Choose yourself, again and again.

Years ago, at my consulting job, my manager came up to me on the third day and said, “let’s practice your introduction to the client so you could lose the accent and irrelevant details”. It took a few more such instances in the next three months to realize those “irrelevant details” were my life story, and it was not for him to alter or gloss as a way to represent the sharpest consultants. By the end of the fourth month, I left that job. 

Right after my graduation, I was interviewing over zoom for an out-of-state tech-related role. The day was lined up with back-to-back hour-long interviews with the principals, directors, VP, HR group…all the ones you expect to meet in-person for your onsite interview. After 2nd conversation of the day, the people for my 3rd conversation onwards never showed up. On waiting for about 3-ish hours on the zoom, looking at myself intermittently (thinking who knows? In case they show up), the recruiter called me to say that the panel decided to hire me for another role as that appeared to them better suiting with my skills. I had until the end of the day to confirm the offer. I said no.

Over the past few months, I have come to observe, learn, appreciate and vocalize the lived experiences of many individuals from different communities. As a consultant in Philanthropy, there are times when I come across consulting practices across various organizations with philanthropic practices that are non-inclusive to the core. And while those organizations have not consciously created those practices, still, they are not intentionally trying to break it either. I step away from such organizations as and when I can, even if that means taking a step back.

I am sharing these snippets of my life book to tell you – choose yourself, again and again. Our true core has everything it needs to enable us to succeed in life, to be a better version of ourselves over the years. Choosing yourself when the time asks you to step up is your way to protect that core. Besides, the pandemic has indeed impacted our core, certain times in ways that we are not aware of ourselves. We see/read structured recovery plans for economies but have we ever paused to ask ourselves – what’s my plan to recover? Or, taking a step further back, what do I need to recover from? In this article, I want to outline three life situations related to our profession when you should slow down to evaluate if and how you could choose yourself.

#1. When you are currently actively employed

While our circumstances differ with limited flexibility to ask yourself the following questions yet, do not hesitate to think about these questions when you can:

1. Evaluate the sustainability of your role (both pre and during COVID). Is that still a one-person job?
2. Evaluate your mental health and happiness (both now and the future, i.e., after the COVID era) .

I believe we grew by more than a year during a pandemic. Some more than others, maybe, but we all did. With those changes in your personal beliefs and understanding, does your job still provide you opportunities of realizing your impact in a way you intend to?

3. Evaluate your organization’s values and culture (both pre and during COVID).

Like I mentioned above – we all went through personal growth in varying degrees. Do your organization’s values and culture align with your values? Did they align before?

#2. When you are interviewing for a potential job

 Apart from following the usual best practices of growth mindset induced interview techniques, watch out for the following indicators in your conversations with your potential employer:

1. Ask them about their past campaign details from the perspective of the organization.

Carefully listen if the response included more of those six or seven-digit plus figure donors only or rather all donors? Did they surround the majority of the response around donors, or did the response appropriately include the community that their campaign impacted?

2. Ask them how they would articulate their impact and success.

Again, listen carefully. Was it more about the top donors or the community? Did they build their response around relationship building?

3. Ask them how do they handle organizational/team failures?

We all fall and fail in life. That’s human. Observe them see were they comfortable to show/share any vulnerability? Do they embrace failures?

#3. When you just moved out of a job

Unless you move into another job directly after your current employment, there will always be an immediate space after a job ends when we are “blank”. When I left my job a few months ago, my first week was all about randomly looking at my phone during lunch hour for another email or a work text. It is natural, but it is you who can manage that time better. So, in those first few days after you move out of that last job:

1. Reflect and create a list of items you learned from that past job – skills, behavioral or emotional. This list is your source of strength for your following chapters.
2. Reflect and create a list of times/tasks you feel you could differently handle/manage – skills-wise, behaviorally, or emotionally. This list is your reminder to yourself of when you need to stand up and protect yourself.
3. Embrace the “slow-phase” as your success. We are so used to working towards and chasing goals and metrics that often, it is hard to define success without something tangible. Pause. Enjoy this phase with books you always wanted to read, shows you could never watch, or pick up that online course for a skill you wanted to learn. Your success is nothing but your happiness.