My name is a Donica Shaw and I'm here today to talk to you about shattering your own glass ceiling.Now, we recognize that this is terminology that is commonly used when we're talking about women who are ascending into the ranks of leadership, who are doing amazing things in their career. They are joining the C SUITE, they're starting their companies, they are working with other people around the world to bring um advances in technology, health, um fintech, all of these great things to the forefront. But as it relates to this presentation, we're gonna talk about why and how it is so important for us as women in the workforce to not only understand what our own personal feelings are, but realistically how we're supposed to manage and break them if we want to have long term success.

Um My company, if you're wanting to check it out and why I'm here and just a little bit more about myself, you can check that out at www dot adon dot com and my company website is my wing women.com. Um It is actually a social media platform for professional women. It has a health focus and it's really meant to offer peer support to ceiling breakers. Uh Just like you and I who are looking to get support around managing health wellness, mental health, holistic health, all of the healths, right? Um And so I encourage you to check it out as I dive into the presentation now because I'm a woman of lists and wanna make sure that you have an understanding of what to expect with this very important presentation. First, we're gonna take a look at our beliefs. Um The things that we believe intrinsically about how women can have it all can be at all, how she can have a life and a family and have career success. We're gonna check out those beliefs from there. We're gonna jump into the self-care personalities and then we're gonna round out the conversation with the long game because obviously, if we talk about class dealings and cracking the glass and shattering the glass, I wanna make sure that you have actionable information beyond today.

And so let's start at the very beginning. I have asked myself this question many times in my life and today, I'm gonna turn the question on you. That question is, do you believe that a woman can have it all? Where did you come up with the idea that supports that belief? Now, the truth is whether or not we're conscious of it or not our beliefs around what women can have and can't have start very early in life in most cases. And in, according to my research, we gain and build these beliefs around the relationships we have with women around us. Sometimes it's mom, sometimes it's an aunt, sometimes it's just another influential female figure in our life. That can be a cousin, a mentor, a colleague. What have you?

And so from very early on, we're watching to see how these women are taking care of themselves. We're looking to see the things that they value, why they value them, how they support these values if their values waiver and we also make determinations upon the strength of that woman based off of those actions for most of us as well. Based off of what we've been traditionally taught. When we look at those women, we tend to see the things that they have been able to achieve financially, at least that give indicators of their success and how their values played out in their life. So if you check it, take a look at my grid here, you can see that for some. When we look at our mothers, we look at our aunts, other professional women. We say, hey, you know, her idea of success is work, life balance. And that's the picture up here in the corner with mom with baby for others. It is the ability to go on vacations and seeing um really amazing experiences, things around the world. They work very, very hard, they're able to provide vacations for others. It's being the boss, right?

It's the woman at the lead of the table leading the conversations in the boardroom, driving conversations around whatever her area of expertise is in her given work environment. It's her ability to navigate these spaces very, very easily. That is what makes her successful down here for some of us based again on some of these relationships and things that we see. We determine early in life that our social circle is what gives us prestige. It's what gives us success. It's who we get to hang out with on the weekend through our social organizations, relationships and also through other professional affiliations. Now, for others of us, it boils down to what you have. I wanna see the money, honey. You know, are you driving a G wagon? Are you driving the latest model Benz? Do you live in an exclusive community? Where do your kids go to school? Things of that nature are usually things we see very early on that we believe equal success. And lastly, it could be the ability to have and maintain the nuclear family, right? Getting married, having Children, having the ability to not only be present in the workspace but also have all of these um other opportunities that would be afforded to you based off of being married, having Children and kind of being the woman who has it all.

Here's the thing though, when we're doing this one thing that we normally figure out pretty early on, you know, I, I think if we asked a six or seven year old based off of what we're seeing very early in life, we determined that the belief based on what we're seeing around us and it plus hard work.

So if I see that my mom was able to give us, you know, vacations to Bali and she worked hard. That's how I get my success. The problem we're seeing now more so particularly in the last few years, is that more and more women are reporting, burn out the reporting burnout. Now, there are varying opinions around how and why women are burning themselves out. But I would argue that at least for the sake of this conversation, it starts with belief, it starts with what we are telling ourselves around what we can have, how we get it, how we maintain it and then doing everything possible or that we believe is possible to get success.

I'm going to challenge you in this presentation because there's something I want you to kind of consider. And even if you, if you don't consider it fully today, take it in your back pocket, take it on for another day, right? It's how we're looking at success. And whether or not that level of success or that belief of success is actually what success means for us or what it can mean for us. And so in the theme of the presentation, when we're talking about shattering our glass ceiling. The first question we have to ask is how we do it. For me, it's a matter of taking a look at our belief structures and then pivoting and shifting them a little bit. So I'm gonna offer you a new belief or a new model to consider in addition to the others you've been presented in your life. Now, from again, very early on, we have this belief that success is outside of us. We have a belief that if we see a parent or remodeling behavior, we work hard, we get success. That's what we believe success is. But based on what we're seeing in trends reports and my research, that belief needs to shift a little bit particularly for women around the world.

If the women's workforce is to survive right now, with 29% of women currently holding executive roles around the world globally and that number expected to rise. We have to start asking our ourselves the question of how we're going to maintain these roles of leadership. If we're burning out, my belief is that we need to shift, we need to take our beliefs. We need to understand that. Yes, hard work is important, but that work needs to be intentional and not only that, but what we're looking for, it doesn't equal success per se. It equals you. Success isn't in the workplace, you're in the workplace. Success isn't at the Mercedes Benz lot. Although, you know, I will say they're very nice to visit. You are when your Children need to be woken up and taken to school or they need help with their homework, you know, you're present with them. The common denominator in all of these examples that we um looked at a few minutes ago in terms of success is that the one constant is you. And so instead of looking for this end point of success, what we ought to be looking for is the endpoint of how we manage ourselves so that we're better positioned to maintain success and to bring other women along for the journey.

When we do that, we create the whole work woman, the whole woman. This is an example of the whole woman. So this could realistically be any of you. But you see she's there, she's solitary, there are no big fancy cars in the background, there's no vacation pictures, there's nobody else present in this photo but her. So today I wanna talk to you about how we get you to believe that you're the success you've been looking for. So that said, how do we shatter the glass? We know how we can crack it. We know we can shift our beliefs. But at one, when it comes to shattering that glass, we have to ask ourselves what barriers in our lives are preventing us from getting to the other side of that glass and staying because that's the other part we can shatter the glass. We can break the ceiling but we don't wanna burn out and then come back through the ceiling, right? We wanna be able to stay there so that we're stable enough to grow our leadership opportunities around the world. For me, I believe the answer really starts with self care. I know this term has been tossed around on social media so much this last year.

And I recognize that when we're googling it, you know, you're gonna find pictures of people, you know, exercising in the park and um journaling the problem though, or at least the one that I ran into is that I didn't quite identify with some of the self-care examples that were put before me.

And so if I was going to put myself on the side of success or put myself above uh financial success or the outward accruement of success, if you will, I had to figure out a strategy or a strategic way to address my self care. So what I'm gonna do is I'm going to dive into the eight self-care personalities in terms of getting to yourself. You have to identify the personality type that is the barrier to your success. Now, I know that you guys can't click my screen, but I made the short code which will take you to the self-care personality assessment. The goal of this is to reveal your ceiling to you. It will reveal the area in your life that you need to focus on to not only shatter that glass ceiling but to stay above, to stay on the other side of it once you have done. So, so that said, like looking at some of the options of self care, you know, and again, I encourage you guys to check it out right now and listen to me in another tab, if you can, one of those strategies is nutritional self care. Are you eating to succeed? Are you eating a diet that supports your ability to stay in the work in the workforce and maintain your um success level?

Uh maintain your output, so to speak, that's one area of self care that you may get as an output for that test. It's going to indicate to you that you need to work on that area of your life. If you want to have that balance and work in your professional field, then there's social self care. It's going to beg you to take a look at your friendships, the people around you. Are you leveraging these people adequately to make sure that you're successful? So, for example, um I have Children and so I remember very early on in my career, I would hate to take help from other people. I had this belief that I could only be successful if I was running around trying to save the world, but also still somehow able to do all of these things for my Children. 24 hours a day that my friends led to burnout. And so if you have people around you who are willing to contribute to your success, watch your kids help you with groceries. Are you leaning on them or allowing yourself to explore the fact that you don't have to do every single facet of everything to manage you to in turn, be successful, the other port or the other personalities, professional self care.

This is a tricky one particularly for women that are early and mid level in their careers because that's where you are developing your personality. That's where you're developing your skill set, right? But as we know, the further you get in your career, your reputation does precede you.

And so if you're constantly engaging in behaviors and habits and trust me, I have explored some that have landed me in the hot seat that are going to set you up negatively for people to not offer opportunities, for example, or to rescind opportunities. That's probably an area that you should look at if that's what your answer comes up on that particular assessment quiz. Uh The next is domain self care. This is kind of um an interesting one for me because, you know, I've gone to friends' houses and some, you know, friends that I have at least this point in my career, they set aside so much money per week per month to make sure that somebody comes into their home, cleans it top to bottom, they invest in domain self care or making sure that the environment that they're in is organized, it's clean, it's orderly.

You know, if you can't keep in clean and organized environment, you may not be able to um function at optimal um at optimal level in your particular career. And so making that investment in maintaining your domain and that can be at home, that can be in your office, that can be in your car. You know, that's those areas that you're wanting to take a look at. If you get that output, the next is financial self care, right? This one, this one a little triggering because I know that there are times where I'm like, oh everybody else in my office has these shoes or everybody um that I've seen that is successful, wears this type of black dress, they carry this type of briefcase, you know, all of these little things, right?

But what was happening was I was overspending, my budget was radically out of balance and then I would find myself anxiety ridden with knots in my stomach at night because I was trying so hard to achieve those external indicators of success when really I needed to maintain myself so that I wasn't anxious, right?

The goal of this is to make sure that you are the end point. And so for that one, I wanna say, wise women manage their money, self care, helps catapult your career, an additional note to that, um some roles, particularly when you hit the C Suite, you have to have solid credit before they hand over that credit card, the company opportunities and access to money.

And so this is an area you might want to work on if you find yourself, um being turned down for opportunities or not being able to ascend as far in your personal or professional life as you would like, and a few more spiritual self care. Um I saw this quote, I believe in a Disney movie and it said the mountain doesn't bow to the wind. And so here we're looking at spiritual self care and how it can anchor us. And so whatever your um relationship to spirituality or religion or spiritual practice, this test can indicate for you that that is a ceiling within yourself. You to shatter, you may need to set a prayer schedule, a fasting schedule. You may need to be in the habit of just checking in with yourself and being mindful for a moment. Maybe it's meditation for you, maybe it is reciting mantras or affirmations. The test would indicate that there's a ceiling there and you have to challenge your belief around it.

The next Don.

I'm so sorry. I have to ask you to speed through this and we do, I know we had tech difficulties and our schedule is so tight for today and people are loving your chat. Can I ask you to just sum up in a bow for us.

Absolutely. And so, um in addition to these self care modalities, I think the last slide there and there's a great way to end is the takeaways from this presentation. And you need to examine your beliefs, you need to identify the area of self care or the ceiling that you have, that's preventing you from moving forward. You need to create a plan to make sure that you can not only shatter that ceiling, but you need to learn how to manage it long term, which is number four and to round us out there we go. Again, there are my contact details on my personal website, as well as my company website.