EP 97: Releasing the Need to Prove: Arielle Estoria’s Journey to Authentic Leadership

Do you find yourself in a constant state of proving? Proving that you are a good enough leader, parent, partner, fill in the blank?

Do you know what drives your need to prove to others and yourself?

When does the need to prove you are good enough and worthy enough show up the most? At work, in your relationships with others, or maybe in your relationship with yourself?

When you fall into a constant state of proving your worthiness and value, your unaddressed relational wounds fuel an excessive need for validation and recognition from those around you that exhausts and leaves you in an excessive loop of hustling, anxiety, and doubt.

But when you commit to doing the work to understand your underlying motivations to constantly prove yourself, you can release these burdens and develop a more secure, confident approach to leadership, relationships, and conflict resolution in all areas of your life.

Arielle Estoria (she/her) is a poet, author, actor, and model. Her motto, “Words not for the ears but for the soul” stems from her dedication to remind anyone who encounters her work that words are meant to be felt and experienced not just heard, with a specific heart in empowering, encouraging and making space for audiences of women to feel free and at home in their own bodies.

Arielle has shared her work through custom spoken word pieces, workshops and themed keynote talks with companies such as Google, Sofar Sounds, Lululemon, Dressember, Tedx, the SKIMS campaign by Kim Kardashian and more. She has consecutively emceed annual conferences and has led various writing, embodiment and self-acceptance workshops in various settings ranging from students to professional development spaces.

Listen to the full episode to hear:

How Arielle has worked to cut ties with people pleasing and learned not to constantly explain herself
How Arielle defines “secure proving” versus “insecure proving” in her life
How we can try so hard to prove ourselves that we forget the self we’re trying to prove
Balancing performance and authenticity online, and how social media makes it hard to show up as your full self
How Arielle defines success for herself, outside of the linear path through life that she was taught

Learn more about Arielle Estoria:

Learn more about Rebecca:

Resources:

Transcript:

Rebecca Ching: All right, y’all! I am just a few episodes from episode 100! For those of you that have been with me from the beginning, thank you! And those that are new, I am so grateful you’re along for The Unburdened Leader ride. I would be so honored, it would be such a gift to me as we celebrate this milestone, if you have not already, please rate and review the podcast wherever you listen to the show, and please make sure you’re subscribed and share it with some folks you think may benefit from it. So thank you so much for listening to this show!

[Inspirational Intro Music]

Arielle Estoria: What are we overcompensating for? What are we going to these great heights to not be this person? Just say you’re not that person anymore. But there’s still so much fear around that. That was another level of my unfolding, honestly. The process still keeps going, like I said in the book. It’s cyclical. It happens, is repeated and all over the place, and so, I’m back in that space of, “Oh, this is my next round of awakening, of what are you proving and who even is this self that you’re so desperately trying not to just prove but hold onto?”

Rebecca Ching: Do you find yourself in a constant state of proving, trying to prove you’re good enough as a leader, a parent, a partner, or you fill in the blank? Do you know what drives your constant need to prove to others and yourself? Now, maybe you have a desire to prove someone wrong or to prove you’re not the same person you used to be, and when does the need to prove that you’re good enough and worthy show up the most? Is it at your work or in your relationships with others or maybe just in your relationship with yourself.

Now, when we do the work to earn trust, we look to deepen connections and relationships. Trust does indeed have to be earned and maintained.

2:00

But I want to note: building trust is different than constantly having to prove, especially if you have a history of relational wounding or trauma. And note: we all have experienced some kind of betrayal, rejection, neglect, at minimum, and you may find yourself constantly trying to prove your worth, which is rooted from past experiences where your value or your capabilities were questioned or undermined by significant people in your life.

So, when you fall into a constant state of proving your worthiness and value, these unaddressed relational wounds fuel an excessive need for validation and recognition from those around you that exhausts and leaves you in an excessive loop of hustling, anxiety, and doubt.

I’m Rebecca Ching, and you’re listening to The Unburdened Leader, the show that goes deep with humans who navigate life’s challenges and lead in their own ways. Now, our goal is to learn how they address the burdens they carry, how they learn from them and become better and more impactful leaders of themselves and others.

Now, I suspect you know well the pressure to prove yourself. You know what that feels like, and I’m hard pressed to find someone who walks through life feeling like they don’t have anything to prove. I mean, the folks who say they have nothing to prove often seem like they really have the most to prove, right? But when you get curious about your relentless urge to prove yourself, you’ll likely find a multitude of trailheads that offer important data about what’s at the root of your need to prove.

Now, I know, for me, the constant need to prove myself usually stirs when someone or something matters a lot to me and vulnerability shows up, activating the parts of me that want to mitigate the discomfort by working harder (and often harder than is needed), overthinking, and questioning myself.

4:10

When I follow my own trailheads in these instances, these familiar feelings go way back from the task at hand in front of me and find their roots in my relational wounds and traumas from childhood, school, and previous work experiences.

I’m gonna share some different archetypes or experiences that can birth the need to prove ourselves, and you may relate to some of the types of these relational woundings and traumas I’m about to share as they fuel this constant need to prove yourself, especially in leadership roles where these following experiences can activate the echoes of burdens you still hold from, one, childhood neglect or abuse. So, when you experience neglect or abuse in childhood, it can bring up deep seated feelings of unworthiness or inadequacy in adulthood, and as a leader with this kind of background, you might feel a heightened need to prove your worth and competence, particularly in a challenging or confrontational situation. It could also carry these kinds of burdens from toxic past relationships. Now, whether they’re personal or professional, your experience in toxic relationships can instill in you a fear of rejection or criticism, and this fear can drive you to overcompensate by continually proving your worth to avoid perceived or real conflict. This is exhausting.

Another one is workplace bullying or undermining. When you consistently experience being undermined at your work environments, you can develop an acute sensitivity to vulnerability that may lead you to constantly seeking validation and affirmation through your achievements and decisions. And a big one, too, is cultural or societal discrimination.

6:04

When you face discrimination or marginalization due to race, gender, sexual orientation, or other aspects of nondominant culture identities, this can result in you developing a chronic sense of having to prove yourself. And if you’re a leader from a marginalized group, you may feel additional pressures to demonstrate your capabilities and legitimacy.

The last one I want to highlight is critical or unsupportive parenting. When you grow up with overly critical or unsupportive parents, this can instill in you a perpetual need for approval from others, which can be quite tricky as a leader. The lack of unconditional acceptance in childhood might lead to this constant pursuit of external validation in your professional roles and personal relationships.

Phew, in each of these various types of experiences that leave us holding the burdens of shame, humiliation, abandonment, rejection, despair, and more, the relational wounds can trigger an intensified fear of vulnerability and conflict, which leads us to, again, relentlessly quest to prove our worth, often at the expense of our authenticity and wellbeing. But when you commit to doing the work to understand your underlying motivations to constantly prove yourself, you can release the burdens and develop a more secure, confident approach to leadership, relationships, and conflict resolution in all areas of your life.

Arielle Estoria is a traveling spoken word poet, self-published author, dance party enthusiast, emcee and event host, speaker, body positive model, actor, and professional feeler. She shamelessly claims that she is in the business of pulling on heartstrings, and her motto is “words not for the ears but for the soul,” which stems from her dedication to remind anyone who encounters her and her work that words are meant to be felt and experienced and not just heard, which just means you may or may not cry by the end of your time with her, and you have been warned. [Laughs]

8:17

Arielle has shared her work through spoken word workshops and themed keynote talks with companies such as Google, Sofar Sounds, Lululemon, Dressember, TEDx, Skims, and more. Her first EP is a collection of music and poetry called Symphony of a Lioness, and her single “Magic in Your Bones” are all available on iTunes or Apple Music. She’s also the coauthor of two collections of poetry: Vagabonds and Zealots and Write Bloody Spill Pretty, which can be found both at Amazon.com.

Now, notice when Arielle talks about her decision about when and where to stop explaining herself. Pay attention to when Arielle talks about how she discerns when to show up and contribute, and when to not push herself to perform. And listen for when Arielle talks about how to discern when to just live life for her and not for sharing with the world or on social media.

All right, y’all, now please welcome back Arielle Estoria to The Unburdened Leader podcast!

Arielle, welcome back!

Arielle Estoria: I’m excited to be back!

Rebecca Ching: I’m really looking forward to this conversation today, and we’re gonna be talking about proving. As I was thinking about this topic, in light of so much that you’ve written about and even just a lot of people who are experiencing it, there’s this sense of constantly having to prove, and I don’t know if people are aware of how much that’s present, and I’m curious if you can share what your relationship with proving to yourself and to others is, particularly in your very public work as a poet, an author, and an actor.

10:05

Arielle Estoria: Yeah, I think there’s such a twofold to this because I think growing up as a Black woman, as a Black woman within Evangelical spaces, there was a lot less room for you to prove. There was nothing you needed to prove in a sense of there was a permission for you to show up fully, so what are you proving.

Rebecca Ching: Ah.

Arielle Estoria: What is there to say, you know? So I think, for me, and I’ve share this before, of just growing up pretty much just like going through the motions, making sure I’m being well-liked, making sure I’m being approachable, making sure I’m doing all the presentable and approachable things, and it wasn’t until I started doing the opposite of that — and I still think I’m very much so a people pleaser. I still think I very much so operate at a sense of, “Like me! See me!” But I’m really trying to get to the point where I operate more in a more authentic space.

So I feel like once I shifted and I stopped having to always be approved or approachable or liked or do the good thing or do the pleasing thing, that’s when it was like I had to explain myself more. “Who are you to now operate outside of this conditioning that you’ve been given? Why does your art not sit in this wavelength and now it sits in a whole other thing? I don’t understand it. I don’t understand it, and I don’t understand you,” which, as an Enneagram 4, is my nightmare. My absolute nightmare. It is the worst possible feeling to be misunderstood.

Rebecca Ching: Yes.

12:01

Arielle Estoria: And so, in the having to prove myself and in the having to show up and be like, “No, but I’m doing this, but I still like this. Yeah, I’m trying to be a yoga teacher, but look! I’m still going to Israel. I’m still a Christian. I’m still a this,” and having all these outside of what feels natural and what feels comfortable to me, kind of conditionings, and so, it wasn’t really until I started doing things outside of the space of approval that I even had to come to a point where I felt the need to prove.

I don’t think there’s ever a necessity like in a sense of permissibility means that we can just be and that there is no explanation to it, which is really hard as an artist because I’m like, “I don’t want to have to explain his to you because then that makes it seem like it’s more watered down. I had to spoon feed it to you?” I think that’s why artists, we like to kind of be the people to poke holes in things. We like to be the things that kind of like — I’m not really a flip-the-whole-thing-upside-down kind of artist, but there are artists out there who are like that, and they’re so good at it because I think that’s our job. Our job is that we don’t give you answers. We don’t spoon feed you, but we do give you truth, we do give you information, and you are, at the end of the day, the artist to decide what to do with it.

So this idea of proving has been such a wave, especially a very frequent wave in the last few years of having to — “Why are you marrying that person?” and “Why are you not going to church as much?” and “Why are you doing yoga?” and I just got to the point where I was like I don’t have to explain myself to the people who get me, and I think I just need to lean into that.

Rebecca Ching: Okay, so, for you growing up (I want to just recap this), it was like you weren’t even aware of the need to prove. It was like you just — there wasn’t even the permission to try and be.

Arielle Estoria: Yeah.

Rebecca Ching: And then once you started stepping out of that and doing your own thing, then all the questioning came because you were not fitting their expectations.

Arielle Estoria: Yeah.

14:12

Rebecca Ching: Whether it was family, probably, or people that are experiencing your art, and then turning that around.

But what strikes me interesting about proving is you and I scheduled this interview a little earlier, and you had to reschedule because you had a callback for, I think, a commercial. And so, that got me thinking more about the proving. Like there is this element. You want to land the gig. You want to get the spot, and so, yeah, what is your relationship with proving, particularly in those acting auditions?

Arielle Estoria: Well, I mean, so much of that is you’re showing up and you’re proving that you’re the person for the job.

Rebecca Ching: Right?

Arielle Estoria: Even though there are 50 other people, 100 other people who are also in this room who have also been here also proving to you that — and I think I just really learned to go into those spaces of, “All I can do is be me. All I can do is show what I bring to the table.”

I had actually one audition that really was probably the most epitome of this was I did the audition, I did my version of it, I obviously take the direction, and then I add a little something to it on the second take, and then I submitted it. And then I did my callback, and the director was in the callback, and he gave me a note, I did the note, and then he goes, “Actually, I kind of liked your initial instinct the first time around.” And that’s what I ended up doing in the actual commercial. This was for Starbucks. That’s what I actually ended up doing was how I naturally responded in that moment. He gave me a note to tweak it to see a variation. He was like, “Actually, no, I really like how you initially did it.”

And so, in all of my classes too, I’ve really learned that, yes, it’s trusting the script, yes, it’s listening to direction, and most times people are just seeing are you gonna be hell on set or are you gonna be someone who’s at least nice to work with, you know?

16:14

Not just easy but at least just pleasant to work with. And so, that but it’s also your natural intuition. We’re actors. I’m an actor because I have this natural way of like, “Oh, how else would this person say this line? In what mindset would I have to be different in order for me to approach this?”

So much of it is having to prove myself, which I hate. I think that’s why it took me so long to come back to it because I wasn’t good at doing that at first. I didn’t want to have to, and now I’m like, “No, I know who I am. I know what I bring to the table, and if the door closes, it closes. But I’m really lucky to always get very close.” And I kind of use the getting very close or availing an opportunity as a win, as a I was considered, and then it didn’t work out for look, for whatever reason, and after so much rejection you start to be okay with that and it becomes, “I can only prove myself in this moment. I do this audition and then I leave. I either made an imprint or I didn’t. It either works or it doesn’t.” And you move onto the next one. Yeah.

Rebecca Ching: How do you define proving, then, given what you just shared? What is your definition of proving or how do you know you’re in a state of proving versus being?

Arielle Estoria: Mm, I think there could be so many different ways to think about this. For some reason, the first thing that popped in my head when you asked that is a lot of times we think proving, I think in the context we were just talking about, is I’m proving that there’s a puzzle piece. There’s something complete, and all you need to fulfill it is me. You need my smile. You need my spark. You need my voice. You need my charisma.

18:03

But then there’s a level where we prove in a sense of like, “Everything is perfect. Everything is perfect. How do, then, I fit in this? And how do I make myself fit in this?” So there’s a secure type of proving and a very insecure type of proving, and I think it really depends on in which setting we’re sitting into that. I think when it comes to acting, I try my absolute best to tap into my secure proving. “I’m gonna go in there. I’m gonna do this the best I know how,” and it’s not in an insecure sense. It’s like, “I trust myself. I trust my gift.”

And then there are a lot of other times when it comes to family, when it comes to work being slow and me trying to figure out who I am as an artist where I’m insecurely proving myself like, “Oh, everything is working. Everything else is perfect, and I’m not.” And that really makes me come back to, I think, as a kid if there was any level of me trying to prove, it was this constant proving of I’m good enough. “I’m good. I’m good. I’m good. I’m good enough.”

And even in therapy recently, my therapist did an exercise with me, and she was like, “I’m gonna ask you who are you, and you just answer back with whatever comes to mind.” So she asked me a few times, and I was like, “Creative. I’m an artist. I’m a feeler,” and then I kept coming back to, “I’m good. I’m good. I’m good,” and then that’s what ended up breaking me down and I was sobbing in that, and I was like, “Okay, what in me living up until these 32 years of life has been surrounded around me trying to prove that I’m good, that I’m not sinful, that my body is good, that my Blackness is good, that my spirituality (even though it winds and flows and ebbs) is good, that my marriage is good, that me as an artist outside of church spaces is good.” It was just this constant overwhelming of like, “Oh, I’ve been trying to prove to everyone around me that I’m good, that I’m good enough, that I’m good in nature, that I’m worthy,” and it’s like, okay, but do I believe that about myself?

20:24

And so, I do think there’s a secure and an insecure way of proving, and I think it’s just circumstantial in which we tap into one or tap into the other or are triggered by one or triggered by the other.

Rebecca Ching: I love that differentiation, because there’s almost proving in spaces where we want to earn the right. We’ve got to earn trust. And you’re talking about in acting they’re trying to assess are you going to be a good fit for this piece that they’re doing, but you’re not putting your worthiness, your good on the table for them to have a say. And then the insecure proving is completely eternalized, and it’s particularly tricky when it comes to family or the vulnerability like, for you, when the work is slower or other factors in our world that if we’ve eternalized our worth and we’re waiting for that feedback.

And so, that’s interesting for you because that’s tricky with work, because if it’s quiet and you’re not getting the gigs —

Arielle Estoria: Yes! Oh, I definitely go in waves with that. I just am coming off a month of two conferences and all these things, and then it’s just like crickets and I’m like, “Oh, I have to stop going into this damnation mode of, ‘You’re nothing. You’re not doing anything.’” It’s pretty jolting. I actually just started Kerry Washington’s book Thicker Than Water.

Rebecca Ching: Oh.

Arielle Estoria: And she actually talks about that. At the beginning of ending Scandal and how she was like, “If I’m not Kerry Washington, if I’m not Olivia Pope, who am I?”

22:06

I was like, okay, so this is not just me. I’m obviously experiencing it on a less Olivia Pope level and more just on my level, but that’s still a thing we have where we do these big things, especially as artists, and we’re like, “That was the thing. That was what I was here for. So now what the heck am I here for?” It’s really jolting, and all your energy, all your thoughts and preparation go into me prepping those poems, me showing up to those events, and then they’re done and you’re just like, “I guess I’m just going back to my apartment and my plants and my sweet husband,” which are great things. But I’m also like, “Okay, just twiddling my thumbs.”

So it’s really jolting, and I think coming off of COVID, it’s even more jolting because the pandemic took so much of that away. Anytime it gets quiet I think it does become really scary, yeah.

Rebecca Ching: I want to shift a little bit to another recent experience that you shared about, and you wrote an email about this that really stood out to me, and it caused me to pause. You were at a recent book launch party for another really gifted poet, Cleo Wade.

Arielle Estoria: Yeah. Yeah.

Rebecca Ching: And you wrote to your community this. You wrote:

“But adulting still be adulting. Bills gotta be paid. New bills keep coming. My desire to be connected and relevant is costing money, and if I’m honest, my value in myself has been heavily wrapped in being booked and being busy, and I’m desperately trying to untangle it. What’s it like trying so hard to prove yourself that you forget the self you’re trying to prove?”

Arielle Estoria: [Laughs]

Rebecca Ching: A stop-in-your-tacks moment. I was like, “Yeah! Put that in neon lights!” And so, take me back to that moment you were writing that. How were you feeling in that moment?