Achieving upward social mobility and self-acceptance doesn’t always go hand-in-hand.
One aspect of social mobility that comes up time and again amongst the people I speak with is the sense of unease you can feel about where you find yourself vs where you’re from. And how challenging it can be to accept the reality of living with what you’ve worked so hard to achieve and what you’ve had to overcome.
What’s striking is that it seems to get worse as you get older. Especially once you have children.
Self-acceptance can get harder the further your social mobility journey goes
In my 20s, when I was blasting my way through corporate life, travelling the world and making a ton of money (relative to where I came from – but not compared to some of my corporate peers – we know the #ClassPayGap is real😉), I felt that if I could do it, then so could everyone else.
In my 30s, I was too busy combining work with raising my children to pay much attention to what else was going on. Plus, we were splurging a whole salary on childcare so, y’know, it didn’t feel like we were overtly well off.
And then I hit my 40s. And my kids started secondary school and the gap became more of a chasm between the start I could see my children had in life vs the start I had. And, more painfully, the start that the children of some of my childhood peers and relatives had.
The discomfort of ‘doing well’
With all this comes discomfort. The sense of knowing in your bones that not everyone gets a fair go. And that some people’s lives seem rigged from the very start. And that some of us get a little bit of luck to help power up all our bloody hard work by dint of our birth order or birthplace.
There are times when it’s hard to feel ok with having more than enough to pay the bills. To have access to good quality housing, food, and healthcare. To have savings to fall back on and resources you can call on. To have the headspace to ponder and wonder about inequity rather than dealing with the sharp end of it.
Fractures in families and things left unsaid
For lots of people this leads to fractures in families and conversations that can’t be held. Which is why it’s important that we can have this kind of discussion in the workplace. If we care about social mobility from the context not just of getting in, but also getting on, people need to know it’s ok to acknowledge this part of the experience. And to find others they can talk to.
If this is a conversation that you want to open up in your workplace, or a conversation you’d simply like to have with someone else who gets it – let me know. You’re definitely not on your own.
Looking for a speaker on social mobility and self-acceptance?
Self acceptance is a theme that runs through a lot of my talks, not just this post. If this is something you want your team or audience to hear more of take a look at the showreel on my social mobility keynote speaker page, or follow along on LinkedIn for more posts like this.
You might also like to read Social Mobility and History Repeating Itself and Social Mobility and Scholarships.