“Don’t forget to schedule your trauma healing session before Week 5.”

That was my coach, speaking to our whole group. I raised my hand.

“I don’t have trauma.”

“What do you mean? Everybody has trauma.”

“But this is an entrepreneurship program. Why are we talking about trauma?”

I had paid US$20,000 for a one-year program I found through a Facebook ad. My coach was wearing a brown, one-shoulder leather dress, and I’ve always loved one-shoulder tops.

The ad talked about imposter syndrome and limiting beliefs. The word trauma wasn’t in it. Or maybe I was still looking at the dress.

I thought I was there to learn business.

Instead, we spent two full months on trauma. Then, for the remaining ten months, at least 60% of the program was about healing trauma when it showed up in business.

The Strategy Wasn’t the Only Problem

When our state of mind is not in the right place, strategy will not work.

I thought I was paying US$20,000 to learn business. What I began discovering was what could stop me from building one.

Moving from employee to entrepreneur isn’t a harder version of the same game. It’s a different game. So is moving from senior staff to CEO. The skills that make someone a strong senior employee (precision, patience, proving yourself) are not the same skills that make someone a founder or a CEO. You can learn the new skills. But if a limiting belief is still making the decisions, the new skills never get a clean shot.

New skills don’t execute properly when an old belief is holding the wheel.

You can have expertise, a good idea, and a strategy. But if some part of you keeps saying, “I’m not good enough,” you may hesitate when it’s time to act.

You prepare. Then you prepare some more.

You know what you want to do. Why can’t you get yourself to do it?

I had spent years trying to answer that question by thinking harder.

I grew up in a household where we didn’t talk about emotions. We didn’t even use the word love. To me, trauma meant weakness.

Besides, I’m a CPA. We are trained to be impartial, examine evidence, and keep emotions from distorting our professional judgment.

But looking back, the program challenged exactly what I needed to examine.

Even My Rebellion Needed Approval

At 16, I realized how much of my life had been about pleasing my dad.

I should have been a journalist, a researcher, or a writer. My dad even suggested journalism.

So what did I do?

I chose accounting.

First, to agitate my dad and show him I could make my own decisions. Second, because accounting was prestigious and would make my parents proud.

Apparently, my rebellion still needed parental approval. 

I thought I was choosing for myself. Looking back, I could see how much of that choice was still a response to someone else.

That helped explain why I worked so hard in a field that didn’t feel natural to me.

The child trying to earn approval had grown up. The need to earn it was still there.

Then I entered a profession that rewarded familiar rules.

Why Analytical Professionals Feel Stuck

Most of us can explain why we chose our careers.

We liked the subject. We were good at it. It offered security. It was respected.

Those reasons matter. But the person making the choice at 17 or 18 didn’t arrive with a blank piece of paper. A lot had already been written on it, by family, school, culture, and the people around us.

By the time you chose, you had already learned which choices earned approval.

Then you entered a profession that rewarded the same thing.

Perform. Get it right. Keep going. Feelings can wait.

Different environment. Familiar rules.

It can feel like home before you’ve ever asked whether it fits.

And when a workplace rewards a pattern, why would you question it? You get promoted. People depend on you. You become the person who always delivers.

What makes you good at work can also keep you stuck.

Until you’re exhausted. Then you blame yourself for not being strong enough to keep going.

The Rules You Never Chose

Over the years, I’ve noticed familiar rules in the analytical professionals I’ve worked with. Some of these rules began long before they chose a career.

Rules like:

• Feelings can wait.
• Certainty is safety.
• Rest is earned.
• Approval matters.
• I am what I produce.

A rule may have helped you succeed and still keep you stuck. When it keeps getting rewarded, you may never think to question it.

Here is one of them in full.

Approval Matters

You became good at reading the room.

What does my boss want? What does my client expect? What will people think?

You learned to adjust and deliver.

That skill made you easy to trust and hard to replace. But when someone else’s approval becomes the condition for your next move, they get a vote you never consciously gave them.

You stop asking, “What do I want to do?” and start asking, “What will be accepted?”

So you share the idea and wait. You run one more scenario. You check one more time that everyone is comfortable.

Whose agreement are you still waiting for?

I’ve seen this in the leaders I coached. Capable people with good ideas, building scenario after scenario before making a move. One client, a tax partner at a Big Four firm, examined her patterns and began acting differently. Over five weeks, she closed C$1.2 million in sales.

Whose Approval Are You Still Waiting For?

You don’t need to erase your past or blame your parents. You can appreciate what a rule helped you build and still question whether it deserves to make your next decision.

Whose approval are you still waiting for before making your next move?

Take the Quiet Mind Audit to begin examining what’s creating the noise.

https://learn.humanpotential101.com/diagnosis

For more on examining these patterns and taking your next step, join the waitlist for The Survival Guide for Analytical Professionals on Planet Earth, in the Era of A.I.

https://learn.humanpotential101.com/book

Hui-Lin Liao, CPA, brings 28 years of corporate and consulting tax experience to her work as The Mind Auditor™.

I don’t fix your mind, I free it.™