Work, life and things in between – Day 82 – Front row seat!
A while back and against my self-doubting, self-criticizing mind, I had contacted someone here in Vancouver who claimed that what boards needed more than anything else were female members and more particularly those with Human Resources background.
Because I know the drill one has to go through to be considered for board positions and because I knew I had not walked the traditional road to that end, I did not think I could land a board membership position despite the cries you hear everywhere that they are looking to hire female members.
So I pursued this to see if it were true and also to challenge the doubting Thomas in me.
I had not heard from them and assumed, as I would typically do, that they took one look at my bio and went: What? Is she out of her mind?
The nice surprise for me that day was that they replied and were interested in meeting with me after all.
You have heard of the expression “the glass half full or half empty kind of guy”…well, when it comes to thinking about selling myself I sense that I may be in the glass half empty category….not sure why. Perhaps it is because I don’t believe that things can come easy….hunkering down and weathering the storm is more like the typical pattern of events…
How many people have you met who were excessively sure of themselves, to the extent that you wished they would shut up and give someone else a chance? People you would like to see at the back of the bus so they are out of sight and out of sound and yet, sure enough, they will pick the first row?
So, for me, one thing I was finding out with all this navel gazing activity of trying to figure out how best to do what I want to do, was that I too often assumed that people would expect me to take the back seat….and because I did not want to look like that guy everybody wished to see at the back of the bus, I did exactly that, take the back seat and in doing so, set myself way back and created more work for myself…..yet, I don’t know how many times I have been invited to sit in the front row….
I may have been a little slow on the intake here. Was I blind? Stubborn? (we already know that I am) or scared? I sure hope I was not playing hard to get with myself….
See, the real challenge in identifying your shortcomings is to sort through what works for you and what does not..and if you are brave enough, to look into why it is that way! It is hard to do on your own when you have no one to hold the mirror for you. Did you ever try to look at your back when standing in front of the mirror? can’t do it right?
As long as you are doing the looking, you will keep seeing the same thing. It is that simple. You need a new set of eyes to see different things.
So, when it comes to my own projects, I tended to look at all the reasons why it would not work…and tackled all of them first and usually came out on top after all, but what a climb! No wonder I was so tired.
This time I am thinking, what if I just took the front seat right from the start and save myself all that time and effort of traveling my way to the front? To day 83.