Retaking My Pen

I reset all of my goals on June 1st. One week later, I am a week behind on nearly all of my new goals. One of these new goals is to spend thirty hours learning something new by the end of the year. That equates to just one hour a week. I managed to not do that one hour of learning this week. Actually, I am still in a debate with myself on what that learning will be. I am leaning towards options trading or the closely related topic of the science behind mental health disorders.

As I sit here reflecting on the progress, well lack of progress I made towards my new goals this first week, I grow to appreciate that I did in fact learn a great deal this week. I learned about myself. This course of study started about a month ago.

Let’s skip past the catalyst of what started this new learning process, to what I am learning. I am learning that I engage in a typical human behavior of letting my brain take in information and then filling in the blanks with misinformation. Two of the books I read this past month call this, “story telling” or “writing clever stories”. Otherwise stated, I all too often jump to conclusions that are not accurate, and this story telling causes me worry and anxiety over things that are never going to happen.

Even worse, I unfairly draw conclusions about the motives or actions of others. Often times, I internalize the inaccurate conclusions as negative beliefs about me. I manage to convince myself that others think that I am not intelligent or not good enough. Maybe some people somewhere do in fact think that I am idiot or not good enough, but in reality, no one is really thinking that much about me, well except for me.

For a very long time I let others define myself confidence and myself worth. It is on me to define myself worth, and the absolute worse way to do this would be to let what I think others think define me. The only limitations on what I can accomplish in life are those that I create in my own little brain. I do not want this for myself or for anyone.

How do we break out of the spell of telling ourselves stories and letting these stories define ourselves worth? Well…that is what I am in the process of learning. My course of study thus far:

• Working with a career coach. My career coach is Jim. If you want a highly seasoned professional that will be blatantly honest with you, hire Jim.
• Sitting down with two coworkers in separate conversations, one high performing peer and one high performing junior resource and having a discussion with them using the following agenda:
  • My overall objective is to become a better leader / teammate.  Here are some topics that I would like to cover:
    • From your perspective, what makes a strong leader / valuable teammate?
    • How can I become a better leader / better teammate for you?
      • What things do I do well?
      • What areas should I improve upon?
• Reading the following books:
  • Crucial Conversations by (a whole host of authors)
  • Take Life to the Next Level: The Big Leap by Gay Hendricks
  • Unf#ck Your Brain by Faith G. Harper
  • The Dance of Anger by Harriet Lerner
  • Do Epic Shit by Ankur Warikoo
  • How to Ikigai by Tim Tamashiro

A great tool to breaking out of the habit of “story telling” and jumping to inaccurate conclusions is to simply ask rather than assume, and to give people grace. A great example of this happened this week at work. My boss, one of two individuals that guided me into this new self-learning journey, was unresponsive this week. I just needed to know his travel plans for the upcoming week, so I could book critical client meetings and business development activities while he was in town.

Initially, I felt a bit of aggravation as I waited for him to get back to me. Then I reflected, and rather than telling myself, “I am not important, that is why he is not getting back to me.” I told myself things like, “I know his wife and daughter are traveling abroad and a family member had been going through a difficult time. I hope he is okay.” “His lack of responsiveness could mean that he is in the throes of selling a big project, which will be exciting, good news.” “He has a great deal of work on his plate. I wonder if I can help in some way to free up his time to focus on planning next week.”

Of course, it turns out that he had a good reason for not getting back to me sooner, and he certainly thinks that I am important, so much so that he wants to make me the account manager of one of his accounts to free up his time to focus on other initiatives that are important to the entire firm. Account management is my favorite role in our firm, so this all makes me happy. I could have spent the week down on myself, instead I read my affirmations each morning, and I took my pen and wrote positive ideas into my brain about myself and those I interacted with.

I am looking forward to continuing my learning about myself and working to improve the person that I am. I am working to become a better person, one day at a time, and this all begins by retaking my pen. More on this to come in the weeks ahead.