How to Lovingly Smash Your Own Glass Ceilings
Written by Constanze Zientek, Women's Coach
Constanze Zientek is a women's coach who works with highly sensitive women in their thirties, helping them to cultivate inner strength, embrace embodied leadership, and build an authentic, aligned life. Her approach blends emotional depth, clarity, and self-trust.
Have you ever felt like you were meant for more, but it still feels too far out of reach? Like the experiences that you are having in your career or in your private life are not even scratching the surface of your potential, but you don’t really know how to look for more? No matter how hard you try, you always feel like there is an invisible limit holding you back from your actual potential, but you don’t know how to get over it? If that is the case, you are not alone. You’re likely experiencing a glass ceiling in your own advancement.
What is a glass ceiling?
While some limits are very visible, glass ceilings are almost invisible limits to what a person can be or achieve in their life. It’s like a very well-hidden limit that determines the maximum amount of growth, evolution, or luck that is allowed to happen to a person and therefore often keeps them rotating in the same lane, without the possibility of change or big pivots.
Potential areas include salary, career opportunities, relationships, friendships, every imaginable skill (learning a language, an instrument, a new sport, or only a few of them), or simply the feeling that you don’t deserve what’s good. It is the feeling that you can’t do or have something because you’re not skilled, able, or worthy enough to have more or something different.
A glass ceiling can, without any doubt, tie a person to a state of misery, but it doesn’t have to. Actually, a glass ceiling is more likely to tie people to situations where they feel like their current state is not extraordinarily great, but still just fine. That’s because the glass ceiling acts like an invisible barrier wherever people feel that going higher will eventually lead to everything currently existing falling apart or bring up more risks and responsibilities.
As we can see, there are different types of glass ceilings after all. Some examples are the glass ceiling of power and influence, the glass ceiling of income, the glass ceiling of expansion, the glass ceiling of luck and ease, and the list goes on. Career and education can be classic fields for glass ceilings to appear in. However, they can also appear in relationships if things seem to be “too good to be true or too harmonious.” Glass ceilings can also arise in any other opportunity that seemingly comes together a little too smoothly (just picture getting an unexpected gift and thinking right away, “What do they want from me in exchange? Am I being scammed here?”).
Many times, glass ceilings appear in very subtle ways and therefore become almost unnoticeable in the first place. They can appear as a feeling of unworthiness while secretly desiring a raise, the wish to be treated in a different way in personal relationships, a feeling that it’s impossible to pick up a new hobby, project, or habit, or simply the fear of doing too many different things at once. There can be uncertainty about being able to handle it and, of course, about what people might think about it.
A glass ceiling is the silent force that wants you to stick to your current identity because that’s what you are and what feels safe to you. It’s what makes you stick to “being realistic” when you secretly feel like there’s more to explore, but fear that there’s so much more to lose.
The hidden cost of staying beneath it
As much as the glass ceiling might serve as a protection mechanism in the first place, it comes with a hidden cost whenever it is simply fear that is holding a person back from growth and evolution. That cost is losing touch with one’s own desires. Whenever a person continually dismisses what they truly want, the chances increase that they will sooner or later develop a habit of dismissing their own desires and start living a life they have learned to adapt to, but never aspired to create in the first place. That feeling can further increase resentment, self-doubt, and frustration, which can eventually become permanent and have a detrimental effect on their physical and psychological health over time. On top of that comes, of course, the fact that not only the person but also those around them might unknowingly suffer from that person holding back their true potential.
10 ways to lovingly smash your glass ceilings
1. Recognize the ceiling you have learned to call your limit
As already mentioned, there are various ways in which a glass ceiling can show up, such as the glass ceiling of power and influence, the glass ceiling of income, the glass ceiling of expansion, and the glass ceiling of luck and ease, to name only a few. The very first step is to become conscious of which ones are yours. Since glass can be completely transparent, it’s often hard to discover. Ask yourself what thoughts come up when you think of getting bolder, bigger, and more versatile than you already are.
Do you feel like it would be too much responsibility and come with a hidden cost?
Do you feel like it would attract the envy of others and you might lose some people?
Do you feel like a fraud?
Do you feel like another role would just be too much to take on?
Do you feel like it would be too good to be true?
Do you feel like you would have to carry too much at once?
Take your time to get to know your glass ceilings. Sit with them for a while. The more you get to know them, the better you can start to approach them in different ways and ultimately start to lovingly smash them.
2. Ask whose rules you’re still living by
Ask yourself where your individual glass ceilings originated. Are they something you picked up in childhood? Where were they taught to you? Sometimes we realize that we’ve been living by the rules our teacher introduced when we were in third grade, even decades later. Get clear on how they have been serving you. There might not just be a downside to them, but also a benefit. Cherish the benefit, but also look at the downside. What does the glass ceiling cost you? What ways could you find to still cherish the relevant benefits even if you moved forward from your current standpoint?
One example of this could be the conviction, “I have to work really hard to prove myself to be successful.” This belief could once have motivated you to deliver extraordinary results and really go the extra mile in order to achieve your goals. But nowadays, with more experience, capabilities, and a deeper awareness of your own needs, it might create a glass ceiling because it might leave you feeling chronically unprepared for stepping into a new role or project and therefore cause unnecessary anxiety that actually hinders you from reaching your current goals.
3. Find evidence to believe a different story
We are more likely to believe in ourselves once we have created the evidence that we are actually capable of overcoming challenges, adversities, and our very own limits. Ask yourself about all the moments when you have overcome some invisible or visible limits, your own doubts or those of others. If you want to, write them down as an evidence log. Sit with those moments and let yourself feel into them. Adopt the thought that if you were capable of overcoming these hurdles in the past, you can always gather the strength to do it again.
4. Differentiate between inner and outer barriers
Not every barrier is internal or mental. Some are external, and they can’t be changed by decision alone. Acknowledge whether there are concrete circumstances that are putting limits on you and to what extent. The goal is not to sugarcoat anything, but to become really aware of your circumstances and more compassionate toward yourself. There might be a way of overcoming the outside barriers, but the first step lies in simply noticing them.
5. Choose a small, consistent action
So if there are actually external circumstances that are hard to overcome, how do you approach a glass ceiling? Support comes from creating the conditions that make change more likely to happen. If outer circumstances genuinely limit you, try to identify one circumstance you can influence and start working on that. Don’t pick any steps that will be difficult to sustain over time, but focus on steps that can be undertaken consistently to create lasting change. Ask yourself, “What is a step that I can take today and then maintain consistently to overcome my ceiling?” Then stick to that action.
For instance, if financial insecurity is holding you back, start by educating yourself more on the topic and by creating a small financial cushion, if possible. Check in with yourself every week, and name and celebrate the steps you have taken.
6. Don’t wait to feel ready
Once you have chosen the consistent actions that you are going to take, you might have to come to terms with feeling unready. The weird thing about feeling ready is that it often comes after you decide to do something and start putting your energy into it, but not before. Waiting to feel ready before taking action rarely works. Sometimes we truly have to play make-believe in order to bring something into existence, and readiness is a good example of that. With every step you take, you build the foundation for the feeling of readiness to develop. So don’t wait for readiness to appear before starting to apply your chosen doable, consistent steps, and trust that readiness will show up once you do.
7. Build community around your progress
Change is easier if we don’t feel all alone while we’re implementing it. Getting together with people who think like you and help hold you accountable, while you do the same for them, can provide such valuable support in staying consistent. Also, it can really help you gather the courage to go further with your chosen steps when you feel like you’re not the only one doing it.
8. Let ambition and sensitivity belong in the same life
You don’t have to be hard on yourself and disciplined in order to overcome your limits. In fact, it’s often quite the opposite that is more helpful. Taking an honest look at your sensitivities, weaknesses, and fears doesn’t keep you from evolving as long as you don’t make them your identity and let them stop you from going further. If you take them as an honest mirror of what you really need in order to overcome your limits, your sensitivities, weaknesses, and fears can show you exactly what to avoid and what to cherish in order to grow into the next version of yourself.
9. Practice setting boundaries if needed
Not every outside opinion or seeming obligation is as important as it looks in the first place. If something truly keeps draining your energy, feel free to explore setting boundaries and making your needs very clear. Sometimes we get so used to doing things a certain way that we don’t even notice whether they are benefiting us and those around us. Sometimes a no is necessary to say yes to something else that matters.
10. Get into a safe container while doing it
Getting in touch with people who think like you and have the same or similar goals can work wonders in helping you reach the point of smashing your glass ceilings faster. Working together with a qualified coach who will motivate you, hold you accountable, and give you tangible, applicable steps to move forward can absolutely boost your growth even further. Contact me today to take the first step towards smashing your very own glass ceilings, and let’s figure out how we can work together!
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Read more from Constanze Zientek
Constanze Zientek, Women's Coach
Constanze Zientek is a women's coach working with highly sensitive women in their thirties. She supports them in cultivating inner strength, embodied leadership, and an authentic, aligned life. Her approach blends emotional depth, clarity, and self-trust. She furthermore practices as a lawyer with over ten years of work experience, specializing in inheritance law. Her work with clients in emotionally complex transitions, combined with her own journey through her thirties, led her to coaching. Today, she integrates structure and intuition to offer clear, deeply human guidance.
