Who Determines Your Worth?

10 MINUTES TO LESS SUFFERING

This solo podcast episode explores the psychological burden of seeking external validation and how self-doubt can limit personal and professional potential. Host Alison Carmen shares

Key takeaways

Alison Carmen reveals she dropped out of an Ivy League college due to health and family illness, yet found success by declaring her own value in professional settings instead of justifying her background.
A former client with only a high school education successfully manages 40 staff members and handles complex QuickBooks finances despite persistent imposter syndrome about numerical skills.

Main topics

Intrinsic self-worth vs. external validation
Imposter syndrome and educational background

Notable quotes

"The biggest person fighting against us is us."

Conclusion

The episode provides a practical framework for dismantling limiting be

Transcript preview

Speaker 1 (0:11) Hello, my name is Alison Carmen and welcome to my podcast, 10 Minutes to Less Suffering. And the name of today's podcast is Who Determines Your Worth? And I've been thinking about this the last couple of weeks. I heard from an old client of mine. And what's so interesting about this client is she happens to be one of my more successful clients that I've worked with. And she... graduated high school and never went to college. And while we used to work together, she used to have this story that, well, I didn't go to college and I'm not great with numbers. And how can I run this business? And when we used to take a step back, she was able to run her finances. She was able to run her own QuickBooks. She was managing a staff of about 40 people. And it was more her story of what she didn't have than what was actually happening in her life. And although my story is very different from my clients, and for me, I dropped out of an Ivy League college. I wasn't feeling well, and my sister was very sick, and I ended up going to college near where I grew up on Long Island. And after that, I used to find myself in circles or on a board or in a business meeting where a lot of these people had this very high education and they were looking for candidates. And I used to sit in the room and watch them judge the candidates based on where they went to school. And I was quiet and I'm sure they were sitting there thinking, well, how's Allison sitting in this room? She doesn't have the same kind of level of education or whatever. And as I was sitting there, I had a choice. I could blurt out, well, I dropped out of an Ivy League school or I could sit there and declare my value. And in one of those meetings is one of the first times I did that. And I remember feeling more comfortable because I was sitting in the room, not having to explain myself, not have to justify anything. It didn't matter because I decided that I was okay. And then when I went off on my own, into my own law practice and as a business consultant, in a way, I guess it was a gift because When people came into my office, they were whole. They were all they needed to be. And if they had a dream, it was my job to help them get there. It was my job not to look at what they didn't have, but what they do have. And what made them unique and what made them special and what made them want this dream. Everybody has their own brilliance, their own uniqueness, their own specialness. And the reason why I bring this up today is that there's so much around us that tells us. that we don't