Wise words from my personal trainer and post secret.
I’ve been longing and dreaming for a long break for more than a few years, so when the stars finally aligned for me to to take one without feeling like I was abandoning my work family, I jumped on it.
Let me tell you, slowing down when you’ve been going 100+ miles an hour for well over 20 years is harder than it may seem. I am the queen of work hard, play hard, but I finally realized none of that is sustainable without some rest and renewal slid in there somewhere as a foundational support for the other two. I suspect my inner circle has some sort of over/under bet going on how long I’ll last, but I’m determined to spend the time re-setting the culture in our home and turning some Project Manager attention to the chaos we’ve been living in since the children were born…11 years ago. Yes, I think I did just state I’m taking a sabbatical to project manage my home and life for a little bit. I’m reconnecting with the joy and passion I have for my profession, my family and myself.
Many Mom’s in my community volunteer at school, and I’ve had a standing monthly 1 hour appointment to give my time for a few years now, but on Sabbatical I’ve bumped up my time to one morning or afternoon a week for a couple of hours. My son, The Destroyer, is in 2nd grade and I’ve been hanging out in his class for 3 weeks now. I wish I had eloquent and succinct enough words to convey how amazing, fun, refreshing and fulfilling those hours are to me. It’s the best time I have all week, it’s the most exciting thing I do all week and I absolutely LOVE every second of it. It probably has less to do with being there more often and more to do with being focused and immersed in simply being there vs. running my overly booked life through my mind while physically present, but only worried about how quickly I can get my task done before I HAVE to be on to the next one. Or what fire needs to be put out over here, or oh crud I have no idea how we are going to fix that one big hairy problem and I can’t even get a minute to think about it…… I don’t HAVE to be anywhere, for anything or anybody but what I choose right now. Almost as if by magic of circumstance I finally have uninterrupted chances to breathe and be.
I realize a sabbatical of length isn’t realistic for everyone, but maybe if we all did a better job of finding sabbatical inside our daily lives we would enjoy them more and worry less 🙂
Best,
Laura
Quote pic from http://energetic-mastery.com
In science or math a hypothesis is tested through study and experimentation. The entire point of the process is to gather more information and then adjust the initial opinion based on the new information gathered, or to reject the null and accept the alternative hypothesis without adjusting the initial opinion. Many of us haven’t considered this since covering it in our school years, and long-lost are the days of gathering , it was The Bubble and Franklin College for me, and just bantering away on an academic topic or topic of personal passion. We seem to get into jobs and not only forget how to do it, but also forget how much better things are when everyone is allowed to weigh in and no one’s information is discounted as wrong/out of line/not what we do here/not what our customer wants from inception.
Why not take a step back from the battles or boredom of the job and try seeking information about what you’re holding as theorem when it’s really hypothesis. It’s theorem to you because you’re passionate about it, but you can still have passion for a hypothesis if you recognize examination allows for strengthening or strengthening via adaptation. If something is failing or running off track and you can’t figure out how to fix it, you’ve probably not landed on what is actually “wrong” yet.
If you adapt or re-frame your thinking and embrace opinions as hypothesis rather than extensions of the opinion holder, especially when the opinion holder is you, then it becomes a lot easier to effectively collaborate and produce desired and appropriate results which are sustainable, rather than simply extinguish fires and hope something else isn’t flaring up while your attention is turned. I try to operate as much as possible in this space and it is not easy at first, but the more I practice it in a purposeful manner and an attitude of joyful service the better I get.
The added benefit to always being open to receiving new information and adapting is the amazing people and points of view you get to encounter along the way. Try it the next time you have to collaborate and let me know how it went. If you’ve been on this path for a while I’d love to hear your stories.
Best,
Laura
I’ve had many career transforming moments, one of them being the concept of “Killing things early” gleaned from a PMO Symposium in Vegas. At the time I worked in a culture where we never killed anything…ever. We just rode that shit hard, put it away wet and went out back again without resting. I tucked it into my Perfect PMO dream box and went about my business. Not long after, I took my Perfect PMO dream box and opened it up at new employer in a totally new industry. A smaller consulting place functioning well and poised for growth that “needed a PM”. We spent the next 6 months collaborating on what “we need a PM” meant and I helped them see they didn’t really need a PM. They needed a more specialized industry resource who had mad PM skills to best meet their clients’ needs and they could do the company PM work themselves, they just had to actually do it.
Life cycle of failure
Traditionally failure is considered bad, feared, often hidden, sometimes denied, but rarely embraced. Rather than punishing failure or denying failure exists, entrepreneurs embrace failing in the spirit of fail, learn, rise and soar. The realization I was basically “killing” myself by pointing out the position needed to be eliminated because it could not be adapted to fit the business needs made for some uncomfortable Big Girl Panty (BGP) moments. It took some bravery to unpack the “Kill things early” mantra in spite of the fact it was what needed to be done. I didn’t want to be perceived as failing at my job. I had to let go of the fear and reframe failure as the performance of growth it truly is. Once I recognized what would be gained by failing instead of focusing on the failure itself, it provided me with this amazing sense of freedom, possibility and power. The culture allowed for failure and promoted open collaboration to take fail/fail and make it win/win. They adapted the role and I get to take the experience and lessons with me in the Perfect PMO dream box. When we fail, if we use the failure as a chance to adapt, we won’t make that mistake again and we get better.
The freedom gained by the fail is the landing place for adapting to grow stronger, perform better, rise higher. This applies to everything from riding a bike to running a business. Yes, my example points out there are costs of failing, but even in my example the cost of delaying the kill would have been greater. I’m not going to pretend it was easy, but I can tell you once it was all said it done it was a moment I look back on with almost giddy fondness. I finally got to kill something, and it felt soooo good! Have you ever gotten to kill anything? Do you work in a culture that embraces failure? I’d love to hear about it.
Best, Lola
PMO Lola 