Success

The fear is strong in this one…

/ wonderingwoz / Leave a comment

I love Yoda.  I think he’s my favorite all-time characters. You can apply his logic in so many situations. “Do or Do not. There is no try.”  Do you know how many people I’ve told this to through the years?  At first they look at me a little funny. When they think about it, they realize the wisdom in those simple words.

I remember having a conversation with my Dad when I was in college in what seems like an eternity ago. He had me write down goals for a semester.  I wasn’t doing so well academically… actually I was learning so much about life instead. I remember sitting at his desk, thinking through what I wanted to do.  Here’s the thing….  I had no clue what I wanted to accomplish.

I took a stab at a goal: Try to study 3 times a week for a class.  When he reviewed what I wrote, he told me perhaps the wisest thing. “The language you chose dictates your actions and results.  Instead of ‘try’, use ‘will’ instead.” Honestly, I didn’t want to say anything stronger than that.  I wasn’t even sure that I would graduate.  I didn’t even know why I was in school, didn’t know what I wanted to become. I was scared shitless…..

Fast forward 20+ years…. here I am, still unsure what I want to do with my life and terrified. This fear… is real terror.  It is so much worse than my fear of spiders and water slides.  This fear is tangible.  It has a taste, a smell, a sound, a texture, a sensation. It overwhelms all of my senses. And it keeps me safe.

Or does it?

“Named must your fear be before banish it you can.” – Yoda

So what is this fear of really?  It’s that fear of being SEEN, of really, truly and unapologetically seen. Damn perfectionism and being a people pleaser….   I can morph into whoever someone wants me to be. I can be wild and crazy, calm and serene, passionate and vocal, and all combinations in between. I am the master illusionist.  Sometimes I don’t even know what I’m feeling and rely on others to tell me what I’m feeling. I feel bad when I feel something that is opposite of what others think I should be feeling. How messed up is that?

Ironically, I think people can’t see the real me. That is soooo far from the truth. They certainly can!  You can only dance and hustle so long before things come crashing down around you. Dr Brene Brown calls this “the hustle of worthiness.” It is exhausting and something I’ve done for YEARS.

“Fear is the path to the Dark Side. Fear leads to anger. Anger leads to hate. Hate leads to suffering.” – Yoda

So now I’m exhausted and terrified. Fear isn’t keeping me safe. It’s keeping me from living and making me bitter and resentful. I want to do so many things and fear stops me dead in my tracks and says… “yeah, about that.  Why don’t you just crawl into bed and pull the covers over your head. Or watch some TV? Or play that game on your iPad for hours? Or anything that will keep you from moving forward. Or backward. Just stay put here. Where it’s nice and safe.”

And boring. And uninspiring. And joyless.

Lifeless.

“To be a Jedi is to face the truth, and chose. Give off light, or darkness, Padawan. Be a candle, or the night.” – Yoda

So many people talk about pushing through the fear.  I don’t think this is the right approach for me. It seems so negative and more like suppressing the emotion rather than giving the emotion space to be. I think I’ve swallowed enough emotions over the years and it doesn’t help at all. Fear is part of me, it’s part of all of us really. It craves acceptance like the rest of us and grows stronger the more we try to suppress it.

“To answer power with power, the Jedi way this is not. In this war, a danger there is, of losing who we are.” – Yoda

Perhaps fear and I need to re-negotiate our contract, consider a partnership rather than a dictatorship. There is a place for fear… like when I’m being chased by a lion or someone is holding a gun to my head. Not sure there’s a place for it walking to my mailbox or talking to a co-worker. Granted, we do have bobcats and coyotes in the area and some of the people I work with are downright scary, I don’t think either of those are going to really try to eat me. Fear doesn’t need to rule my existence.

So Fear, walk with me. You are not going to lead me any more. We walk together, side by side. You can prod me gently when you think I need to be cautious and I will take your counsel under advisement. I will act on your guidance when it makes sense (like rampaging lions, guns to the head, etc). Otherwise, I will take your hand and lead you gently into the unknown where glorious and amazing adventures await.

“Hmmm. In the end, cowards are those who follow the Dark Side.” – Yoda

 

 

 

 

Success… What the Heck is It?

/ wonderingwoz / Leave a comment

I’m reading a book titled “Make it Happen” by Laura Casey (buy it here):. In it, she talks about ways to overcome your fear and need for perfection to achieve your purpose.  Sounds promising, doesn’t it? Who doesn’t want to achieve their purpose. Sign me up! On a side note, I totally see another girl crush coming on… move over Dr Brene Brown! Don’t worry, she’s not taking your place. You’ll always be my number 1!  But I digress…..

In her book, Laura poses an interesting question.  What is your definition of success?

Hmmmm….  this question really stopped me in my tracks. Success has a definition?  I thought it was something you either achieved with tons of accolades or you had.

When I first started in my current role, I really struggled with knowing how I was doing. In my old role, you knew where you stood. We had very specific KPIs with tangible targets.  We could measure EVERYTHING. And I was all about chasing and exceeding the targets. That’s how success was defined for me at that time.  In order to exceed, you had to hit this number, drive this result, hit this bar.  Not so much in my current role.  Things are far more… squishy.

One day this internal conflict came to a head.  I had a rare face-to-face meeting with my manager (she was based in Chicago, I’m based in Nashville). I started rambling about the fact that I have no idea what I’m doing and I feel like I’m floundering. I didn’t know what to do or where to start.  I felt like a failure. I went from running a team of 50 in my previous role to leading a team of 3 then 4 then 12 in my new role. I was overwhelmed and uncertain in unchartered waters. I was in a world I didn’t really know and not sure if I liked.

Once I took a breath, my sage manager looked at me and said, “You need to redefine what success is, Chris.”

I stared at her for a minute.  A good LONG minute. You know, one of those where you blink with your mouth slightly open, head tilted to one side? Yeah that kind of stare. Then it dawned on me…. she was right.

I am not sure if she’ll even know how much of an affect she’s had on me with that one simple statement. When I get stuck in a situation and start to panic, I hear her words in my head. It causes me to slow down and think.  That and my new boss’s mantra of “Progress, not Perfection.” That’s another story entirely….back to success.

If you think that means after that epiphany I figured this whole success thing out… WRONG! In fact, I still flounder with the squishy stuff. I fall back to wanting numbers to drive. The squishy stuff is hard. It’s gray, it’s messy and it changes constantly. How can you figure out success in that mess? To add to the confusion, I’m trying to understand what success is to me professionally AND personally. Sheesh….

So what DO I know then?

First, business success and personal success are not mutually exclusive.  Why do I even think they are separate?  Why do I have to be a successful business woman OR a successful wife?  I am not a digital being where everything is either true or false, black or white, 0 or 1 (for all my fellow nerds…). I can be successful at both, if I know what that looks like.

Second, success isn’t measured by money or climbing the ladder.  Yes, money is great to have and it helps to make life more comfortable. It’s not everything though. Being a vice president or CEO of a company may look great, it’s not everything either. I can achieve both of those, and it’s possible I still might not be successful, especially if I lose all of my friends and family in the process.

Third, and this is a hard one, my success isn’t defined by someone else. Sure, if I get the Nobel Prize for some amazing thing I did, some would say that’s being a success. Or if I get elected President of something, some would say that’s a success. In some way that thinking is  allowing others to determine your path AND your worth. Should my success be dependent on what other’s think? It’s great to get that recognition. How can I feel valued as an individual if I rely on external people to tell me when I’m successful or not?  I’m not sure that I can.

It’s easier for me to rely on someone else to tell me if I’m successful or not.  In some ways that takes the responsibility off of me to do the work to make the changes that help lead to my success. Ironically, I get irritated when people are not accountable for what they do or do not do. In some ways, when I let other’s define my success, I am shifting the accountability to them. Hmmm, not sure that I like that and perhaps it’s a blind spot for me. If someone else tells me I’m successful, I can say thank you.  If they don’t I can say they don’t see my worth.  Either way, it erodes my self-confidence and destroys my self-worth.

Owning my successful is a scary thought.  What if I DO succeed?  Then what? Is that it? Is this going to be expected of me forever then? What if I fail and fail publicly? Soooo much fear. And fear can stop you in your tracks.

So I continue to work on this definition… who knew a simple question to define success would be this difficult? This time, I am not going to wait for the perfect answer before I start working towards my success and I’m not going to let anyone else define it for me. Really who knows me better than I do? Besides, I have to remember it’s progress not perfection! Progress helps us realize our success, while perfection hinders our progress.

It’s time to live large and stop being so small.