Thoughts by Jen

Lately, I’ve been focusing wholeheartedly on untangling the preconceived ideas of who I think I should be, the things I think I should have, and the things I think I should be doing from the realities of my current opportunities.

What is normal, anyway? Seemingly, the idealistic version of ourselves is created internally through a lens of societal constructs forced upon us from birth mixed with our formative environment.

I still haven’t decided if I’m an ‘A-type’ or if I flow like water…. perhaps both?

Have you ever taken personality tests? Because of my professional life, I’ve taken almost every test ever created… and I’ve found that, dependent upon my mindset within my life at the moment, my dominant features change. When I’m embroiled in a huge project at work, the dominant pieces of my personality shine through. When I’m laissez-fairing through life… my gentler, flowier pieces come to the forefront. Ultimately, I’ve decided that this is a good thing – to embrace having a healthy mix of the two. We have to know when to put our foot down and when to ease back, and these pieces of ourselves must be cultivated in order to draw on the parts of ourselves we have honed when we need the skill most.

I say this out of literal years of failing immensely and choosing to look back on my choices and actions in reflection and employing the art of self-analyzation. Unfortunately, I’ve crushed and killed so many things… (ideas, relationships, activities) this is the only way I’ve realized my penchant for leaning too far into one version of myself. It’s very difficult to balance myself and draw on my lighter, gentler components when necessary because I was born with a pretty domineering streak. I probably have a little too much ego at times which masks my ability to see the truth clearly. So often, it was me – I was the real problem. I should have backed down to ensure the situation improved, because most of the time, the only thing we can control in any given situation is ourselves. Only through looking back at a situation in its entirety am I able to see where I made giant mistakes – and, unfortunately, we can’t go back in time. We can only take the hard earned lessons and apply them to future situations IF we are mature enough to recognize the need to do so in the moment.

It is only the experience itself that has shown me and taught me the consequences of my actions… Through each of the situations in which I’ve experienced failure, taking the time to look backward and trying to understand what went wrong, I am able to realize and understand the indicators that show how my actions enabled the disaster. These indicators serve me now – to remind me to back off, show compassion, and try to compromise a little. I have no desire to repeat the mistakes of the past and the only way that I can move beyond my past mistakes is to learn and recognize my patterns; to choose a new path when given the opportunity to do so again.

And how can we possibly understand the why if we choose to ignore our responsibility in any given failure? It is only my choice to be real and honest with myself that enables me to understand the why behind each failure I’ve experienced and how I played a role in the situation.

I’ll tell you – it’s painful. It’s hard to reflect upon yourself and your actions and identify the how and why of what you did to add to the outcome. But it’s only through this action that you can truly learn from your behavior.

I went through a period of time in my professional life where I made multiple errors back to back. I acted immaturely, I was too hard on my employees, and I had far too many unrealistic expectations. I was ignorant to the realities of my personal behavior and the impact it was having on the people around me and the organization I was working for.

Failure

Failure

Failure

Three giant, difficult, hard failures in a row. My first Library Director job, a non-profit I was trying to help initiate, and a second job (that I ran away from the Director job for) that eventually fired me.

Back-to-back-to-back… talk about a difficult three years.

By the time I left my Library Director job, the employees hated me, the Library Board hated me, and no one was impressed with the work I’d accomplished… and I did great work. Within that situation, it was my immaturity and my attitude that did the trick of garnering spite. This is where I learned that I have to be much slower, gentler, and far more methodical in my work habits to solicit buy-in and bring everyone along with me. Just because I think what I’m doing is right doesn’t mean I can actually accomplish it alone. Bringing people with you is just as important as having the right idea…. ‘I can’t do it by myself’ is the lesson I learned here. It’s almost hilarious to read this lesson as one paragraph when it actually took 14 long-suffering months for me to truly grasp the impacts of my tactics. Like I said, it was my first director job, and I don’t believe we can hone a craft without jumping in and trying. I forgive myself for being immature, and I will carry the embarrassment of my failures with me into every job I have for the rest of my life.

A lesson hard earned.

When trying to help get a non-profit organization off the ground, I’d surmise that there were similarities to the attitudes and actions described above. I’d been a long-standing member of this organization for years, and I was trying to help get a local chapter started in my new hometown. I believed (and still do) wholeheartedly in the mission of the organization and wanted nothing more than to bring the wonderfulness to that community which I believed would benefit greatly from having a chapter in town doing service work.

What a time in my life! I was so arrogant, believing I knew much more than those who I’d managed to rally around the cause. Looking back, I was more than obnoxious. I often say these days that I don’t possess the ‘finesse’ of trying to sway people… and that’s still true. But these days, I know that about myself. I have the self-awareness to understand my faults and where I’m lacking and to keep that at the forefront of my mind when I have the compulsion to push and demand that things should be done my way.

I got mine… eventually they kicked me out of the group. In actuality, I quit out of anger (and it was best for everyone) but when I came back with my tail between my legs and asked to rejoin, they said no. And I can’t blame them.

A lesson hard earned.

It wasn’t much later that I was fired for the first time in my life. I’d left the Library Director job to take a more prestigious job in the county with the local government, and a job that will (hopefully) always hold the title of the worst job I’ve ever had. Don’t get me wrong, I learned a lot, but it was more life lessons learned than skills. I don’t believe I have as much blame in this situation as the previous two situations, but I certainly hold some.

It was honestly a relief to get away from that incredibly toxic place, but the sting of being fired when you’ve always believed yourself capable and valuable (professionally speaking), was a huge blow. I struggled with understanding my role from the day I was hired, and I never fully understood the expectations they had of me. I became obsessed with not knowing what I was supposed to be doing and eventually probably a bit frantic. By the time they asked me to leave, I’d already been looking for new jobs – I knew it wasn’t working and knew things were headed south pretty quickly.

But again – the blow of being asked to leave… I have no one in my life as a backup. I am my sole breadwinner and the only person I have to count on. I was so scared. Jobless and alone. But, luckily, I was also riddled with faith.

A lesson hard earned.

Suffice to say – with three failures under my belt in a row, it’s almost hard to verbalize what I felt. I felt like there was something wrong with me… and to be honest, there was. I think the best way I can try and explain the feeling I was left with after this bad time of my life is this…

My failures absolutely, inimitably crushed a part of my insides… these experiences forcibly macerated a portion of my ego and the false understanding of my true self.

Perhaps it is because I am such an emotional person, or because I’m hyper-sensitive in many ways, but I can draw on the pain these experiences caused at any time. It is the type of vanquishment that doesn’t really leave – the type that has left an indelible understanding of my capacity to utterly, totally, and completely fail – all of my own doing.

While I would never, ever, EVER in a million years choose to go through this particular time of my life again, I have to admit that it utterly changed the way I view myself and my capabilities.

I do still believe in myself – I know I have the capacity to be good, helpful, successful, and victorious… but through these experiences, I know that these qualities are ones that you must carefully hone and implement in order to achieve.

I’ve had many failures throughout my life. I’ve made many choices that I’d probably do differently if given the chance again, but I refuse to dwell on them. Like I said before, we can’t go backwards. The value that is found is when you choose to apply these lessons toward your future. Life keeps going, and if we’re lucky, we keep on living.

While we’re living, it’s in our best interest to be relentlessly honest with ourselves, because most likely, no one else is going to do that for you. Choosing to be honest with yourself in an effort to be the best version of yourself is an investment. Being your best is no one else’s responsibility but your own – and it’s an investment that will reap dividends in the future.

If given another opportunity, you’ll know better next time.

Because of this sentimentality, I’ve been pondering the idea of expectation vs faith. Are we assumptive? Taking life for granted? Do we expect a particular thing? Or do we have faith that God will provide the things we need in our lives?

We often overlook chance which may or may not provide us the things we think we want, need, or deserve… but are we standing in our own way in achieving something greater through our arrogance and our innate egoism? What do we deserve in this life beyond the breath in our lungs and the sun on our face?

Is it our job to demand things happen in a certain way? Or are we to take every situation as it comes and implement our hard earned lessons to ensure the success of whatever it is that God has granted us in that moment?

Is it my demanding expectation that has crushed things along the way? What if I were more mature and humble and focused on enabling success regardless of how it’s achieved? What if I had the constraint to look beyond my desires and into the possibility of the future?

Is that a self-sacrifice to the greater good?

Summum Bonnum

May we have the capacity to extinguish expectations and replace them each with abundant, blinding faith.