Transformation Tactics: From Being Overlooked to Being Outstanding

Dr. Christine Li [00:00:00]:
Hello, and welcome back to the Make time for Success Podcast. This is episode number 185. Last week, we discussed a listener question about how to become an identity that you haven't quite mastered yet. And this week, we're going to take another listener's question about how to not be overlooked. I'm so grateful for your support for the podcast, your listens, and the feedback that we've been getting for the show. I'm so proud of this show. I'm so excited to be getting some questions from you all, and my approach is that we're all in this thing called life together. So a question from one listener is likely gonna help a bunch of you.

Dr. Christine Li [00:00:47]:
So I'm so happy to be taking these questions. Please continue sending them in. And I wanted to share with you some additional great news that we've recently passed 100,000 downloads for the Make Time For Success podcast. You've made it happen. Keep listening. Keep supporting the show. I'm so grateful for each and every one of you. Let's go listen to this episode together now.

Dr. Christine Li [00:01:18]:
Hi. I'm Dr. Christine Li, and I'm a psychologist and a procrastination coach. I've helped 1000 of people move past procrastination and overwhelm so they could begin working to their potential. In this podcast, you're going to learn powerful strategies for getting your mind, body, and energy to work together so that you can focus on what's really important and accomplish the goals you want to achieve. When you start living within your full power, you're going to see how being productive can be easy and how you can create success on demand. Welcome to the make time for success podcast.

Dr. Christine Li [00:02:04]:
So a few weeks ago, I received an email from a kind podcast show listener who wrote, I haven't listened to every episode, but I love your show. It's so practical, and I find your insights about energy really helpful. A topic I would like to hear about is how not to get overlooked. I got overlooked in favor of a male colleague for something recently. I'm sad about not getting more money, but it is the lack of recognition that is hurting me about it psychologically. And this is such a pattern with a long history, especially with men. I grew up between 2 brothers. How do I get seen as important? Thanks for your show.

Dr. Christine Li [00:02:47]:
Dear listener, thank you so much for sending in this wonderful and fascinating question. I'm really eager to answer and send you some help. As always, I just feel like I know what I'm gonna respond right away. I think it's just a habit that you develop as a psychologist. You see and speak to so many different people over the years that you develop a philosophy and kind of a set of philosophies about human behavior and about yourself. And, therefore, the responses just come right away path that we have set the stage. By that, I mean, if there's a pattern that you see of being overlooked and you become wary, you become suspicious that you're being overlooked, you will very readily see instances where you are being overlooked or you think you're being overlooked. You just become like a radar, a radar that is always on, tuned to the setting of check this out.

Dr. Christine Li [00:04:04]:
I'm being overlooked. Human beings do this for a number of reasons, but, mostly, it's to keep ourselves safe. Since we're made to protect ourselves against anything that would threaten our safety, we would be inclined to be super alert to instances of being overlooked, especially if we think that being overlooked is going to be causing danger to us. For instance, we wouldn't get a promotion, things like that. And that said, I could also see other people being completely relieved that they're being overlooked all the time. You get what I mean. People are very different, and we all choose what we find to be important. And for the listener who wrote in with this question, being seen is, I think, of utmost importance.

Dr. Christine Li [00:04:55]:
So that leads to piece of advice number one. Do not expect to be overlooked. You wanna fix your expectations. You wanna completely change the setting on the radar. You might even wanna put the radar situation in the closet altogether. You just wanna go about your day and your work situations with the feeling that you are not overlookable, even by people who wish to do that to you, you will find that just having this sense about yourself will change the behaviors that you make in the workplace. You will decide, you know what? I'm gonna give that person a glance to make sure that I get called upon in the meeting. I'm gonna add an additional phrase to the paragraph that I just read out loud to the group.

Dr. Christine Li [00:05:50]:
I am going to send an extra email. I am going to make sure they know I'm raring to go for the next promotion, and I'm gonna make sure I'm in the right zone when it comes time for settling the next promotion. Things like that. It might be lunchtime. It might be how you walk in in the morning. It might be how you leave at the end of the day. The way we expect to be treated has a lot to do with how we behave then because our minds and bodies are just wanting to create a cohesive, coherent story. So if you're originally thinking, I'm gonna be overlooked every single time no matter what I try, your mind and body are kinda gonna relax and decide that you don't have to do anything that's overly public or overly attention grabbing because you've decided that you're overlookable.

Dr. Christine Li [00:06:46]:
So the first piece of advice is really just to decide for yourself that you are no longer going to be overlooked and you're no longer going to expect to be overlooked. Now you might be saying, dear listener, Dr. Li, Christine, this is a really hard ask because I've been thinking about this my entire life, the situation with my brothers. I even believe I'm overlookable, and I want you to know that it's all a belief. Right? We'd be tagging this episode and this question with the word belief if it wasn't a belief. And all beliefs are changeable. Just because you had this one for a really long time doesn't mean you can't act with a completely different opposite belief starting tomorrow, the next day that you go to work. Okay? So tuck that away. The second thing that I have to say here is that I believe, dear listener, that there is a part of you that agrees that you must be overlookable.

Dr. Christine Li [00:07:52]:
It's the part of you that is incredibly innocent. It is taking the cues from your environment. It's taking the cues from your brothers from a long time ago. It's a part of you that is using your childhood logic, saying that if it happened all the time when I was a kid, it must be something about me, and there must be some really good reason for that to happen. It must be something that's fixed and something that I can't seem to change. And your belief, like I said, a couple minutes ago, is a really powerful way of you being in the world. It helps you to structure your behavior. But, again, the advice here is that you wanna change this belief that you are overlookable.

Dr. Christine Li [00:08:50]:
I have a feeling that you already know that you aren't completely overlookable and that you needn't be overlooked because look what you did. You reached out over the Internet to someone who you don't know personally to ask this very important question. You are basically giving the signal, I'm ready to change this pattern. I'm done with it. I'm tired of it. It's making me so stressed. I want the next promotion. All of these things are things that are truly in existence now.

Dr. Christine Li [00:09:23]:
I know that I could not overlook your question because it was wonderfully written, so powerful, and so meaningful to you. And because you reached out in a very powerful way, you're getting an equally engaged, powerful response. So know that it works in your real life as well, that when you decide I will not be overlooked, things are going to start looking differently. You're gonna be acting differently. You won't expect to be overlooked and you won't act like it either. And that whole change of your energy is something that other people will not be able to resist seeing. They are going to change their energy towards you because that's just what happens when we change and when energy changes. The example I can give to you is, like, when you shake up a bottle of seltzer water or a soda can, it's no longer the same.

Dr. Christine Li [00:10:24]:
It's ready to explode. Anytime we move something, it becomes changed. It gets altered. And so I guess I would just wanna put in here, don't be so afraid of your beliefs because your beliefs are there to structure your behavior, to make sure that you get to work safely so so that you don't just cross the road without looking both ways. We have beliefs that if we look both ways, we're gonna cross safely. And you have the beliefs that if I act a certain way, I'm gonna be overlooked. And that just matches your past and your past experience. But, again, it does not have to match your future experience.

Dr. Christine Li [00:11:07]:
You can shake your soda can up. You can be a completely different person. And this, again, is not saying that other people aren't doing things. We can't control the behaviors of other people. Maybe your brothers were overpowering. Maybe they were taller than you were. Maybe they were louder than you were. But you know what? You're an adult now.

Dr. Christine Li [00:11:30]:
I would wonder how you might even wanna change the dynamics with them, with your family, and just have a go at it and say, you know what? I feel like things need to change because we're all adults now and because I'm ready to be center stage. I'm ready to be an equal with you guys. I'm ready for the family not to keep me last when it comes to dinners or opinions or decisions, these kinds of things. So this brings us to my 3rd point here. You get to decide what you want to see in your life. So if you wanna see more family involvement, if you wanna see the next promotion, you have to make that your full picture. No more allowing or tolerating or predicting or expecting that you're going to be overlooked. Again, you get to decide what you wish to see.

Dr. Christine Li [00:12:23]:
I'm gonna explain this piece a little bit more now. There's a part of the brain called the reticular activating system. Again, it's called the reticular activating system. The RAS, for short, is a network of neurons located in our brain stem. Its main job is to filter the massive amount of information that our senses are bringing in, and our senses are constantly being bombarded with things like what our coworker is doing, how we're being seen by other people, the food that we're gonna eat for lunch. It's processing all of this, and it's helping us to decide what is really important enough for our attention to be paid to. So it's basically saying, you know what? There's a million things that you could be paying attention to now, but we're gonna keep it limited to this certain set. Think of the reticular activating system as the gatekeeper for your brain.

Dr. Christine Li [00:13:26]:
It keeps us feeling calm most of the time because, otherwise, we'd just be overwhelmed by all of this stimulation. To give you an example of how the reticular activating system works, you can imagine yourself at a noisy party. There are people talking, people coming in and out. There's music playing. Glasses are clinking. You're having a great time. But despite all of this hubbub and the noise and the activity, you can hear somebody mentioning your name at the other side of the room. The way that happens is the reticular activating system.

Dr. Christine Li [00:14:04]:
Another example that I've heard being used to describe the power of the reticular activating system is when you're shopping for a car. If you're looking for a red car, you've decided I'm going for red, all of a sudden, you're gonna start seeing red after red after red car, and it's just how our brains work. Test it out. I think you'll find it to be a fun experiment. So our dear listener decided that she was gonna pay attention to every instance when she felt like she was being overlooked. She created that as an important goal for her reticular activating system, and it complied. It ensures that she does not miss a single instance of being overlooked. But the good news is that she and everyone else who's listening to this episode can use the reticular activating system to their or her advantage now and set a different goal.

Dr. Christine Li [00:15:04]:
You could train your brain to look and focus on different things. For now, she can say, I'm gonna focus on all the different situations where I am being paid attention to, where I'm being treated courteously, where I am being seen as first in line, where I'm being recognized, where I'm being cared for, all of those instances that she has maybe been ignoring because her radar has been turned on so high for the moments where she's being overlooked. And once she does this, I believe that she's gonna find more and more evidence that there's so many people ready to support her. There's so many people who are in her orbit looking at her, watching her, knowing that she's making this development in her life. And, of course, she is going to make steps step by step towards getting the attention that she is craving. She is going to be seen. So just to review, no matter what you're believing is happening to you over and over and over again, there's likely a certain set of expectations that leads you to feel and experience life in that way and other people in that way. But there's also the reticular activating system where the things that we are priming ourselves to see, we see.

Dr. Christine Li [00:16:34]:
But there's also the advice that I've snuck in here in this episode that when you want your situation to change, you have to be the originator of that change. We cannot sit idly by thinking that other people are all of a sudden gonna change their behavior towards us. We cannot sit idly by tolerating things that are frustrating to ourselves, to our nervous system, to our promotion schedule, things like that. Decide that this is your one precious life. It is so indeed precious. So decide, you know what? I'm gonna listen to this podcast episode one more time, and then I'm gonna go into work guns a blazing, not literally, of course, but I'm gonna be on fire. I'm gonna have my energy turned up much higher so that I feel comfortable being center stage, being an equal employee, being the person that they wanna choose for the next promotion, and being my full self. I no longer have to tolerate feeling like I'm overlookable because I'm just not.

Dr. Christine Li [00:17:43]:
And dear listener, I wanna say thank you again for submitting this question. I do believe that it's a sign that you are ready to shift to change your views, to change your circumstances, and I cannot wait to hear what happens for you next. I have created a free cheat sheet for how to create change by shifting your mindset and improving your ability to get your desired goals for everyone listening to this episode. All you need to do to get this free cheat sheet is to go to https://maketimeforsuccesspodcast.com/goals. Again, it's at https://maketimeforsuccesspodcast.com/goals. Let's support each other. Let's decide that we can experiment and we can be safe. Safety is a very important thing to have, of course.

Dr. Christine Li [00:18:35]:
We wanna be safe in our hearts and our minds, but I am here with this podcast week after week to remind you that you are safe in this very basic and important way. Now it's time to develop the parts of you that have been quiet, that have been hidden, that have been untested, that you are interested in experimenting with? Because I have found with my own life and in helping the lives of many others that when we experiment, we get to be more powerfully ourselves, and I can't wait to hear how everyone does. I'm gonna see you all next week for another episode on the Make Time For Success podcast. I will be interviewing the wonderful Heather Sager. She is a speaking and sales coach, and she's just super dynamic and wise. I can't wait to share that episode with you soon. Take care.

Dr. Christine Li [00:19:32]:
Thank you for listening to this episode of the Make Time For Success podcast. If you enjoyed what you heard, you can subscribe to make sure you get notified of upcoming episodes. You can also visit our website, make time for success podcast.com, for past episodes, show notes, and all the resources we mentioned on the show. Feel free to connect with me over on Instagram too. You can find me there under the name procrastination coach. Send me a DM and let me know what your thoughts are about the episodes you've been listening to. And let me know any topics that you might like me to talk about on the show. I'd love to hear all about how you're making time for success.

Dr. Christine Li [00:20:13]:
Talk to you soon.