The 5 Lies That Are Killing Your Executive Career (and the Secret Payoff Keeping You Stuck)

Earlier this year, I challenged myself to get on the phone with over 150 C-suite leaders and senior leaders who will shortly be at that level to ask them a simple question:

What’s holding you back?

What’s stopping you from having a vibrant, fulfilling role that allows you to grow and contribute—or if not that, what’s stopping you from getting those types of roles, getting the access, and being able to close in the first place?

And I started hearing patterns. Five major lies kept coming up. They were so deeply ingrained, so believable, that most people didn’t even realize they were repeating them.

I want to be honest and blunt with you because there’s so much bullshit out there—people selling you inauthentic “career hacks.” Let’s be real. Not everyone is going to make it to something better. Some will stay stuck in a downward spiral because they’re the number one contributor to it.

If these lies have become part of your identity, it’s over—until you rip them out. But if you still feel anger, frustration, or fight left inside you, then this is the moment to wake up.

Let’s go through the five big lies that are holding you back and the hidden payoffs keeping you stuck.

Lie #1: Rising up is mostly politics, not skill.

The payoff:
You get to stop trying.
You get to blame the crooked game.
You get to feel smart for playing small.

Because if it’s all politics, why overextend yourself for a game you can’t win?

The truth:
It’s not politics—it’s need.

Effective leaders rise when they crystallize themselves as the solution to a problem no one else can solve.

If you haven’t figured that out, if you can’t feel that in five seconds of walking into a room or showing up on LinkedIn, that’s your vulnerability point. Until you fix it, “politics” will always be your excuse.

And if it’s not politics, you’ll tell yourself it’s “not enough skill.” That voice that says, you’ll never be skilled enough.
That’ll kill you too.

Success and rising up as a leader are about need, not politics, and not skill.

Lie #2: Ageism kills my chances before I even open my mouth.

The payoff:
You get to mask cynicism as wisdom.
You get to go half-speed and call it survival.
You get to treat scarcity thinking like a virtue instead of a liability.

The truth:
Does ageism exist? Of course. Are there companies that will judge you unfairly because of your age? Yes. But you have a binary choice here:

Option one: own who you are.
Own the fact that you’re the elder of the tribe.
Own the experience, the scars, the unique process that only you have.

Option two: spend the rest of your career losing at a young person’s game.

Because when you refuse to own it, you become one of those lazy 20- or 30-somethings who think credentials will let them waltz in. They don’t. They haven’t done the work.

Owning it means facing your regrets and getting help if you need to.
Suppressing it, blaming it on ageism, and setting that example for your kids? That’s not the path you want to model.

Lie #3: I’ll just start my own business and escape.

The payoff:
You get to live inside a beautiful fantasy.
You get to cope with your misery at work by saying, “Six months from now, once I launch, everything will change.”

The truth:
This is delusion talk.

I’ve heard it from people down to their last five years of work, living off savings, telling me they’ll start a business “someday.”
But they’ve never launched anything. They’ve never tested the idea. They’ve never gotten client number one.

To launch a business requires years of trial and error even under the best conditions. If you haven’t done that, you’re in the same pipe dream zone as everyone else.

You don’t fix a broken relationship with work by changing partners—you fix it by changing how you show up.

If you want to do it, go all in—right now. Quit, commit, and go.
If you won’t, stop pretending. Because every year you waste dreaming about it, a real opportunity to have an impact slips away.

Lie #4: One more certification will fix everything.

The payoff:
You get to feel like a good student.
You get the dopamine hit of “progress” while avoiding risk.
You get to solve comfortable problems instead of confronting the real ones.

The truth:
It’s creative avoidance.

Credentials aren’t impact.
Training isn’t presence.
Reading another leadership book while dozing off at night isn’t growth.

If you’re not in the ring—talking to the right people, reframing your leadership, recalibrating how you show up—then you’re not learning, you’re hiding.

Repeat after me:
If it doesn’t terrify you, it’s probably not the thing that’s going to change your life.

Cut the BS, identify what actually scares you, and move there.

Lie #5: My past mistake will always define me.

The payoff:
Control.
You get to hold onto the wound like it’s protection.
You feel safe guarding your shame, even if it’s suffocating you.

The truth:
That thing that happened—the layoff, the bad boss, the unfair judgment—you probably didn’t deserve it. But by guarding it like a secret, you’ve made yourself your own jailer.

Every leader who’s done something meaningful has failed, publicly or privately.
The difference is they use it as evidence of evolution, not proof of failure.

Your silence and shame are costing you more than that mistake ever did.

When you own it—when you say, “Yeah, that happened, and here’s what I learned”—you take back your power.
There’s no growth without that kind of honesty.

You’re not your worst day. You’re who you became afterward.

Where to Go From Here

If you’re in a leadership role right now and you’re struggling with presence, signaling, imposter syndrome, or tactical leadership—you need to identify the countermeasures.
You need to stop the internal noise and rebuild authority in real time.

If you’re between roles, it’s a different game. You need to generate momentum and offers now—not next quarter, not next year.

If you’d like to explore hopping onto a session with me to spend about 45 minutes making progress into either of these areas you can do so here:

→ helloanish.com/work-with-anish

Choose what you need:

• Leadership Presence Strategy Session – if you’re in-role and need to lead from calm, not chaos.

• Career Momentum Strategy Session – if you’re between roles and need to rebuild traction fast.

These sessions are for leaders who are truly committed to change—people who are sick and tired of doing it their BS-driven way, and who want to see real, measurable results before year’s end.

If that’s you, this is your moment.

If it’s not—you already know how that story ends.