Stop.

My usual morning routine involves pressing snooze half a dozen times and then dragging myself out of bed, while getting ready I'm usually checking my email, having a look at my calendar and working out what I'm going to have to get done during the day. This morning as I was finishing getting ready I grabbed my usual hair product that I've been using for about the last four years and stopped and thought to myself, 'wow, this smells really nice'. 

It struck me at the time that I've been using a product for so long, every single day, but never once realised what it smelt like because my head is usually somewhere else. I'm usually so wrapped up in what I'm going to be doing, or what I think is going to happen that I don't stop to be present in the moment.

There has been a lot of change in my life in the last year, (well change is a constant regardless) and when I look back I think about the missed opportunities to really be present to what was happening. Whether it was to appreciate the brilliant moments, the wins or to pay attention to the parts that hurt. 

We're all constantly focused on moving forward, the next win, the next engagement, the next project, that when we have something great in front of us we don't see it.

It's hard to be present. It's hard to not get wrapped up in thinking about the future or to get bogged down in details. But it's amazing to have those moments, however brief and be able to see what is in front of us.

Whatever we think the future might hold for us is irrelevant, because what we're doing right now is the only thing that's real. 

It's Not a Destination

We've all heard the saying, you can't be happy with someone else until you can be happy with yourself, there's plenty written about this, but does it make it right? I think that we spend so much time trying to be happy that we don't realise happiness is a state of mind, it's not a destination. We don't go through our lives doing things, feeling bad and getting hurt and then get to a point where nothing bad happens again and we're suddenly at happy. 

Perhaps, we should be striving for satisfaction instead. The reality is that we need to have connectivity to be happy, we need to feel loved and cared for and that our life counts for something. So to say that you can't be happy with others unless you're happy with yourself is a little simplistic. Maybe you can't appreciate it as much, but there are times when we need people in our lives to stick around, to deal with the bad parts and prove that we're worth it. Sometimes, we put ourselves out there and we get hurt, we declare our love and get rejected, relationships end, conflicts arise. Ultimately, we will be able to move on from these things and but sometimes when you're in it it's hard to know it will end.

There are times when the person we want in our life won't be able to be there and that hurts, it's at these times that we can forget about the other people in our lives. But if you're able to look up and out, you see the people that matter are the ones that are still there, that turn up, and drag you out of the house.

Right now, I'm not at the place I want to be and I think it's pretty obvious to anyone that's reading this. Eventually I'll be ok, and I'm still working out how I'm going to get there. One way is to let people know where I'm at and ask for help on the bad days and to trust in people that they'll be there. 

When there is no one else then I think about a memory, about a time when I was at peace and not scared of anything. I had just graduated year 12 and was lying on a lilo in my best friend's swimming pool 25 kms from the nearest town. I was staring up at the sky, at the vastness of the stars above me and enjoying the complete silence and serenity.

I don't know what's next, I'm not sure how I'm going to get there, but I know that the people in my life that matter will stick around. 

Emotions Aren't Logical

I could tell you how many people are injured on our roads each year, the debilitating injuries that people have to live with for the rest of their lives and the ripple effect of these events. But numbers, figures and statistics won't mean very much, they won't convince you that you need to be careful and mindful of the people that are around you and the damage that you might do.

Or I could show you this video

And now tell me, how do you feel?

I know one of the families in the video, their son was in the year below me at school. He was killed by his drunk best mate when he was 18. This video causes an emotional reaction, it makes me nauseous and sad and angry. When we're trying to convince someone to get on side with a change campaign or to help us in a cause we can tell them the numbers or we can find out what will drive them to help.

This isn't about manipulating people, but about realising what drives people, what motivates people and to cut out the fluff, drop the BS and get authentic. Today I heard someone say that no one is opposed to change, they are opposed to the way that it is presented to them. When we want to get someone on side we have to find out what they want, to prepare them for what is going to happen and to allay their fears.

I can tell you the pros and cons of a project, but when you make a decision it will not be based on this.

We believe in logic, in making rational decisions and that feelings aren't part of business. But our humanity, our emotions and our desire to be connected and part of a community are far more powerful than a graph.

The Job: One Year Anniversary

It's one year since I walked into Deloitte as an employee and it's pretty great to be sitting here now and to be honest I'm a little bit smug too. Around 18 months ago I was getting told I was being foolish, using a blog would never work to get a job and writing posts like this one would surely get me fired. It's not the way it works, you can't target the company and get them to hire you. There is too much risk, if you focus on one company then you're shutting out all of your other options.

But that was the point, Deloitte was the company I wanted to work for, and the more time I spent researching, talking to people and finding out about it the more I wanted to work here. So that is what I focused on, I realised that I could stay where I was, which was safe, secure and guaranteed (but unhappy) or I could take a risk, put myself out there, and take a chance that I would fail. I wasn't successfully initially, I applied for a role in People and Performance and didn't get it. But I kept trying, I looked at my strategy and I refocused. I took the rejection in my stride and I kept going. 

Sure, it hurts to get rejected, to be unsuccessful and to try something and fail, but if it's something you really want then you'll keep trying. Eventually I got the attention of Pete Williams and while initially there wasn't a role for me, when one became available Pete called me and a week after my interview I was accepting a role with Deloitte Digital. Pete has written his side of the story here.

There has been a lot written about what I did to get my role here and it gained a large amount of attention for being different and innovative, but the reality is that the reason it worked for me wasn't that extraordinary. I created relationships with people, I gained the support of people and I had individuals around me who were willing to vouch for me (this post goes into more detail).

A year on the question is, do I have The Job? While I was initially looking for a Human Resources role the position I ended up accepting was quite different, sitting within Deloitte Digital I have been involved in the Leadership Academy and the internal side of social media. I am extremely happy that I am in Digital, it's a fantastic part of the business to be in, full of fired up people who give a damn about what they're doing. 

My role is not yet 'The Job', that's still a work in progress (I'm focusing on moving into more of a social media role full time). But I can say for certain that I am with The Company I want to be with and that I can see myself with for a number of anniversaries yet.

Once Bitten, Twice Shy

I've been having a lot of confronting and raw conversations lately, sometimes it's me spilling my guts, other times it's one of my friends and I've realised that the only way that we can have these conversations is if we drop the facade and stop being scared of what people think. We have to give into being terrified and feeling like a failure.

A friend forwarded on an article yesterday which discusses a study around why and how people learn differently and the way our behaviours are shaped from childhood. The study found that when given a series of tests students who became scared of failure or not living up to the praise they had received earlier such as, 'you must be smart at this' gave up more easily or picked more simple problems.

Yet the other students who were praised for their hard work dealt better with setbacks or not being able to solve the problems. They tried other options, and wanted to learn from others who had succeeded with the puzzles. We are conditioned to try and avoid failure when we think we will be judged for it, yet making mistakes is part of learning and part of innovation and growth.

When we're creating a product, writing a report or designing a strategy we prototype, we redesign, we ask for help and we improve. When has the first draft of anything you've done ever been as good as the end result?

We want to be good, to be right and to not have to feel defeat, but from adversity and failure comes resilience. It's easy to be happy when things are good and everything is working for you but when you mess up, when you hit the bottom, that's when you start to see who you are.

There are some aspects of life where once we've made a mistake and felt vulnerable, embarrassed or humiliated we'll do anything to avoid feeling like that again. So instead of learning from it, making a new model, a new prototype or a new approach, we avoid, we shun and we don't learn.

How differently would we feel about making mistakes if we just realised this? 

Speaking Up Hurts Less

I wrote this post for a different blog, but it didn't end up getting used. It's been sitting on my desktop for a couple of months now and I decided it needed to be shared, because maybe someone else needs to read it.

I am cringing as I write this, and I can feel anxiety knotting up in my stomach, I think that if we’re born with an emotional toolkit then mine was missing a few things. My toolkit got plenty of angst but seems to have missed vulnerability and worthiness, throughout the years I’ve tried to make up for it, but it’s been hard work.

As a teenager I often felt like I had so many feelings and emotions stuffed into my body that I couldn’t do anything to get them out, so I tried to cut them out. I don’t even recall the point that I started self harming or if there was a specific trigger all I remember is that it became the only way I could deal with anxiety, anger, or sadness. When I started self harming I didn’t even know what it was called, I couldn’t Google what I was feeling and there was nowhere for me to find out what I should do or how I should deal with what was consuming me.

I was too scared to ask anyone for help, I didn’t feel like my problems or feelings were worthy of being talked about or that I was worthy of feeling better. We might get taught how to share our toys or to say please and thank you but we don’t get taught how to deal with emotions that feel like they’re never going to go away. And that is how it feels, when you’re stuck in it, it feels like nothing will ever be better, that there will never be anything good again.

At some point after years of putting myself through pain I realised that it wasn’t getting any better and I started to try and find other ways of dealing with the sadness. I wrote, man did I write – pages and pages of diatribe as I tried to put the feelings somewhere else. I cooked, I cleaned, I ran, I did anything that would get me thinking something different and shift my mindset from inflicting pain. These things all helped, they reminded me that I had some control and that I could channel my energy into something good.

But the thing that really made a difference, the only thing that ever truly made the pain go away was to ask for help. For me, asking for help was almost as bad as what I was feeling, because it meant that I had to be vulnerable and had to admit that there was a problem. I was so scared of what people would say when I showed them who I really was. But something funny happened, when I called they would say, ‘I’m glad you called, I’m glad you could trust me with this’. No one judged me, no one rejected me and I felt worthy.

Eventually I realised that pain isn’t something that has to be torn out, it’s like a scab healing and it helps us to appreciate happiness when we have it. I heard a song recently which summed it up for me, ‘happy is the heart that still feels pain, darkness drains and light will come again’. I still have occasional times when I feel like I’m surrounded by darkness but now I know that there are people in the light who can drag me back, so I call them, I get out of the house and I ask for help.