tech industry, and I grew up with a lot of the daughters of people who built the internet. And what I learned from that cultural upbringing was that success and achievement was really the pinnacle of one's worth. And if you could dream it, you could do it. And there's a lot of benefit that comes from that, especially being, you know, a, daughters of the second wave feminist movement as having so many opportunities. But I would say coupled with this intense pressure that I felt to succeed, it really manifested in something that I call manic ambition, this frenzied, frantic need to succeed at all costs. And I loved getting good grades, I love getting gold, gold stars, and I took that gold star chasing mentality through to college and into the corporate world. And like, you probably know, and so many of your listeners know the corporate world looks like a ladder in the same way that our educational systems look like a ladder. It's designed to make you climb and chase accolades and achievement. And that took me really far. I did well at Google. And whenever I would go to a cocktail party, I felt great saying that I worked at Google, it gave me that hit of you know, okay, well, people automatically know that I'm smart, I'm intelligent, and I'm capable, great. And yet inside, I felt this emptiness, this kind of void of not good enough of, they're going to figure out that despite the fact that my work at Google and I have this title, secretly, I'm not worthwhile at all. And that that pain that comes from mistaking my success for my self worth, and this kind of unconscious belief that I'm only as good as my last piece of feedback, that is called The Success Wound. And that success wound is what drove me to chasing external validation over my own voice. And I see that you're nodding a lot. And I'm wondering if you can relate to that.
Erica D'Eramo 4:05
So not only do I personally relate to that, but I just see that in so many of my clients, particularly in women, that, you know, we've kind of been on, like the railroad tracks, you know, we've sort of been on the train and just kind of following these tracks and, and the path has been laid out, we just need to reach for that next rung. And then there's a certain point that comes and I think it's different for everyone, where we start to question what success really means. And if we're not questioning it, hopefully there's a coach somewhere in folks' lives when they realize that they're no longer fulfilled that is asking them like, "What do you mean when you say success? What do you mean when you when you picture these validations? Like, what does that give you?" And yeah, I would say it permeates so this concept permeates so many of our conversations around careers. And I, I would be interested in hearing too, my personal observation is I see this much more in women than I do in men. I'm not saying it, it only follows a gender bi... and I'm using a gender binary here, I'm not saying it only follows gender, but I definitely think there's gender elements to it. And I have my theories, I'd really like to hear what you have to say about that.
Brooke Taylor 5:27
I found the same thing that you have found that in high achieving women, specifically, the success wound is very prevalent. And there are a couple of reasons for that. I think the first is that when women were granted the ability to open a checking account in their own name, and it became more aware that women could ascend to powers of position and they should ascend to powers of the positions of power, they're actually became this unconscious. And in some ways, very blatant requirement that women ascend as fast as possible. And that there are only so many positions open for a woman in power. So then you add another layer of competition, and then you layer on child, having children. And okay, we need to ascend before we have kids, or when we do have kids, we need to work twice as hard as the men because we have these other childbearing, you know, responsibilities at home. So it's layer upon layer. And what it really is reproducing in us is patriarchy, but just in an entirely different way. We are repeating the same internalized patriarchal systems, through our desire to climb a ladder, that is very much a capitalistic patriarchal ladder, and be part of a system and a game and wanting just to succeed at it in that way. So I think that this, there are multiple layers of this in the same way that, you know, there are multiple layers of, you know, certain biases, and certain unconscious biases due to intersectionality, I see that success wound having an intersectional impact. And then if you want to even layer on in children of immigrants, there is an even deeper successful there, because success really does mean to survive. So there are so many layers to this.
Erica D'Eramo 7:26
Yeah, I think that kind of scarcity and that sort of like forced competition for those few slots also adds this layer of pressure around like you representing so much, right? Especially if you're sort of one of the only in the room. And this is, you know, gender or ethnicity or name, the characteristic if you are one of the only you have that perceived weight often on your shoulders of kind of representing everyone else that's waiting behind you to succeed as well. And I think I see that a lot that felt responsibility, regardless of whether it is real, or there not.
Brooke Taylor 8:08
Absolutely, absolutely. For me, it was very unconscious, I went to a very liberal, all girls school in the Bay Area that was designed initially hundreds of years ago to feed into Stanford, which is a beautiful, unnecessary, you know, thing to educate young women to get them into STEM. I would say though, there that again, there was that added pressure of your being given all of these opportunities and sky's the limit, but holy shit, sky's the limit. And here's the ladder. And here's the one that you need to climb. And so what I found in my own life was that I actually had to get to work to look at my success wound and start to separate my identity from my achievement and really examine the ladders that I'm climbing, the systems that I've bought into around what success looks like, internalized patriarchy, looking at the intersection of capitalism and success and power and say, "Is this a system that I want to be a part of?" And the answer for me was, was no, and it but it actually took me to do the deep work and heal some of the traumas from "lowercase t trauma" and in some cases "uppercase T Trauma," around my self worth, and help to reacquaint myself with my with my true self, True Self with a capital S and ask her what she wanted and what she needed in order to thrive. And the answer to that, for me was to exit a corporate system. And yet I still had this deep desire to help other women to ascend to positions of power, but from an aligned place, from a place of here's how I'm going to bring my leadership vision into the workplace from a place of authenticity and truth and alignment and consciousness, rather than from just playing out the same unconscious kind of patriarchal ways of leading.
Erica D'Eramo 10:08
Yeah, that's, I mean, that's really fascinating. I like the framing there around, you know, almost like walking alongside people and helping them. And it, recently while researching an article about Women Helping Women, there was a lot of research in there around the the hierarchical systems that we find in sort of male social socialization, versus the flatter structures that we find in female socialization from like young ages. And I'm making broad generalizations here. But there tends to be a lot more kind of collaboration amongst young girls, and the types of games that they're presented with, and the types of games that they end up playing, versus sort of that hierarchical top dog. More sports like mentality that we see with boys. And so I, this the verbiage around kind of, like existing in the hierarchy existing in the patriarchy, and helping others to survive it. And yet, interacting with it from a place of kind of equals or side by side or lifting those women up, hopefully, with one day us being able to kind of reassemble that structure at some point, right?
Brooke Taylor 11:30
Absolutely. Yeah, that's that's the higher vision and goal is to have corporations and organizations and institutions whose goal it is to disseminate power among us rather than power over others. And that's kind of how I define patriarchy is power over, rather than power amongst in between. And so, you know, this, this notion of a success wound, it can occur within an individual, but it can also occur as an illness within an organization too. And you see that, especially in corporations, sometimes political structures where their main motive or mandate is profit and power, as opposed to putting the human at the center and asking and having the organization ask itself, what does success mean to us from a place of impact and values? And so I mean, really, that's kind of the first step that I would ask everyone to take, which is diagnosing your success wound and asking yourself, "What did success look like in my family of origin? And then my cultural upbringing? And what did I learn about success and achievement in my worth, when I succeeded, and when I failed? And what have I internalized then about my worth, based on success, success, achievement and failure?" And that is really the first step to diagnosing and then ultimately healing your success wound.
Erica D'Eramo 12:57
Yeah, there's a lot in there, right? There's a lot of barriers between our current consciousness and then being able to reach that point of diagnosis, because so much of this is tied up in identity, like you mentioned, values that we have absorbed throughout our lives, maybe not even consciously about, like how we assess our own value. So I love the questioning of sort of, like, where did this come from? Who gave who gave you this belief? Where did you inherit it from? And is it still serving you? Right? Because I, as you mentioned, with survival, I think sometimes shame can get in the way too of us accepting, like a different path. If we feel that maybe that wasn't the right path, or there's some right or wrong there. And yet, these beliefs and operating in this structure, let us survive, right, it served us to a certain point. And, and what you're mentioning is like when we get to that point where we realize, oh, it's not serving me anymore, this is not working anymore. Yeah.
Brooke Taylor 14:04
That's right. So yeah. And I think about that, in terms of, you know, we have this, this wound this wounded self, this part of us that feels not worthy, not good enough, as demonstrated throughout our lives in moments that are small and big, where maybe we asked for help and it wasn't given or we were embarrassed by putting ourselves out there or had moments of shame when we failed or got more applause, love and belonging and appreciation when we brought home a straight A report card, than maybe less so. And none of these are our parents fault. It really is just a reflection of our society in general. And so what that manifests in us is this, this kind of little wounded self and if you think about it in a room, I think about that wounded itself, almost like a bit in a corner. It's much younger. And as a result of that wounded self, are, we actually create this other self called the protector self. And that protector self, you can think of it like standing with its two arms on its hips in front of the younger wounded self saying, "No matter what, nothing's going to harm you ever again." And the strategies of the protector self can look like perfectionism, overworking, having a tough time saying no, people pleasing, and continuing to need and require external validation to feel good enough. And all of these things are ultimately what leads to burnout, and climbing a ladder and realizing that holy crap, this was the wrong ladder for me to climb, and only feeling good enough, when you're constantly getting that external validation or going from job to job wondering, you know, is this my purpose? Is this the right thing? So all of the symptoms that you're suffering with started as very smart, adaptive coping strategies to protect the wound inside. And so what I help people do is heal the wound, allow the protector to step aside so that the true self can come forward, because you were born, I was born with the self inside that is confident and calm and courageous. And it's all kind of the essential goodness of who you are. And that is the part that's kind of at the other corner of the room whispering to you and saying, you know, it doesn't have to be this way. Or, you know, you can try it a different way, or you're good enough just the way that you are. And when we actually allow that true self to step forward. She, he, they have brilliant ideas about what you should be doing with your career. They know exactly how you should be working, they know what to do what to say, intuitively. And so it really is remarkable to see when I take my clients through this process of healing the success wound, and because I work mostly in the area of career, I've talked about it in the context of work, but it really does have ripple effects around the rest of people's lives.
Erica D'Eramo 17:10
Yeah, I often get asked in my coaching capacity, I often get asked like, "Are you a life coach or, or a professional coach or career coach?" And like, I'm literally whatever coach you need that day, because if you are able to separate work in life, you've cracked the code that I don't know that any human has so far. Yeah, it's it's all interconnected. Right? We're, we're supposedly working for life.
Brooke Taylor 17:36
I agree.
Erica D'Eramo 17:37
Yeah. So in the work that you do, what are some key themes that you think, you know, are important for our listeners to take take away?
Brooke Taylor 17:53
So when you're diagnosing your success wound, you can ask yourself some of those questions like I mentioned, what does success look like in your family of origin? What beliefs do you have about success in your self worth? And then you can start to also ask yourself the question of what are some of my protector strategies? What are, am I do I tend to be a perfectionist, do I tend to be a grinder grinding, you know, grinding and hustling for yourself? Or do you tend to be a hider, maybe somebody who succeeds, but only so much, because they're scared to step out of their comfort zone, maybe you are, like me, I'll work hard play hard type who's going to, you know, kill it Monday through Friday, but needs to blow off steam on the weekend. And that causes severe burnout as well. Or, you know, maybe you tend to say, "Oh, this job will fix it, or that job will fix it." But you tend to feel quite lost. Asking if you fit into one of those five archetypes that I just mentioned. And based on that, that can help you identify the inroad, the trailhead to then heal your success wound and start to realize that this strategy that's causing suffering in some capacity is really just a coping mechanism. So once that's been done, you're really well on your way to having new, a new way of existing at work. And of course, healing that wound, which is really step three, that's best done in therapy or in a coaching context, so that that true self can step forward and start to action on a new vision, a new way of being in your career. And the results that I've seen from this process are truly incredible. I've seen some of my clients just double their salaries with working 50% less just because they were being crystal clear on the impact that they wanted to have. They're working smarter, not harder, their confidence shot up. I've also seen women, as I've mentioned, because this does have a ripple effect and up calling in the loves of their life because their self worth is increased. They're able to set boundaries better, they're no longer longer people pleasing or putting other people's needs in front of their own. I've also seen women recover from debilitating burnout, because they no longer have this voice in the back of their head that saying, it's not enough and they're not, you know, they're able to actually finally relax on vacation. So you know, I always say that healing your success wound doesn't make you a monk. I'm not trying to make you kind of, you know, give up all worldly possessions and not have success in your life. Quite the opposite. I'm, this process is helping you to actually redefine what success means to you, not from your protector self, but from your true self, and to help create space for you to actually go after that. So that's how you actually create a career that's fulfilling, rather than just reenacting the same kind of unconscious patterns.
Erica D'Eramo 20:50
Yeah, I was gonna ask like, what is a healed success wound look like? And I think you've covered a lot of it. Any other kind of, when you visualize what that looks like, on the other side of the healing process, or is there any other side of the healing process is this just something that is kind of a lifelong endeavor?
Brooke Taylor 21:08
What I found in my own experience is that once my identity was separated from work, and once I was no longer working to prove my worth, I stepped into this space that I now called conscious success. And conscious success is the state of freedom and fulfillment and lasting satisfaction that comes from only following the directions of my true self or my internal guidance system. So that true self again, she always knows where I should go and what I should do. And when I take direction, from her, I always find my space, myself in a space of fulfillment, because I'm no longer trying to fill this hole. But I feel whole in myself. So a healed successful it looks like this existing in a state of conscious success. And that's really what we're all after. We're, you know, in a capitalistic society would have us believe that more consumption, more greed, more fame, and more power leads to happiness. But I think we all know intellectually, that's not true. Some of us need to get those things in order to know it, you know, on an embodied level. Luckily, I kind of woke up to that a little early, because I could look down the line and say, This isn't, I know, this isn't going to end well. So I'm grateful to say that I live in a space state of conscious success most often. And when I slip into my success wound tendencies I have I follow those kind of three steps of diagnosing the core wound, finding out what sort of protector tendency I'm acting out of, and reacquaint reconnecting and reacquainting myself with my true self.
Erica D'Eramo 22:55
Yeah, it's the tendencies, right? These patterns, these thought patterns, and these protective tendencies are embedded in our muscle memory for so long that even once we kind of break free of it, and maybe separate ourselves or get get a bit of space from it. I found that going back into those environments, like meeting up with old coworkers, or, you know, going going back and maybe doing a presentation at your former company, it, it can kind of reimmerse you in that state of being and just like any kind of, I guess, I almost talked about it like addiction in a way, right? Like if if you know that you are drawn to that, and it is not a supportive environment for the patterns you want in your life, you have to be very careful sometimes going back into those spaces. What are your thoughts there? Like what can people do? Maybe they've made a lot of progress, but what can they do to make sure they maintain that?
Brooke Taylor 24:01
I'm so happy you said addiction, because I think of it as an addiction. And I'm very familiar with that part of my, you know, protector and success wound strategy was drinking a lot. And part of my transformation was actually getting sober. And so I saw myself not just addicted to alcohol, that was almost like the surface problem. I was truly addicted to external validation, and achievement and my identity as this "work hard play hard" lady. And so I, too, go back into corporate settings and find myself slipping and relapsing into those old ways of being, even changing sometimes the content that I'm teaching to try to appease or appease more of a corporate mindset and what that actually looks like, what that means to me is, I will start to talk differently. I'll start to To look at feedback from the presentation differently, I'll start to be more concerned with the output rather than the input, I'll start to get really nervous and anxious before even going into those settings, I'll get performance anxiety. And those are all symptoms for me of my success wound. It's that perfectionism that concern with what other people are thinking, and a little bit of that as good, I think it keeps you sharp. And, again, we're not trying to be monks here or perfect. But when I find myself relapsing into that belief system, that something outside of myself can fix the inside thing. That's when I know I'm, I'm in my addiction, so to speak. So I'm so happy you said that.
Erica D'Eramo 25:46
Yeah, it's almost like watching out for those key, I don't know, thoughts or patterns or blood pressure, whatever that is that is giving you the signal that like, "Oh, we're reentering that zone that we work so hard to kind of separate from."
Brooke Taylor 26:03
And I'm sorry, I'll just ask you. Do you find that you have a success wound? And you can repeat the same patterns that you did in corporate in your own business now?
Erica D'Eramo 26:17
Oh, 100%? I mean, I think that's one of the reasons I asked, you know, do you see this as kind of being, like, an actual healing? Or is this sort of an ongoing thing? And I, I guess my lived experience would be that, I think I also had sort of that wake up moment. The binary like, oh, oh, I see. I see what's happening now. Right? Like, the decisions that I put in place to kind of create the life I wanted, and there is maintenance required, like it is a practice in a way for me to stay conscious to stay aware and to not slip back into those patterns, because those protector muscles are very strong for me, like I overdeveloped them, right. Like we talked about back pain whenever we overdeveloped some muscles and other ones are weakened. I overdeveloped those protector muscles, I think. And so it's very easy for them to kick in and say like, "Oh, I got this, I'm going to protect you." So yeah, I do see it in my current endeavors. And I just try to stay conscious of it. I just tried to stay conscious of like that, seeking some sort of external, I don't know if it's even validation, because when you're, when you're your own boss, sometimes it that external validation takes on the form of like, a certain number, or comparing yourself to some other person doing something similar. So it's still it might not it's like validation from yourself, but you're still using these external markers to kind of measure it.
Brooke Taylor 27:59
100 percent. Yeah. I I was talking with my husband, about how do I share with people, the genuine and true success that my business has had, in a way that is devoid of success wound, and still is a plate from a place of conscious success. And I need to check my motivation, because on the one hand, you know, because, you know, as sole proprietors, we don't have public earnings. And it's, I, I, but I do from an esteem standpoint, and from owning my success standpoint, want to share that I've hit certain numbers, or I've done this amount of revenue, or I've impacted this many people. And what I've come to is, I have to really use like meditation and breath to relax my protectors, and to almost like evoke a state of like, almost a heart centered state of self, and then maybe sit down and write and say, my business is impacted, you know, you know, 45 women in my private practice this year, and, you know, 1000 women in my programs, and these are some of the things that they say, so, I'm all I can fall into that very, very quickly and almost write up like a, you know, a Google email about my, you know, year over year growth, which is just, that's for me, that's for me ego. So yeah, that's it.
Erica D'Eramo 29:34
Yeah. Um, I, I love your comment about meditating and writing. We actually just recorded a podcast on journaling, and how journaling can be very, very useful. And so yeah, I echo that whenever we are either struggling with really with anything. Journaling can be a hugely valuable exercise. For us specifically, I incorporated Two Piers as a public benefit corporation, which forces my hand in a way, which was intentional to measure our impact using a variety of metrics. I get to choose what those metrics are. But it's made me be quite intentional about, you know, what's the point of having? I do measure things like how many people have we reached? How many people have been in our workshops? But it's, it's made me stop and question, you know, "So... so what?" like, what am I learning from that number? How many of those were pro bono? How many of them were paid? What was our reach? And looking at it from different lenses to make sure that it's matching up with the intention? And so maybe there's something in there around kind of our lives as well. Like, if we're, why am I measuring this thing? Why am I measuring the square footage of my house? Or?
Brooke Taylor 30:57
Completely? Yeah, it's I think, I think, to your point, I guess what I'm learning here is that yeah, it's it's the motivation behind it. That's the why behind it, am I doing this from a place of wholeness, or from a place of not wholeness, woundedness?
Erica D'Eramo 31:12
Yeah. You've, you've kind of spoken in your work as well around creating a career of purpose and passion. And that's something I'm always interested in hearing folks thoughts on. When you think of purpose and passion, what do those actually mean to you?
Brooke Taylor 31:30
To me, purpose is a state of being, it's not a state of doing, it's not a title, it's not a career path. It's a state of being, it's, again, it's following the directions of your internal guidance system, am I being today, in alignment with my values, am I allowing myself to work from a place of self rather than protector, because when you almost go upstream to the being state, you eventually and I've seen this time and time again, find yourself in the career that you are, quote, "meant for" that one, that is a perfect reflection of you, you find yourself in relationships that are nurturing and supportive, you find yourself in communities that only want the best for you, because you are being your purpose. So for me, purpose is, you know, measuring success by how much fun I'm having, it's allowing myself freedom and spaciousness and flexibility. One thing I'm working on this year is being more patient and rushing less with myself and with others, having less urgency. And when I find that when I am in that state, which are all the essential qualities of my goodness, things just sort of come to me and I find myself in the place that I am meant to be. And I feel like I'm living on purpose. And if you mix passion in their passion, to me is a is the, almost the intersection of purpose and interest when I am being my purpose. And when I am then doing the thing that I'm interested in. That, to me is what creates a sense of passion. And I'm deeply passionate about the work that I do, because I'm interested in it. And because at when I'm doing it, I feel good. And so to me, that's that's passion.
Erica D'Eramo 33:31
Yeah. Yeah, I think they get used interchangeably a lot. But like you described, they're quite different in how and how they manifest and what they actually describe purpose and passion and interrelated and that they probably feed off of each other. But yeah, I like that.
Brooke Taylor 33:47
Agreed. But I think, again, to your point, there's like this myth of like, I need to find my passion or find my purpose. And I don't think it's something that you find. I think it's something that you become, yeah,
Erica D'Eramo 33:59
Yeah. I think there's also a lot of empirical evidence there that you can look at in your life if you're not distracted by the carrot that's being put in front of you. Right?
Brooke Taylor 34:11
Great. Yeah. I mean, gosh, there's so many distractions and so many. Yeah, so many shiny, the shiny object syndrome can really keep us stuck and keep us unconscious and keep us on the hamster wheel.
Erica D'Eramo 34:26
I sometimes refer to it as I has like a carnival, you know, like you're at the carnival, and you're playing one of those games where they've rigged it so that only like one person per night wins. And you've decided you got to do it because this is this is the goal that was set in front of you and you gotta get that teddy bear like that teddy bear probably costs $2 at the local Walmart. But you're gonna put all of his money time resources and like frustration energy into getting that bear because that's what's been put in front of you. And it's a scam? It's a scam. It's not for you.
Brooke Taylor 35:04
That's a great analogy. I like that one. I call it like the treadmill to nowhere. But I like the carnival game.
Erica D'Eramo 35:11
Yeah. So we've kind of just discussed some of them. But what are what are some resources or advice that you have for individuals who maybe want to explore more here.
Brooke Taylor 35:24
So on my website, I have a couple of free offers. The first is a Get Unstuck worksheet, you can download it at BrookeTaylorCoaching.com. It'll help you to set aside your success wound and your protector elements and actually allow yourself your true self to dream and scheme and think of what potential places of purpose and passion you might be able to play in your career. And I love this practice, because it, you can do it once a month, once a year. And it always illuminates new opportunities for where you can play in your career. And most people are somewhat dissatisfied in their career unless they're completely on purpose and completely on passion. So this is a great exercise to help you get unstuck in whatever element that you are.
Erica D'Eramo 36:17
Cool. And for, for individuals. Definitely, we recommend you go check out what Brooke has to offer. And it sounds like you have some coaching available as well and you work with people. What other kinds of offerings do you provide?
Brooke Taylor 36:36
I'm launching a group coaching program at the end of January 2023. So if that, if this airs in time, I'm launching that it's a 12 week program for conscious corporate women who are highly ambitious, to help them to get, to help them really heal the success wound stop acting out of their protector self, and finally find a career that feels fulfilling to them. And this group coaching program's called Finally Fulfilled. I take people again on this kind of 12 week process and go through the same system that I take my clients through in a nine month period, but much more condensed, much more actionable, much more precise. And that's launching end of January.
Erica D'Eramo 37:17
Okay, that's good to know! How about for organizations or leaders? We have a lot of people who listen to this podcast who want to make the environments better, who want to foster the change, maybe from a place of allyship, maybe they've already reached what they consider success in their life. What are your recommendations? from a strategic perspective?
Brooke Taylor 37:42
My recommendation would be to look for areas where you see toxic culture, and knowing that toxic culture whether that's cutthroatness, lack of inclusion, any sort of bullying, it's usually driven by this success wound by this unconscious or conscious pain in the individual and their deep desire and need for a sense of power. So when you look at the organization and find where are those pockets of toxic culture, come at it from the perspective of this person is seeking a sense of power because they feel powerless, and help coach them around this notion of success wound and finding a sense of self worth outside of work. And I guarantee that that toxic culture will shift.
Erica D'Eramo 38:27
Right. To provide the safety that's lacking, right. That's exactly the lack of safety. beating it out of people isn't going to make
Brooke Taylor 38:37
No, not at all. It's usually in an honest conversation. And yeah, that psychological safety's so critical for good performing well performing team so yeah, absolutely. Yeah.
Erica D'Eramo 38:48
Well, great. We have really appreciated you coming on this episode and sharing some of the work that you've done sharing some of your lived experiences. It resonates a lot for me. And I I know already, that this will resonate a lot for quite a few of our listeners, a lot of those overachieving women, a lot of those gold star A-plus women who are giving it their all and maybe feeling unfulfilled and just struggling to keep going. So we hope that they take a look at your, your resources, maybe reach out. And yeah, any last thoughts that you want to leave us with?
Brooke Taylor 39:29
No, I think that feels really complete. Thank you so much for such a great conversation. It's really been fun.
Erica D'Eramo 39:34
Yeah, thank you, Brooke. And for anyone looking for more information on Two Piers. You can find us at our website at twopiersconsulting.com or on any of your typical social media streams. So thanks for listening, and we'll catch you next episode.
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The Success Wound: Achievement, Identity, and Redefining What Fulfillment Means
In this episode of the Two Piers Podcast, Erica D’Eramo is joined by Brooke Taylor, a transformational career coach for female leaders, organizational consultant, speaker, and former Marketing Lead at Google. Brooke was named a “Top Career Coach to Watch” by the Australian Business Journal in 2021 and has served as an in-house coach for female executives at Google, Uber, and McKinsey. Through her workshops and coaching programs, she has supported more than 5,000 women globally.
The discussion centers around Brooke’s concept of “The Success Wound,” which she defines as the pain high-achievers experience when they mistake success for self-worth. Together, Erica and Brooke explore how ambition, identity, perfectionism, and external validation become intertwined, particularly for women navigating high-performance environments and systems built around competition, scarcity, and achievement.
It’s a thoughtful episode filled with candor, humility, and practical reflection on what it means to pursue success consciously, rather than automatically.
Growing Up Around Achievement
Brooke begins by sharing her upbringing in Silicon Valley before it became the global tech hub many people recognize today. Surrounded by ambitious families and immersed in a culture that celebrated achievement above all else, she internalized the belief that success and accomplishment determined personal worth.
That mindset followed her through school and into the corporate world:
Good grades became validation
Career advancement became proof of value
Prestigious roles created a sense of legitimacy
Working at Google provided external markers of success that many people aspire toward. Yet beneath that achievement, Brooke describes a persistent sense of emptiness and anxiety:
“I’m only as good as my last piece of feedback.”
That disconnect between external success and internal fulfillment became the foundation of what she now calls the success wound.
Why High-Achieving Women Often Experience This Differently
One of the major themes throughout the episode is the way this dynamic often shows up for women in particular.
Erica notes how frequently she sees women following a clearly defined path of achievement, only to eventually reach a point where they begin questioning whether the version of success they’ve been pursuing actually aligns with what they want.
Brooke expands on this by discussing several overlapping pressures:
The expectation to succeed quickly
Competition for limited leadership opportunities
The pressure to “prove” women belong in positions of power
The added complexity of caregiving and family expectations
Scarcity dynamics that encourage comparison and overperformance
The episode also explores how these pressures can become internalized over time, shaping the way people evaluate their own worth and measure their progress.
Separating Identity from Achievement
A turning point in Brooke’s own journey came when she began examining the systems and beliefs she had internalized around success.
Rather than continuing to climb ladders by default, she started asking deeper questions:
What does success actually mean to me?
Where did my beliefs about achievement come from?
Am I pursuing goals from alignment or from fear?
What parts of my ambition are rooted in external validation?
This process eventually led Brooke out of the corporate environment and into coaching work focused on helping women define success more consciously and sustainably.
The discussion also explores how many achievement-driven behaviors initially develop as protective strategies. Perfectionism, overworking, people-pleasing, and constant striving often begin as adaptive ways to seek safety, belonging, or approval.
The “Protector Self” and the “True Self”
One of the frameworks Brooke shares throughout the episode is the distinction between the “protector self” and the “true self.”
According to Brooke:
The protector self develops strategies designed to avoid shame, rejection, or failure
The true self reflects a deeper, more grounded sense of identity, intuition, and authenticity
Protector strategies can look like:
Perfectionism
Hustling and overworking
Difficulty saying no
Seeking constant validation
Hiding or staying small out of fear
Cycling between overachievement and burnout
Brooke describes the healing process as learning to recognize these protective patterns while creating space for the true self to step forward more fully.
Redefining Success
As the episode develops, Erica asks what a “healed” success wound actually looks like.
Brooke describes this state as “conscious success,” which she defines as:
“The freedom and fulfillment that comes from following the directions of your true self rather than constantly trying to prove your worth.”
This does not mean abandoning ambition or rejecting achievement altogether. Instead, it involves redefining success in ways that are internally aligned rather than externally driven.
For Brooke, conscious success includes:
Spaciousness and flexibility
Meaningful impact
Alignment with personal values
Sustainable ambition
Enjoyment and fulfillment
A reduced dependence on external validation
The episode also acknowledges that this is not a one-time transformation. Erica reflects on how old achievement patterns can easily resurface, particularly when returning to environments or systems that originally reinforced them.
Purpose, Passion, and Internal Guidance
The discussion eventually shifts toward the concepts of purpose and passion, which Brooke frames less as destinations to “find” and more as ways of being.
Rather than viewing purpose as a specific title or career path, Brooke describes it as:
Living in alignment with values
Trusting internal guidance
Operating from a grounded sense of self
Making decisions from wholeness rather than fear
Passion, in turn, emerges when that aligned way of being intersects with genuine interest and engagement.
Both Erica and Brooke note how easy it can be to get distracted by external markers of success or “shiny object syndrome,” particularly in cultures that reward constant striving and comparison.
Implications for Leaders and Organizations
Toward the end of the episode, Erica asks Brooke what leaders and organizations can do to create healthier workplace cultures.
Brooke suggests looking at toxic workplace behaviors through a different lens. Rather than seeing controlling or cutthroat behavior solely as a performance issue, she encourages leaders to recognize that these dynamics are often rooted in insecurity, fear, and unmet needs for safety or power.
The episode emphasizes the importance of:
Psychological safety
Human-centered leadership
Coaching and self-awareness
Creating cultures where worth is not solely tied to productivity or status
Resources from Brooke Taylor
Brooke offers a free “Get Unstuck” worksheet through her website to help individuals reflect on their current career path, reconnect with their own definition of fulfillment, and begin exploring what a more aligned next step could look like.
Listeners can learn more and download the worksheet through Brooke Taylor Coaching.
Final Reflection
At its core, this episode explores the difference between achievement and fulfillment.
The success wound often develops quietly, reinforced over years through school, work, family systems, and cultural expectations. For many people, achievement becomes so closely tied to identity that it can be difficult to recognize where striving ends and self-worth begins.
As Erica and Brooke discuss throughout the episode, healing that relationship does not require abandoning ambition. It asks for something more nuanced: the willingness to examine why we are striving, whose definition of success we are pursuing, and whether the life we are building actually feels aligned once we arrive there.