If self-reviews make you want to jump out a window shouting “Review This!”, you might want to approach them from a fresh perspective. My advice? Stop thinking about your boss.Prefer to listen? Click the play button.
So, I, like, ran a search on self-reviews. My first hit told me that self-reviews make employees feel more engaged. Well. My team is pretty engaged in wishing that they didn’t have to do them, worrying about when they’ll find the time and fretting over figuring out what to put in which box on the form.
I filed that article under W for wackadoodle.
I don’t know about you, but for me, self-reviews feel like pure, unadulterated torture. I often start my work session by penning my resignation letter. Dear Boss – I’d rather quit than relive this year. Goodbye.
If we were only talking about 2020, you might understand this attitude. But I feel like that every year and I love my job.
So what’s going on?
The self-review hits so many triggers, it’s hard to know where to start. The fear of being judged, which is tied to the primal fear of being tossed out of the tribe is just the most obvious one. There’s the taboo against self-promoting behavior, also tied to the loss of tribe anxiety. Then there’s the fear of failure, of not having done the things on the list that was given to you at the start of the year. Fear of exposure – the fear of others realizing that you don’t actually know what those goals meant, where you fit into them, or how you did. Fear of losing something – status or money – based on your answers.
Once you’ve kicked your fears to the curb, there are expectations to deal with. Am I making the most of this opportunity to document my strengths? Is this going to affect my performance ranking? My raise? Does my family depend on me getting this right? Good God, Man! Why didn’t I start this a year ago? Beyond that, the resentment – I told them all of this last year and it got me no-where. Eventually, we get down to the sneaking suspicion that none of this actually means anything.
Finally, you’ve arrived at the truth.
Because if you’re in fear, expecting some huge result or bent out of shape by the futility of it all, your self-review will be meaningless.
Why?
Because the person the review has the biggest impact on – is you.
I’d like to offer this twist of logic. What if you approached your review as if you were writing it for yourself? I contend that you’re doing just that.
Your company is paying you to take a moment to self reflect. To look back on your work year and jot down some of the highlights. Things that you did well, that you enjoyed, that you’re proud of. Some of that stuff happened for all of us. Even if our biggest project imploded, there’s still something in there that went right. There’s still something you learned. So jot that down too.
Be specific. Isn’t that the basic Review 101 advice? It’s good to do not because you have to have exact percentages in order to bolster the case for your existence on the planet, but because we get better insights when we have precision of thought. Coaches understand that for clients to get insights, they need to pick a single situation and analyze what actually happened. It’s the same for self-reflection in business too.
Talk about what you did instead. Let’s face it. We all knew that a never before seen virus was due to arrive in 2020 and we set our company goals accordingly. Right? No! Even if there wasn’t pandemic, our business goals wouldn’t have been perfection anyway. You had goals, you hit some and you missed some. Talk about what you did.
Deliver the information in light of what you want.
You signed up for your current job. Why? What do you actually like to do? What do you want to do more of? This is your chance to highlight the things you’re best at, which are probably the things you like best. It’s a chance to remind yourself what you want out of work.
Look, you’ve met your boss, right?
So trust me, your manager knows you.
Your self-review isn’t a blind date. You don’t have to impress your boss with it. You already did the best you could at that for the last 52 weeks.
Your self-review is a chance to remind yourself that you actually did a hella-lot this year. It’s a chance to lay out what the heck you want out of work and let your manager in on the secret.
So relax. Get a cup of joe and enjoy doing a little self-reflection.
Think breaking free from your desk has to happen before you find joy? Bass Ackward, man.
Look, work is hard, right? Being out of work, looking for work and having work – we’re talking difficult situations, regardless of which boat you’re in now.
Whether you’re overworking, underworking or struggling to find or keep a job, in every case, you’re going to hit up against a belief. The belief that you have to know the solution before you get to the results. Not so, Sparky.
I know exactly what it feels like to hamstring myself by tying together things that can be independent.
I was a woman who wanted to be “She who never wonders what to wear.” The experience of walking to my closet each day and trying outfit after uncomfortable outfit, was balled up so tightly in my head with being overweight that I actually believed that I couldn’t have any other experience until I lost weight. It simply didn’t occur to me that you don’t have to be thin to have seven outfits that look good and fit.
I used to have twenty-five percent of my salary tied to credit card debt. Along with my mortgage and a car payment, that pretty much meant we were always one paycheck away from financial failure. I didn’t think I could change that. I thought you had to born with the miserly Scrooge gene in order to be debt-free.
I had my experience of being utterly miserable in my job. I believed that my boss had no idea what I did all day, had no time to understand it and basically, disregarded me. I felt the amount of work on my plate was more than anyone could ever do and I believed that I didn’t have the political clout to help our team. I was miserable because of my work.
It’s easier to see when we’re talking about frumpy clothes and harder to see when we’re talking about work but in each case, a belief that was connecting two unrelated things was holding me back.
I believed I had to be skinny to have clothes I liked.
I believed I had to be born with a talent for money to get out of debt.
I believed that my boss, my company and my workload had to change for me to be happy.
None of those was true.
I have stayed inside a dressing room long enough to hear the canned music tape play completely through three, count ’em, three times. No lie. Turns out, if you’re willing to spend several hours inside a clothing store, trying on every style, in every size, you can emerge as “She Who Never Wonders What To Wear”, even if you’re a size 16 – or 2XL – or a size 2.
I have also been thunderstruck with the thought – What If Money Is A Skill? Whaaa?? I have read dozens of books on personal finance. Turns out, with patience and time, you can get out of debt without living in a tent or starting a farm. Who knew?
It’s also true that you can be happy, at work, at the job you have now. I learned to love that exact same job I described. I did it because I wondered if I could be happy doing anything and I set out to find out if that was true.
Just like getting out of debt, or finding nice clothes that fit, getting happy where you are is a matter of trial and error. To get happy I did all sorts of things. I made a playlist of in-your-face music to listen to on the way to work. I played it every day… Drive by Incubus, Happy by Pharrell Williams, Taking Care of Business by Bachman Turner Overdrive and 51 other songs that made me feel in control and ready to take on my day. I left on time for a week straight just to see what would happen. I figured out what I loved and was good at and did those tasks first, forcing myself to find ways to offload work or make the dull stuff more efficient. I spent a week saying no to three things every day. I listened to management and leadership books. Basically, I kept trying stuff until I found what worked for me.
One day, as I was walking out of the office, on time, I passed the desk of a dear friend. I knew she was deeply unhappy and I also knew she didn’t have to be that way.
I coach, I bother with all this because I’m profoundly certain that you can be happy. I want you to know that you can be deeply satisfied, right where you are.
Don’t, please, please don’t chain your joy to your desk.
The two things don’t depend on each other. Don’t wait for things to change. Try things -things I suggest and things you think of for yourself.
There is nobody on the planet who can tell you where your path goes, or how you make magic in your life. Nobody. You are so incredibly unique and perfect, and so amazingly yourself, how can anyone know what fantastic direction you’ll go?
If you chain your joy to your desk, if you wait for your job to make you happy, you are missing the race. You are missing the path. You are sitting down on the path. And that’s OK but please, if you’re not happy there, don’t stay there.
And I don’t mean leave your job. By all means, stay there, until you figure out how to be happy at that job. Even has you fail at things, you can be happy. Even out of work, keep trying new ways. Find ways to feel joy, even as you struggle, fail, and triumph.Once you do that, nothing is chained to your desk, not you, not your happiness, nothing.
And that, is just my wish for you.
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Is this a random spill or symbolic artwork? How you make sense of your world is entirely in your mind.
I’ve struggled this week with how to make a blog on personal power at work relevant in the light of current events.
Although I can listen, see, imagine, and sympathize, I will never experience what it is to be a black person in America. Although I’m the mother of a police officer, I will never know what it’s like to be one. I can’t walk in any of these shoes.
Here are the shoes I can walk in – a pair of pop-art pumps with chunky heels – because these shoes belong to me.
These are literally, my shoes.
Standing in those shoes, here’s what my experience as an American woman has taught me – systemic, conscious, and unconscious bias is 100% real.
Here’s what I can tell you – I have been told and shown, based solely on gender that I am ridiculous, inconvenient, a threat or worse yet – a disposable object.
Here’s what I believe – People do abuse power and when anyone in power acts as if the rules and laws don’t apply to them, they should be held accountable.
So let me be clear – on the macro level, I for sure don’t think we should pretend inequality, injustice or violence doesn’t exist. That would be crazy. I believe in social agency. I believe in protest, in free speech, and the ability to leverage our influence to change our laws. We have a truckload of problems with bias in this country and we should get to work on them.
For the purposes of maximizing our impact at work, I don’t think it serves us to relinquish our sense of agency, even if the deck is stacked against us. Which brings us to today’s topic – agency.
Agency: the ability to act independently, to impact the course of your life, and to set goals for yourself. A sense of agency is linked to subjective well being on both a personal level and for us as a society. As my grandmother used to say, as long as you have choices, you’re OK.
So many of us give our agency away on the day-to-day. When we give away our agency, we’re giving away our sense of control and, along with it, our own power.
You get to look at the world around you and decide what’s working and what’s not. You can change your mind about all sorts of things.
You change how you view yourself.
You can change what you think about your job, your boss, your capabilities, and your value.
If you’re going to embark on a journey of this sort, let me encourage you to change the way you view your own agency. I’d like to encourage you to see yourself as the CEO of You, Inc. No matter what deck is stacked against you at this moment, you have the choice to validate that reality by giving up or spend some of your time on the planet trying to reshuffle the cards. My advice is always choose to reshuffle.
For this at-work example, let’s say that I want to move up one level in my organization and to do that, I’ve decided I’ll need to demonstrate leadership on a large project.
One way to approach this is to ask my manager to give me a large project to lead. Then, I can go back to my desk and wait for the project that never comes. When review time comes, I can be frustrated by the fact that nobody gave me a chance to shine and, I can settle for whatever wages I get, remaining in my current position, probably doing less tomorrow than I did yesterday, because, well, nothing works.
Let me tell you, this happens all the time. Why? Because the person in that example believes that they must be given a project by someone else. Can she control her boss? Hell no. Can she make someone give her a project? Not before the next review cycle comes up and not without legal action and money. Maybe not ever. So this is a completely dead-end way of dealing with the here and now – even if it’s true! This is why, in the moment, I always act in favor of personal agency.
So let’s say, despite the fact that I’m an old woman of average intelligence, I think I have the ability to maximize my personal benefit, and demonstrate my effectiveness, regardless of what project my boss gives me.
Now let’s say because of this belief, I tackle even small projects with a professional process. I document what I do, I create templates to use to build efficiency, I keep track of how long I expect it to take, how long it actually takes, and what caused any variance. Let’s say I sat down at the start of the project and wrote out my expectations of how I would perform and in the end, I evaluated my performance.
Basically, I treat this little project that I’m doing by myself, as if it was the big opportunity I’ve been waiting for. I’ve assumed all the authority over how it will be handled. I’ll be evaluating my own performance, so my manager’s feedback is now secondary. I’ll be learning from the project and improving my skills. Because I’ll understand why any problems in delivery or performance occurred, I’ll be able to build in processes to prevent future delays or disappointing behavior of my own making.
Here’s what I’ve just done – I’ve taken all the power over my performance and my opportunities, out of the hands of my manager, and put it all right on my desk. I’ve basically just made my manager irrelevant in the context of this project. I don’t need to know when he wants it done, because I already know when it will be done. I can just check to see if that will suit him. If not, I can offer up options. I’m not forced into a timeline, I’m negotiating one. I don’t need him to tell me what he expects because I know what results I’m delivering. Now I can just confirm I’m delivering what he’s looking for. I basically treat my manager like he’s my customer. I have lots of power. I have the goods and services he wants to buy. I just have to keep myself relevant.
Do you see what I did there? It’s still work. I still need to deliver stuff and make it good but it is a completely different ballgame if I see myself as the owner of Myself, Inc., and my manager as my best customer. My work experience is no longer at the whim of my boss, my work life is at the whim of ME. If my boss doesn’t agree with my evaluation, well, that just means we need to communicate better. Or I might decide to make it mean nothing at all.
What I find actually happens is I get really curious about what my boss thinks. I’m not devastated when my boss has something critical to say. I’m fascinated. I take this bit of information and analyze it. Did I miss something in my own eval of me? Great! I’ll add it to the working template for next time. I already do this for myself, so getting this information upfront is like getting a free trip around the monopoly board.
Ok, sound good? So to build out your own little Yourself, Inc. empire where you rule with confidence and independence, take back your own agency.
Commit to working for yourself and refuse to let your boss control your opportunities. Strike a blow for the republic of you!
Study your own work by stating beforehand what you will be doing ( time estimates, results expected, and expectations of your own behavior) and then by evaluating what actually happened.
Take it one step further and ask yourself how you can be better, faster, or more professional next time and add that information to your documents.
When the next project comes, repeat the process but shoot for improvement using the information you learned.
In a short time, you’ll have great confidence in your ability to deliver, your ability to estimate when you’ll deliver and how you’ll approach the work. When you have that kind of bedrock under you, it’s easy to ask good questions about projects, you can estimate quickly and with confidence.
It doesn’t work if you don’t put in the effort to do it fairly. You must lay out your expectations for yourself upfront. Don’t just do work and take stock at the end, looking back at the project and feeling good or bad about it. You won’t build confidence and communicate to yourself that you take your work seriously.
Because you value your own work and treat it with respect, you no longer have your ego tied to the size of the project you’re handed, the team that comes with it, or really anything external. All your satisfaction is internally driven. When your own evaluation of your performance is the most important one you get, there’s a lot of freedom in that. When you hold yourself accountable to you, and you treat yourself like a professional, you have just shown yourself who you are at work. Better yet, you’ve just shown everyone else, too.
What do other people think of you? Better ask yourself what the question costs you before you ask it.
I love to wonder what other people think about me. I mean, kinda. Right? In STEM we don’t all walk around emoting and asking if people like us. We’re the problem-solvers, the endurance kings, the queens of creating something out of nothing. We don’t care what other people think about us. Right?
Have me read you the blog and give you the riffs. My pleasure.
I had one of those eye-opening experiences the other day. I wanted to make sure our team understood my expectations for how we work with our summer intern. I look forward all year to our summer college student joining our team. It’s a chance to make a positive difference for sure, but more than that, it’s our chance to show up as the leaders and teammates that we want to be. A time to bring our very best to the table. A chance to cheer on another human being reaching far, far out over thin air, trying to grab at the branchwe’ve carefully placed there. A chance to witness a real triumph and real accomplishment.
I believe every word of that.I take enormous pride in our ability to find challenging, meaningful projects that get these college students a chance to achieve more than they thought they could. It’s my pure joy if they blow their minds while working for us and leave there feeling ten feet tall.
This year, I’m turning all that over to someone else on our team to lead. As I wrote out the instructions for how to achieve this, imagine my surprise as I realized that I have that same opportunity every day for every member of my team and I’m not bringing it. I mean, yeah, I do OK but I don’t bring it like that. Not with every fiber of my imagination, not with those big expectations, not tossing them out into the river without telling them I’ve got their lifelines looped around my fist and I’m ready to haul them out with everything I’ve got.
I almost couldn’t hit send on the email. What would this person think of me when he saw what I expected of myself and him, and realized that I was dropping the ball daily?
We don’t care what other people think of us.
Oh, big fat hell-yes we do.
Our brains are designed to make sure we hang in tight with the tribe. Tribe is survival. As children, our entire job in life is to watch other people’s body language and try to figure out how to get more cheerios and a clean diaper. That’s before we even know how to say pass the pampers.
Once we’ve got language on our side, it’s worse yet. There’s standing in the family. We grow up applying all the labels that come with social dynamics – the good one, the wild child, the troublemaker, the silly one, the funny one, the smart one, the bad one. Lovely labels stuck all over us like little price tags that rub off as we carry an armful of cans to the pantry.
All of this is 100% normal. Here’s where our education system and culture leave us in the lurch – nobody ever tells us – Here you go kid, how you feel is on you now.
Next thing you know, you’re thirty-five, walking out of a meeting, unable to stop the flood of worry over what the person across from you thought about your progress on your project.
Again, 100% normal and 100% useless.
Here’s the rule – you don’t belong in anyone’s head but your own.
What she thinks about you, your project and the way you waxed your car is on her. It tells you absolutely zero about your ride, your performance, or you as a person. It tells you everything about her.
Get it? I could have held back on my proclamation for interns, toned it down, set less dramatic expectations, aligned it better with what I’m actually doing on the regular, made it less obvious that I’m not all that. If I did, that would tell you something about me wouldn’t it?
You might think that I was being realistic in my expectations. You might think that I was a hypocrite or untruthful. You might think I was a coward. You might think I’m an irrational dreamer.
I sent the email. How do you like me now?
Here’s the deal. I can never know what you or anyone else actually thinks – even if you tell me.There are so many layers, filters and variations. In the end, the only thing that I can act on is what I think.
That doesn’t mean that I don’t appreciate people sharing their thoughts with me. Thoughts, critical ones especially, are worth their weight in gold.
Secret One: It’s darn uncomfortable to deliver critical feedback. If you get feedback you can bet the person felt you were worth thinking about for a couple of hours so they could figure out how to tell you something true and useful. Even if they do a poor job of handing it to you, it’s still the most valuable thing you can get at work other than your paycheck.
Secret Two: If you agree with the person who gives you feedback, even just a bit, and then thank them for it, you’ll get more of this magic serum. If you disagree and make them feel small or uncomfortable for sharing it? Right. It’s like killing the goose. You won’t get another omelet out of that bird.
Do you see that? Honest feedback about how we can improve is uranium. It’s the kind of information that can power a career. We should care about it. We should ask for it. We should embroider it on throw pillows and leave them on our recliners.
What we shouldn’t do is predicate how we feel about ourselves based on it.
Critical feedback is one thing. Speculative musing about what someone else thinks is where we tend to go next.
Our boss says “You need to be more organized.”
We think “He thinks I’m a chaotic mess and he’s going to fire me.” Which makes us feel anxious, and then we check our email and facebook, and maybe text a friend, all of which is – a bit chaotic and not what we’re being paid for. Ironic, yes?
Or we think “He’s the most disorganized person on the planet, who’s he to tell me that?” The answer to which is “He’s got no right to tell me.” And then we feel angry, and we discard the advice and keep doing what we’re doing and … that results in us not allowing him to tell us anything. Get it?
Better to remind ourselves that we have no business in his head, we don’t know what he thinks other than we might be better at our job if we were more organized. Truth be told, everyone is always better at their job as their organization skills increase. He doesn’t have to be good at being organized to be able to observe disorganization in us.
Ok, let’s tie this back to my story. Even if I’m not knocking it out of the park on the regular for every member of my team, doesn’t mean I shouldn’t try to do just that. So sending the email and braving disapproval is worth it. I meant what I said. We should make our summer intern’s ten weeks of work with us an opportunity for him or her to blow their mind.
What my team thinks of me for that, is up to them. What I decide to do with my insight is up to me.
Think you have to know how to do something before you can be confident? Think again. I’m gonna lay it down – get ready to take notes.
Straight up. Confidence is a feeling. Which means, say it with me, you can create it anytime, anywhere. On your worst day – confident. On your best day – confident. Sounds good doesn’t it?
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We get tangled up when we think that we need to have built up a history of skill and results in order to have confidence. If you’re talking about how certain you are that you can deliver a piece of software within the time allowed, then yeah, ok, knowing that you’ve done it before gives you confidence.
SCRATCH. Back the truck up.
No. Truth: the feeling of confidence comes from your thoughts. So if you think – I’ve done this six hundred times so I’m sure I can do it again – that thought can bring confidence. Sure. But stick with me, it’s the thought “I’m sure I can do it again” that generates the feeling of confidence.
Now, let’s ditch arrogance right here. Arrogance is not confidence. Arrogance is thinking you are somehow, someway “better” than someone else. That’s not what we’re talking about.
Confidence is the feeling of self-assurance that comes from faith in your own abilities.
The Big How
My coach gets us to build confidence by having us do stupid dares. We dare ourselves to ask someone for a free dinner, we ask for a better seat at a concert or a new job. We dare ourselves to publish a book, or a blog or sing in public. We dare ourselves to start businesses, to grow our businesses, to get on a live event and coach people. We dare ourselves to enter a 5K, return a product, or just ask for help. Sometimes we dare ourselves to jump up on a park bench and recite a poem – for nobody, in front of everybody.
Why? Because all of these things are uncomfortable. And the more you put yourself out there, and do something that has you squirming and wanting to back out, but you do it anyway, the more you realize that you’re OK. Ok with being turned down, OK with being thought a fool, OK with being ridiculous, vulnerable or just plain wrong. OK with trying and failing, OK with trying again and OK with figuring out how.
At work, we are confronted with things we don’t know how to do – all the time. How to get it all done? How to create something, fix something, get our message across, and sometimes, just how to be happy.
Here’s the big secret – you don’t have to know how to feel confident. All you have to do is have faith in your ability to figure it out.
The Big How – is about writing down where you are now, where you want to go and then listing out all the things that can stop you from getting there. For each obstacle you write down the plan for overcoming the obstacle.
Say I’m an analyst and I want to be a team lead – here’s some obstacles:
People don’t see me as a leader
There are no current openings for a team leader
I’m not sure what a team leader does
I don’t have any large projects where I can demonstrate leadership.
Now, I think about how to overcome the obstacles.
People don’t see me as a leader – So I can demonstrate clear leadership of myself. I can volunteer to set up meetings, which will put me in control of the agenda and the meeting and the follow-up. I can look for opportunities to be of service to my team, and demonstrate teamwork and leadership. I can dress a bit better, carry myself like a leader.
There are no current openings for a team leader – but I can tell my manager I want to prepare for one. I can say I want to be the next in line, her replacement. All managers need a replacement in training. I can ask for additional work that will help me learn what she does.
I’m not sure what a team leader does – I can meet with other team leads and find out what their responsibilities are, I can imagine what would be helpful and take that work on of my own volition.
I don’t have any large projects where I can demonstrate leadership. I can lead smaller ones, and demonstrate skill, and when I notice that my boss has too many balls in the air, I can ask for the chance to take one. I can get on committees and work on their projects. I can ask for a project.
Now, I have a path. More obstacles might come, but for now, these are the ones I see. If more come, I’ll add them to the path. For now, I’ve got a lot of work to do. Some of these things will fail, but since this is my path, my Big How, it’s ok. I’ll just think of something else.
For some of these, I might have to carry the big how with me for a few days, asking myself over and over – how can I solve this obstacle? Eventually, your brain will give you an answer. Try it. Even if it fails, you’ll get more information about what to try next.
Once you’ve done this process consciously a few times, you start to understand that you have the best ability on earth – the ability to figure out The Big How.
Some people believe this girl’s possibilities are already set in stone. Do you? Who decides who she gets to be? How you answer that question, can change your life.
This week, I had a good laugh. I’m not reverent, so it’s expected that some of that spills over at work. We have a little messaging system that allows us to customize information about our availability. At the end of the day, I notify the world I’m off duty by selecting a red dot and adding the phrase – gone to my happy place.
Today’s blog, read for you.
One day, I forgot to change back to the green dot that says available – working from home when I started my day. My boss IM’d me, and asked – “Are you working? It says you’re at your happy place.” One of the people on my team said – “Work IS your happy place!” and we laughed.
Sure, I still get exasperated. Sometimes, I embarrass myself and want to jump off a metaphorical bridge, but underneath it all, I have deep confidence that tomorrow, or even fifteen minutes from now, I’ll see things differently. That’s the key. I understand that how I see things is up for grabs.
For most of us, that bit of awareness is like getting the best game controller ever to use on our own darn life. Once we get good at this, we’re like, high-five me. I’m out. But there’s way more to uncover, so this week, we’re moving to the far end of the tool-set. Past immediate relief, beyond awareness and even past seeing our thoughts as objects. For today, let’s spend some time working with dreams, goals, and beliefs.
To get there, I want to take you on a quick journey. We start off thinking that we have fixed character traits. To one degree or another, we believe that who we are is defined by how we show up in the world. We’re smart, we’re silly, we learn quickly but we can’t speak in public. We don’t question this and common speech patterns reinforce it. Also, we believe that the environment we find ourselves in has a huge impact on how we feel. If we have a nice boss, good co-workers, and meaningful work to do, we’re doing great. If not, well then, we’re miserable and we expect our HR department to fix that.
There’s nothing wrong with this, it’s how most of the world views things. It has one major drawback though – we have to wait for someone or something to change before we can be happy again. I don’t know about you, but I just don’t have that kind of time.
Enter awareness experiences. What I call awareness experiences are episodes when we are standing slightly outside ourselves, thinking about our own thinking, recognizing our own role in the drama that is our daily life. This can happen when we’re challenged by a coach, or simply when we observe that other people are having a different experience at the same meeting, discussing the same project. Like the time that slacker you know agreed with you about the new product design. You both knew it was bound to backfire but while you were gnashing your teeth, he was chuckling. What was up with that guy?
Awareness experiences start to soften our view of the world. They get us asking questions.
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Once we start asking questions, it’s a slippery slope. If you always believed you didn’t get math and one day, you wonder if maybe math is just a skill, like playing the banjo, that’s major. Pretty soon, our questions aren’t just about how much change is possible for ourselves. If we can change, how locked down is our experience of the world? You can work with these questions and actually start to change yourself and how the world feels to you. Once that happens, it’s game on. I mean, why wouldn’t you challenge yourself?
Do that enough and you start get a giddy feeling that who you are – just might be – up for grabs too.
This is where it gets GOOD…
Once you have a questioning mindset, you’re ready to do some big dreaming. This work I’m about to describe is my absolute favorite. Some of my clients like to live here. So do I. Sadly, this is not a hotel you can check into and just hang. It’s more like a lumberyard. You come here, look at all the pretty moldings, the cool cabinets, the funky bathtubs, and fixtures, but then, you have to buy something and take it home. You have to work on installing it if you want to use it. Nobody is going to let you just live in aisle twelve, and certainly not in your bathrobe.
From the opposing camp, I have plenty of clients who don’t even want to visit here. We pull up to the door and they’re like : “Nope, got no money, don’t need anything, couldn’t even imagine what’s in there. I’ll wait in the car.” If that’s you, just know, you will not get lost in there. You will not get depressed about all the things you can’t have. You are far more likely to have a beautiful master bath someday if you actually know that they exist. Trust me, some of the stuff in here is quite reasonably priced.
Are we still talking about identity? You bet.
So how do you do this dreaming big stuff?
Ask yourself who you want to be. Brainstorm a long list. Go all in.
Here’s just a few of mine: I want to be a person with few regrets. I want to be beloved by my family, crazy about my husband. I want to be kind and I want to have a big mouth. I never want to believe that I’m helpless. I want to be healthier and more relaxed. I want to write a NY Times best-seller and move my whole family to Hawaii.
Ask yourself how you want to live.
Do you want to live boldly, without fear and anxiety? Do you want to live with wide swaths of free time? Do you want to live surrounded by art? Or music? Do you want to live near the mountains? Do you want to live feeling confident?
And last, ask yourself what would the best way to experience life be – for you?
For me, I think the best way to experience life is to have the freedom to get neck-deep in things that mesmerize me, make me curious, call to me. I think the best way to experience life is to experience it with a tractor-trailer full of compassion for myself and others. I’m not there yet.
And if you do this exercise correctly, you won’t be at your idealized life yet. We’re not supposed to be. What is life, if we believe there’s nothing over the next horizon for us?
Trust me, there is always something over the horizon. It’s up to us to ask what it is.
And what about you? Right now, in the place you’re at? Who decides who you can become this year? Next year? And who decides how you will experience your world?
I love this picture. Did you notice that the person’s headlamp is beaming up at the moon?
OK. I hope you set aside some time this week and answer those questions. Don’t stop until you have at least ten answers for each of them. Got it? Good. Now it’s time to bring the building materials home and put them together.
Just like going to the store, some of the things you’ve listed are out of reach – for now. I’m pretty sure that becoming a NY Times best selling author is not something available to me in the near future. Same as with the store, you all ready have some of what you wrote down. I rarely feel helpless, I have a tremendously big mouth, I’m nuts for my husband. I let myself get up to my armpits in hobbies and interests. That’s how I became a coach.
So analyze your dreams. What do you already have? Circle them on the page. What is really far out? Underline that. What’s left? Possibilities, ladies and gentlemen, possibilities.
I can write a book. I can take concrete steps toward being more compassionate at work and at home. I can set aside more free time.
I can start to redefine who I am and how I experience the world.
I can make this life of mine, even more aligned with my dreams. So can you.
Would you kick this cute little guy in the face? Of course not. So why are you doing that to yourself?Looks like a long blog… take a shortcut and listen to it instead. Check out the pictures below first. Rock on!
A few years ago, some friends and I hiked the John Muir Way, a trail that bisects Scotland. The hike was fantastic. It led us through pastures, fields, towns, and beside canals. Did you know that you can smell the scotch in the air around a distillery? I kid you not. At one point, we spent a day passing fields of sheep. It was May, so there were lambs. If you’ve never been around ’em, they bounce around in little groups. With different levels of curiosity and courage, these little cuties follow you along their fences and, sometimes, scramble underneath the wire and then scurry back inside. I was utterly charmed.
I also worried about them, I wanted to make sure they got
back into their fields. I wanted to
engage with them; I couldn’t take my eyes off them. One thing I didn’t want to do was put them
in a cubicle and make ’em sit in a chair until their spines were misshapen and
their eyesight went.
I wouldn’t do that to a lamb, but I’m all too willing to do that to myself.
Why is that?
Today, let’s open up the Awareness Toolkit and take a look at unkind behavior towards ourselves.
Before we start, let me clarify here – we’re STEM people, we
have projects and deadlines, we have bugs, defects, and production problems – sometimes,
we just have to dig in and do the thing.
We have to fix it, finish it, or get it working again.
Collaboration is our lifeblood. We know that investing in our social network
is key to getting through difficulties, so we make sure we help out other
people. We brainstorm, listen to peers as
they talk through an idea, or interrupt ourselves to help others hit their goals.
If we’re not doing this to some
extent, we won’t succeed.
When we overdo these behaviors so that our health, relationships,
or positive outlook suffers, then we’ve entered the dark zone of sacrifice.
For me, it’s the forced march. I fall into the habit of working long hours
without a break. I forget to drink
water, I resist getting up, I pile up snacks to give me little boosts of dopamine
as I work to my own detriment. I don’t notice
that I’m getting less and less done, and I’ve crossed the horizon into
diminishing returns.
For others, it shows up as giving up their own
desires to say yes to other people.
It can show up as skipping lunch because you’ve accepted too
many meetings. Doing one little thing,
to help someone, then another, then another, until you’re staying late to catch
up.
We can fall into overdoing our good habits of determination
and collaboration. Our thinking takes on a more extreme turn.
We think that something is more important than ourselves,
we believe if we don’t complete this task or say yes to this request, the
results will be threatening or even catastrophic. We convince ourselves our value is tied to
achievements. Sometimes, looking at
our current situation, we tell ourselves, just this one more time. Next time, we’ll plan better. Meanwhile, we’re staying later, we’re feeling
resentful, and we can’t even list our results for the day.
Any of that sound familiar?
Listen, lambkins, it doesn’t get better until you become
aware of the issue and of the ways it goes wrong.
This behavior stems from a positive intention. We presume
our self-sacrifice makes us team players. We’re tough, dedicated, and have the
ability to go the extra mile. At work,
most of us want to be excellent. We want
to go above and beyond. We also feel
like none of this could have predicted. This
is the reality, we need to sacrifice for the good of the company. True dat, right? NO!
Hey, I got it right this week… here’s the whiteboard of where we start on this journey.
Here’s what our behavior,
driven by this positive intention, looks like:
Changed or canceled personal time – we move
our vacations, are afraid to plan them or take them, we miss birthdays or
family celebrations, we get home just as the kids are going to bed. Not only once or twice, but on the regular.
Forced Marches – Long hours, extreme effort,
unrealistic expectations.
I just did this last night. There
were three of us working on a production issue, which we knew we could resolve,
but the root cause would become obscured.
One of us had a hard stop that blew right by as we egged each other on,
looking at one more thing, checking one variable, trying to get to the complete
answer. It was made worse because we
already gathered sufficient evidence, an hour before, to prove the source of
the issue.
Poor planning, lack of experience – when we run
out of time on projects, or can’t deliver results, we don’t look like pros. This is so hard to say because it kinda hurts
me to admit it.
As professionals, trapped in the
go-go, can-do mindset, we don’t do the less glamourous work of continually reframing
our MVP (minimum viable product). If all
our projects end up in a big push or fail to come in on time, we really owe it
to ourselves and the company to demand that we step back and re-evaluate. These issues are solvable, and we stop
ourselves from finding solutions when we don’t require them. I’m not saying it’s easy or that I have this
solved – it crops up over and over – like crabgrass. The key is to face it – be
aware.
Exhaustion, Stress, Resentment – I don’t think
I have to explain this. If you’re sacrificing
your health, your sleep, the breaks that your brain needs to thrive, it’s going
to show, and you’re going to get cranky.
Falsely Helpful – Oh my, we’ve all met this
person. We ask them for something, and it’s clear that they don’t have time to
help. We try to take our request
back. They won’t let go of it. We apologize; they insist that there’s no need. With a big, fake smile, they head off at a
hundred miles an hour to do what we’ve asked, and we’re left there, feeling
guilty. Don’t be this person. Just say no.
Being Kind to Yourself Is the Best Gift for your Team
Are you ready? Let’s turn this nasty cycle on its head.
Go from Self-Sacrificing to Self-Affirming.
Here’s where we end up as we become aware of the consequences of sacrificing ourselves to work and move to a self-affirming stance.
When we adopt a self-supporting
attitude, we remind ourselves that our health and life priorities are first. After all, we’re working for a reason. I’m pretty sure it’s not a deep desire to
drop dead at my desk while my family doesn’t even notice. Sad to say, this has been a real possibility
for me at times. The good news is I’m
aware of my propensity, and I’m not willing to live like this anymore.
As we’re faced with challenges, in this new mindset, we
tell ourselves, if I don’t finish, fix, solve, do whatever I’m tempted to
sacrifice for, then I’ll find another
way.We remind ourselves that
there will always be another emergency, but there’s only one of us. We can’t do anything well if we’re exhausted,
miserable, or running in circles.
Scary huh? Did you just reject all of that out of
hand? You’re not broken. You are right on track. My clients, and I, resist moving to a self-affirming
place. Here’s why:
We THINK this behavior means:
We’re selfish
We’re mediocre
We’re not a team player
We’re risking our job
All of that is pretty darn frightening. Better play it safe, and keep sacrificing, right?
If you need some help working through how to affirm your right to health, optimisim and a great personal life, just say the word. You can book a 25 minute session with me and I’ll walk you through your personal, specific issue. It’s free, it’s my jam, and I promise it’ll be useful. Click Here. I can help you – THIS WEEK.
NO! Because we’re wrong. When you act in a self-affirming way, you actually demonstrate this:
Belief in your ability to find better solutions – we love
to be around people who think there’s a better way and want to try to find
it! We love this. You’ll love being this person. Try it. You won’t always win, but others will want to
help you solve things better, and the more you do this, the more value you add
at work.
Stopping when your productivity falls, calling it a night
– nothing will help your team more than knowing the right time to call it a
night and send people home. Sometimes,
we’re all just waiting for the one person who has the backbone to say uncle.
Professional planning, designing, tracking, and
delegating – Once you’ve committed to never sacrificing yourself, you’re
going to need to change the way you work.
Don’t wait to figure this out before you stop overdoing it. You have to stop first, then you’ll be driven
to figure it out. This is counter-intuitive,
but it’s the magic key. When you have to
face the consequences of being self-affirming, then you figure out pretty quick
how to prioritize, plan, and all the other good stuff. Be brave! Jump in!
Self-respect, good health, smart breaks – think about
a person you know who doesn’t sacrifice their health for their job and still
manages to knock it out of the park. There’s
a man I’ve worked with who is like this.
He exercises, he leaves on-time most days, and he’s well respected. If he can do it, we can do it.
Treating others as competent – this is the most unexpected and beneficial side effect. When you treat yourself respect, when you don’t overdo it, you have to rely on others to do their jobs. You stop over-helping and that, allows others to grow too. In a way, you’re less selfish? What? Yep. True.
See this little lambkin?
This is us, heading off into the world of work. We have no idea what’s about to hit us.
Have some compassion for your innocent self, trying to do a
great job in a challenging world. There’s
no need to sacrifice yourself, lamb.
Yeah, not your police department. I’m talking about your personal dreams. If your answer to that is – “Dream this, lady” – I’ve got the blog for you.
I’m pretty stoked. We’re jumping ahead today and tackling something in the accelerated column of the plan for this year.
If you’re not aware, the goal for the blog this year is to get back to basics. I want to help you move from unhappy, out of control, boxed in, and overworked to happy, engaged, forward-looking, doing right-sized work. Lofty, huh?
There are levels we have to pass through, and I’ll describe those in later posts. To help us make this miraculous change, there are four toolsets, each a little more advanced than the one before. These are short-term relief, awareness, thoughts as objects, and dreams, goals, beliefs.
We’ve been hanging around in the short term relief toolbox for a bit. You need that relief desperately at the beginning. Today though, we’re moving to the far end. Why? Because that’s where we find the excitement and drive to keep us running ahead. Otherwise, we take that short-term relief, start to feel better, and stop there. That would be a shame. The full journey is WAY MORE, WAY BETTER than just ending the pain.
What
is a personal dream?
A personal dream is something you want that carries an excitement with it, maybe a little anxiety, perhaps even fear. It feels like getting on a brand-new amusement ride. Get it?
A personal dream is also internally motivated. We can have the same vision – buy a house – for example, and if it’s externally motivated, it feels completely different. It feels like we’ve got a monkey on our back, like if we don’t achieve it, then there’s something wrong with us. If we want that house because of an internal drive, then it feels like – wouldn’t it be amazing if I could get a place of my own? I wonder how I could do it? If we fail, we feel like we’re okay, all good. Just tripped there a bit, I’ll try again soon.
Yep, I’m still not great at this. Email me for a high res copy. Amy@RockYourDayJob
What
is a personal dream at work?
Buying a house can be a personal dream you bring to work. It shows up there as several months of steady employment needed for a mortgage, the ability to pay for the house or save for it. A personal dream of home-ownership can motivate you to strive for a promotion or be assigned to a project that creates opportunities for a bonus.
We can also have personal dreams specifically about work, too. It can show up as a desire to have a specific job, or work with a group that you admire, or become something you find exciting. For years, my personal dream is to become an inspiring leader who builds team cohesion and finds terrific opportunities for her staff.
Aligning
your PD with your Boss’s goals
Did you all get your goals for the year? Were they inspiring? Got ‘em tacked next to your phone, do you?
Will this year be different? Are you going to really work on them and make sure you hit them all, or are you going to follow marching orders, and if you’re lucky, your boss will have actually assigned them to you?
Are they in a ball under your desk already?
Yeah. I thought so.
If you want help tying a PD to a goal, I’m here.
If you would like a free 25-minute session – click here. It’s free, it’s on zoom, camera on or camera off. It’s my pleasure
What your boss wants is an external goal. External goals often leave us feeling depleted and unmotivated. To ramp up and actually hit those goals, you have to hitch them to a balloon, something that will get them some lift. Tie them to your PD.
When
I think of getting better at leadership, I get excited, happy. I think – wouldn’t that be cool? Wouldn’t I be cool if I was really great at
that? I want to run around and holler
for my car keys; I want to get started.
If I can add that zoom to my boss’s goals, that’s a win for both of us. For example, if she wants me to figure out a process for getting a new type of application out to our users, well, that’s fine. But it’s just a job, a task. She tells me, I try to do it.
When I ask myself – how can getting this new type of application out to our users help me be a better leader? Now I’m getting somewhere. Perhaps I think our team could get to code these new applications. That ties to my desire, my DREAM, of finding terrific opportunities for my staff. Boom. I’m all on board. Now this goal, which started out as a task, is part of my dream. Now, I want to show up at work and get to it. Now, I want to bring it out and talk about it during meetings with my boss. Now, I’m all in.
What
if the goals you get can’t be tied to your personal dream?
Well, I got to tell you, there are very few that you can’t tie to your PD. When it does happen, though, you want to tell your boss. Tell him this is a task you’ll absolutely do, but you don’t wish to have more assignments like this. Let him know where you’re headed, see if he can help you align it with your PD. You don’t have to drop your PD like a hot potato, and you don’t have to declare defeat.
Are you killing yourself making everyone else happy at work? Think you need to stand up for yourself? You’re right – kinda.
Nothing will suck the fun out of work faster than trying to please everyone. I should know, I attempted it for years. My results? Phbbt.
Ok, this is a long one… I riff on the whiteboard stuff and there’ll be dogs barking at the end. Enjoy!
I’m pretty excited about today’s blog because I took my time whiteboarding out the message I wanted to deliver, and guess what? I’m going to add it to this blog. So cool, right? Now you can get your information exactly as you need it. You can read the blog, listen to the blogcast, or review the diagram. Freaky good. AND BONUS: I did this to save myself time.
What? You heard me correctly there, Slick. I was selfishly attempting to figure out how to get two blogs done in the time it takes to do one. Why? Because you all don’t buy my products because of my blog, and frankly, I have housework to do. I want to shove my two side hustles into smaller boxes so I can pick up some personal time. See how self-serving that is? Does it change how you think about me if I tell you the personal stuff I want to do is exercise, eat right, and just enjoy my damn dogs before they croak? Ahh, now you don’t think that’s so selfish, do you? Well, you’re right where I want you. We’re going take a crack at getting you to drop your people-pleasing and start making your own darn self happy. You so deserve it.
My first attempt – too large to embed. If you want to get a clearer copy of this, just email me – Amy@RockYourDayJob.Com
The Big PP (People Pleasing)
My own story about trying to please people at work goes like this – I wanted to learn new things, I wanted to help, so I figured out how to support an overnight system. I was able to take on a rotation and give my teammates a break. That felt great! Go, team!
Years went by, I became a manager, but I was still supporting things overnight, during the day, all the time. My boss was new and made a big fuss about how many hours I was working, all the dedication I had. I felt proud – and tired. Years went by. The boss left. I had new bosses, new systems, and I was still up at night, up during the day, working fifteen hours on the weekend to get my inbox cleared out, etc.
I thought I had a time management problem. So, during a coaching session with Brooke Castillo, she coached me on my time issue. I’ll never forget it. First, she asked me why I was doing all that work. I’ll paraphrase the rest:
“Because
I want to do a good job,” I said.
“Why do you care if you do well?“ She asked.
Insert
lots of reasons, questions … and then
“Because I want people at work to think I do a good job,” I said. I hated to admit that. I like to believe that I don’t care what people think about me, but that day, she coached me through all my thoughts, and that’s what dropped out the bottom. Bummer.
“Yeah,”
she said. “That’s your work.”
Happily, she didn’t leave me with that. Instead, she went a step further. She asked me this:
“Do
you want to work all those hours?”
“No,”
I said.
“Will
they be happy if you work twenty-four seven?”
“Maybe,”
I said.
“But
you don’t want to?” Brooke asked.
“No,”
I said.
“So why don’t you tell them, ‘I know you’d like it if I worked twenty-four seven, but I wouldn’t’ ?”
Boom. That did it for me. Suddenly, my wants and desires were on equal footing with my employers. What I wanted – counted.
So here’s what happened next: I never said those words to anyone at work, but I thought them in my mind. I met with my manager. I said I was going to try something new. I was going to try to get some work-life balance. I didn’t ask for help with it. I just said, let me know if you see a problem and then, I set about learning how to shove my work back into a standard time block.
You know what happened? My evaluations went up. I kid you not. I slept more, delegated better, took myself off the rotation for overnights, and started learning how to work more proactively. Why? To please me. Who benefited? My employer.
Straight Trippin’, dude.
High-Five there, woman.
So what about you? Where are you killing yourself to make someone else happy? Really – get an example in your mind.
Now ask yourself this – do you actually control how they feel? Yeah – you saw that coming, didn’t you? I hope so. If we turn the page upside down, the answer key reads: NO.
Not today, not tomorrow, not in a box, not with a fox.
You can be workin’ your cubicle sittin’ butt off, and you’ll never make anyone happy. And frankly, you’re not paid to. You’re paid to deliver results – and believe me, your boss hopes you’ll finish in time to get some sleep, ‘cause you know, lack of sleep causes lower performance at work.
Okay,
so let’s tackle the BIG Elephant in the room – SELFISHNESS.
If
you want to make yourself happy, then you’re selfish.
RUBBISH.
That’s the worst bag of malarky ever, and we’ve all picked up our own sack of it as we stood at the cash register of our lives.
Toss that idea out. If you want to make yourself happy, then you’re human and maybe even enlightened.
If
you want other people to stop being happy, so you can feel good, then you’re
selfish.
Get
it?
Uh,
uh. Don’t go to … Well, if I don’t do
this burdensome task that will make me stay up all night, then someone else
will have to.
That’s
where this always bogs down.
Change
that thought to:
Is this burdensome task my responsibility?
If no. Then, game over. Go home if you want to. Don’t stay late to make someone else happy if it’s going to make you sick, unhappy, miss dinner with the kids, or cause your dog to need a piddle-pad.
If yes, then ask this instead: I’m not going to stay up all night to do this burdensome task. I’m not going to give it to someone else (make sure this is really YOUR task; otherwise, give it back). So now… how am I going to solve this?
See that? That right there, refusing to kill yourself to do it? That’s what drives innovation. That’s how come my reviews went up. Each time I solved that problem, my life got better, and so did my performance.
Meanwhile, back to people-pleasing – Your wants, needs, and personal life, your desire to grow is just as important as anyone else’s. For you? It should be more so. You worry about you. Get your own house spiffed up. You can come back and lend everyone else a hand later – after you’ve walked the dog and had a good night’s sleep.
And that? Is just good to know.
If you would like a free 25-minute session – click here. It’s free, it’s on zoom, camera on or camera off. It’s my pleasure
No matter what your jam is, it’s better if you know why you’re there. Don’t feel like reading? I’ll read it to you.
You know that thing you do that’s, well, just a bit crazy? Yeah, that. Do you have any clue why you do it? If it’s just your weekend hobby, getting right down to the bones of your why might not be so critical unless you’re the person on the skis in this picture. But if you’re putting in forty hours a week doing something, the more ownership you have for your why, the more agency you’ll feel.
Happy Monday Folks. Last week I was awol. If you subscribe to my newsletter, you got your Monday fix, but my blog followers missed out. Thanks for checking back.
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My first job was as a cashier at a grocery store. When things were slow, they’d send the boys out to get the carts. I didn’t get the memo about pushing carts and gender. Here’s the thing, the guys would go out and make a game of bringing in as many carts as they could, the train of silver and rust wheels stretching further and further. At that store, to get the carts by the door, you had to go up a ramp. The parking lot was gently sloped away from the building, so the closer you got to the door with your long line of carts, the more physically challenging it was to both get the carts up the ramp and to turn them and not crash into the windows.
Looking back, it might have been a slightly irresponsible game.
Never-the-less, the manager was a tough, cigar-smoking old fashioned barrel of a man, and he didn’t seem to mind it. Like I said, no memo. So I started going out and bringing in carts. One day, I had a very long line of carts, the most I’d ever stacked. I was headed for the ramp with a nice head of steam. It was late, there were no shoppers coming out, so I went for it. I got the front cart to the top of the ramp. A man stepped out from the shadows and put his foot on the front wheel of the cart. Of course, the whole chain came to a stop.
“What do you think you’re doing?” He asked. It was the assistant manager. I couldn’t see his face, he was silhouetted against the windows.
He wasn’t a dumb man. He could see I was bringing in carts. So I didn’t offer that explanation. I was nonplussed. I couldn’t think of a thing to say. I didn’t know why he stopped me and he never explained. He removed his foot and went back inside.
I can be a prideful thing. I pushed that chain of carts from a dead stop up the ramp, made the turn and put them all in a neat line by the wall outside the door. I never did know why he stopped me. To this day, I don’t know if it was because I was going too fast, if he thought it was a risk for our customers, if he didn’t like women bringing in carts or if he just didn’t like me.
I do know it took me a week to come up with the word that explained what I was doing, and I needed adult help to come up with it. Competent. I thought I was being competent. I was working at something productive at a time when the other cashiers were standing around. I was performing the work as well or better than the other people who brought in carts, meaning I brought in a lot and I brought them in quickly.
That was a pivotal incident for me. Once I found that word, the incident stopped bothering me. At least I knew what the hell I thought I was doing.
I learned a lot from that. I learned that waiting for someone else to explain why I’m working is folly. Nobody other than myself knows what I’m trying to accomplish at the most personal level by the way I work, the work I choose to do and the manner I choose to do it. Nobody other than myself needs to.
In the end, it didn’t matter at all what the assistant manager thought about my cart pushing skills. He didn’t bother to communicate his perspective to me. I, however, found my perspective and a deep sense of satisfaction at being able to answer his question. I knew exactly what the hell I thought I was doing and that felt great.
Things are a little different now at work. I’ve got a terrific manager and have been lucky to have several of them in the past. They’ve taken time to explain their visions and offer that most valuable of all things – critical feedback. Doing a good job requires more than keeping my station clean and the money in my register correct, but one thing remains the same.
Nobody can tell us what the hell we think we’re doing.
That, my friends, is something we have to answer for ourselves, and my friends, it still requires some thoughtful consideration to come up with the answer. The good news is, when you do, it still feels incredible, powerful and stabilizing.
So why do you do what you do – at work?
To answer the question, let go of the traditional for a moment. Because the assistant manager could see what I was doing when he asked that question of me, he took away that easy answer. I couldn’t say – I’m bringing in carts, what did you think I was doing?
So when you look at why you go to work and what you’re trying to accomplish there, don’t let yourself say – I’m promoting our new product, obviously. Don’t let yourself say – I’m paying my bills, duh. Really put some skin in the game. Your own skin.
What is it you are looking for? What is floating your boat? As a teenage female competing with others for recognition and for promotions, I wanted to be seen as competent. I wanted to demonstrate that there was nothing in that store that I couldn’t do. I wanted to be useful and strong. I was at work to prove that I could be independent, pay my own way and earn my keep.
Once I understood that, it didn’t matter if I was pushing carts, balancing registers or running down the aisles to get a customer just the right toothpaste. I could be competent and I could achieve my objective. I could change jobs and still keep working on being ever more competent. My reason for being at work was independent of my work, my gender, my employer or even my direct manager. My reason belonged to me.
I’m just a weird kid that grew up to be a slightly odd woman. I’m not a rocket scientist or a superstar. My features are symmetrical, so there’s that. But I do know one thing – if I can figure out why I’m working, so can you.
After talking to person after person about what they want out of work, I know that the chances are, you have a strong why. You have a noble calling. You want to be excellent. Or you want to help others. You are full of ideas and you want to share them. Maybe you want to provide for your family. There’s something there we want, separate from the mountain of objectives that we’re all looking at as we head into the breach of 2020, with our corporate marching orders and our electronic dashboards.
Find out why you do what you do. If you’re not sure, take a guess. Carry it around with you for a week or so. You’ll know when you find it because the guys with their foot on your wheel won’t matter anymore. You’ll know what the hell you think you’re doing and it will feel – great.
