Crossroad Decision Making

I have spent the last month interviewing with an amazing Consulting firm! I applied to a job on LinkedIn that looked cool at the start of the year. My attempt to make sure I did not put all my career (and financial) eggs in one basket. I was starting to feel the pressure of hemorrhaging money (albeit planned, still tough to see that savings account dwindle). Like all good worker bees in the new year I made sure to apply to some full time jobs.

I got a first interview with the recruiter. She was awesome! So easy to chat with. I loved how I showed up. I felt confident and articulate. Not perfect, but at ease. This is not a small feat for me (read other blogs on self-regard, anxiety, imposter syndrome)…. So when she asked if I wanted to continue, my answer was “of course!”. The firm does work with organizations I am really passionate about, the culture seems to be exactly what I am looking for. All signs point to coolness. Met with two other consultants who work there and the managing director. Supers mart people. Unpretentious. It was everything one would want in an interviewing process! Nirvana does exist!

In the meantime my business is slowly but surely taking off. I signed a client, the group coaching program I created has participants. Things are happening! Will I ever earn the same money, unlikely, although my husband says, ‘yes and more’. The safety of working for someone else pulls at me. Having a regular paycheck I can count on, please… But working at least 40 hours a week, hummmm, putting aside, or at least not going all in, on where may passion and energy has been for the past few months, I don’t know. It is an amazing embarrassment of riches. Mind you, I hadn’t been offered the job yet, but I felt confident and wanted to be clear on what I thought before any offer.

True to my usual process I created a list… pros/cons. Well the pros of taking this job from a numbers perspective outweigh trying to do my own thing, hands down. Stability. Money. Team. Variety of work. Passion projects. Yes Yes Yes. BUT…. I don’t wanna…..I let my heart lead. I decided to keep going with the path I am on. Even with the lists, trying to be objective, I didn’t let fear or my anxiety of “what if I can’t do this” take hold. I let my heart and intuition drive my decision making, not the numbers. My mantra in life has been regret the things you did, not the things you didn’t do. This brought me to Spain for a year. Leaving a job to go to Rome for a summer. Getting a masters. Having my daughter. Taking charge to smooch a man who would turn out to be husband (guess I knew that). So far I haven’t regretted any of those things.

If this company had come into my purview while I was still at my last full time job, and I had not experienced the joy and satisfaction (and even a bit of success) of being independent, I would have definitely loved to have join this great consulting firm. It would have been a different dream come true.

Sometimes we just have to throw caution to the wind, follow our hearts, and take the risk.

“If it excites you and scares you at the same time, it probably means you should do it.” ~Unknown

Self-Regard and Business Development

I definitely dove in head first to set up my new venture. When I left my job I didn’t know what I was going to do, let alone how I was going to do it. But it didn’t take long for me to shake off the ick and get clarity about what I liked about my previous positions. I started building on that feeling and made some decisions. Part of my new plan was to go back to school… I enrolled in a coaching program and elected to become certified in EQi 2.0. I have always been interested in the Emotional Quotient, also referred to as Emotional Intelligence, since the first article I read in college over 20 years ago. My admiration of the topic kept my eyes open for learning opportunities. But time and competing priorities didn’t allow me to get too deep. Until now… As part of the certification we completed the EQi 2.0 assessment (obviously). The assessment is super cool and it goes deeper with more facets than I even knew existed within EQ. This isn’t my sales pitch for taking the assessment. This is about me… per usual. I had a massive ‘aha’ in self-regard. I knew I did not consider myself a confident person. I knew my self view isn’t in congruence with how others view me, or what the evidence shows about my competence… remember that time I wrote about the Imposter Syndrome… yup all that showing up here in the EQi 2.0 assessment. Self-Regard is the ability to respect and accept one’s strengths and weaknesses. Thank you EQ Edge. Clearly I accept my weaknesses, but respecting and acknowledging my strengths… uhmm. No big surprise. But oh geez, how am I going to have my own business and “sell myself” if I can’t even articulate to myself how awesome I am. “Houston we have a problem.”

Business Development (fancy word for sales) has never been something I am fond of. I can only think of a handful of people who are. Even with a marketing undergrad degree I knew I wasn’t going to go into sales. My dad who is a stellar entrepreneur and has been in business for 41 years didn’t make the sales aspect of his work very appealing. It was filled with angst. Basically I have a lot baggage there. This is the primary reason I never thought I would be in business for myself. But here I am, super passionate about this line of work, how I can help others, and have the work life balance I want. So back to my problema… I’ve got to sell it. My first “business development” conversations were a total bust! My self-regard, or lack there of, got the better of me. I was clearly overcompensating for my insecurities so I was just blabbering on and on, not being a good listener. I was trying to give my “elevator pitch” and feeling very uncomfortable while doing it. I would get off these calls and think, “well clearly Rachael now isn’t your time, your anxiety, your lack of confidence, your inability to …..” Read: Continuing down the spiral of low self-regard. I hit the chocolate bars hard after those first conversations.

I picked myself up by bootstraps, after applying to a few ‘real jobs”, and decided I would work toward unpacking this. I enlisted the support of a coach. Wise decision Number 1. Not only did they help me identify the different facets of self-regard and see the whole picture, they helped me uncover what I thought about confidence and how it shows up for me. I was seriously confusing confidence with a Machiavellian ego. They also helped me find what part of business development I was comfortable with, what my “why” was and how to share that with those I wanted to help.

I am still figuring the balance, but I am having more compassion to be myself. I am looking at business development differently. But most importantly my self-regard is increasing. I am a confident person. Once I reframed confidence is how I feel internally, that I could do what I was envisioning for myself because of all my gifts, it would in return show up to those around me. I didn’t have to “prove it”.

I am sure the business development will never be my favorite part of the work I am embarking on, but I am grateful for the opportunity to step out of my comfort zone and work on something that has quite frankly been my Achilles heel for a long time. I know my self-regard will ebb and flow. Like so much of what we work on never has a finite end, it has given me a greater sense of self.

“Confidence isn’t optimism or pessimism, and it’s not a character attribute. It’s the expectation of a positive outcome.” – Rosabeth Moss Kanter

PS. If you are interested in learning about yourself through the EQi 2.0 lens please reach out to me.