Today’s guest post is from my dear friend and butterfly, Vanessa. I’ve known Vanessa since she was a college student, and my family has loved her since she lived with us for one awesome year post-college. Vanessa is all in to whatever she does, and her ambition and zest for life never cease to amaze and exhaust me. Her path may not always be straight, but it’s always headed in the right direction.
I am one of those who Michele has asked to write about my take on “self-leadership,” or more accurately, how I have recently experienced self-leadership in my own life. So, what do you think the first thing I did was? Poured over a bunch of her latest posts, read and re-read the quotes on self-leadership she sent me, thought about times in my life that my friends have named this quality in me, consult other authors (those who are stacked on my bedside table, mostly), and spent plenty of time not really leaving the thinking to myself. Does that resonate with any of you?
It’s ironic, yet, when faced with the need to define anything for yourself, make a decision, or take action, how often do you really self-lead?
I’ll choose one of the most classic moments of a twenty-something’s life to illustrate my pock-marked road to self-leadership; a vista that I imagine many of us are familiar with.
A few years ago I got a great job. It was great for me because it offered play and laughter and silliness, but also a placement in a growing agency within a growing industry. I had the opportunity to be trained by the best in the field, who are also just wonderful people, and to make steady growth. I was promoted at my annual and again at my second annual review. It was truly a blessing and seemed even more so as many of my peers fought stagnation in their current jobs or fought to find a job in the first place.
So many of you will not understand the quarter-life-crisis that followed. I totally get that. I am a bit sickened by it myself (but let’s discuss upper-middle-class angst another time, shall we?).
At some point as I entered into my third year in my job, now as a Board Certified Assistant Behavior Analyst (yep- I got some fancy letters after my name from that baby), I had the realization that I had reached the ceiling. Given my level of education and the certification I could attain at that level, I could not promote further in my company or outside of it either, at least in the same industry. For someone who thrives on challenge and change and forward momentum, this was anxiety-provoking.
I made a hasty decision one day to take the GRE and went into it 9 days later having glossed over some remedial math, but not nearly as prepared as I should have been. That was my form of self-leadership at the time- don’t think, just act. I then spent a rainy afternoon researching graduate programs and decided that a Master of Science in Clinical Psychology would be my best bet, since I wouldn’t likely get into a Ph.D. program out of the gates. So in the following months I applied and studied my tookus off for the GRE Psychology Subject test, all the while thinking that I was just creating options for myself and I would decide later, if I even got in.
I got in. I got the envelope, opened it, read it, and then made a mad dash for my beach cruiser and went to the beach. All of the effort I had already put in did not help me come to terms with what I was doing. All of a sudden, the thought of grad school felt burdensome, like a heavy institutionalized weight that my former adventurous, hopeful entrepreneurial spirit could not handle. I’m supposed to gallivant around the world, right? I’m 25, single, financially blessed…why on earth would I commit myself to a career right now? The world is still my oyster!
Believe it or not, I did the same thing that I did with Michele’s simple (or not so simple) question about writing a blog post. I talked to dear friends, to colleagues, to advisors. I wrote emails to friends living in exotic places and to those heading off on adventures soon enough to see if I had other viable options. It turns out I did. I still do. I played out all of the options in my mind, feeling more and more unsettled as I thought about it. In fact, with each new perspective I solicited I felt more and more conflicted.
Then something started to shift. Slowly, as I received many pieces of advice from my kindred adventurous spirits, many who begged me to get out of Dodge while I could (“there will always be school, jobs,” etc. reasoning) I began to really know what the voice of my own thoughts sounded like. I took each piece of advice into account, considered each tempting offer, prayed, really sought to grasp for the first time what the commitment of grad school would mean for me, and I made a decision.
It was not easy to separate the words of experience and wisdom from those who know me well. It was certainly not easy putting myself more fully on a career-path to the exclusion of other things. It is still not easy.
In fact, I believe that ultimately, if you make choices based on others’ opinions or the world of possibilities out there, it will only get harder.
I decided to stay, to commit, to pursue my personal best in this line of work- in the end, simply because it felt like the right thing to do. I hope it goes without saying that the other decision wouldn’t have been a wrong one. For me, however, self-leadership was making the scarier choice to root down still further and invest. I know it is self-leadership because though it feels right in many ways, it still feels like a growth pain. And those are the ones I want.
Vanessa Felts has found her niche amongst the quirky and idiosyncratic, teaching unique individuals with Autism how to play and communicate, and shaping socially adaptive behaviors to help them live the fullest lives possible. Vanessa loves beachcruising and happy hour, yoga and kombucha, paddling and worshipping the Creator, a page-turner and a glass of wine. Follow her on twitter for the occasional brief celebrations and amusing diversions of life @vfelts.
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