CONTENTS
CONTENTS
Chapter 6
If you are 34, this is the chapter for you! A decade in review....
If someone walked up to me in 2010 – 10 years ago when I was 34 – and said,
“Ten years from now, you will be living in New Zealand after an adventure living in Boston, San Francisco, and London. You will be single, in the best shape of your life, preparing for a powerlifting competition. You will come home every day to a three-bedroom house on the beach as you have always dreamed. You will be earning 600% of your current salary as a Partner at one of the world’s most prestigious, “Big Four” consulting firms running a strategic team in an emerging market. You will reflect regularly on the 31 countries you have seen and will tell hilarious stories to all of your friends who come to support you as you do stand-up comedy on the side,”
I would have laughed wildly, turned and walked away shaking my head wondering what kind of drugs that person was on.
I would have gone back to my modest home in rural (and very landlocked) Ohio, looked at my 198 pound body unhappily in the mirror, and walked down to my in home office, logged in to my online banking account to make sure I had enough money to pay for my two mortgages after losing most of our financial security in the housing crash of 2008. I would get up early every day and drag myself in to work – wearing one of the two pairs of pants I had that still fit me – road raging all the way there, to start back over my 14-hour day running the most gruelling and stressful project that resulted in my being the unhealthiest I had ever been in my life. I would have walked into my office, gone to one of my team meetings and cracked an inappropriate joke, and buried my head in my hands as I received a mean email from someone at the company about something that I had to take the blame for even though I had no idea what it even meant. Later in the year, I would have sadly reflected in a victim mode about how I suspected my entire peer group was making 150% of what I was making because I was a loyal, long-term employee who never stood up for myself and what I was worth, never having taken a risk to move on after 13 years at the company.
Recently, a dear friend and former colleague of mine, Drew, called to ask about my life and exactly WTF as people who have known me for a long time are often intrigued by my “story.” How does a farm girl who grew up on welfare, who they knew in 2010 as I was, end up as such a “success” as he called it? We ended up chatting for quite some time about how I saw the story while he challenged me a few times on exactly WHAT I did and HOW I did “it” – “It” being my facing transformation and change with sometimes seemingly obliviousness to the risk I was taking or the courage I was demonstrating. Looking back on life this way – a decade in review if you will – is incredibly eye opening and deeply humbling. So, since all these things that my imaginary stranger predicted have now happened, it’s time I share a bit of a story about exactly how the last decade of my life has been such a “180” from where I was just ten short years ago.
In this chat, Drew and I landed on an interesting word based on a book he is reading, Grit. As defined, “Grit is passion and perseverance for long-term and meaningful goals. It is the ability to persist in something you feel passionate about and persevere when you face obstacles. This kind of passion is not about intense emotions or infatuation.” This sincerely intrigued me as I never really saw myself that way. I always have seen life as a journey, yes, even in 2010, but at that stage, my journey was in slow motion and somewhat of an autopilot until I had a major wake up call.
As I told him some of my story – that I related in some ways to the movie “Yes Man” with Jim Carrey - I thought maybe I was just opportunistic, quite often simply saying "YES" when people needed me to do something or when things fell in my lap. The view I had was a bit different than his and a few others of my friends who see me as the one who put my lap in the right places for things to fall into it (you can take that to an innuendo if you like hehe) and that I had crafted these last ten years very mindfully….
SOME 2010-2012 HIGHLIGHTS
START OF THE DECADE IN REVIEW From Top Left to Right: Otterbein ALUMNI awards, HAWAII WITH JOSH & BROCK, INDIA with ptc, my first triathlon with katie & Paula, chrisy's bachelorette, my boston going away with alisha and angela, yale speaking opportunity, family christmas with the nephews and brock, family CHRISTMAS with dad, mick, tom & lynnette.
SO WHAT IS GRIT?
This made me curious even about myself - what are the prevailing characteristics of grit and how have I demonstrated them? According to Angela Duckworth, the world’s leading expert on “grit,” it combines resilience, ambition, and self-control in the pursuit of goals that take months, years, or even decades and is comprised of these top 5 characteristics:
1. Courage- the ability to do something that frightens one; bravery. I think we covered courage and bravery in some of my other blogs, but for those who have way more to do than read my entire long winded blog, I can give you my opinion about myself here…. My demonstration of courage is less about a conscious facing of fears than it is basically being oblivious to what I should be afraid of. I often say yes to incredibly risky and scary things before doing much research, so I do not put any self-limiting beliefs into my awareness. This has been quite the trend in my life with a propensity to sign up for something that sounds cool and then just going and doing it pretty much like an idiot for the first time and then researching the better way to do it after massive amounts of embarrassing failures. Truth – for my first triathlon, I used a mountain bike, changed clothes three times, and had no idea that the transition area times counted in where I would place. Truth – when I moved to London, I ignored all the warnings about the troubles with moving internationally and consequently took me 4 weeks to get HEAT, 6 weeks to get a phone, and 90 days to get wifi. Truth – when I travelled across Europe, there were days I was checking out of a hotel not even knowing what country I was going to next. Insert shoulder-shrug emoji here. ;)
2. Conscientiousness: Achievement Oriented - wishing to do one's work or duty well and thoroughly. Anyone who has ever seen my book collection will agree hands down, I have a serious issue – bordering on obsession - with being conscientious and achievement oriented. Everyone who has come to my new home here in New Zealand gets to see this manifested in my guest bathroom where the bookshelf belongs for avid #2 readers with a personal development obsession…. I will talk about my favourite self-help/professional development book in a moment because it’s so much more a story than just the concept itself. Aside from that, I pretty much only watch documentaries to learn more about anything I can, constantly striving to perform well. This transcends work that once led to a comical argument with my ex-husband at a leisurely game of kickball in the park when I was being a tad too competitive. He would recall my personal motto, “Nothing is worth doing if you are not going to do it at 100%.”
3. Long-Term Goals and Endurance: the ability to endure an unpleasant or difficult process or situation without giving way. I pretty much am obsessed with goals, personal, family, professionally, athletically, and testing my endurance with experimental trials for all things that may challenge me. I feel that when I do not have a goal – or twelve – to work toward, I get lazy, apathetic, depressed, and demotivated. I think everyone should have goals – I should say, it’s my goal to get all my friends and employees to have a goal or two. I want them to share them with me so we can work on them together and I want them to be TOUGH and stretch goals that take them and me out of a comfort zone. My most literal manifestation of long-term goals and endurance are the personal tests to become an athlete/runner/fit person after spending most of my life overweight and out of shape. I have done this by participating in races and events that require long term commitment, gruelling preparation, and endurance such as a full marathon, four more half marathons, several other obstacle and endurance runs, triathlons, duathlons, two months of Insanity and P90X, and next, a Novice Powerlifting Competition. The physical tests work my mental endurance as well as they require commitment, dedication, positive attitude, and perseverance. Those races – and my propensity to finish in the bottom 20% - have taught me more about how to thrive at work and rise from "failure" than most of my formal education and experience. As well, after watching “The Secret”, I learned about law of attraction, positive visualisation, and put together a vision board so I would really visualise what I wanted – pie in the sky – longer term in my life. When I look at it today, it’s mind-blowing how much I have achieved since the days of those things being a fairy tale.
4. Resilience: Optimism, Confidence, and Creativity. the capacity to recover quickly from difficulties; toughness: I think all I need to say here is read blog Chapter 3. In short, my perspective about recovering from difficulties is simply in my attitude that I have a CHOICE about being optimistic, taking nothing personally as often as I can remind myself of that, forgiving, and leveraging all my other strengths to pick myself up when things seem impossible or irrecoverable. My creativity allows me to find humour in just about anything knowing that the other option is crying uncontrollably and that is far too exhausting.
5. Excellence vs. Perfection - the quality of excelling, of being truly the best at something: Here is where I am going to need to draw a line and say, I am not the best at much of anything…. I have always considered myself a jack of all trades and a master of none. However, I do MY best at everything I attempt to do – nothing “half-ass” as my stepdad would say…. I strive for excellence; I encourage everyone to do the same. If you are a bagger at the grocery store – be the best fucking bagger ever and don’t put shit on top of my eggs, and I will appreciate you. Maybe one thing I think I excel at is this very thing – treating everyone with kindness and respect – building relationships that have been the underpinning of my decade of transformation.
DECADE IN REVIEW FROM TOP LEFT TO RIGHT: Surfing in sydney, turning 38 in aus, puerto rico with katie, first time shooting with the bluewolf guys at childfund, vegas with kris, halloween with tracie, tahoe with kevin, the hnb team for my boston going away party, and the bizzarri/florence crew !
THE THEME AROUND SAYING, "YES!"
So now that I think maybe I have some grit, I want to think about this decade and where these characteristics come in to play…. Everyone has heard the question at a job interview, “where do you see yourself in 5-10 years?” and everyone usually has the same blank stare for a minute and then comes up with an answer either about their personal goals for getting married, having kids, traveling or they go to the career goals of advancing at the company where they are interviewing or maybe starting their own company someday.
I think if someone asked me that question ten years ago, I would have had a starkly different answer than what has transpired. I say transpired, but we all know, life does not transpire; we are presented with choices by the second and we create our lives. In a decade, that’s a small 315,316,000 seconds. Of course, for a lot of that we are sleeping, or watching movies, or in some other way on auto pilot. Sometimes other people’s choices impact us changing our lives forever. The amount of permutations of a life we could create are infinite - and one small choice may have put me or you on a path that changes a life forever.
I am drawn to think about some of those critical decisions I made in the last ten years that led me from being a physically unhealthy, married woman living in Galena, Ohio who worked for most of my career in a “normal” job at a bank and at the time had only seen a small part of the USA and had only been to four other countries, Canada, Mexico, Italy, and Germany.
I will tell you the number one most important thing I did within the decade, actively, that changed my life – I said Yes to my boss, Jim Lockhart, in 2010, when he asked me to run the business side of the Salesforce implementation for Huntington National Bank. That took courage as it was a massive career risk on a topic I knew nothing about… A few months later, I said Yes to Inder Koul when he asked me to come over to IT to own the whole program. Of course, prior to that, a different mentor of mine, Lori Murray, altered some of my decisions in 2006 for me to still have been working there that year… and another mentor in 2008, Carolyn Jones, who told me to read “The Gift” which was how I got the job with Jim Lockhart in the first place.
I want to be specific here – I did not just read the book. I read it, I absorbed it, I took it seriously. One sentence on one page gave me an idea and I acted on it - which I will tell you ALL about in Chapter 7. That new job led me to the opportunity to speak at a global conference, Dreamforce, in 2010, which was my first trip to California with George Madjarev, my Salesforce Account Executive, who saw more in me than I saw in myself - which was the ability to thrive in the Salesforce ecosystem. That exposure woke me up to opportunities during the same time that I saw how overweight I was. So, I talked to the same mentor who suggested "The Gift" and made decision to change my relationship with food, all about educating myself (see Blog Chapter 2). This time frame is when I met dear friends, David Girouard and Chuck Boutin, who have themselves moved around the world, constantly reinventing themselves and therefore have been personal inspirations to me – cheering on my weight loss and my career trajectory.
This amazing experience seeing that there was a world outside of Ohio and Huntington led me to ask one of my dear friends and ALL TIME FAVOURITE consultants at Bluewolf, Michael Sirohi, about a job opportunity – he was so excited about it that he introduced me to one of my now dearest friends (family) in the world, Anne Whiteford, who always tells the story about not wanting to like me so she could hire someone else. We immediately bonded, I got the offer, and I said yes, leaving Huntington in July, 2011 after 14 years to join a small firm, Bluewolf, based in New York, and that began my international travels with London as my first destination. That is where, on a Friday afternoon, I said YES to my client when he asked if I was willing to coach the CEO of one of the most prestigious financial services firms in London the following Monday. #commenceweekendfreakout
In 2012, I added Ireland and India to my travels, spoke at Dreamforce again and had the honour of also speaking at Yale University – yes, yes, yes and yes. I met yet another lifelong friend and mentor, Melanie Doulames, at Nuance, who has been a lifeline in all things from “boy issues” to nutrition to yoga to sales operations. At this time, a dear friend and sorority sister, Frankie Folk, nominated me and I won the Otterbein Alumni award for Leadership and Citizenship based on the many non-profits boards I had worked with and for over the years. At Bluewolf, I won Rookie of the Year based on my teams’ performance focusing on their individual growth and aspirations – an award I will always attribute back to that team. #CM&LRocks
In 2013, I had the amazing experience with my company to travel to Whistler and Australia where I was inspired by colleagues and clients from around the world and realised I could do so much more for others if I had a global reach. This amount of travel was very tough on my personal life, as anyone could imagine. In April, Josh and I separated and were divorced by October – to this day, this was the most difficult decision of my life as he is one of the most amazing people in this world. We concluded we wanted different things long term, and there were many things I could not give him, so yes… that took courage and it broke me for a very long time until I saw him with his daughter and new wife to whom I can honestly say, she makes those hard decisions feel 100% right.
We sold our house in 2014, as when I was asked to run the Boston office, I said Yes. After a year in Boston where I got much more into the gym with my trainer Chris Chris, I was very aggressively recruited to Acumen Solutions and said YES to a new opportunity to move to San Francisco. During those years, I had so many amazing mentors, I cannot even begin to name them all - you need only check out this Leadership Team and know they became my family. I took up skiing with various groups, falling in love with the thrill of downhill speed, took up hiking, annual Mexico trips with Melanie; began my insane amounts of personal travel with friends, family, and began dating here and there after a few years of being truly alone for the first time in my life.
In 2016, I had impromptu trips like Yosemite and Barcelona; met more inspirational coaches and mentors both personally and professionally and leveraged offer after offer to reinvent myself by saying YES. That year, I won the Presidential Award at Acumen based on the amount of people (ultimately over 30 employees) I had recruited to the company – focusing always that I define my own success only measured in those who I can bring with me who will hopefully always strive for excellence. At this time in my life, I had three very devastating events as my dogs aged and each slowly passed away within a year and a half of each other. After having them in my life for nearly 14 years, I no longer really knew stability or routine and pretty much became enamoured with constant change and freedom to roam.
The story from this point on - basically my crazy whirlwind from 2017-2020 from SF to London leading to New Zealand is far more detailed in Blog Chapters 4 Part I and Part II. However, I never really had told anyone some of the key decisions I made along the way to be - in some ways - a completely different person than I was ten years ago and in other ways, the same person who wants to lay on the sofa with an amazing man and belly laugh at Bill Burr. Maybe my next challenge will be applying more grit to my personal life and getting back to a space where I can share all of these amazing YES’s with someone who wants to come along. #who'scomingwithme
MORE DECADE HIGHLIGHTS
DECADE IN REVIEW FROM TOP LEFT TO RIGHT: Dad and the three chowmigos in boston, mike, jenn, tom & evan Boston St Pats, that time i had a hickey, st. Thomas bluewolf crew, the original rookies of the year, my little brothers and dad at graduations, poppy's 80th with my four brothers and dad, poppy's 90th with adam, zack, kevin and mark, steve o and me in PTown!
DECADE IN REVIEW FROM TOP LEFT TO RIGHT: Park city ski trip with kevin mark, marc, & co. leila and my mini me, Gina, matt & dd in SAUSALITO, the dream team for the spartan, maryanne, jack, zak & adam in sf, uncle mick, vicky and cousin kevin at the ferry building, tonya with bud & poppy in carmel, ashley, kevin and mark at the bridge to bridge run.
Self Talk Highlights:
1. First of all, in the grand scheme of the things, everyone who is capable of reading this blog is successful. I consider myself no more or less successful than anyone in my world, as success is defined by each of us and what we deem important for ourselves and how we are living according to our values. I do not think money or job title equates to success, so when asked how I am successful, I picture only that people who spend time with me, knowing my number one core value is FUN - may consider me successful because I have A LOT of fun.
There are areas of my life I want to work on related to other values. I am at the pinnacle of my career in consulting, so now it's time to think of what's next to focus as much as I can on my purpose and servant leadership. Reaching a career pinnacle at 44 means it's time for a new peak to set my sights on - one that will continue to challenge my network of people who want to continue to strive for excellence as well. My self talk here is to take every opportunity to learn more, listen more, build more relationships. It's not an accident that I named A LOT of names in this post - because I have achieved nothing on my own without mentors, coaches, advisors, friends, and deep relationships that mean the world to me. So, as my ideas flow for how I want to be successful as a PwC partner setting a foundation for my next ten years, I want to share them, perfect them, ask for feedback, and make my performance at my current job the best it can be so when it comes time for the next thing, I can leave a legacy that I will be proud of, however long that may take. The good news is, I do live in a place where every weekend feels like a vacation. I can't wait to see more of this beautiful country, learning about the local culture, and ensuring I change New Zealand for the better as it changes me.
2. I mentioned above a "wake up call," which I mean from a career perspective. Some know the long story, which I am happy to share, but in a nutshell, I became aware after a performance review that as the published "top performer" with the highest level of education, and the longest tenure of the remaining 12 employees in my Division in a similar role, I was the lowest paid and by 57% less than the next employee in the pay scale. My initial reaction was fury, anger, and rage. I mean, I pretty much lost my MINNNDDD. My second reaction was, get educated on this - how in the actual fuck did this happen to me? My third reaction was absolute disappointment - but not in the company, in myself. Why would any company pay me more than I held myself in regard to being worthy of earning? Nobody says, oh you only want $5 for that, I prefer give you $10.... Do they? NO. So, my self talk here was to calm down, assess the situation, understand the reality, discuss the options openly with my employer, and realise the only way it would make sense for me to stay was if they pretty much doubled my salary. This was the shove I needed to see I was being complacent - "a fixture at the company" as my friend put it at the time. Sometimes, feeling like I "got the shaft" (which I don't mind on a Saturday night - heheheheh) is really realising I haven't been holding myself accountable to my value. If I think you should, I will tell you if you should charge me more than you are. :) But then I may want something free later. So my self talk here is - don't give away your value! You are not the free sample broken cookie on the tray at Starbuck's! Research what you and your skills are worth. Not that money/salary is everything, but you should be paid what you deserve and what your peer group is being paid when all things in the range are the same.
3. I have to share here that, while considering the last ten years of my life, despite a lot of change, loss of loved ones, and many tough times and great times, 2019 was by far the most amazing and the most difficult year of my life. From multiple international moves to changing jobs, to feeling at the top of the world and to hitting absolute rock bottom, all I can say is it was a roller coaster that actually almost killed me. I started this whole blog because of 2019's challenges and rewards, trials and triumphs, happy days and sad days. All the while, the self talk remains the same: no matter where I am, how I feel, good or bad, those feelings do not isolate me, I can always lean on my loved ones who are literally always there. I can also always cheer myself up remembering I am 100% responsible for my own life - with a lot of help, I got myself here and I can get myself to the next spot. Nothing has beat me yet, and though I will constantly be challenged, I will be resilient and find a way to make things FUN. No matter where I am in my career, fitness journey, financial stability, or location, I don't need to keep my struggles to myself and there will always be someone to lean on when I get too weak to handle everything on my own. I truly found gratitude for life and resolution to take in difficulty through learning about proper breathing, meditation, mindfulness, exhilaration with extreme sports, and maybe if I am honest, driving fast on curvy roads (carefully).
2019 YEAR IN REVIEW PHOTOS - THE GLOBAL EXPERIENCE
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