Six Steps to Six Figures: Release Your Fears, Own Your Worth, and Ask for What You Want

Copyright © 2017 Sabiha Vorajee.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

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ISBN: 978-1-5043-0645-4 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-5043-0646-1 (e)

Balboa Press rev. date: 03/13/2017

CONTENTS

Introduction

How This Book Works

PART 1: RELEASE YOUR FEARS~

Step 1: Your Invisible Barrier—Hitting Your Glass Ceiling

Chapter 1: Are You Asking?

Chapter 2: What Happens When We Don’t Ask?

Chapter 3: Why Aren’t You Asking?

Chapter 4: Asking for What You Want: A Must, or Nice to Have?

Chapter 5: The truth about Worth and Value

Chapter 6: What’s Getting in Your Way? Realising You Have a Glass Ceiling

Chapter 7: Triggers—the Keys to Awareness and Consciousness

Chapter 8: Getting to Know Your Glass Ceiling So You Can Break through It

Step 2: Through the Glass Ceiling to Your Why

Chapter 9: Who Did You Want to Be When You Grew Up?

Chapter 10: The Truth of You—from Your Childhood Dreams

Chapter 11: The Power of Intuition, and Your Inner Being as a Compass

Chapter 12: What Do You Really, Really, Really Choose?

Chapter 13: Your Powerful and Priceless Vision

Chapter 14: Time to Play!

Step 3: Drawing back the Curtains; Facing Your Truth

Chapter 15: The Sum of All Fears

Chapter 16: Drawing back the Curtains: The True Power of Our Beliefs

Chapter 17: Uncovering the Truth about Our Monsters—the Beliefs of Fear

Chapter 18: Your Monster—Your best friend?

Chapter 19: Who’s the Big Bad Monster? Taking Back Your Power

Chapter 20: Who Do You Believe You Really, Really Are?

Chapter 21: Money, the Biggest Monster of All

PART 2: OWN YOUR WORTH~

Step 4: Uncovering the High Value Woman Within

Chapter 22: Getting Crystal Clear on Your Powerful and Priceless Vision

Chapter 23: The Power of You—Owning Your Worth

Chapter 24: What Do You Stand for and Believe In?

Chapter 25: Tapping into and Living Your True Power—Your Feminine Energy

Chapter 26: Cultivating the Lost Art of Being a Feminine Woman

Chapter 27: Feminine Energy and Leadership—You Are a Leader

Chapter 28: What Happens When You Embrace the Powerful, Feminine Leader Within?

Chapter 29: Finding Your Powerful, Feminine Voice

Chapter 30: Allowing Yourself to Receive (the Powerful, Feminine Way)

Step 5: Connecting to and Becoming the High Value Woman You Are

Chapter 31: The Seat of Feminine Power—Emotions and Energy

Chapter 32: Teaching People How to Treat You

Chapter 33: Boundaries and Non-Negotiables

Chapter 34: How Do You Be That? Living the Power of Being on a Daily Basis

Chapter 35: The Dark Side of Emotions—Staying Centred in Your Core

Chapter 36: Number One through the Gift of Gratitude

Chapter 37: Being More, Doing Less

Chapter 38: Vulnerability and Transparency—the Real Power Tools

PART 3: ASK FOR WHAT YOU WANT ~

Step 6: Filling Treasure Chests (Inside and Out)

Chapter 39 A Professional Life You Choose to Live and Lead In

Chapter 40 Creating Truly Congruent and Authentic Relationships

Chapter 41 Creating an Inspired Plan with P3 (Know Thyself)

Chapter 42 Creating an Inspired Plan with P3 (Know Your Value)

Chapter 43 Creating an Inspired Plan with P3 (Know Your Field and Industry)

Chapter 44 Creating an Inspired Plan with P3 (Know the Salaries in Your Field and Industry Inside Out)

Chapter 45 How to Ask; Strategy 1: Start by Having a Strategic Plan for Your Career

Chapter 46 How to Ask; Strategy 2: Setting Expectations for Yourself and Your Manager

Chapter 47 How to Ask; Strategy 3: Building the Relationship; Getting to Know Your Manager inside and Out

Chapter 48 How to Ask; Strategy 4: Creating Powerful Win-Win Situations through Collaborations

Chapter 49 How to Ask; Strategy 5: Seeding the Conversations and Testing the Water

Chapter 50 How to Ask; Strategy 6: The Big Ask!

Chapter 51 How to Ask; Strategy 7: The Asking Conversation

Chapter 52 How to Ask; Strategy 8: Key Tips to Asking

Chapter 53 How to Ask; Strategy 9: The Outcome—Yes/No, and How to Deal with It

Chapter 54 How to Ask; Strategy 10: Feedback Forever More!

Chapter 55 Final Words—Owning Our Worth and Power, and Continuing the Journey

Epilogue: Join the Movement

There comes a time when the risk to remain tight in the bud is more painful than the risk it takes to blossom.

—Anaïs Nin

For my Beloved.

INTRODUCTION

What would it feel like to be able to ask for what you want to receive financially for the work you do? What if you asked in a way that used every aligned part of you—body, mind, heart, and spirit? What if your voice resonated with deep certainty and knowledge, and you just knew you were worth every cent you were asking for?

What would it be like to live, walk, talk, eat, sleep, work, and play in a body that tingles with vibrant, passionate energy, letting you know in every moment who you are and what you’re capable of and that everything you choose is within your reach? You would simply have to have the courage, certainty, and confidence to ask for it.

What if, by owning the one thing that makes you feel like a woman (but has been negated and devalued in our society)—your powerful, feminine energy—is the one thing that can create the success, abundance, and fulfilment you want and dream of in a way that appears effortless and simple?

How would it be if you felt within the cells of your body, the marrow of your bones, the depths of your heart, that you were placed on this earth for a reason—to give your gifts and be rewarded handsomely for those gifts in every manner possible, especially financially?

What if you already had within you the confidence and certainty to ask for what you want, and all that’s left is for you to own and claim what’s rightfully yours—what you came to be, do, and have?

And in claiming your birthright, your inherent worthiness (which was never in doubt, but which you forgot in the tumultuousness of your life), you end up teaching, empowering, and leading other women to be and do the same?

Who would you be?

What would you do?

What would you create?

Whose lives would you touch and change?

Who would you become?

This book does not contain statistics, research, or studies on women about how we’re still experiencing a pay gap, although this topic may come up. It’s not a book about tricks of the trade; a vanilla, one-size-fits-all approach; or extra stuff you simply need to add to your already very full repertoire that allege to get you the success and money you want if you just do it the way they say you should.

This is not that kind of book. As much as those kinds of books can help us, in the end, all they really do is let us know how much we believe we still lack in being able to ask for and receive what we want and choose.

It’s not that kind of book.

This is a book that will awaken within you questions from a body, mind, heart, and spirit perspective about why you may not be asking for what you want and will ultimately choose, and thereby not receiving what you desire. The reason I have written it in this way, is currently, with all the information we have at our fingertips, I still haven’t come across a book that covers all the topics I’d like to discuss with you. Therefore, I have approached it in a way that encompasses all of who we are as women if we truly want success and abundance, material and otherwise, in our lives.

Asking for the money and wealth you want, or the promotions and opportunities that will allow you to live and give your gift from your heart and spirit requires us to start from deep within and not simply from the physical and mental faculties we rely on so heavily on a day-to-day basis.

It is my fervent desire for this book to show you how to be and do this, and I promise to provide start-to-finish spiritual, strategic, and practical strategies (gained from my many years of experience as a Human Resources professional from the other side of the interviewing table) that you can learn and apply and be the creator of all you choose. In the being of this woman, know you have the power to ask for and receive exactly what you want.

This book is your roadmap to owning and claiming your magnificence. It becomes who you are and where you rarely question or doubt whether you’re worth the money (or whatever else you’d like in your life) when you ask for it, even before you ask.

As women, we very often place ourselves last. We seem to believe that for us to be able to ask for what we want; first we must make sure everyone around us gets what they want. Until that happens, it’s incredibly selfish to even imagine that we can ask for what we want.

We seem to believe we should give our gifts from the depths of our being and not ask for anything in return. After all, it’s not very enlightened, spiritual, or feminine to ask for something in return for giving and living our gifts. Isn’t this what we were born to do?

We seem to believe who we are and what we do should be seen, noted, and rewarded without our ever needing to say anything, because to ask for what we want isn’t humble or gracious, and it’s definitely not feminine.

We seem to believe we must prove our inherent worthiness in every waking moment about every aspect of our lives and in every role we play, because it can always be queried, doubted, or, God forbid, questioned, especially in our professional lives.

We seem to believe that for one of us to move ahead, one or more of us must fall and make way because there just isn’t enough room at the top.

At some point, consciously or subconsciously, we give up or give in. We start playing the game the way we’ve been told we should play, because we believe we can’t win any other way. Through this capitulation, we negate every voice within that is screaming at us to reclaim our magnificence, own our brilliance, and ask for what we deserve.

I grew up in a culture that told me being born a girl meant I wasn’t to be seen or heard. For me to live my purpose, I was to abrogate all control to those who knew better and not question what I was told. I was lucky I had parents who truly believed in education for boys and girls, so my brother, sister, and I were educated to university level and went on to have successful careers in law, accountancy and Human Resources.

It was a given that as a boy, my brother would do this, but for my sister and I, it was considered arrogant to want an education. We didn’t need to be educated, and we certainty didn’t need to learn how to earn a living. Our husbands would do that for us.

I rebelled against everything I’d ever heard, determined to make my parents proud and shush the voices telling me that, as a woman, I was kidding myself that I would ever be successful.

I proved them wrong. In just under twenty years I had worked internationally in numerous large companies as an HR professional, specifically in the areas of reward and remuneration. From the bottom of the ladder to the top, I received salaries no one in my community could have told me I’d receive when I was a young woman, until eventually I retired from the industry, having reached the pinnacle I’d aspired to, started a new adventure and then returned, because I missed it.

But it wasn’t without a price.

We’ve been told, to achieve what we truly desire, we must play by the rules–rules that, ironically, weren’t created by us in the first place but which we must play by if we want to succeed.

Rules like be nice. Don’t have too many opinions. Tone it down. Hide your femininity. Don’t ask too many questions or challenge too many people. Be the peacemaker. Work much, much harder than anyone else. Don’t you know you must work twice as hard to be half as good if you’re a woman? Dress like a man, get a seat at the top table. Make sure you’re heard. Don’t worry about demonstrating your value—just keep endlessly proving your worth. Eventually, you’ll get there.

I did get there, and for me my there was exactly what I wanted. However, I crashed and burned many times along the way. It was through these fortuitous crashes that I learned some invaluable lessons about how to be a highly successful, professional, feminine woman who could ask for the money, promotions, and opportunities I wanted and receive them.

Nonetheless, when I look back at my journey, I see all the advice I was given and took, and I concluded that most of it was completely counterintuitive. Being a woman, I took the much longer route to the joyful, authentic success I wanted to create.

I also realised most of it was piecemeal and not at all holistic, which, as a woman, had me feeling very one-dimensional for much of my professional life.

So, I asked myself a question and decided. What if I wrote a book sharing how to be a highly successful and fulfilled, powerfully feminine woman who knows how to strategically manage her career and earning capacity, articulate her value with confidence, certainty, and charisma, and be able to ask for and receive what she wants whenever she wants?

Not a bad idea, I thought.

Sure, there are lots of books out there on similar topics, but there isn’t one written by someone who’s worked in remuneration and reward internationally; who knows the insider workings of how organisations manage their reward strategies; who’s created those very same strategies and lived it all herself by asking for and receiving what she wants; and who, in the process, coached many others to do the same.

Great idea, I thought.

And then, guess what happened? A thought popped into my head. A harbinger of doom. The killer of all desires and dreams. The death knell to courage and bravery—to pretty much everything we ever choose: Who the hell are you to write such a book?

That was when I knew I had to write this book. No matter what it took.

It never ends. That insidious voice that tries to undermine our every dream and desire, snuff out every spark we ever imagine of ourselves doing something magnificent, audacious, and life-changing. That voice tells us we’re a fool for even thinking it. That voice never goes away, and too often we hear it subconsciously, and because we don’t catch it and take it to task, it seeps away our inspiration, our passion, and our purpose. Before we know it, our dreams are off in the distance, no longer visible to the eyes or heart.

It’s time to change this. Not just for ourselves but for girls and women everywhere.

I don’t know about you, but I’m tired of hearing about the pay gap. I’m tired of hearing how, across most industries, women globally earn less than men, have access to fewer opportunities, must fight for what they want, have to put up with awful mistreatment sometimes, and even when they feel like they’ve succeeded or are succeeding, must work that much harder than their male counterparts to maintain their success, never mind elevate it to the next level.

I’m tired of hearing about how girls outperform boys throughout their schooling years, yet as they progress through their careers, the gap widens at every point, and they never seem to make it up.

I’m tired in this day and age of having access to so much information, intelligence, and knowledge, yet feeling like no matter how much we know, we’re not changing the nature of the game or the levelness of the playing field.

I believe the status quo needs to change, and I am willing to challenge it and help it change.

I believe women and men want it to change, and both are willing to help it change so we all benefit. Otherwise, we’re simply creating a different model of the same thing.

I believe it’s time.

I also believe it’s time to reclaim our powerful, feminine magnificence from the core of our soul, and help other women be and do the same. It’s time to end the games that separate us as women; turning on each other because we believe we must to succeed. It’s time to step into the true potential of who we really are, individually and as a collective group. We have the power to create and nourish life within us. Can we even absorb the enormity of such a thing? Yet it is one of the most unspoken, undervalued aspects of us as women, and it needs to change for ourselves, our partners, and our children.

We women are the true messengers of the change, starting at an individual level, because it is only when we see we aren’t living our magnificence, our dreams, that we’re falling short of being the inspiration we aspire to be, and then we start the journey.

This journey may not be for every woman. Our journeys are personal, and this is a journey that calls you. Some will hear the call and heed it. Others will hear the call, but the sound will be soft, barely heard, and they will walk on by.

All of which is perfect.

I believe our lives are our own, and the song by which we dance to our lives is also our own.

I believe every single one of us came into this life with a purpose, one that transcends every aspect of our lives, and some of us, especially women in this current climate, came to heal, reconnect, and fall deeply into and in love with our magnificent, feminine power. That way we can become the women and leaders we aspire to be, do the work we came to do, and inspire the next generation to become even more. As powerful, feminine women.

I believe one way to do this is by knowing our inherent worthiness, feeling it to the extent we never question it, and living and sharing our gifts personally and professionally from this place. In understanding how much value we must add, we then in return expect to receive the rewards, especially financially, that we so richly deserve.

I also believe we all have a very complex relationship with money: what it is; what it means; what it says about us if we like it, want it, and have it; or what it says if we like it, want it, and don’t have it. Ultimately, I believe it’s not about the money; still, only by taking this journey can we know this at our core for ourselves and then truly understand the role of money in a way where it simply floods our lives.

And finally, I believe as women we simply want to feel the magnificence of ourselves when we live true to our being and our soul. This is when who you believe yourself to be on the inside shows up fully on the outside, and none can deny its truth. When we embrace our powerful feminine. When we give our gifts and are rewarded. When we see how others are inspired by our example—be they our partners, children, family, friends, or strangers. When we shine our light, and our radiance is blinding. This is when we live the lives we were meant to live.

This is why we are here, why we came to be, and why I am writing this book.

If you’re still reading, then I have a hunch you may be one of those who will join me and go on the journey.

There is a voice within calling you.

You’ve heard it many times.

Sometimes you’ve listened. Sometimes you’ve ignored it. Sometimes it made sense. Other times you were sure you were schizophrenic, because there was no way you were even going to contemplate doing what the voice suggested. Quit your job and travel for a year. Take a sabbatical and write a book. Marry him. Run as fast as you can in the opposite direction. Move to Australia (that last one was mine nine years ago. I listened in spite of the fact that most people thought I was crazy!) Move to Edinburgh (that one is mine too from last year, and here I am. In Edinburgh. No one thought I was crazy this time. They know me too well!)

Whatever the message, this voice is insistent in a way that resonates at a soul level, and as much as you try, it’s very hard to dismiss. Then again, when it comes to your professional life, sometimes this voice gets drowned out by some other voice.

This other voice is the one we hear the most, the loudest and most ardently. It often tells us how we constantly and consistently fall short in everything we do at home, at work, with our family and friends, in our social lives. With our bodies, hobbies, and spiritual or creative pursuits, nothing escapes this voice.

This feeling of falling short mars everything, resulting often in a dismal lack of fulfilment in every aspect of our lives, even when we succeed, because often the thing we were chasing wasn’t truly what was driving or inspiring us. It’s what we believe we ought to want, have, and experience.

This voice is the voice without—a voice outside you that deceives you and throws you off your course. Through this book, I want to help you create from a space of confidence and certainty the strategies that will give you the ability to ask for what you want. My innermost ambitious and soulful desire is to help you cultivate the voice within, because this is the seat of your power.

Dr. John F Demartini, in his book, ‘Count Your Blessings: The Healing Power of Gratitude’ talks about how when the voice and the vision on the inside is more profound, and more clear and loud than all opinions on the outside, you’ve begun to master your life.

This is the journey I invite you on. This is a journey that can transform your life as it has mine, to the extent that when you navigate this terrain, it has the power to surprise and delight, and in some circumstances, stop you in your tracks, as you make the decision to take a deeper and more thorough look to what treasures are there deep within you. Why? Because this is the journey to your authentic self, power, and voice. When you own it in its entire