Hello!! 👋🏻👋🏻👋🏻
I hope you’ve all had an amazing week. Or at least, a better week than I had (more on this below!).
Sometimes the winds of life blow right in your damn face, and things can feel hard. That’s just the way it is! You don’t need to fight back when it’s like that; it is okay to just weather the storm, wait for the headwinds to pass, and conserve your energy for another day.
That was me this week. And that is okay!
The storm always passes, and we carry on. Hopefully, you can benefit from learning how I dealt with my challenge. Learning from the experience of others is a great way to learn!
Enjoy the read, and have an amazing week.
As always, feel free to hit me up by email at tim@timparkins.com​
“Better is always possible!”
Tim
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Embrace The Imperfect: How To Navigate Career Storms Like A Pro
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Let’s cut to the chase: I had an absolutely shitty week professionally this past week. Given that I work with people to design and build work lives they can love, I couldn’t help but feel like a complete fraud. Like I don’t have a clue what I am doing. Who the hell am I to dare to help people figure out how to have amazing work lives when mine felt like a complete dumpster fire this week?
Hello imposter syndrome, my old friend!
Having “one of those weeks” is normal. Having this type of experience is helpful, as long as it only happens occasionally. Challenging times facilitate growth, which makes them useful even if they suck to go through.
I reminded myself it’s normal to feel that way sometimes, and I moved on. It was just a sign that I’m human. Us imperfect humans meet life’s challenges by doing the best we can with what we have at the moment. That is the human experience. So I put my tarnished halo back in the closet, acknowledging and fully accepting that I am not perfect – I am human.
A core value that was challenged
One of my core values is personal responsibility. I believe we are fully responsible for how we react, the emotions we feel, and the way we view our experiences in the world.
“As within, so without.”
This is one reason I was so flustered by my experience; I believe deeply in personal responsibility, but it felt to me like things were out of my control. There was a disconnect between one of my core values and how I was experiencing life. Living out of alignment with one’s core values is a recipe for disaster. Most people aren’t even aware of what their core values are, which leave them vulnerable. That is why one of the first things I do in working with clients is to help them discover what their core values are. Living a life that is out of alignment with your core values is a dangerous way to live. I don’t think you can do it over the long term.
You can’t be hard on yourself if you are out of alignment with one of your core values, and instead use it as an opportunity for reflection and gaining insight. Reflecting on the situation can help you understand what’s happening and lead to solutions to get you back into alignment. Maybe you need to change the way you’re living. Or maybe one of your core values isn’t what you thought, but was something that was planted there by someone else. Either way, you can change things up and get yourself back into alignment.
Giving yourself permission to be imperfect.
Most of us operate under the assumption that we need to be perpetually on top of our game. That is an incredibly poor strategy! That’s like expecting a hockey goalie to stop every puck that comes flying at them; even the greats let a few into the net! It’s important to give ourselves permission to have off days, or even off weeks, and still respect ourselves.
The key is not to wallow in self-pity when this happens. Instead, use it as an opportunity to scrutinize what went wrong, and what you might do to course-correct. Did you over-commit? Were you distracted? Did Mercury go into retrograde and muck up all your emails? Whatever it was, learn from it and move forward.
Conclusion
So there you have it; a confession that I didn’t “eat my own dog food” this week. I failed to follow my advice for experiencing an incredible work life. But I can embrace my short-coming as part of the complex, ever-changing tapestry that is a fulfilling career. Remember, it’s not the missteps that define us, but how we recover and grow from them.
Developing an amazing career that you can love will be a bumpy road, and that is perfectly okay.
Had some career success, but feel that work is devouring your soul? Feeling like your job is keeping you handcuffed and you need to “put in your time”, like it is some sort of prison sentence?
I’ve been there. It sucks.
You need to introduce changes NOW if you feel that way; staying in that space for long has scary outcomes that you would rather avoid.
I won’t tell you to quit job and “follow your passion”. Promise.
I will work with you to help you craft a job that is perfect – for you. You can (and should!) design your work so it perfectly fits with the lifestyle you crave.
Let’s get starting building a job you don’t just like, but LOVE! 🚀
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Quotation that I have been pondering
Several years ago, I read this outstanding book on writing by Anne Lamott, called “Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life.”
The subtitle should’ve made it clear, but the book was more about life than about writing. There was a particular line in the book that I’d highlighted that applies to the type of week I just had;
“Your day’s work might turn out to have been a mess. So what?”
She is bang-on. We paint this unrealistic expectation of our work in our heads and then feel disappointed when our day goes to hell. Instead, we should expect that there will be days like that, and acknowledge that it is okay to have those days. There will be days when just getting through them is an achievement.
Living to fight another day is progress.
Journal Prompt
This week’s journal prompt is all about emotional intelligence and self-awareness. It can help you better understand what you’ve been feeling and why you’ve been feeling that way.
By understanding what makes you experience certain emotions, you can set yourself up to feel the way you desire. Of course, you will still feel a variety of emotions. But you can help shape which of them you feel more of by reflecting on this question:
“What emotion have I felt most frequently this week, and what’s one situation that triggered it?”
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