I want to give you hope so you can get right back up and achieve it, what is that? GENUINE SUCCESS!
“If the success you achieve has been at the expense of your health, your family or a negative change in your personality or character, is not really a success”
I DECIDED that: “No matter how high I grew in my professional life, I would always pray to remain as truthful to myself as I’ve always been. I don’t want to change to the extent of losing myself, forgetting who I am and where I come from”. My decision has a lot to do with the upbringing I received from my parents and is based on the respect for all, without distinction.
You see, during my career path I gradually grew up to a high Management level and during those 15 years this is what I use to listen from individual contributors who were part of other departments not reporting into mine:
“Jessica, you don’t look like a ‘Manager’ you are more ‘people’ than the others in your same position, because you do listen”.
“Jessica, I would like to change teams, not because I don’t like what I do now; it’s just that I’m not comfortable with my boss’ personality”.
And from some of my colleagues I received words like:
“Jessica, are you sure that you wanted to become a Manager? you do not behave like us. There is some distance to be kept from those who are not at our same level and you don’t keep a wall between you and them, that is not being a good Manager”.
“Jessica, what do you do to have employees come to your office when they are not even reporting into you? My team rarely comes to me”.
You see? what happens is that I DECIDED not to allow my professional growth to change who I really am, so no matter how ‘high’ I went I would continue being me regardless of my success, this led me to be loved by some, envied by others and hated by few. All this was converted in a sea of emotions that somehow affected me.
There were several years, (yes that is right, ‘years’), where I did not stop to have and enjoy lunch when I should, I didn’t drink water during the day, my hours of rest were very few, my social life was a big huge blank space in time since I was continuously canceling dates until no one asked me out for a while, you know how hard it can be when you are already married to your work.
The time came when I DECIDED I wanted to start a family. My husband and my daughter counted on me, but at the beginning or early months of becoming a family of three, I continued traveling a lot so I was constantly away from them. My husband always supported me, but I missed moments during the first few months of life of my beautiful baby, and I also missed my husband, you know being ‘new parents’ and all.
Although at first it was seen as if I had no intention to ever have a ‘life’ sooner than later my marriage with my work was no longer filling my time nor space, so to get to know my current husband, I DECIDED to change the priorities in my life.
Now, I’ve told you what all that I was missing yet being successful at work just so you could understand where I’m going with all of this. Did you notice the word that I repeated and that is shown in capital letters? Well, that’s what it was all about. The things I did where all base on DECISIONS that I made, it wouldn’t be honest of me to say that things just happened, but they can just happen if you mistakenly allow then to without you consciously making the DECISIONS you know you should.
You DECIDE what you want to be and do. The result of each action that you have taken is because you DECIDED to take them.
Success is a matter of taking decisions. If until now you feel successful I recommend that you look back and analyze what you have sacrificed in order to achieve this.
If you consider yourself a successful person, make sure you ask yourself these questions:
- Has the relation with your family been affected by it?
- Have you jeopardized your health because of it?
- Did you missed important events of any of your family member?
- Did you broke very good and/or close relationship with others because of your achievements?
If the answer is ‘no’, then you are really successful.
But, if you analyze the actions you took, and looking into the mirror you realize that you no longer like who you have become, you cannot recognize yourself and miss who you used to be, you should know it’s never to late to change it all, so don’t be afraid, there’s still time to achieve success, the real success. All you have to do is DECIDE to do so in a way that your success is consistent with what you are looking for and not what others expect from you.
