The Hidden Forces Keeping Smart Women Stuck

When your brain says “be bold” but your inner critic whispers “better not.” 

You might have seen people, like me, refer to inner barriers … or as I call it, our inner glass ceiling … but what are we really talking about here? 

I mean, most people don’t even realise they have inner barriers.

Our inner barriers are our own limiting self-beliefs. They live in our subconscious, and therefore, we are often not even aware of them and how they hold us back from achieving what we want in life. 

These are beliefs like …

… to name a few. 

Now you might be saying “but I’m a confident professional woman who has achieved success, how can I have those beliefs?”

Well … it’s usually what is expressed through in our inner critic – the voice in our head that creates self-doubt and leaves us questioning ourself and our decision-making ability. You know what I mean? I’m sure you’ve heard it and often believed what it told you, without questioning where it comes from. We all have, and we all do, at some time at least.

Blocking Our Own Dreams

My dream was to live in France – since my twenties. It was like a calling from my soul. But life in Australia took over – bought the lovely home, renovated it, studied a Master of Business, worked, got made redundant (a few times), husband left me for another woman, elderly unwell parents to support, tried a few different business options without much success … and felt the rejection – you know the stuff of life.

Whilst I am strong and resilient, the negative experiences hammered my self-confidence. I got to my fifties and was asking “How do I make my life work?”. France was still calling me (even stronger now) … but I kept telling myself “If I can’t make life work in my own country, how am I going to make it work in a new country where I know no-one and don’t even speak the language?”. Rationally that made sense.  

5 Years Becomes 10 Years of Nothing

So my 5 year plan became 10 years of no action on it. It was just a dream that I didn’t believe I was good enough for. Or capable of achieving. Living in France was a total unknown to me, even though I had visited it many times, so I had many excuses.

That is how our limiting self-beliefs become our inner glass ceiling to realising our dreams and goals. Sometimes we don’t even get as far as creating our true goals and dreams because we are so caught up in our life. Our ego makes excuses to keep us safe from the unknown, from not taking risks, from not moving forward. This keeps us in our comfort zone, even when it is no longer comfortable.

And We Create This Inner Glass Ceiling?

As you can see from my story, my inner glass ceiling grew from my life experiences, which had beaten me down. Our life experiences feed our confidence levels – both positively and negatively.

Our social conditioning also plays a big part – women are conditioned to be less confident than men. Like being told “Don’t be so aggressive” when we are being assertive, or we should be nice and don’t rock the boat, or being encouraged to be the carer and supporter in our family. There’s so many of these influences … and that’s a whole other blog topic. Men are encouraged to be confident, assertive and take risks. Women not so much – in fact, more often the opposite.

Our personality type also affects our internal self-concept – our level of inner self-esteem and outer self-confidence. This comes out in:

• • how we respond to our fears

• • our attitude – to life and risk

• • the energy that we put out

It’s different for each woman … but most of us have some limiting self-beliefs. 

How do I Break Through this Inner Glass Ceiling?

1. The first step is be aware that you have an inner glass ceiling and decide you want to break through it – with the goal of stepping into your most powerful self.
2. Then you need to be courageous in opening up to delve deep inside to explore what your inner beliefs are and why you formed them. This often means facing some painful memories. It is not about re-living any trauma though, but observing the circumstances and the decisions you made in them and how that has played out in your life since. An objective observer, like a coach, can help and support in doing this. It’s almost impossible to do on your own.
3. The 3rd step is to reframe the experience, acknowledging you did what you needed to do at the time, but now you are a different – more experienced and wise – woman. Recognising that the unmet needs you had in this experience(s) can now be met by you and how you no longer need this self-belief.
4. Then you can successfully create new self-fulfilling beliefs to overcome the old limiting beliefs. This requires re-programming of the neural pathways in your brain to develop the new belief pathways and grow them until they over-power the old beliefs. This takes time and practice and support. 

This is the path The Reinvention Journey takes you on. Once you’ve made the first step, I’ll guide and support you through the next steps to achieve extraordinary results in less than a year … without the need for years of therapy.

And yes, I did move to France at 58 and I love living here. My life is great and my coaching business and clients inspire and motivate me everyday. I love helping women reinvent themselves and their lives.

Beliefs can be changed – no matter where they come from. You can break through to live your most confident and fulfilling life.

Author: Janeen Sonsie
Janeen is the creator of The Reinvention Journey, guiding mature, high-achieving women to step into their true power with clarity and confidence. Curious what’s possible for you? Book a free Clarity Coaching Session