Prestige can free you – or it can trap you
Here’s how to make your prestige a parachute, not a prison
I was chatting with one of my Harvard Business School classmates (whose Substack, Chief Mom Officer, I highly recommend following), and she said something incredibly insightful about going to HBS.
She said—
“What you’re really doing when you go to HBS is — you’re buying a floor.”
Post-HBS, even if everything goes wrong and your career totally explodes, there’s a limit to how far you can fall because the safety net of the HBS connections and brand name and resources and training will catch you.
I think this is true of all prestigious things.
Brand name universities, well-recognized firms, fancy titles, distinguished credentials…
What you’re really doing, when you obtain these things, is — you’re buying a floor.
You’re setting a limit on how low your life can go, even if everything goes totally sideways.
Chances are, you’ve obtained at least one Prestige Floor in your life (you might even have multiple).
Now the question for you is:
What are you going to do with that floor?
Let me give you an analogy to help you see your choices.
Imagine that you’ve bought a literal floor in a building.
You’ve bought one of those ultra-fancy NYC apartments, that take up an entire floor of a building, like this one ⤵️
This gorgeous full-floor condo is yours. No one can ever take it away from you.
And now that you own this stunning condo, you have two choices.
Option 1: You can make this condo a prison.
You can tell yourself:
Now that I own this condo, I have to either stay in the condo OR stay in places that are equally or more fancy than this condo.
I can never set foot in any place that is less fancy than this condo.
If I do, my life is totally, embarrassingly off track.
I can only go to places that are befitting and appropriate for someone who owns this condo.
When you do this, your world shrinks.
You become trapped by the fanciness of your condo.
Option 2: You can make this condo a launchpad.
You can tell yourself:
Now that I own this condo, I always have this safe, beautiful home base to come back to.
Which means…I have even MORE freedom to go wherever I want!
Let’s go backpacking in Thailand.
Let’s go whitewater rafting in the Adirondacks.
Let’s live in tents in Patagonia.
I have to take advantage of the fact that I have such a secure and comfortable home base to come back to…
By going out there and doing a whole bunch of sweaty, muddy, uncomfortable, interesting things!
When you do this, your world grows.
You are freed by the fanciness of your condo.
What are you doing with the “full floor condo” of your prestige?
Have you turned it into a prison… ⛓️
By telling yourself you can only do things that are equally or more prestigious than what you’ve already done?
Have you shrunk your world and become trapped by the prestige of your credentials?
Or have you turned it into a launchpad… 🚀
By giving yourself the freedom to do bolder, weirder, riskier things, because you always have a safe home base to come back to?
Have you expanded your world and become freer, powered by the prestige of your credentials?
If you’ve been choosing Option #1 for a while…
But you want to start choosing Option #2…
Here’s what I want you to do.
Step 1
IF you were to treat your prestige as a launchpad rather than a prison, what’s ONE thing you would want to do?
What’s one metaphorical “exotic location you’d travel to,” knowing you have a beautiful apartment to come back to?
Just say the first thing that pops into your head.
Step 2
Now that you know that, what’s your likelihood of taking one small, exploratory step toward doing that?
What’s your likelihood of “just looking at some airline tickets to that destination”?
On a scale of 1-10, 10 being “I’m doing it right now” and 1 being “lol never happening.”
Just say the first number that comes into mind.
Step 3
If the number you said is less than 8, come talk to me.
Making your prestige a launchpad is scary but not dangerous.
Making your prestige a prison is completely UN-scary but very, very dangerous.
And dangerous but un-scary things are the #1 thing you need to watch out for in your life.
Because your internal alarm bells won’t tell you that there’s a problem until it’s way too late.
So come talk to me and let’s orchestrate a prison break.
Book a free coaching consult to talk me about working together one-on-one.
Or join the waitlist for my course & coaching program, opening shortly :)
What my clients have to say…
“Trust the process and within a few sessions, you'll see results.
This is not something where you have to wait six months or a year before you expect to start feeling better.
It happens pretty quickly.”
—Client | Head of Business Development at MedTech Company
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