None of this would have applied to me this time last year. I hadn’t had a traditional day job in ten years and I wasn’t in the market for one. Imagine my surprise when I found myself interviewing just a few months later.
Moral: Don’t be discouraged or disinterested, because your dream job may suddenly pop up out of nowhere, too. I was not a person who intuitively understood how to behave at job interviews. At my first interview for my first office job, age 18, the hiring manager asked me if I was open to feedback. I said yes, of course, and she told me it would be better for me to wear tops with sleeves, that bare shoulders were not standard interview attire. Oh! Thanks for telling me. Next time I won’t wear a tank top to my interview. (I got the job, though). A year or so later, I interviewed for a different job. The hiring manager asked me what my biggest flaw was, and I told her, “Probably punctuality.” I did not get that job. You’d think they’d go for transparency and insight? But no. Now I’m in a position where interviews are something of a cattle call. Because we’re all mandatory WFH, most of us are generally available to tune in. Candidates do a presentation - sort of an audition for scientists - and everyone has the opportunity to ask questions. I’ve seen a lot of these lately, and I have some things to share. First of all: We are constantly hiring, and so are all the other engineering firms in our industry. Don’t assume that There Are No Jobs because there definitely are - and you only need one of them. Keep applying! Everything after that has to do with applying and interviewing. I wouldn’t have known any of this even a few months ago, so pay close attention. You can stand out if you do better in even one of these areas. Don’t worry. Nobody is comfortable in an interview, and nobody is really familiar with video conferencing yet. We expect there to be issues with your audio, connectivity, etc. It’s totally okay. That being said, there are a lot of unexpected things that can be really distracting. If you can avoid them, it will help you to look more polished. Chipmunk eating an apple. That’s what I was visualizing. I checked everyone else’s profiles, and there were no open mics. It had to be the candidate. But what was causing that noise? The only thing I could come up with was that his microphone was on his headphone cord, and it was rubbing on his shirt. I think he had it tucked inside his shirt for aesthetics? Unfortunately, over the course of an hour this squeaking, crunching noise kept continuously interfering with his voice. It sounded like someone crumpling up paper balls every few seconds. I am 100% positive he had no idea and couldn’t hear it on his end. The simple answer for this is to ask literally any person to do a test call with you and tell you what they hear. Lighting. We had a candidate who was sitting next to a sliding glass door with vertical blinds. They were angled in such a way that they would shift slightly. Whenever that happened, a bright beam of light would hit the camera. It did really strange things with the lighting on the viewers’ end. Again, that has nothing to do with whether the candidate will be good at the job; it’s just distracting. There are a few fixes for this. One would be to angle the blinds the opposite way. Another would be to set up a workstation somewhere else, maybe in a different room. I sit next to a sliding glass door - the only place in our dinky apartment that really works - and as a result I am in dark silhouette at all hours of the day. I bought a ring light to put on my laptop, and that helped a lot, but it wasn’t really bright enough. Next I bought a flat panel natural daylight lamp that looks like an iPad, with a picture frame-type bracket on the back so it stands up by itself. It was about $35. Problem solved! Now instead of looking like I’m in a witness protection program, I have the best lighting on our team. Clothes and haircuts. In our industry, as far as I can tell the aesthetics have zero effect. I saw a professional presentation by a young guy whose haircut made him look like he escaped from Azkaban. Everyone loved it. (The presentation, that is; I doubt they even registered his coiffure). Slide decks. The slide deck is not make-or-break; most firms have a template and they’ll just give you that to use. If your slides are boring it’s probably okay, as long as your work is sound. If your slides are great, however, it will be noticed and discussed. In technical fields, if you even got the interview, it means they liked your resume and they’re probably willing to make an offer. What we’re looking for are a couple of obvious tells. 1. Is this person BSing? You’d be surprised how many people try to fake their way into technical positions, a profoundly unwise decision that never ends well. 2. Is this person hoping to leverage this offer in order to get a higher offer from a competitor? If you live in a different geographical area, nobody believes you are really willing to relocate unless you emphasize that you really, really want to. Enthusiasm sets you apart. The last thing I will say is that few people in technology fields are truly terrific presenters. They don’t like it, so they avoid it. I know what that’s like because I had an intense phobia about public speaking. After four years battling it, I became a Distinguished Toastmaster. It has been a huge help, probably got me my current job, and continues to be mentioned. If you have a video interview coming up, find your local Toastmasters and ask to drop in on a meeting. Best of luck to you! Except you won’t need it, because you took notes and did those few little extra steps that are going to set you apart. Ever had the kind of day where you just collapse face-first into the couch, pull a blanket over yourself, and cry?
I was having that kind of day. A nine-hour workday including four hours of meetings, a half-hour gap, and then a two-hour meeting for my volunteer commitment. So tired I couldn’t see straight. I couldn’t get warm and my hand tremors were back, one of the lingering after-effects of COVID. I had hit the wall. It’s the same thing in marathon training. You hit your physical limits, and just when you’re already exhausted and in pain, a whole new set of fun symptoms pops out of the closet. Oh, you thought that was a wall? Nope, it turns out it there’s an entire room on the other side! There I lay, trying to will myself to get up and get camera-ready (which did not, in the end, happen. Take me as I am). My hubby came over and started rubbing my back. “It’s only Wednesday!” I wailed. I’m not a crier, as a rule, unless I’m running a distance race. For some reason, running sets off all my emotions. I cry because I love my friends so much, I cry because the weather is so beautiful, I cry because I just set a PR, I cry because I can already imagine the giant meal I’m going to eat at the finish line. None of that bothers me. Crying when I’m ill, though, is something I find humiliating and pathetic. One more thing that makes me feel worse when I really don’t need anything else. I got up after ten minutes - which feels like a long time when you’re bottoming out - and started getting my equipment set up. I was so tired I kept forgetting stuff. “I just made eight trips back and forth for four things!” Then I logged on to my meeting, and everything changed. There were the faces of my friends, colleagues, and companions. This is what gets me through, the same as it does on the race course. Connecting with people I care about somehow taps into a well of energy, even when I’m at my lowest physical ebb. This was a transition meeting, a sort of farewell to the previous year, passing the torch to the new team. Everything is a relay when you think about it. I didn’t feel like I had anything to offer that night. What advice did I have? Uh, try not to die in office? Don’t be me? I felt like I had failed at every single one of the big plans I had at the beginning of the program year. I had campaigned on a platform, and I hadn’t made progress on any of the grand plans I had, nary a one. When I looked back over the past year, I didn’t know how to avoid cataloguing my woes and tribulations: “Let’s see, I started this journey with a root canal and sutures in my mouth, we moved, our dog died, I had an antibiotic-resistant staph infection, had surgery and four stitches in my midsection, was on four separate courses of antibiotics, my husband almost went blind in one eye, and then I almost died of COVID-19. Any questions?” (You’d never guess from looking at me that I recently developed the medical file of an elderly person) But then we went into discussion, and here were the new recruits, so bright and ambitious and excited about the year before them. I welcomed them to start asking questions, and that’s when it turned around for me. Because it wasn’t about me. I never had to rattle off my piteous tale because it was irrelevant to the discussion. Nobody was asking me to explain myself or make excuses for why I didn’t reach all my personal goals. Nobody likely even remembered my platform from last year. What mattered was that somehow or other, we made it. We made it as a team. We kept things together well enough to pass them on to a new group, a new group who wanted only one thing from us: information. Well, actually something more, something that a new group never really realizes they are asking for, which is encouragement. This is one thing I can claim about my leadership skills, that I work hard to make an emotional connection with my team and help reinforce their confidence in their own intuition, their own judgment, their right to lead in their own style. It helps to start out with the assumption that the people you are leading are smarter and more talented than you are, that they’ll surpass you, and that when they inevitably have your job they’ll do it better than you do. If any of that is true, it will mean that you’ve done the most you can do, which is to make others stronger and better than they started. At the beginning of the year, I probably would have pictured myself in full makeup, dazzling everyone with a packet of materials and a carefully polished inspirational speech. Instead I sat at my dining table, wrapped in an old afghan. It was fine. It turns out that what inspires people, one way or another, is all the parts of your personal example that you can’t control. People will form impressions of your behavior that you may never know. (And may prefer not to find out!) What my team shared about working with me was how lucky they felt to be a part of a tight-knit group. In my mind, they built that, and in their minds, I did. Looking back, I have to remind myself of how far I’ve come in four years. I started out so afraid to stand up and speak that my whole body would shake - and now I’m worried about a little hand tremor? I had never even heard of any of the offices I wound up holding or any of the awards I would go on to win. I never dreamed I would serve in a leadership role at all, much less one during a time of such turbulence. I’m still tired, about as tired as I’ve ever been. I still doubt myself and whether I can handle whatever it is I’m currently trying to handle, just as much as I’ve ever doubted myself. Somehow, though, it seems that I keep feeling tired and doubting myself after bigger and bigger accomplishments. This is why it’s important to acknowledge the wall. There is definitely a wall and it definitely feels as materially tangible as any other physical object. Walls, though, can be climbed. They can be toppled. They can serve as infrastructure and you can paint them and grow vines on them. I hit a wall, because I was worn out and feeling sorry for myself. Connecting with other people helped remind me that sometimes we wear ourselves out for good reasons. Just because I’m tired doesn’t mean it’s time to quit, or that I have nothing left. The next time I hit the wall, I wonder where I’ll be and what I’ll be doing? It happened again. I was just publicly recognized for a goal that took me four years to reach. Immediately I spun into the emotional state that I call the goal hangover.
Goals suck, by the way. We’re supposed to “find our passion” and make a “bucket list” and a “vision board” and then celebrate when we make all this stuff happen. For the record, the first three parts of that process definitely work as advertised. The trouble is the celebration part. How can I celebrate when I now have NO GOALS?? Right now, I’m on a goal cycle in the 3-4 year range. I’ve been in this situation several times with wildly different types of goals, and I’m starting to learn to expect it. I went back to college after my divorce, got my bachelor’s... and then spent months recovering from a respiratory infection I got my driver’s license at age 29... and then had to commute on the freeway an hour a day I ran a marathon, got the race medal... and then borked my ankle and spent months in physical therapy I tackled my paralyzing fear of public speaking, earned my Distinguished Toastmaster award, and then... NOW WHAT? This is something that tends to be an open secret for newlyweds. There is an entire industry built around Your Special Day, holding wildly expensive and impractical wedding ceremonies. But then - ta da - you’re married. The premise of marriage is that no day is special; you’re just living a new and different default mode. (I super-love being married and I think our wedding ceremony was pretty modest - we mainly wanted an excuse to go on a honeymoon). Marriage includes a bunch of stuff that a wedding typically does not: clearing hair out of the drain, loading the dishwasher, filing taxes, and debating whether to talk to the neighbors about one of their weird loud habits. Marriage is only one example among many of how what was once a lovely fantasy becomes the new baseline, the pretty ring on the vision board now just an ordinary fashion accessory. Every goal is like that. You strive and strain for it, and then you reach it, and then it simply becomes a thing you can do. It’s a skill, a memory, or something you have worked into the shape of your body. The trouble with goals is that for those of us who thrive on challenge, reaching the goal means the end of the challenge. It’s a bit of a letdown. What am I supposed to do with my spare time now? Sort laundry and watch TV? So you’re telling me that my reward for reaching my goal is... nothing?? Well, the medal or the trophy or the diploma or the... Ordinary state of goalless being Probably most people are more comfortable not having the stress of an impending goal. Most goals are very practical, like paying rent or getting the car fixed. I realize that lacking a goal is a strange problem to have, a problem of privilege - And indeed, I use some of that privilege to try to help others acquire some privilege of their own - And yet I find the prospect of having no goals to be disappointing, dull, and boring. When I was several days into my case of COVID-19, I felt that I might die. I might die quite soon. It felt like such a pitiful waste. I lay there for days, thinking about my stupid day planners and my stupid goal lists and my stupid resolutions. It occurred to me that there would be no lasting legacy, that when someone else went through my stuff, they’d throw it into a bag and get rid of it. Rightfully so. I had very little to show for my time on this planet. Even though I’m a whole body donor, they probably couldn’t even use my poor organs. At that point, I decided to trash my existing goals. I decided that the old me had officially died and that, if I ever managed to get up out of my sickbed, I would start fresh. Being very ill is the most boring thing in the world. It’s hard to sleep and there is very little to attend to while awake. Too sick to read or watch a movie. Too sick to do much of anything but let your mind wander. That’s when I started pondering over the idea of what I would do. What would you do if you actually had a fresh lease on life? A real chance to start over? One of the first decisions I made, after choosing to trash my previous goals, was to act on my intentions more quickly. If there was a book I wanted to read, I would start it right away, rather than add it to a list. If there was a movie I wanted to see, I’d watch it that night - and be grateful when I could track a plot for longer than five minutes without getting confused. If I was thinking about someone, I would reach out right away and write them a note. This is a way of having “goals” without having a backlog, a paradoxical way of having few to zero goals. Just do everything in the current moment. That, though, didn’t seem inherently challenging enough. Was that all I was going to do for possibly the next forty years of my life? Read, watch movies, and text people? Sure, that was more than I could handle at the time, but I knew if I survived intact I would presumably want more than that one day. Could it be a physical goal? I had no idea, but I did know I had it in me to do whatever it took to get my physical stamina back. If it takes five years, I’ll do it, because what the heck else would I do? Could it be a mental goal? I didn’t know, but I did know I really, really wanted to be able to read again and I would never quit trying. (It worked). I did choose something. In fact, I chose a few things. I decided that I wanted to get a normal job again, and go to grad school, and that I still wanted to try for the ultramarathon. If I lived. These were some of my deathbed realizations: that I’m a challenge-oriented person, that challenge is what keeps me happy and motivated, and that I want to be where the action is. I want to do the obvious things, the things that are of a large enough scale to be worth my attention for the next few years. What are yours? Allow me to introduce myself. I’m a freshly minted Distinguished Toastmaster, and four years ago anyone, including myself, would have voted me Least Likely to Be. I’ve been shy all my life, and I began this project with overwhelming stage fright and a deep dread of public speaking. I’m sharing my experience because truly, if I can do this, anyone can.
Let me give a brief explanation of what a Distinguished Toastmaster, or DTM, represents. It is an award for communication and leadership offered by Toastmasters International, which is a nonpartisan, secular, nonprofit public speaking club. You should totally join! The DTM is like the black belt or Eagle Scout of our organization. There are lots of other awards, but this is the biggie. Fewer than one percent of everyone who joins eventually reaches this designation. On average, it takes most people 8-10 years to complete a DTM. With careful planning and a good mentor, it can be done in two years, depending on what time of year you sign up and assuming someone will accept you as a club officer shortly after you join. The fact that I did it in three and a half years is not all that amazing by timeline; it’s really about how I was able to make such a dramatic change that quickly. Most people aren’t all that into spending their free time confronting their terrors. When I stood up in a group, I could barely get my mouth open. Not just my voice would shake but my entire body. I almost collapsed once after speaking for 30 seconds. I would choke up and turn purple. My heart would hammer in my chest. The tremor in my hands would last for ten or fifteen minutes after I finished, long after the lectern had been yielded to other speakers. After two months, I told my husband I was quitting. I would feel ill from the moment I woke up each Wednesday morning. Emotionally it was easier, a couple years later, to go into my Krav Maga classes and get put into chokeholds or punched in the mouth. I HATED SPEAKING SO SO MUCH. I mean, it was awful! I couldn’t bear it. He asked me why I would quit and reminded me that I always want to quit things right before they start working. Good point. I couldn’t have asked for more from my club. I had no idea how fortunate I was to live within a short walk from one of the highest-performing clubs in my region. All the people I met were unfailingly sweet and welcoming to me, and I’m proud to count several of them as close friends today. Drive-two-hours-to-hang-out friends. Follow-through friends. If I’d bumbled into a different room and been assigned a different mentor, I probably wouldn’t have made it. Things started happening in there. People responded to my speeches. They asked questions. They laughed. They remembered what I had talked about months later. They talked me into doing standup comedy. They started voting me Best Speaker. Like, a lot. I was invited to be vice president. Nothing could have surprised me more, until a year later when I was chosen to be an area director. And THEN I was asked to apply to be a division director, and I was nominated unanimously by the selection committee, and I won a contested election. HOW DID THIS EVEN HAPPEN? Inside I still feel like the gawky wallflower trying to hide in the curtains. My self-image has been all over the place in this process. I went into the room trembling, knowing myself to be shy, painfully awkward, and boring. Somehow along the way I was convinced that nobody could see my hands shaking, I looked and sounded just fine, and in fact I was... interesting and funny. ??? I’ve seen the same thing happen with others. A couple of times a year, someone will come in who reminds me of myself. Unfailingly they describe themselves as being terrible at speaking. They worry about how visibly nervous they look. They think they’re boring or they have nothing to say. Yet they get up there and they have this charisma that is obvious to everyone except themselves. Evaluation is the one thing we can’t do for ourselves. Over and over again, a guest will come to a meeting for the first time. Often, they’re willing to stand up and do a one-minute improvisational speech, part of the game we call Table Topics. Over and over again, they’ll win a ribbon, and they won't believe it. “It’s a democratic process,” I tell them. “You have to accept that everyone voted and you legitimately won.” That’s what I like the best. I like coaxing people to see themselves as something more, showing them that, objectively, everyone else in the world sees them as interesting and worthy of their attention. I love watching a stammering, quaking wreck like myself blossom into a confident entertainer. Together we shall rid the world of boring speeches, rambling stories, terrible wedding toasts, and unproductive meetings! AH ha ha ha hahahaha! What I was given by my friends, I happily pass on to others: the gift of being seen and being heard. In exchange I receive the infinite gift of story. Week after week, I am surprised, delighted, informed, entertained, and often moved to tears by stories I wouldn’t hear anywhere else. It’s taught me that even the most ordinary-seeming people can have tidal waves of talent and the most fascinating lives imaginable. Even more than I’ve learned to speak well, I’ve learned to listen well. Stories are what bring us together. Storytelling doesn’t just make the world go around, it built civilization and language itself. I’ll never get enough of it and that’s what keeps me coming back. I never thought of myself as a speaker or a leader. I’ll rephrase that. I NEVER thought of myself, of all people, as a speaker or a leader. I only came to confront one of my worst fears. I didn’t think I’d ever actually be any good at it! Now I love what I once hated and dreaded, like a stray puppy being adopted by the city dog catcher. Where there is resistance there is great power, hidden power. It wouldn’t bother us if it didn’t mean something to us, if it didn’t resonate on some deep level. I encourage you, if you’ve ever felt like me and wanted to run screaming from a microphone, to do something about it. You don’t have to carry that feeling forever. If you can make yourself get up and speak for one minute a hundred times, you can be free. I got my DTM with roughly forty speeches. Well, what do you say? No, seriously, I’d love to know. I’m listening. From the perspective of a Gen Xer, one of the brightest lines separating us from Millennials is their uncanny comfort in front of a camera. Any camera. They always seem to know how to shape-shift into a photogenic pose with milliseconds of notice, transforming from ordinary people to professional models. That’s, uh, not me.
Things I would rather do than appear on camera: Be splattered with mud Stand in line for two hours Get my teeth drilled I can say this with aplomb because I have done all of those things in recent memory, and none of them made my heart palpitate, caused me to break out in a cold sweat, or forced tears from my eyes. Being on camera does. As a professional, I understand that comfort on camera is now not just a key business skill, but a simple social requirement. People want to take lots of photos, tag their friends, and post them on social media because that’s how people relate. I appreciate this, too, because I love seeing pictures of my friends and associates smiling and looking good. It shouldn’t be any bigger of a deal than, say, having people drive by and catch a quick glimpse of your lawn. Alas, the way I look on camera is the way I look all the time. I look like myself, my self-conscious and nervous self. What makes for a bad photo is an awkward, unnatural facial expression. The attitude, not anything about the person. For instance, my dog is perfectly happy to have his picture taken even when he’s sprawled on his back with his tongue hanging out sideways and his ear inside out. In one sense he looks like a contorted mess of a creature, but in another he looks cheerful and friendly. What I want to look like: Ordinary Self-assured What I feel like I look like: Squinty Lop-sided Distracted Kinda crazy This is just in still photos. Video is even worse. I had occasion to appear live on video for two minutes. I had several weeks’ notice. Everything was going my way: I had hours of experience with the software I had already submitted my official written report I had participated in the same event the previous year I personally knew almost everyone involved My presentation was scheduled around the midpoint, with plenty of people both before and after me I had checked in and tested my volume I had rehearsed my material, triple-checked my data, and set up the lighting where I would sit I got up early to do full hair and makeup I was sitting on my own couch, in my own living room, with my husband by my side for moral support Then I got the heads-up that I would be on in a few minutes. That’s when the trouble really started. The previous night, I had gone to bed early, knowing my alarm was set and everything was prepared. I barely slept a wink all night. First I dreamed that I woke up at 9:30 and missed the whole thing. Then I dreamed that someone had smashed my phone, pulverizing the screen to the extent that it peeled off the device, but nobody would admit who did it. All this over a two-minute, unmemorable blip of a routine presentation. Anxiety much? By the time my turn came to speak, I was in bits. My heart was hammering, I felt waves of nausea, and tears started in the corners of my eyes. I choked. I turned on my microphone but left my camera off, knowing full well I was supposed to turn it on. I delivered a perfectly adequate report and returned control to the chair. Then I spent the rest of the meeting tormenting myself. Why am I like this?? What the heck was I thinking??? Cheater! Screwup! I debated apologizing to my entire team, then realized that everyone probably shrugged it off and forgot all about it five minutes later. Assuming they noticed or cared at all. Bringing up my petty personal concern would constitute 1. Drama and 2. An unprofessional waste of others’ bandwidth. The way to deal with it is to FIX IT before next time. This is a common issue for me. I’ve been actively battling stage fright for three and a half years. At this point it’s my single biggest personal issue. I continue to put myself into situations where I can confront myself and hopefully improve, and I continue to suffer waves of unwelcome physiological response in return. Body! Y U do this?? There are two ways to go when emotions and neurochemistry stand in our way. We can quit and back away, knowing we will continue to smack against this obstacle over and over again. Or we can start throwing ourselves at it, hoping to crack it and break through. Recognize that plenty of people are passing this way, simply opening the sliding door and walking through, or going around and using a different entrance. We make it difficult for ourselves by fixating on it and believing it is a legitimate problem. My stage fright is not a legitimate problem. Literally nobody cares about it except for me. The only reason I discuss it is because someone else may benefit from my analysis. If I ever get past this, “stage fright” will no longer be a thing on my to-deal list. I won’t be thinking about it. The more I dwell on MY STAGE FRIGHT the more it will be engraved on my foolish brain. I have to figure out how to think and act like people who enjoy being in the spotlight, who strut on camera. I suspect some of it is attitude and some of it is technical skill in practicing poses and facial expressions. (?) When I started with public speaking, I thought someone might need to call an ambulance. I almost collapsed on the floor once after standing up and speaking for thirty seconds. Now I only feel that way when I’m on stage with a microphone in my hand, in front of a large audience, and I know I’m being recorded. Small room, not such a big deal. Off camera, not such a big deal. I’ve felt the change in becoming relaxed during situations that used to be stressful and scary. I know I have it in me to keep grinding away, buffing off the rough edges, whenever I wish that something about myself were more streamlined. Panicking on camera is not part of my personality and it’s not something that benefits me in any way. I can let it go, and when I do, my life will be easier. The answer is to create more situations where I am on camera until I just quit caring. I did it with running, I did it with martial arts, I did it with garden-variety public speaking in a conference room. Millions of people appear on camera and find it neutral, uninteresting, exciting, or emotionally fulfilling. There is a way if only I can find it. Out of the chaos came a brief window of opportunity for something different, something polished and orderly. How it happened I’m still not sure. We found ourselves at an awards banquet, where I received a trophy for the first time in my life.
Actually not one but three! This is how it looks on the outside: A woman walks on stage and accepts an award. She is wearing a new dress and is in full hair and makeup. This is how it looked 90 minutes earlier: The scene, a studio apartment full of half-packed boxes, rolls of tape, and Sharpie markers. A man has blood all over his face because he has somehow cut open his eyelid. This is terrifying and also very inconvenient timing! The man and his wife are in the process of getting ready to leave for a formal event and ‘blood everywhere’ is not part of the dress code. Injury treated, the couple dress in haste and run to the street to catch their rideshare. Picture a woman sitting next to an open window, hair blowing vertically because all the windows are open, as she tries to apply makeup using her phone camera. Couple stops on the way to pick up keys to their new apartment, where they will be moving in five days, hence the precarious towers of cardboard scattered around their home. Couple climbs out of rideshare. Wife still has vertical hair, complemented by mascara on only one eye. Wife scurries into restroom hoping nobody will try to take her picture as it is not Halloween. While the doors have not yet opened, wife feels that she is 20 minutes late. She was supposed to help set up the table for the door prizes. When you see a normal, average person, it can be hard to tell that that person is having a tough time. Not unless he still has blood on his face or she is still walking around with her hair pointing toward the ceiling. This has been a tough year. I signed on to fill an office, and almost immediately my personal life exploded. I had a devastating death in the family, my husband traveled for work 21 out of 50 weeks, our dog was diagnosed with a liver tumor and given two months to live, and I started having migraines and night terrors again. Then there were all the oral surgeries and now we’re moving. The hardest part has been our inconsiderate upstairs neighbors, who are only reliably quiet between midnight and 4:30 am. I’m so tired all the time I feel like I have amnesia, or maybe dementia. I have felt scattered, disorganized, guilty, desperate, and often incompetent every day for the past twelve months. Yet how do I explain the trophies? Oh, sure, I did the work. I did it all and I did it well. A lot of the stuff I did was not even mentioned. I wasn’t just an area director, I had a Distinguished area. I may have been a Spark Plug for one person, but I also coached a club from two members to twenty-one and trained officers from two districts and five divisions. I did all the stuff they mentioned for the Above and Beyond trophy, and I also did three other similarly-scaled projects that weren’t on the list. Not only that, but I also co-chaired a conference in another district, completed four award levels, completed all the work for my Distinguished Toastmaster except for faxing in the final paperwork, ran a campaign, and won a contested election. It feels weird and inappropriate to actually list off all the stuff I did over the past twelve months. It doesn’t seem real, or fair, or something I can’t quite name. I’m having a lot of trouble reconciling my self-image with my outer image, my emotions with what is apparently objective fact. Why do I FEEL like an incompetent slacker loser? Why do I constantly feel like I am procrastinating when objectively, I get so much done? They say it’s Impostor Syndrome. That when we’re growing and learning, it means we’re working outside our comfort zone. That the only way to never feel like an impostor is to only do things we know we can handle 100%, like making toast or putting our shoes on the correct feet. Can’t I just feel for one day like I’m on top of everything? Can’t I just for one day feel like I know what I’m doing? Every day in Toastmasters has been a battle for me, every day since the first day, when I stood shaking like a leaf and barely able to say my name. My fight against shyness, social phobia, and pathological stage fright has been one of the toughest things I’ve ever done. It looks like nothing and it feels like someone should call me an ambulance. I have felt that I would collapse if I took another step. I have felt like sprinting for the exit. I have felt like crying and I have felt like I would black out and hit the floor. I never did. I forced myself and I kept going. Oh, it’s hard. It’s hard sometimes. People say I’m a great speaker now. Most of the time, I’m not scared anymore. People notice that I show up and I’m willing to help out anywhere I am asked. Sometimes they tease me about being District Director one day. Let’s not be getting ahead of ourselves, I say. The analogy I gave earlier is that I feel like I’m constantly falling up a flight of stairs. I trip and stumble and bounce from one step to another, and somehow I always seem to stick the landing, breathless and rumpled. How far can someone tumble upstairs, though? The truth is that we can’t tell how other people feel by looking at them, we can only tell if we ask. I have no way of knowing whether all my friends and peers feel just as uncertain and overwhelmed as I do. Maybe they also shun the spotlight and work out of a sense of duty and curiosity, maybe they also find themselves up there trying to be gracious when they’d rather peek out from under a tablecloth. What I’ve found in my case is that my emotions are rarely appropriate to the occasion, and they always try to steer me wrong. I’ve found that my stress level is always about the same, even when I’m doing 10x more than I previously did at that exact same mix of neurochemistry. I’ve found that I am not good at feelings like pride or satisfaction or fun or relaxation. I am a tightly wound person, and I probably always will be, and I may as well use some of that energy to benefit society. This is why I occasionally go above and beyond, because acceptable and enough isn’t really in my comfort zone. My first day at WDS, “all I did” was check in to my hotel, register, and go to one meetup. Then, thunderbolt from the blue, I made an instant friend!
Kismet doesn’t usually happen at your house. It happens when you get up and go somewhere where there are other people, preferably on a similar wavelength. This is the best reason to go to conferences and workshops. The kismet thing is even funnier from my new friend’s perspective. Just the night before, she spontaneously went to an event, where she met a workshop facilitator, and then had the bright idea to go to this person’s next event. We happened to sit next to each other. From the moment we started talking, we felt an unusually strong connection. Two days ago, I was already in town, already packed, already registered, my annual lightning-bolt disruption experience carefully planned. This is my fourth year, and I bring fully formed expectations of making fabulous new friends and having life-altering conversations. I’m, you might say, a ringer. My friend, though, two days ago she was just living her life. Suddenly she stumbled down the rabbit hole, not even having heard of this event going on across the street from her office. Are you hearing this? Are you?? These types of encounters are available to you the moment you disrupt your routine. Go somewhere new and different, introduce yourself to strangers, be open to new ideas and new conversations. Maybe even across the street from your building? The workshop itself, the meetup, I should tell you about this because it was excellent. Marli Williams. Check her out. She’s a genius and she changes lives so often that she may be sorta kinda taking it for granted. This particular meetup was called: “How to Be an EPIC Facilitator Who Changes Lives.” A lot of us had *aha!* reactions to the concept of facilitating rather than teaching. I took vigorous notes and already feel like I have had a major perceptual shift around facilitating meetings and events. Picture the room. It’s literally standing-room only. A few people standing in the back could sit on the floor if they chose, but honestly there is so much energy in the space that one would find it hard to remain seated. Every person present is there for an extremely specific message, which is how to be a leader and change lives. See that this attracts a very particular type of person and a certain mindset. The more specific you can get when you are dialing in to a new friend wavelength, the easier the click will be. Pull back a moment. What if I had sat next to someone else? Was there another person in the room (or more than one) who might also have felt like an instant friend? MAYBE! The point is to set aside the time, to be open to the possibility, to make room for friendship. It feels like people used to be better about this, about having long timeless evenings of conversation and laughter. On a weeknight! Everyone got ready to go. We turned to each other. “Do you want to go somewhere? Like, now?” “Yes!” “What do you want to do?” *shrug* We wound up drinking tea and bogarting a booth in a bar for, what, three hours? Exchanging life stories and talking about every single thing ever. Have you ever been swept away and smitten by a new friend? When was the last time? This is something I want for the world, and also the reason I’m interested in event planning and facilitating workshops in the first place. If I could lead a discussion and have it end with new friends walking out the door together, I’d die happy. Probably even if it only happened once! Friendship. Out of all things, isn’t it something the world could use a lot more of? When I went to my first World Domination Summit, I was lit up and inspired by the academies and the keynote speakers. I took pages and pages of notes and felt a serious case of FoMO about all the times I couldn’t be in three places at once. With each year that’s gone by, I’ve felt more like I’m here for the people I will meet, and that the event content is more of a side attraction. Oh, yes, this person has published a book / runs an annual event / has a website / has a podcast and I can catch up later. But ***this person*** will only cross my path for two hours unless I do something drastic *** Like get vulnerable and reach out and say “Hey, I like you” And “Do you want to go somewhere? So we can talk more?” *** Sometimes people say “sure” and then they talk themselves out of it later. That’s because most of our interaction with other people is via alphabet letters these days. Or memes or emojis, but... We aren’t doing much, culturally, about sitting across from each other and listening intently and making a magical conversation bubble. Face to face, voice to voice, laughing in stereo. As I write about this, as I get very worked up about the power of friendship, I start picturing all my older friendships. I have not been present for my old friends lately and I feel sad and full of fails about that. Then I think, that is not friendship. No real friend would want someone to associate guilt or sadness or failure with that friendship! Right? That’s my call to action here. Reach out to someone, someone you like. Make a new friend, step closer to an acquaintance, call up someone you haven’t talked to in a while. Say hi, tell them why you’re thinking about them. I told the waitress for our section that we had just met and we felt like we’d been friends for twenty years. I told her she should watch for who sat in our booth next, and see if it looked like they had picked up on that vibe. Maybe her curiosity and expectation will influence the next party to sit there. Maybe they’ll have a crazy amount of fun and have no idea why! Maybe it will be you and your friend? Maybe I can carry that feeling into the next workshop I lead. Maybe I can, maybe anyone can, create a space where people feel like friends are all around them, waiting to be made. I won my election as Division Director in Toastmasters!
This is the first time I’ve won an elected office. Another kid encouraged me to run for class president in sixth grade, and I didn’t win. Since that time, I’ve held a number of offices in various clubs, but never in a contested election. I’m not a very competitive person; in fact, I have a distaste for competing and I tend to prefer to serve in the background. I’m motivated mostly by two forces: curiosity, and a feeling of duty. As long as I’m interested in doing something, I feel like I might as well be helping out and contributing. This is why you’ll often see me moving tables and chairs, picking up litter, or submitting reports. Not only do I not need to be in the spotlight, I actively avoid it. At least I used to until I decided it was time to get over my aversion to public speaking. Did I say ‘aversion’? Another way to say it is that I began with a level of stage fright that I have only seen surpassed by three or four people. It turns out that in an organization like Toastmasters, this willingness to work hard, coupled with the drive to push yourself past your comfort zone, is recognized and rewarded. This makes it dangerous for a shy person who wants to avoid the spotlight. As an area director, I was asked to apply for a position as division director. Sure, I thought, if you need me, I can at least go through the motions. Then my application was approved. Then I did my panel interview, and I was nominated unanimously. I wrote my candidate statement and designed my campaign poster and had it printed and mounted. Embarrassed every step of the way! The last thing I wanted was to be putting up a big old poster with a head shot of myself on it. I moved from a desire to do a competent job. As far as I knew, I was running uncontested. ***[foreshadowing]*** The day of the conference arrived. I was fighting a cold and short three hours of sleep, but I arrived early for the business meeting. Let’s just get through this and then I can focus on preparing for next year’s term, right? The way this typically works, one candidate is nominated for each of a slate of positions, and the elections are somewhat of a formality. Everyone knows each other, and everyone on the slate has just spent at least a year serving the district in one office or another. We’ve had plenty of time to form impressions. There’s an opportunity for other members to run a “floor campaign,” in which they submit the appropriate paperwork and then have a club officer nominate them from the audience. Sometimes the candidate knows there will be a competitor months in advance. Other times, the floor campaign might be a surprise. This is what happened. First, there was a floor campaign for Program Quality Director, and the floor campaign won. Then, there was a floor campaign for one of the division director positions, and the floor campaign won. The nominated candidate for that division, having lost his election, suddenly decided to run against me and try to win my division. This is technically perfectly legitimate, and it’s been done before, although I did not know this at the time. In practice, it rarely works. Rationally it makes sense: games have rules. Physically, my body reacted as though I had been attacked. My heart hammered and all the blood drained from my face. Alphabetically I’d have to go first. I understood that I had approximately one minute to prepare to give a campaign speech, walk up onto the stage, take the microphone, and speak in front of over two hundred people. Are you kidding me with this?? Emotionally I felt one thing. BETRAYAL. What a weird and medieval word. In my mind I fully understood that this was *not personal.* In point of fact, I had helped this man with his campaign. I had noticed that he didn’t have his poster made, and I went out of my way to help him with resources. I knew he had nothing against me, that this was about him and his personal ambitions and the rules of the game. The undeniable fact that my body was flooded with stress chemicals, and that my emotions were thoroughly activated, was irksome to me. I hardly needed the distraction of my emo, weepy inner child when I had a speech to give. But my heart was still pounding so hard I could barely see straight. My arms were shaking, not trembling but shaking. I took the mic and walked out, feeling utterly unprepared, with my natural hair. Yet another emotional hot button for me. If I had understood that I would be performing this morning, I would certainly have gotten out my flat iron! I gave one of the most lackluster speeches of my speaking career. No idea if anyone else felt that way, but I know that I did not meet my own standards. Tired, kinda ill, frumpy, shaken up, such a frazzled mess that I actually... said... ‘um.’ (I’m legendary for my almost perfectly clean speeches and lack of vocal tics). I’d just heard my rival speak. He wore a suit, and he was so vibrant and charismatic, I knew I couldn’t match his performance on my best day. Oh well. I spelled out my platform and how glad I was to work with such fine people in such a fine district, one with such high standards. My speech was probably too short, but I just wanted to be done and go sit down before I fell down. I felt like I might faint and I didn’t want to do it up there. Then my opponent spoke. He looked great, he owned the stage, he sounded completely pumped. My heart sank. Then they went off to count the ballots, and the next ten minutes felt like ten hours. My arms were still shaking. I won. I had 39% more votes. My rival hadn’t gained a single vote. This basically meant that everyone who voted for him the first time voted for him the second time, which is great. He’d successfully built a base of people who knew him and respected his work. The contest was between his clearly superior performance on stage and my carefully developed platform. His ambitious power move and my reputation. It’s entirely possible that some of the votes weren’t so much for me as they were against my opponent’s strategy. Afterward, a number of people came up to congratulate me and, in some cases, dish about what happened. I realized that time after time, I was talking to someone I had helped in some way. We had worked together side by side and I had shown up for them, as they were showing up for me. My rival came up during lunch to shake my hand and say, hey, no hard feelings. I reminded him that on the bright side, he was now eligible to compete in speech contests again! I told him he was twice the speaker I am, and I encouraged him to compete next year. The reason I am not competitive is that I don’t think it proves anything. If I’m up against someone and they win, then I’m not learning by competing with them, I’m learning by watching them. If I win, then it might just be because I’m more experienced or because someone else had a headache that day. Winning doesn’t help me improve; improving helps me win. If I’m truly focused on improving, then winning one day is irrelevant for the next day. I play the long game. When I’m in, I’m in for my own reasons. The competition is between Yesterday Me and Tomorrow Me, and Tomorrow Me had better come out ahead. The real game is building allies, working together for a common cause. I never know where I’ll be in relation to everyone else three years from now. I do know where I’ll be next year, and that’s filling out a ballot to help choose my successor, because hey! I won my election! “Your paycheck is your thank-you.” Every manager and employer seems to think this. Almost no employees agree. This is a huge mystery to me, partly because it takes a split second to say “thank you” and it costs nothing. Why would this be so hard to do? Check the box! Even the brattiest four-year-old is capable of begrudgingly grinding out a forced thank-you. Just say it. Geez. It’s basic good manners.
Beyond gratitude, I’m starting to find that there is one more free thing that most people find terrifically motivating, and that is praise. Even the tiniest amount of praise! It’s hard to come by in this world and people are hungry for it. They may not even realize that they’re orienting their entire lives around a chance to hear a few words of approval. The art of the extremely specific compliment is something I’ve been honing for years. I’ve found that if you say something true and positive that is not necessarily obvious, you can utterly transform someone’s attitude. You can sometimes also transform their self-concept. They won’t be able to stop thinking about what you said. I’ve heard from people years after the fact, that they remembered something I said about them, something I don’t even remember having said. That’s partly because I do this all the time. It’s a routine, like leaving a tip or waving goodbye. When I started learning to give evaluations in Toastmasters, it amplified this art of the extremely specific compliment. It’s fairly easy to give someone one sentence about something they did well. Try extending that to two or three minutes, and it takes more thought. It’s possible to give the same piece of advice in multiple ways. Say your feedback is that someone [isn’t talking loud enough] because [nobody can hear them in the back of the room]. Honestly that comes across as criticism. To a vulnerable novice who is feeling extremely nervous and inadequate, that feedback can be devastating! One piece of relatively mild critique instead of effusive support and praise can stop that person from ever trying again. Slip that critique in between four or five compliments, and it’s easier to take. Phrase it instead as helpful advice, something that explains how to fix the issue, and you have their attention. “You can work on projecting by aiming your voice at the back wall. [Demonstrate posture and voice projection]. That will start to happen as you feel more comfortable.” Nothing about this comes across as a critique, because it isn’t. THEN include the praise, support, and encouragement. My goal is to mention at least twelve things the person is doing well. I also look for something unique, a special talent that this person may not realize is hidden in there, in amongst the insecurity and inexperience. I sometimes run out of time to point out all the things the person is doing well, so if I think of more, I’ll pull them aside and tell them afterward, or write them a note later. This works. No fewer than four of mine just won first place in different speaking contests. If I had been more critical and less supportive, they might not be there at all. I WAS RIGHT. My praise was technically accurate, precise, and correct. They knew it. They rose to the level of my expectations, which is what people always do. This is what happens when you make a habit of lavish praise. People notice. They take it in. Their eyes glitter. The next time they see you, they sit up straight and wave. Make people feel seen in the best way, and they’ll never forget you. Why can’t people do this at work? There’s another trick that can be added to this art of the extremely specific compliment. That is to praise someone who isn’t there. If you’re consistently heard “spreading gossip” of the positive variety, it becomes clear that this is your pattern of behavior. It reinforces this concept that your praise is to be believed. If someone hears you say something positive and true about another person, and they agree with your assessment, it helps them believe the nice things you had to say about them, too. People usually don’t believe it when someone pays a compliment. We’re taught to brush it off. We expect all performance evaluations to be negative and painful. Why, though? It’s entirely possible to hold people accountable for their performance without going negative. If you get the motivation and incentives down right, though, you don’t usually need the accountability. What’s wrong with the work world for a lot of people is that they’re expected to comply with someone else’s strict rules and regulations. They’re only really noticed if they mess up, by coming in late, missing a deadline, or doing a task imperfectly. They start to feel flinchy about even walking in the door. They start to wake up with dread in the pit of their stomach. They start feeling depressed all day on their day off, unable to stop thinking about how much they hate going in to work. What does that do to performance? Seriously? How can that kind of emotional environment possibly motivate people to work harder or do a better job? This is why I talk about the praise engine. When people are noticed for doing well, when they are praised for bringing something special, when it’s clear that they’re offering something unique and valuable, then they associate the work with their identity. They start working for pride and personal satisfaction. At that point you don’t need to motivate them to work - you need to motivate them to take breaks and go home, because otherwise you can’t stop them. Not only that. When you start up the praise engine, other people start to learn to operate it. They learn by your example. You start hearing other people give evaluations and teach methods in your style. You realize you’ve created a culture that propagates itself. Get yourself a praise engine. It fuels itself. It costs nothing to run. It builds copies of itself and does its own maintenance. It’s also a lot easier and cheaper than having to continually replace all your unmotivated, demoralized staff. If you hate affirmations, you have three choices right now. 1. Hate-read! That’s always fun. 2. Stop now and spend the next ten minutes reading or doing something else. 3. Activate your curiosity and hear me out.
You’re right, affirmations are dumb. It’s dumb to lie to yourself and try to hypnotize yourself into something that you know isn’t true. That’s not how I use affirmations, though. I use them, but first I put them through my process of inquiry. Aren’t you lucky that I’m going to share it with you? (Here you could practice an affirmation: I AM LUCKY, and ask yourself whether you believe that is generally true, or only just now). I am happy to make affirmations about my personal values, because I’m reminding myself of things I believe are important. I AM PATIENT, I remind myself, the few times that I need a reminder. I value patience and I practice it. I’m fine with giving myself credit for that. On the other hand, I would not do the affirmation I AM BEAUTIFUL, because I don’t give a care. That’s not a quality that matters to me. In fact, I find the concept annoying. I also absolutely hate the expression “comfortable in my own skin” because every time I hear it, it makes my skin crawl. Like, what are the other options? Comfortable out of your skin? Comfortable in someone else’s skin?? I fit the description - I have a fantastic body image and a very high regard for my physical self - (and see how I sneaked in a few extra affirmations there) - but I certainly don’t need to use other people’s preferred language to express that about myself. I will be delighted when this phrase falls out of favor and I can quit hearing it. That’s another step in my affirmation interrogation. If I generally like the concept of someone else’s affirmation, I will rephrase it and adopt it for myself. It’s poetic. Maybe one person might respond better to an affirmation in the form of a haiku, or a request, such as MAY I BE PATIENT or: I’m getting better At tolerating these jerks Though I don’t want to. I AM A POET! Argue that one if you like. I say if you claim to be an artist, then you are one. Presto change-o. I also think affirmations work very well as missives of gratitude, such as I FREAKING LOVE TACOS or THIS IS MY FAVORITE! Hang around me long enough and you’ll find that I say stuff like this all the time. Pro tip: You can do this stuff without ever publicly declaring that you are doing it, or making any kind of issue out of it. This is especially important if you find yourself amongst naysayers or those who describe themselves as “fluent in sarcasm.” Ha, now there’s an affirmation if I ever heard one! It comes up in dating profiles all the time. I AM FLUENT IN SARCASM. *snort* (That one is definitely not mine. I think sarcasm is very lazy, mean, and not at all funny). The thing about affirmations is that for most of us, our self-image is far behind where we are actually presenting in the world. Try to compliment a woman - any woman! - and watch what happens. She will fight you. It’s like we’ve collectively decided that there’s a moral hazard in graciously accepting someone’s compliment. That’s the same feeling that makes us so squirmy about affirmations. It feels icky and gross. We’re much better at the nasty kind of negative self-talk, such as: * i am an idiot * Or * i suck at this * Or * i should never have come here * If anyone comes along and tries to talk us out of these dreadful thoughts, we feel compelled to argue our point. Please, let me explain to you in meticulous detail just why exactly I suck so much. I’ve spent some time convincing myself that what is truly important is that this other person, this tricky complimenter, is reaching out and trying to make a connection. Rejecting a compliment is more than just rejecting a gift, it’s rejecting a person and telling them that their opinion and their act of caring means nothing to you. Also, what if they’re right? What if, when they tell you YOU’RE SO SWEET or MMM, YOU’RE THE BEST HUGGER, what if they’re right? What if you allow that factual statement to define you such that you bring more of that desirable quality into the culture? What if compliments are people’s preferred way of building a better world? What if they’re... a performance evaluation? This is how I got myself into trouble. I started forcing myself to do public speaking because I knew myself to be a physical coward. <— Negation alert! Part of public speaking is learning to accept evaluations. You have to accept that if people who don’t know each other give the same feedback, then objectively it’s true. For instance: “Nobody can hear you in the back of the room.” Okay, thanks for telling me! I steadied myself to hear a constant barrage of difficult feedback, because I like to challenge and push myself [yeah, you know what that was just now, *nod*]. Instead, people kept telling me: YOU ARE SO FUNNY! Dang. Now how am I supposed to get my head around that? I didn’t agree with this assessment, but I kept hearing it. People from entirely different clubs would say the exact same thing, over and over, that I had “such a dry sense of humor.” I’m still not entirely sure what that means, but what am I going to do, call these people a bunch of liars? I had to accept that whatever it was I was doing, the audience liked it and wanted more of it. Who was I to refuse? As an affirmation, I wouldn’t go so far as to say I AM SO FUNNY, because that’s practically inviting my inner self to step up with an attack and a negation. I can, though, tell myself that my strong points in speaking are humor, research, and informational speeches. What comes out of that kind of affirmation is a resume. It leads directly to a dispassionate and objective assessment of your marketable skills. That in turn leads to better jobs and contributing at a higher level. Is it fair for a surgeon to affirm that I CAN SAVE LIVES? Is it fair to say something like I AM ACCURATE or I AM CAREFUL or I WORK HARD? Can we grudgingly allow ourselves to admit, secretly and in private, that maybe we’re not 100% terrible? If we come across an affirmation with which we disagree, shouldn’t we ask ourselves why we feel that it is not true? Something like I AM WORTHY or I DESERVE TO BE HAPPY? This is how I use affirmations. I introduce something that is new to my self-concept, something that objectively seems to be true. I talk myself into why this is true and why it matters that I agree with it. It’s allowed because we’re allowed to grow and change. In fact, we’re supposed to, partly because it makes life better for other people. Whatever you are, be a good one. |
AuthorI've been working with chronic disorganization, squalor, and hoarding for over 20 years. I'm also a marathon runner who was diagnosed with fibromyalgia and thyroid disease 17 years ago. This website uses marketing and tracking technologies. Opting out of this will opt you out of all cookies, except for those needed to run the website. Note that some products may not work as well without tracking cookies. Opt Out of CookiesArchives
January 2022
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