I have had trouble asking for help for nearly my entire life. I don’t know when it started or what caused it, but at some point in my childhood I learned that knowing correct answers is rewarded, and asking for help is admitting that you don’t have the correct answer.

That simple idea led me to perpetrate, quite literally, decades of self-sabotage. Rather than ask a question or offer a guess, I just kept my mouth shut.

Warning: This article briefly mentions self-harm. If you (or someone you know) need support, call the toll-free, 24/7 National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-8255. You can also text HOME to 741741 for free, which offers 24/7 support from the Crisis Text Line.

Are you looking to get promoted? Why?

It’s an honest question; what is important about that promotion, for you? Maybe it’s money, recognition, or power. Maybe it’s what you think you’re supposed to do.

Whatever the reason, it might be wrong.

In an increasingly asynchronous and distributed workplace, it’s super important that managers learn how to leverage the strengths and avoid the pitfalls of a text-oriented way of communicating.

Done right, asynchronous communication can increase clarity, make decisions more durable, and even enforce equitability within teams. But done wrong, it can hinder progress, create churn, and even add unnecessary stress and anxiety.

Here are a few things you can do to be sure you’re getting communication right in your distributed teams.

You want something in your career. What is it? Advancement in specific skills? Bigger problems to solve or bigger teams to lead? Occasion to showcase your unique talents? The chance to work with specific people you look up to, and to learn from them?

No matter what your ambition, your ability to achieve it is built from two parts: your resolve, which is your capacity to do the things you must do; and your environment, or the presence of opportunity.

I call this the “ambition to opportunity ratio.”

This is one of my favorite mottos, one that I’m working very hard to live up to myself:

If you want to be good at something, you have to be OK with being bad at it for a while.

For as long as I can remember, I have had anxiety about being bad at things, and it has held me back. Do you struggle with failure? Do you want to know how to fix it? I might be able to help.