Category Archives: Knowing yourself

Trying isn’t good enough

by Rebecca Thorman   31 comments

“What did you do today?”

I cried like a druggie in rehab pleading with God and my dead father to help me. Also, I slept. Tried to sleep. To ignore. To escape. Between sleeping and crying, I tried to be normal.

“Nothing much, I ran some errands,” I replied on a Saturday night out at the bar, trying to be normal. Going out with friends for the first time in a long time. Friends that were good enough to forget that I ignored them for the past eight months. Because that’s what happens when I’m in a relationship.

Everyone likes me better when I’m single. If you lined up the town and asked them to raise their hands when they saw a cool person, and then presented Me, In a Relationship and Me, Single, the hands would most assuredly go up the second round, and I would raise my hand in line with the rest. I’m not good in a relationship. Perhaps because I don’t think I am, and perhaps because it never really mattered before now. Because when you date assholes, you can be a bitch right back. So dating a good guy is a complete shock in terms of how to act and how to behave and how to live.

So of course you push this cool person down the same worn-in path as before, and as you go, you look around and know that the two of you don’t belong there.

And I am angry that the Universe could present me with such a being when I’m not primed. I’m not prepared.

It’s not that I don’t feel worthy, exactly. But that I never saw myself with someone so all-American, so normal, so right. Because my life was messed up the moment my father died, and surely God doesn’t think I’m ready for a life that isn’t messed up. Surely, I should keep punishing myself. I am not ready for such greatness. Surely, I am not ready to lead a normal life yet, with barbeques and endless cuddling and television. Life is jaded. Always and forever. This will never heal.

Being single, it doesn’t matter. But being in a relationship – the good kind, at least – brings all this other responsibility. And I don’t really care for all that. To care about someone so deeply and they just might up and leave, or want you, or die, or get sick, or let you down, or need you, or care about you back. I get anxious. So anxious I can’t breathe.

Okay, so I have issues. The kind that should be capitalized and underlined, and you should take note of it.

But I’m working on that, and back to Saturday night, I declared that it was the beginning of “New Rebecca!” exclamation point, let’s take another shot, done and done. I was fabulous. I smiled and was totally level-headed and ingratiated myself back to the good side of the Universe through two hipster bars, three slices of bacon, spinach and yellow-tomato pizza, and a pair of four-inch heels. Cue the soundtrack as the shot pans up and fades out. Walk out of the theater with a happy ending. It was fun and I laughed.

Sunday morning, I got up and cleaned the wine bottles from the counter, threw away someone else’s cigarettes, and vacuumed the dirt from the corner. And somewhere in between, I found a little bit of normal.

Common Sense.

Gen Y needs boundaries for action

by Rebecca Thorman   33 comments

I like motivational talks. Like this one from Gary Vaynerchuk. I get all excited and pumped and ready to work.

Then I get stuck. Interminably stuck. Because I’m really excited and pumped to work, but for what? I’m a lucky person, but I wonder is this it? Really? Because I thought there might be more.

Marcus Buckingham of the Wall Street Journal gets it. “This is a deeply anxious and insecure generation,” he argues. “On the surface they look self-confident, [but] deep down they know that they don’t actually know what it takes to win.”

Apparently it’s going to take a decade of wandering for us to figure it out. New York Times columnist David Brooks describes this new Generation Y life stage as the Odyssey Years – a decade of exploration and experimentation (via Tammy Erickson).

“During this decade, 20-somethings go to school and take breaks from school,” Brooks reports. “They live with friends and they live at home. They fall in and out of love. They try one career and then try another.”

And all this unbridled choice has us delaying marriage, children, and permanent employment – accomplishments that have traditionally defined adulthood. Not for Gen Y though. Brooks reports that fewer than 40 percent of 30-year olds have achieved these things versus 70 percent forty years ago.

The consequences of our aimless wandering delay adulthood, but also our chance at genuine happiness. Generation Y’s passion is defined by our idealism, not our pragmatism. So while it may seem like we’re enjoying our freedom, research shows that we’d be a lot better off with more structure, less choice, and working through problems instead of moving on to our next big adventure.

We need more accountability. We need restrictions. Because passion needs direction. It needs filters, and red tape, and four walls. Passion needs to be challenged to be passion at all.

This is the fascinating juxtaposition that is Gen Y. We crave structure, efficiency and effectiveness, and yet, we “have a huge willingness to believe in a grand vision of things — both [in ourselves] and the world,” Buckingham reports.

But grand vision makes it dangerously easy to be underwhelmed at the banality of everyday life. Too much choice keeps us reaching and searching and never doing anything at all.

“When our ambition is bounded it leads us to work joyfully,” happiness expert Daniel Gilbert reports. So Generation Y can keep wandering. Or we can open a door and see what happens when dreams hit reality.

Life limits.

3 ways to turn weaknesses into strengths

by Rebecca Thorman   24 comments

“Um… I can’t think of the word.”

I am not the most articulate person in person. It’s something that I’ve had to work on. A lot.

Mostly, it has a lot to do with my personality type. What’s going through my head sounds quite coherent to me, but I tend to say things first and think second. That makes me stumble in the middle of sentences and prefer to put words to paper instead of lips.

I didn’t really know this was a problem until my last job. A position that was all about public speaking. Speaking. Out loud. All the time. But I did well and survived. Here’s how you too can turn your weaknesses into strengths:

1. Do it small and awkward first.
I practiced my first big speech in front of Ryan. Doing speeches is actually much more difficult in front of people you know. Ryan and I weren’t dating at the time and never really hung out, but I thought he was cute and I wore a cute dress in preparation.

And it was so ridiculously embarrassing.

I don’t know what possessed me to think I could speak publicly in front of the guy that I had liked since the moment we had met, but it was awful. I was sweating. I was hot. And then cold. And I couldn’t even look at him. I looked behind him. At the corner.

Lucky for me, it worked. It totally worked and I aced the speech a few days later.

Make yourself uncomfortable before you have to perform for real. Most bloggers I know had a blog before their current blog. Companies test imperfect products with small groups before a launch. Runners do three miles before ten. You’re not the exception. No magic fairy dust for you. Only awkward, pride-swallowing affairs that give you mad confidence and oh-so-valuable experience.

2. Appreciate that weaknesses are your best asset.
The second time Ryan and I ever met and hung out, we got into a huge argument outside of the bar. And then he walked me home and asked why I was so cute when I was so angry. (And no, I didn’t let him come up.)

It’s totally annoying to fight with someone you like, but when you realize that you fight because you care things get better. You see, weaknesses are inextricably linked to strengths. They are the manifestation of fear from the things you want the most. And we avoid things that are scary to us. Like success. And love. And hard work.

But really, it’s not scary to take the first step towards being promoted to bank manager, or writing a book, or learning to swim as an adult, because then you just take another step, and then another.

3. Stop buying into natural talent.
Ryan is constantly telling me, “Relationships take work.”

I huff and I puff and then I agree. Because really, what do I know. I didn’t grow up with an example of a good relationship. Ryan did. My father died when I was in second grade. His parents are still together. My examples were happy endings. His were real people, not characters in a movie.

Nobody is excelling without practice. In his book Outliers, Malcolm Gladwell suggests it actually takes 10,000 hours of practice to become an expert in any area.

“The people at the very top don’t just work much harder than everyone else,” he reports. “They work much, much harder.”

And according to the 10,000 hour rule, I still have two or three years of serious relationship practice left before I get my happy ending. But even then, happy endings take constant vigilance because happiness is such an attention hog. Nobody ever tells you that, right? Like, usually when you reach your goals/success/nirvana the work is supposed to be over.

But since Tiger Woods isn’t taking a day off, neither can you (except maybe when it’s 83 degrees outside after a Winter in Wisconsin). The real meditation is in the constancy of habit.

Strong Side.

Real-life disclosures on the myth of work/life balance

by Rebecca Thorman   64 comments

I just got off the phone with Zeus, and I’m angry. This isn’t a surprise because I’m quick to anger, quick to forgiveness and quick to just about every emotion, really. The emotional roller coaster of being a woman and all.

Zeus and I have been engaged in phone warfare. Which also isn’t all that surprising considering that he works for a start-up and now I work for a start-up and well, life is busy.

You will understand this even more when I tell you who Zeus is – that is, Zeus is Ryan Healy, co-founder of both Brazen Careerist and Employee Evolution.

Many of you already know this about Zeus being Ryan, but I felt it was time to announce it beyond my About page because of some recent emails I received from my readers.

I feel I have every right to keep my private life private, but I also feel a strong relationship with my blogging community. My blog and the people who support it are the primary reasons I’m successful today, and so it’s important to me to be as transparent as possible.

I didn’t make my relationship with Ryan explicit before because we had just started dating (even now we’re early in the relationship game), and it’s hard enough to begin a relationship, let alone have the extra pressure of so many people watching you. I mean, Ryan and I are both “In a Relationship” on Facebook, but not even explicitly with each other because I’m so superstitious.

(Yeah, you try dating me.)

This is made all the more difficult because like I mentioned, we’re both busy, and I want the career, the relationship, the blog, the time to exercise and hang out with my friends and call my family.

“People that exercise every day and work twelve hours a day have no life,” Ryan reminds me. So, okay. But maybe I could be the exception?

“No, you can’t have it all. Something has to give,” he goes on. Ryan is practical to my impractical. Rational to my emotional. The pea to my pod. He’s a Taurus and I’m a Virgo. He’s an INTJ and I’m an ENFP. By all personality tests and worldly measures we’re a good match.

But sometimes it’s hard to like someone so much and have so much else going on in your life. It’s hard to think that we might not always live in the same city or that I might not be able to change the way I want to.

It’s easy for me to ignore all these elephants cramping my view though, because in my heart, I see this working. And I know that because this is one of the hardest times in our lives, it’s also one of the best. If you’re playing it right, the best time in your life is filled with uncertainty and risk. There’s nothing balanced about that. It’s exciting and exhilarating, and to take full advantage, you need to:

1) Let go.
2) Give in.
3) Smile.
4) Repeat.

I work for a company that will disrupt the traditional retail market and my boyfriend is someone that has disrupted everything I know about relationships. Nothing is stable now. That’s the thing about work/life balance. It’s more of a see-saw, kind of up and down, and is only ever balanced for the briefest moments in time.

Possibility perch.

Yes, this post was Ryan-approved before I hit publish. What are your thoughts on work/life balance? How do you achieve it? Do you want to have it all? Is it possible or are you content with just one or the other?

Careers are like relationships, so ask your mom for advice

by Rebecca Thorman   43 comments

“I don’t know if I want to be with Zeus,” I say.

“If you don’t want to, then don’t,” my mother replies.

But it’s more complicated than that, and I tell her why. I tell her that I really do what to be with him – a lot - but I don’t know how. I tell her that I’ve been sabotaging the relationship, and I don’t know how to stop. I confess everything, and feel the weight dissipate.

“You do look for problems,” she says. “You push things too far. You test people too much. That’s not good. So now you need to figure out if you’re going to mature and grow up or not.”

I’m silent because normally my mother tells me how great I am, how I can do no wrong, and how all men suck. It is the Gen Y parenting creed. But tonight, I am not so lucky.

“Why do you think you’re picking fights?” my mother presses. “You must be doing it for a reason – a lack of confidence in yourself, or in him?”

I concede that I don’t feel like my life is together enough to be in a relationship. And that I’m worried Zeus will sell his company, get rich and dump me. Or we’ll get married, live happily and divorce at the age of 40. Or that he won’t remember to suggest we eat something when I’m moody. Because I get cranky when I’m hungry.

These are the things I worry about. I am a woman. And this is what we do.

Women need constant reassurance, and the only way we know how to get it is to fight, and push buttons, and push past the buttons all the way to the brink of breaking up, so we can see – will he be there then?

My mother argues men can deal with this at first, but it adds up and is like a brick falling from the sky each time. It builds and it is cumulative and eventually they have a wall, and they think I don’t need this. I don’t need to be unhappy, nothing I do ever works or helps, and I can’t make her happy. This isn’t the way I want to live, men think.
 
And there’s a limit to what a man can take, my mother says.

“And you – ” she continues, “you need to live for today and for you. You can’t know the future. And nothing about your past relationships is pertinent for today. You have to resist the urge to fight. Resist the urge to be angry in an instant over nothing, resist pushing to the breaking point constantly.”

Careers are like this. Maybe you have an idea, or you really want something, or all of your dreams are suddenly within reach. But you make up excuses of why you can’t get there. You prove every hypothesis on why it won’t work. You extrapolate the worst. You don’t call people when you should. You think less of yourself than you used to. You ask others to comfort your decisions. You trip over your own accomplishments just to see – are you on the right path?

Lucky for you, careers are often just as forgiving and patient as men in the beginning, but you have to grow up for continued success. You have to mature before the wall seems insurmountable.

“It is work,” my mother concludes. “It’s a lot of work. But if it’s truly in your heart, you have to do that. You have to work to make it happen.”

Motherly advice.

Starting over in the same city

by Rebecca Thorman   24 comments

Hercules moved away. I don’t feel left behind by Hercules, but by my own life which seems to have somehow escaped me. I am beginning to feel engulfed by this when my friend Maria Antonia comes over.

“Transition periods… they suck,” she reminds me. “I can’t think of a transition period that didn’t suck.”

“Uh huh,” I smile. Maria Antonia is incredibly practical. This sucks, but it will pass. We try on dresses, talk business and girly things, and go out for the night. I come home early. Socializing seems silly when all I can do is think of myself.

Another night I visit with Belle and her fiancé. It takes a lot of effort on my part not to be the third wheel; they are just sickeningly cute. I give myself a gold star for not being envious. I feel more grown up this past week, and I wonder if you learn lessons faster as you grow older.

Hercules left on a Sunday morning and I miss him on a Thursday. I go to the iTunes Store and download sixteen songs in a row, add them to a new playlist and hit repeat. They are mostly happy songs and soon I feel like the world is once again at my feet. Then I remember the other night, Zeus, and the five glasses of wine. We’re sitting on my couch.

“Am I your rebound?” Zeus asks.

“Of course!” I declare. I feel bad as soon as the words escape. I liked Zeus the moment I saw him and tell him so.

“Love at first sight?” he chuckles. I don’t think it’s funny since love is both the closest and farthest thing on my mind.

“Something like that,” I reply.

And I don’t want him to be my rebound, but I don’t see any other choice. I feel incapable at relationships. Zeus seems younger than most guys I date, and is both sweet and guarded. He makes me want to write, and a few days earlier, he bet that I would make a good girlfriend. This makes me happy and so now that we are alone, I kiss him. It’s not what I expect.

“Zeus, you know when you see an outfit that you really like and you have to try it on to see if it fits?”

“Yeah…”

“I’m not sure we fit,” I say. I’m not trying to be rude on purpose, but the word vomit keeps coming! We keep talking and he agrees and disagrees with everything I say, taking a middle-of-the-road approach. This is good I think and I like him more as the wine wears off.

A lesson I’ve learned though is that when men are in my life, it engulfs me. And when men aren’t in my life, I rise up like a balloon that was being held to the ground and is finally being let go.

I like both states of being despite their unequal weight on my shoulders whispering in my ear. I feel the need to choose relationships or career because it’s easier to go all-in on one side of the coin instead of trying to reach a balance. Defining your own success is indeed as rare as successfully hanging curtains by yourself. I’ve been thinking about this, and the strange feeling of glee I have to own a new beginning where everything is different, yet exactly the same.

Later in the week Zeus texts me, “So what do you think, did the clothes fit?” And this makes me a bit giddy, because that line seems to be straight out of a movie, and I think maybe the clothes do fit. And I ready myself for another stab at flourishing in life.

How to step up and have anything but a normal career

by Rebecca Thorman   37 comments

You know, I get that change is hard. But it’s also inevitable. The world in which today’s young “will make choices and compose lives is one of disruption rather than certainty,” argues this report.

Indeed, when I started my current job, there was much disruption. In the beginning, it was the challenge of transitioning from being an employee to running an organization. Of being lonely. Of complete work/life distortion.

And when I say challenge, I am being polite, because what I really mean is not all unlike the walk of shame after a particularly rowdy and untoward night of college drinking. That is, what exactly did I get myself in to?

Lately, it’s been an entirely different type of challenge – that of being in limbo because the responsibility and possibility of it all paralyzes me more than I’m willing to admit.

Because, really, given the opportunity to change the world, would you take it? We all think we would, but it is so very hard to look in the face of what you truly want and take it. It is so very hard to fight the war of what really matters.

So Generation Y isn’t always stepping up. And those that do, often think about stepping right back down. Because unless you’re in the fight to make change, it’s difficult to know how ridiculously hard it is. I thought that this might have just been me, that maybe I’m just not cut out for all this leadership change stuff. But I recently met with a thirty-one year old vice-president. She told me no, we’re all neurotic. Really. Neurotic was her word.

“This next year will probably be one of your hardest,” she said. “But you know and I know, once you’ve tasted this, you can’t turn back.”

I think about her words on the days that I don’t want to strategize, or build encampments, or be so obsessed with seeing a CEO or colleague or client on the street that I spend fifteen minutes trying to look vaguely presentable before going to Walgreens just to buy some toilet paper. Really. Some days, I just want to buy toilet paper in peace. Some days, I just want to be normal.

“Being normal,” Hercules replied, “gets you a middle-class life in the suburbs. It’s fifth place, and you know you want to be in first.” All successful people then are understandably eccentric. They take risks that normal people wouldn’t.

There’s this thing about risks though. It’s easy to sign up, but it’s the follow-through that’s hard, the follow-through that decides your character.

Like when I went skydiving two weeks ago (here and here). I wasn’t nervous. Honestly. They tell you to get nervous because if you’re not, you’ll freak out when the door opens at twelve thousand feet. So I was trying to be nervous, but I just wasn’t.

But in skydiving, eventually the plane does fly up to twelve thousand feet, and the door does open. When that happened, my tandem instructor put my hand out into the wind. “That’s not so bad, is it?” he asked. No, I nodded; it wasn’t so bad. I was a rockstar, invincible to anything and everything. I was a rockstar, that is, until we moved to the edge of the plane and I had to put one foot out into the air. It was then that I thought oh, holy crap, I can’t do this. What have I gotten myself into?

That’s the moment, see. Where you have to muster strength from somewhere you didn’t know you had. The moment where you face all your fears. It’s only a split-second in skydiving. Literally. A split-second where you decide if you’re going to smile or cry. Move forward or turn back. Jump or freak out.

When you’re pushing adulthood, however, it can last months. It’s easy to say you’re going to do something. It’s easy to be eager with words. Actions are much harder. That pesky day in and day out stuff.

Like putting down the potato chips and going to the gym. Or not taking things personally when it would be so easy to join the fray. Or putting down your guard, opening yourself up, and then – and this may be even more difficult – letting someone else in.

“It’s the hardest thing in the world, to do what we want,” this character says. “And it takes the greatest kind of courage. I mean, what we really want. Because it’s such a big responsibility – really to want something.”

Oh, and in case you were wondering… I jumped. With a smile on my face.

Risk normalcy.

Don’t make career plans – here’s why

by Rebecca Thorman   56 comments

I thought something would happen the last week of March, but what was supposed to happen didn’t.

See, I was supposed to figure out who the man of my dreams was this past week. Stop laughing. This is serious business. Last year, I felt overwhelmingly that this would happen in March or April, and as time went on, I began to believe that it would happen in the last week of March.

I told a couple people about this craziness – my mother, Belle, Hercules. They all humored me while explaining in a good-natured way that I shouldn’t count on it.

You can’t plan for things like this, they said. You can’t plan for love.

Fine, I told them. But I went ahead and had drinks with every eligible bachelor I knew. Just in case. Then I waited for fireworks.

Nothing.

Okay, so you can’t plan love. And you can’t plan for your career any better.

When you stick to a plan, you miss out on opportunities. Besides, you’re only in control of yourself. You may have goals, but unless you’re ruthless with yourself and who you are – your abilities, your strengths, your weaknesses – you’re not going to get anywhere.

For instance, I had drinks with Johannes last week. He’s been planning one particular career path for a number of years now and found out recently that he didn’t get the job he really wanted. He got another great job, but it wasn’t the one he had put on the map he carried around and relied upon. Understandably, he was pretty despondent.

This was probably you when you realized that you would never use your degree. Or when you found out you couldn’t have children. Or when you started your dream job, the one that paid you large sums of money, and you looked outside your corner office with a view and realized you’d rather be a musician.

That’s the thing about life. It doesn’t really care about your plans. So you can chart all the courses you want, but it’s much better to just be prepared and flexible for the opportunities that come your way.

Like Sunday, when I shot a gun. Um, yeah.

If you know me at all, you know how ridiculous this is. And my mother is probably having a heart attack right now. But mom, it’s okay. I was very safe.

I’ve never believed that people should own guns. In England, they don’t allow people to own guns, and there’s virtually no gun-related crime. Seems easy enough to me. So I’ve always thought that owning a gun was downright stupid. Or I did. Until my friend drove us to a shooting ground, taught me the rules of gun safety, and I pulled the trigger. I actually even hit the target several times.

Do you know how exhilarating it is to try new things? To take risks and do something you never thought you would?

That’s why it’s so necessary not to hold onto your plans, opinions, and beliefs with such strictness that you can’t change and adapt, and with such fear that you don’t live your life.

You know, I was never going to be the person I am today. I was going to be the next William McDonough. I was going to be the next Samuel Mockbee. And well, I’ve always wanted to be Oprah. And maybe someday I will be. But I’m pretty glad life got in the way of my plans.

In summary, to rock your life and your career:

1) Focus on the now.
2) Like plans, love change.
3) Take risks.
4) Repeat.

In the meantime, I’m accepting that maybe I’m just not ready for a relationship. Or maybe the person that I like isn’t ready. Or maybe we’re not meant to be together. Whatever. The point is, I’m done worrying about it. And I’m ready for today.

Love it like you mean it.

How I got my dream job (and survived)

by Rebecca Thorman   17 comments

This post about going from bottom to top was inspired by this comment. Thanks, Milena!

I walked in and almost everyone was sitting down, and the speakers were close, shoulder to shoulder. It was so hot and sticky outside, I went to the bathroom to freshen before sitting down near the door, lest the presentation be boring and I should want to leave in the middle.

Big Brother was the moderator of the panel, and I had seen him in the press, but never in person. After the event, we somehow managed to walk out at the same time. He said hello to me, in that special way he has, gleaming with charisma.

Much later we sat at a coffee shop, and I saw him repeat this behavior with other people who stared at him, as people often do. And I must have been staring too, because I remember the way that I felt was that my future was intrinsically and inexplicably linked to this man.

I couldn’t have known then that we would eventually sit in a car together as he expertly handled a disastrous situation. Or that we would have flurries of text conversations at nine o’clock at night. Or that he would be the one of the few people who could simultaneously inject fear and ambition into my dreams, that he would be one of the few to infuriate and inspire me all at once.

At the time, I was confused and unhappy. What I thought was supposed to be my dream job wasn’t working out and I felt claustrophobic in an invisible box, like a mime putting on a bad show.

I had a ridiculous time getting up in the morning, often rising out of bed just fifteen minutes before I was supposed to be sitting in my office chair. A three minute walk from where I lived. I didn’t really tell anyone at the time, not my boyfriend, or even my mother.

And little did I know things were only going to get worse, much worse, before they got better.

Eventually, it was mutually agreed upon that it would be best if I left my job, which sounds better than being fired, and it was just two or three days before Thanksgiving.

I felt a huge sense of relief, and full from a big plate of humble pie, I applied for and started my next job a short two weeks later. And then, a short two months after that, my body decided to send me to the emergency room. The day that I got out of the hospital, my boyfriend broke up with me.

It’s a strange feeling, hitting bottoms you never knew existed. But what’s even stranger is the wherewithal you find in yourself to keep going. That night, I cried on the shoulders of two of my friends, but in part of my head – the part that was growing an antidote to my flair for drama – I also thought that it was no big deal.

I needed to get healthy. I needed to get a paycheck to eat. I needed to figure things out.

So, I did that. With no other choice, it was remarkably easy.

I won’t describe much more about my second job because, in short, I loved it, and it’s difficult to write about such happiness without sounding absurdly corny. Suffice to say, the job was like a retreat for my career, and the organization I worked for was tremendously good to me.

So it was a surprise to everyone, most of all myself, when I started to feel restless later that year, and into the next. Seemingly losing it all made me remember I wanted much more.

That’s when I started this blog. Actually, I started a different one where I posted bad prose that I had written, and told around three people to go read it. Then I started this blog. And I told everyone in my address book to read it.

See, here’s the thing. When you put yourself out there for all to see, when you make yourself vulnerable, and you’re taking a big risk, and you’re doing all this because you can’t think of doing anything else, people will rally behind you. They will support you. Because people like to see others succeed. The universe will conspire in your favor.

The rush of this risk was so big, and the potential payoff so great, that I started to take more risks. I acted in a play where I learned the lines just eight hours earlier. I went skiing for the first time, fell on my butt, and got back up again. I learned sushi was the best food ever.

Oh, and I applied for my dream job and got it.

I don’t want to make it seem that I went through this big transformation over a short period and I know everything now. I didn’t and I don’t.

Let me be clear. It was really the years before this one, and those before that, which set me up to succeed. But eventually, you reach a tipping point and things begin to flow in your favor.

The pace since that’s happened has been like a water slide at a water park. The ride down is fast, scary, and exhilarating, and once you’ve reached the bottom, you can’t wait to make the long, hot and sticky crowded climb back to the top and do it all over again.

Because now I have an entirely new set of challenges and struggles that I face. I work hard, but also strategically and intelligently. And Big Brother, who seemed untouchable to me a couple years ago, is now one of my many mentors.

Dreams = Reality

The most important thing for a decision in politics

by Rebecca Thorman   26 comments

Today, I wore a sweatshirt at the same table as someone wearing a suit. Today, I had lunch with someone who I like. He’s intelligent, successful, good-looking. Today, I had lunch with someone who listens to my ideas, and doesn’t agree with me all that much. I respect that.

So, it shouldn’t have surprised me that today, I had lunch with someone who isn’t voting for Barack Obama.

And yet, never has my stomach risen to my heart so violently after eating just a regular ole’ hummus sandwich.

My whole body wanted to reach out and envelop him in all that is Obama.

If this sounds a bit hysterical, it should be.

Unity is not easy. Hope is not rational.

And as much as we’d like it to be, neither is politics.

It would be easy for me to argue for an Obama candidacy on the basis of the issues. I’ve researched those. And if I were voting on issues alone, settling for any one candidate would prove to be easy, because any one candidate is remarkably similar to the next.

But I’m not voting on issues alone.

I’m voting on something entirely more powerful.

That is, the first feeling you get – your gut instinct – which, as it turns out, is remarkably accurate.

We are highly instinctive creatures. We know how to read people and situations for survival, for love, and for power.

A recent study looking at the faces of successful CEOs proves it. The “experiment lends support to a growing argument among psychologists who study decision-making that when people come to quick conclusions without much information, their decisions are often good ones.”

Our human instinct is among our greatest strengths.

It’s why a woman can tell within the first five to ten minutes of meeting a man whether or not she will sleep with him.

It’s why Ryan Healy spent months going over idea after idea for his new company, only to return to his original thought.

It’s why individuals who hone the gift of fear – the most primal of all instincts – are able to save their own lives.

You cannot hide from instinct.

Across the ocean, there are those who use their instinct just like we do, and will look at Barack Obama and notice “first and foremost: his face. Think of it as the most effective potential re-branding of the United States since Reagan. Such a re-branding is not trivial—it’s central to an effective war strategy,” argues Andrew Sullivan.

In fact, everything you need to know about Barack Obama is available in his face – his authenticity, first and foremost, and then the change he wishes to create, as well as his imperfections as a leader, husband and father, and his great hope for this country, his wife, and his daughters.

It is for this reason that Generation Y and Generation X have embraced Obama like none other. We know that “authenticity is not the product of manipulation. It accurately reflects aspects of the leader’s inner self, so it can’t be an act,” just as Harvard Business Online reports.

And yet, we have to be weary. Instinct is easily muddied. It can be dragged through lies and panic and deception, much like the sludge seen on the streets of Madison, WI after blizzard, upon winter storm warning, upon wind advisory.

You can call your instinct an evolutionary reaction, or maybe your soul, Nature, the Universe, your heart, or perhaps even God helping you throughout life, but don’t ignore it. Protect it. Learn to trust it.

Know yourself better than anything or anyone to change the world.

My instinct is that Barack Obama is the leader to unite this great country. You don’t have to agree with my gut, but I urge you to listen to your own.

Yes We Can.

My non-advice for the New Year

by Rebecca Thorman   22 comments

I’ve been writing a lot of crap lately. No, really, I have. You don’t know because I have been gracious enough not to post it, but it’s been crap. Complete and utter sh*t.

I think it’s because I feel obligated to write an inspiring New Years post, but regurgitating what the rest of the world is saying makes me nauseous. And also, I haven’t been too inspired lately, and this blog is supposed to be happy, angry, inspirational, controversial, exciting – anything but depressing – but depressing is the only way to describe my writing as of late.

I was going to show you my calendar of the nineteen meetings I have this week, which is typical. Perhaps too typical as I’ve discovered it’s fairly easy to become fairly crazy fairly quickly.

And speaking of that, has anyone else noticed that it only took a short two years out of college for you to completely lose the ability to go to sleep at 5:00 am one night and wake up absolutely fine, refreshed and ready to face the day the next morning? Because I tried it recently and I can’t do it any longer. I’ve lost this valuable skill at the ripe old age of twenty-four.

But anyway, I was going to explain the masterpiece of scheduling that my calendar is, and describe my system of scheduling meetings according to existing meetings, all packaged nicely and neatly in a pretty list, but it was really boring. Really.

Moreover, it seemed a little misleading to sell you my tricks of the scheduling trade, when I’m so utterly exhausted. And if nothing else, I’m honest.

Honesty has gotten me in trouble lately though. I’m starting to say “no” more often, and stand up for myself, and people don’t really like that. And I’m still figuring out how to deal with that, because I’m saying “no” and I’m standing up for a reason, good reasons, but I’m not sure the other parties feel the same way. And the transition from sugary-sweet observer to strong active leader is blaringly still en route.

Then I thought I would tell you about the resolution I made one Monday afternoon and subsequently broke this past Saturday night. And there’s no point now, which is cool, you know, because it’s cliche fun to break your resolution a week after you’ve made it. Er, whatever.

I also thought about writing how I feel like I can’t trust many people lately, which is bad, because trust is really important to getting things done. Mostly I feel this way because someone I look up to let me down. But to be honest, I had him on a pedestal, so it was only a matter of time before I found out that he didn’t like where I had told him to sit.

Other posts included how listening to old-school music makes me happy, and that exercising is good, but better when the cute personal trainer guy talks to you, or how your number one resolution should be to start a blog in the New Year. And at one point, I even thought about just copying and pasting the lyrics to all the music I was listening to, because it just seemed to say everything that I could not.

But time after time, the posts didn’t make the cut, because there is so much advice out there on how to start your New Year off right, and the sky is still blue (or gray in Madison’s case), and you are still who you are. So don’t worry so much.

This is, after all, the year of the Rat. That means it’s “a lucky year, a good time to start a new venture. The rewards will not come without hard work, but with careful planning they will arrive.”

Great things are going to happen this year. And you’re going to make them happen.

That’s all you need to know.

Get to it.

Helping your career when you’re not middle class

by Rebecca Thorman   41 comments

I want to respond to the latest post at Employee Evolution, as I’ve done in the past here. This time, Ryan Healy writes on ways your family can help you with your career. Here’s my take:

I didn’t grow up in upper or middle class, nor did I grow up in poverty.

But a large part of my childhood was being raised in the ghetto of my town by my single mother. People are incredulous when I tell them this.

“Do you even know what the ghetto is, Rebecca?” they ask.

My babysitter acted as my second mother and the neighborhood protector. While my mother worked, my babysitter was the character standing on the corner of her lawn, yelling like a madwoman at the drug dealers to “get the f&*k away” from her street. After one such declaration, I remember thinking that they were going to shoot her. Dead. Then and there. But she was tough. The dealers were afraid of her.

My mother did end up moving us to a decidedly middle class neighborhood as soon as she could, but what I learned from my old neighborhood stuck with me.

The point being that I’m intensely proud of my background, but it wasn’t financially affluent.

So I would never say to my boss, “I live with my parents. I don’t need this job.”

Because I’ve been working from the time I was able, and trust me, I do need this job.

I understand that much of our generation grew up middle class, if not upper middle class. That’s a good thing. If you have the connections, privileges, and opportunities, you should use them. Take full advantage of the help that is available to you.

But we all need to be more grateful of what we have. And we need to realize that not all of us have parents and parent’s friends who can help finance our new company, lifestyle, or potential unemployment.

In my world, performance reviews aren’t based off of your connections or your financial stability. They’re based off of your work and your credentials. But we don’t live in my world. We live in the real world. In the real world, who you know and how much money you have are negotiating gems.

It’s good that you can get ahead by building relationships. This is something you have control of.

It’s not so good that you can get ahead with money if you don’t have any. But this is the reality. If you have the privilege of being able to leave a company that refuses to give you additional responsibility as in Ryan’s example, do so. Grow up. Stop whining. And then move out of your parent’s house.

If you can’t risk losing your job, however, but want more challenge at the workplace, pat yourself on the back. Courage should be rewarded.

Then get creative. Think about how you can take on more work even if the employer isn’t helping you do it. It’s rare that you won’t be able to find more to do.

Maybe it’s related directly to what you’re doing now. Or maybe you start a group of co-workers to green the workplace practices of your employer. Or you develop a set of best practices for your peers. Or you could develop and manage an informal mentoring program within the company. You define your success. True fulfillment isn’t created by your employer, anyway. It’s created when you push yourself.

And most importantly, be proud of your background. Realize that it actually puts you ahead of some of your prosperous peers who don’t have to worry about the rent, or the power bill, or budgeting groceries. Some of the most successful people I know are those who have experienced a large amount of adversity. This doesn’t surprise me. Because when you hit bottom, you only have two choices. Stay there or get up. And when you haven’t hit bottom, you don’t have the same appetite to succeed. Adversity is your ally.

Career backgrounder.