A blog about my first real setback, and how it kick-started my career confidence journey.
I had a chance discussion with someone at work who told me that when she was younger, she really wanted to become a midwife. We were stood in a call centre, the two are not very similar. Her dream never went anywhere, the opportunities for her back in the day just weren’t there – this was how she summarised it.
I never met her again, but her story stayed with me because I came away feeling sad. I think about it every so often – what a missed opportunity! I was always envious of the kids who knew what they wanted to be when they grew up. To instinctively know they wanted to be a nurse, firefighter, whatever – and then achieve it (cue images of David Beckham playing football in the garden).
I’m in my 40’s and I still don’t know what I want to ‘be’ – but I realised I don’t need to. I’m perfectly happy, I love what I do, and the people I work with are brilliant.
I did know from a young age that I wanted to go to university, and I was super confident I’d get there. I was good at school and no major bumps along the way = dream number one achieved. When I got there, I didn’t love how my course was structured, and I did not settle in well. As someone at the time said – you go from being a big fish in a small pond, to a small fish in a big pond, and I felt it. My confidence was probably at the lowest it had ever been, and there were tears. Confidence had deserted me, so I called on resilience instead. I’d made it this far, I had no back up plan. I was determined. I wouldn’t drop out and I wouldn’t fail.
The goals were:
1, Graduate
2, Secure a top job
3, Move to a nice apartment in a city somewhere
Oh dear, this is where the plan went awry. Full marks for digging into the resilience, congrats on the cap and gown, but your rental agreement has now run out and you need to pack up your stuff, and remember you have no money.
Moving back in with my parents and back to my Saturday job was a grounding experience. It felt humiliating. I can smile now because what I didn’t realise at the time – I was learning differently to school and uni. Now, this is not the ‘go to uni vs get a job’ debate, but I was really learning what drives me at work, my likes and dislikes, how to collaborate, how to handle customers, and how I could build on all of these, use them in new jobs, and make more money!
The Saturday job started to rebuild some of the confidence I had lost. My first real setback and humiliation kick-started me into actually learning about myself rather than the economics of fisheries (yes, this was one of my degree modules). It wasn’t the end of the world, it was just the start of a different journey.
Here are five of my learns, in no particular order:
1, How I like to be managed
Preferably not at all, but if you insist… Direct me on the end outcome, tell me what you need, I’ll just get on with it. You likely won’t hear much from me until it’s done, unless I need a steer on something, be available for me then.
2, I love to solve problems
I’ll ask you lots of questions, I’ll be in research and validation mode, I’ll make lots of notes. Leave me to it, don’t stand over me or prescribe the how. The joy for me is working backwards from the end goal, figuring out the steps in-between.
3, Passion = ownership
I’m rarely shy about taking ownership or responsibility for something if it really interests me, I’m passionate about it, or if I just want to learn from the experience.
4, I’m fascinated by customer experience
Find me in a shop, airport, or queue of any kind and I will be day-dreaming about how I’d rearrange all the things I perceive that you’ve broken.
5, I need to feel challenged
Once I feel I’ve completed or mastered something (even if it was just the frozen food delivery back in the day) I’m hungry for more, kind of over the old thing, and I need something new. It’s probably why I wasn’t the kid with the early career plan. I’ll never know what I want to be, or know when I get there – because I don’t see it as a finite thing. No point for me in deciding what ‘there’ is, as I won’t ever be ‘there’, I’ll just be in one chapter, part way to the next chapter.
How about you, do you know what your five are, or maybe your top three? How did you come about the knowledge? Did it take a setback? Have you cracked the code of how these might propel you from role to role? I’d love for you to comment below, I will be fascinated to learn from you.
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