Why Being Stubborn Pays Off
I want to dedicate this entire article to my friend Aini Zariyah. Because, I think we need to talk more about other people than ourselves, and draw inspirations from people we know instead of top speakers and celebrities on this platform.
PS: Aini, don't hate me for writing this :-)
It feels good to have a friend who is a big shot. That's what Aini Zariyah was to me when she became the marketing girl for W Bali back in 2012. That job made us cross the line from being cordial acquaintances to true friends. She always remembered she had heard about the vacant position from me. I always remembered that she invited me to cool parties, including my first silent disco ever, at the beachfront hotel.
Then in her early thirties, she took up a life-changing role at the first St. Regis Resort in Maldives as Director of Marketing Communications. I was super-impressed, so proud that my actual friend nabbed that job. I imagined she was living her life, dealing with international crowds, traveling around the world, becoming that "successful" someone that the younger version of us could only dream of.
That phase of life, sadly, did not last long. She came back to Indonesia, trying to reconnect but something was not right. She was rather lost along the way. At least that was how I saw it. So, I tried to help. I shared some interesting job vacancies from some friends; I encouraged her to learn a new language to spice up her life, even to start dating. I offered many suggestions, but she was enjoying her slow-down. She was surprisingly fine for not holding a job for a certain period of time. I wondered ... why ...
And I did ask her, "Why?", when she told me she eventually accepted a rather entry or executive position in a prestigious agency in Jakarta. She said she needed a change. She wanted to reinvent herself. I took a step back and shrugged, not sure what to say. That job soon kept her busy, and we spoke less and less.
Five years later, we agreed to reconnect and hang out together once more. Almost immediately, we chatted for hours, as if everything was just yesterday. I believe in life you would meet many kinds of soulmates; and Aini is my work soulmate. She works as hard, if not harder, than I do. And we love talking about work, growing up, professionalism and adulting. By this time, many things had happened, not excluding the global pandemic. We had also changed much. I had already moved from one industry to another while she was still in that agency, yet forever intrigued to learn something new.
I asked her about what had happened back then after that reputable hotelier role. "I wanted to try something new," she started. But, why would she risk her CV for seemingly jumping off the cliff just to reach a much lower hill outside her turf? She said that it was all her own decision. Her stubbornness pushed herself further to prove herself despite the long hours. Only later did she reveal how lonely it had been to work and live in Maldives. That experience made her so grateful to be given a chance to work in an agency surrounded by enthusiastic people. "It's a good place to learn," she said again.
I was still unsure, so I dared ask: "Don't you regret taking that job after being a director in a very high-end brand?"
She paused for a moment but solidly confirmed, "no." I hesitated to inquire further. "Now I can see that I was a director who thought success was measured by how many projects I could handle, how big the network I had, what the number was. That is not it."
Aini told me that by re-learning from ground up in a different industry, she appreciated more people, better understood how personal success is. She had seen how some friends treated her differently when she was the director and after. She had experienced both sides now.
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I said to her that she might just have been the most stubborn person I had known. To singularly have one ambition to "learn in a new field" takes great courage. To not be tied down by work ego for a nice title, she was both naive and inspiring. I felt like she was indirectly showing me ways to be humble albeit strong-willed, to never feel satisfied and never fear struggles.
I confessed to her that I thought jobs change people - like we became friends when she got that fun job at W; like she went MIA after going into the agency. But, it wasn't true. It was just adulting she had to do. The fact that we remain friends no matter what professional roles we hold or wherever we are in the world shows that jobs do not change us enough to make us strangers.
To celebrate twelve years of our work-ship/friendship relationship, we decided to challenge ourselves with a 20,000-step walk once a week. Three weeks in now, I can see why this is not only very ambitious but also an idea only the stubborns would do. We crossed the Kuningan bridge on foot, walked from Monas to Kota Tua, chatted with strangers around Jakarta: security guards, waitresses, old man sitting next a cat, etc. I don't know for how many weeks we would keep doing this routine, but spending time with someone as stubborn and passionate about work as you are is a dear moment to remember.
Aini, thank you for being a friend, work advisor, fellow hotelier and other titles to come. Let's stay stubborn.