A new stage of my journey, learning more about professional coaching and looking for my first client!
Month: October 2020
Turning up is 90% of the game
Image by me
What if you had spent so much of your life outside your comfort zone that your challenge was in settling back into being comfortable?
Meet Monica!
Up until the age of 13 Monica had an idyllic life. One of 8 children with two great parents she was perfectly happy. And then her father passed away suddenly. On the surface life didn’t change, other than missing her dad.
Monica found herself becoming the ‘clever, naughty kid’ after that. “I adopted this persona of always being outside the comfort zone, always being rebellious.”
Monica balanced jobs and school from ages 14 to 17, and then decided to take a gap year as she had no idea what direction to take next. Career advice was varied and not useful!
After finding herself working 5 jobs in Cairns, a push from her mum had her moving back to the city and getting a job at a trading house – the start of something wonderful for Monica!
“And it was just the dynamism of this really complicated global working environment a whole new language to learn – bills of lading, 90cl, futures, phytosanitary certificates, regulations and steamship owners that were German. Russian and Pacific Islanders. It was an interesting process, and I went to work as a shipping clerk.”
Monica describes one of her key attributes as curiosity, which combined with an ability to make friends and retain information had her soon selected to be part of an international fast track program!
“That just then opened up a whole world! This month, you’re going to go to Singapore, and you’re going to learn about our insurance business. Next month, you’re going to go to Hamburg and you’re going to have learn how we manage our asset fleet of breakbulk ships, or every variety of ships and how many ports we own around the world. You are going to learn the economics of the cattle/beef industry, from paddock to burger. As a 22-year-old kid I just soaked all this up.”
Monica’s career went from strength to strength, a combination of confidence and talent seeing her succeed in whatever she set her mind to. She moved from Brisbane to Perth to Sydney and then to New York as part of her career progression.
For 8 years in US she thrived then as she turned 30 she reflected on her next step and incidentally started to meet women 10 years older and whilst “successful” in their careers and earnings they were unhappy. That was the first trigger in her decision to come home to Australia, but there was more “I think something sat with me from meeting those all the women and I got a glimpse of my future self.
“I actually got sick because I’ve flown a lot and I picked up a virus, I think on a trip back from South America. And I remember I flew into Miami and was feeling just not quite well. I went to whoever the doctor was according to our health plan, and before I knew it, they put me into the ICU because what I’d actually picked up was a viral infection in my heart muscle.”
It was not long after that Monica moved home to Brisbane and moved in with her mum, who sadly passed away 4 months later.
Monica struggled to get a job in Brisbane – a recruiter suggested her experience and her New York accent may have been intimidating to the branch offices in that smaller city – but instead of moving to a bigger city Monica embarked on an MBA – and 2 years later topped the Dean’s list. Another year on she married a pilot and move to Dubai where she embarked on another 9-year adventure in Arabic foreign wealth funds.
Her marriage lasted a decade and she moved back to her beloved Brisbane in 2012. “The divorce gave me cause to reflect.”
Monica shared with me at this stage that if it is work related, she has no issue solving problems, but struggled more with being uncomfortable / vulnerable on a personal level.
“One of my brothers suffers with bipolar. In the last five years, I took my brother in and he came to live with me. And I started to get a real appreciation of mental illness as an illness not as something that people should just get over.
“I got the understanding of just how cruel and hurtful people going through both ends of that cycle are. I felt useless. I just felt like it was something I couldn’t fix. And that really, for a long while, it really affected me. And it took me a while to develop a mindset about removing all my unconscious bias that it was about my brother. It’s not just get out of bed and do something. That’s my method. That’s not healing.
“It took me a long while but I’ve reframed my whole mindset around, this is an illness. And if he had cancer, I would be there in a heartbeat with whatever it needed done. And so I just had to accept it was something out of my control, and I had to manage it. Like I would manage the volatility of the marketplace, and say, whatever version of my brother turns up today, I’ll be okay. I think that was helpful. And that’s helped me a lot more in this last phase of my career. Because I think now, I’m much more of a humanist.”
And Monica’s advice to others about stepping out of their comfort zone?
“It’s hard, but you can’t let it disable you. I would implore them to go to a time where the first experience has been discomfort, like when they learn to drive, the first time you ever get behind the wheel of a car, you think you’re never going to be able to do this. The first time you go out for a run, you think I’ll never be able to run more than 20 minutes. The first time you touch a computer, are you ever going to be able to type? I think there’s lots of examples in our lives where we’ve had discomfort, but we just work our way through it. And for me, I think turning up is 90% of the game. So turn up”
Great advice Monica!
Shedding tears of discomfort
I’m a crier.
We call it the ‘Symington crying gene’ in our family as it most definitely comes from my mum’s family. My mum and siblings, aunts, uncles and several cousins all have it too.
I cry for many reasons; most strong emotions bring me to tears to be honest. Joy, sadness, frustration, anger to name a few.
I have been known to cry watching ads.
I once cried so hard reading a book that the person who found me sobbing thought I had lost a family member.
Over my 50 years I have learned to own my tears, it is part of my heritage, and a sign that I care passionately. Even at work I accept that sometimes I am moved to tears.
The crying scenario where I am still uncomfortable is when they are tears of empathy. I am the person sobbing at a funeral of an acquaintance. The person who cries when someone else cries. Even if they are a stranger.
I feel that my tears take attention away from person experiencing the strong emotion. And the more I try to hide the tears the more the focus comes to me.
But there is nothing I can do. In rare cases I can delay my tears, but not often.
So, I am learning to own those tears too. To not hide, to not apologise. To not explain.
It is hard, and makes me very uncomfortable.
But feeling strongly enough to shed tears is not something I want to be ashamed of.
Driving out of your comfort zone!
Words by me based on an interview with Rosie
I am writing this before I discover if Rosie did get her driver’s licence!
Rosie did her interview with me the day of her test. “For context. I’m 30 years old. And as we’re talking right now, I’m going for my driver licence for the first time this afternoon.”
“It is exciting. And it’s one of those things where, because it’s a more commonplace thing, it’s almost scarier to start doing. Because it’s easy for everyone else, right? I’m someone who most skills come very, very easily to me, if I just apply myself. But most things you can learn with no audience and without the risk of an injury to yourself or a very expensive object.
“So, driving, like deciding to want to, and then actually going through the process of learning. It’s really, really, really outside of my comfort zone. And this is probably the fourth attempt to learn…to get to the point where I’m okay to go for go for the test. And you know, if I don’t pass this test, that’s okay. I’ll go for it again. And it’s now almost like it’s inevitable that I’ll get my license. Whereas before it was something that was just impossible.”
I asked Rosie what the driver was – after all she was 30 and had not been able to drive until now “The moment that I realised I actually wanted this was I was talking to my partner. He said something like, it would be really nice to go on a road trip with you and to not be the only one driving. And he didn’t say it in a judgy kind of way. It was very much like it would be really nice. So partly out of wanting to be an equal part in the relationship and wanting to give that to him. That’s one side of it.”
“The other side of it is I’m someone who hasn’t really shied away from scary things. I tried stand up comedy. I’ve gotten up on stages and spoken, I’ve sung in public. Why was this one thing so impossible for me? And if it’s so impossible, why not do it just to prove I can do the impossible, right? So those were the things that nudged me towards it.”
Rosie realised that to stop herself from getting overwhelmed she needed to take really small steps – step one was driving 4 blocks on a back street, and she repeated that step until she felt ready to move to 8 blocks. She found this technique made it a lot easier to keep learning.
Rosie’s biggest fear is messing up publicly. With potential consequences to others or other objects. “Competency has been something that’s carried me a long way in most of my life and being seen in an incompetent way–while inherently and logically I know there’s nothing wrong with it–it still makes me feel really really awful. And some part of me is sure I’m dying when I make a fool of myself in public.”
Of course I asked Rosie for her advice to others contemplating getting uncomfortable “fear is excitement with judgment placed on it. Right? If you just felt those physical sensations, and you didn’t have a story attached, you would call that excitement. So, fear is useful. It keeps us safe. But if it’s something that isn’t actually going to actually threaten your safety or well being, then find a way to interact with it.”
“Take a baby step like I did driving four blocks, or just spend time cultivating, wanting it. The more you think about that, the more it becomes a familiar thought in your reality, the more likely it’s going to feel available to you And eventually you’ll do it. Eventually you’ll find that energy and that space for yourself. “
And Rosie’s final words for you “The times I’ve pushed out of my comfort zone, I do not have many regrets. But of the times that I had the opportunity to [do something], and I didn’t? I look back on those I see what it could have done for myself. If I can encourage you just try something little, most things won’t kill us. So why not? Why not give it to ourselves?”
Thanks Rosie. I hope you are driving happily right now!