30 day writing challenge – Day #22

Trust thyself: every heart vibrates to that iron string. – Ralph Waldo Emerson

“Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm.” is a great line from Emerson. If there’s no enthusiasm in what you do, it won’t be remarkable and certainly won’t connect with people on an emotional basis. But, if you put that magic energy into all of your work, you can create something that touches people on a deeper level. How can you bring MORE enthusiasm into your work? What do you have to think or believe about your work to be totally excited about it? Answer it now.

 

I think it’s all about ‘what’s next’ for me. I rarely do anything ‘just because’. Everything has a purpose to it. Well, nearly everything. But yes, almost everything I do has a purpose to it. I used to pour my heart and soul into my work because I was readying myself for the next step. And I’d hoped that the next step would take place within the same firm. But from all accounts, in this current economic crisis, it looks like it’ll be unlikely that I’d be promoted, whether or not I’m an excellent performer. And that in itself is a rather depressing thought. That said, I have stewed and I have ranted and I’m moving on (emotionally). There’s nothing I can do about the situation short of throwing in the towel and calling it quits. But I refuse to quit and I refuse to give up.

I won’t however, be a sucker. My game plan is to own the firm’s current social media strategy and drive it, as I have for the past quarter. I will establish a precedent in the professional services (my industry) space and then go out to the market and say “I did that”.

So, I’ll be taking the bull by the horns and doing exactly as I’d planned, with no expectation of the same results (ie, getting promoted from within this year).

And with this purpose in mind, I’ll continue to inject the same amount of enthusiasm, if not more, into my current projects and all else I have on the horizon. So there.

30 day writing challenge – Day #21

Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind. Absolve you to yourself, and you shall have the suffrage of the world. – Ralph Waldo Emerson

We live in a society of advice columns, experts and make-over shows. Without even knowing it, you can begin to believe someone knows better than you how to live your life. Someone might know a particular something better – like how to bake a three-layer molten coconut chocolate cake or how to build a website – but nobody else on the planet knows how to live your life better than you. (Although one or two people may think they do.) For today, trying asking yourself often, especially before you make a choice, “What do I know about this?”

 

The two things that stood out for me at the beginning of the week were, “what I don’t know can’t hurt me” and “what I do know, I really do know”.

I started out the day scrambling to get to work. I woke up late but was still bent on taking my time to get into the office as the only thing I had to tend to was a 2.30pm and it was a low risk media interview at that. But my colleague rang me at 7.50am as I was still pottering around my PJs asking if I could take over a media interview for her as she was ill. Sure thing, the interview was 11.30am, I still had time. Until she told me that the prep was set for 9.00am. Which really, didn’t give me much time to get into the office. So off I went, scrambling and getting into the office at 8.57am.

When I rang the spokesperson, it took me a full 10 minutes before I realised the spokesperson in question was a partner and not a director or senior manager. And that stopped me in my tracks. Because in my world, partners rule the roost. And despite hating the hierarchical nature of the firm, I often find myself deferring to partners whenever they are involved, even if I was the expert in question.

Back to the media prep.

I’d already begun speaking like I was THE authority on the issue which truth be told, I was. I was highlighting the dos and don’ts of media interviews and our media policy, outlining scenarios that could happen and how we could frame answers and stick to our key messages. And the partner was, to her credit, listening to me rather intently and taking notes as I rattled on. So I simply continued as if I hadn’t just realised that I was talking to the person who basically paid my salary.

And so it was, a good 45 minutes spent on a media briefing and with the knowledge that I did indeed know what I was talking about. And I guess in this ongoing journey of self discovery/self awareness, the lesson is, I do know what I do know.