A641.7.3.RB -
Appreciating Your “Real Self”
Read Chapter 5 of the
workbook “Becoming a Resonant Leader”
Complete all of the
exercises from page 109-137.
After completing the
exercises, compose a reflection blog on what you learned about your lifeline, social
identities, strengths, and roles.
This was another difficult assignment. I was cruising right
along with the exercises until I came to the part about seeing strengths in
myself. I only found about seven and
looked ahead at the rest of the exercises only to feel completely inadequate. I’m
not able to see those things in me because I know what goes on in my head and it's not praise about my strengths. I know how I see
value in other things, other people but it’s hard to see those in myself. It’s
not that I’m not aware that I’m a compassionate person, capable of deep empathy
and friendships, and it’s not a self-pity thing. It’s just that I’m not ready
to dive too deeply into those things. But I’m going to work on it. Being
mindful and self-aware, speeds up the recovery of the negative and leads to
resilience. (Foundation, 2013)
Moving on…my lifeline is fairly uncomplicated. We moved a
lot and some of the highlights I noted were when I got married the first time,
the volunteer work I did while stationed in Germany with said first husband,
when I remarried and became part of a huge extended family and also became a
step-grandma, and when I started working in the aerospace field and then
subsequently at Boeing. The highlights have to do with my family, the giving of
my time, and a promising career choice.
The transition points and struggles on my timeline are when my Mom got
remarried and suddenly I had two sisters, when we moved from SD to TX, when I
moved to NM and met my first husband and moved to Germany, when we moved back
to the states and later I had a miscarriage after 8 years of fertility treatments,
when I got divorced and had to figure things out on my own, when I was demoted
at work and felt crushed, and the most recent was the transition to South
Carolina and a new career in final assembly at Boeing.
The biggest regrets on my timeline are that I didn’t take my parents
up on the offer to stay in KS and go to school instead of moving back to San
Antonio to live with a stupid boy, that my first marriage didn’t work out – it was
for the best but it was regretful just the same, when I got demoted and left
North Coast Electric – I was passive-aggressive and behaved poorly and I wish I
had handled that whole thing much more professionally, and lastly when I left
TMX aerospace after a year of 300 hours of OT – I was mentally and physically
drained and when the opportunity came to work at the Seattle Times I thought I
had won the lottery. I had not. It was a regretful six weeks that weirdly
enough ended up sending me to Boeing but at the time, I regretted taking the
job in the first place. I quit without notice and that’s just bad form.
My career rhythms are kind of random. I was in retail for
the better part of 16-17 years and then I branched into other industries. I
found that I really liked working in the warehouse and in the role of VMI coordinator.
I liked being on the road and meeting the customers face to face. I liked being
a representative of North Coast and a liaison between the company and the
customer. This lasted about four years. Then 2008 happened and I was laid-off
for 10 months. I finally got hired on at TMX aerospace and that began my career
in that industry. I’m still in aerospace and it has been very good to me. I
struggle with leadership decisions and some of the normal corporate America “paralysis
by process” things but I think I’m going to stay with aerospace at least until
I retire or win the lottery and can move on to the next phase of my life…which
we know will be a hobby farm in the Midwest and maybe some writing!
My social roles are pretty common: wife, daughter, sister,
niece, aunt, cousin, step-grandma, step-mom, etc. The most important roles and
social identities to me are the family roles: wife, daughter, sister…my family
means the world to me. They are my strength and comfort and I hope I am the
same to them. Secondary is my business and professional roles because those
identify my talents and achievements.
I was taught about my identities by watching my family and
the people around me. I learned my work ethic from my parents and the people at
my first job who taught me to show up earlier than needed and be prepared. I
learned how to be a big sister through trial and error…but mostly out of love
for my sisters. I learned how to be a parent figure (aunt, step-parent, and
step-grandparent) by watching my family and how they behaved. My values have
their foundation in how my family lived/and still live their lives.
There is one aspect of my social roles I have been thinking about
digging into deeper but it’s pretty personal. I have dealt with the experience and
how it has buried itself in my brain, but it’s begun to become obvious to
myself that I need to work it out professionally. I want start therapy in an
effort to work through this experience more…maybe find better coping mechanisms…so
that I can grow more into my social roles. On the one hand, suffering less and
being more aware of our inherent wakefulness would be changes from how we
experience ourselves right now, or at least most of the time. On the other hand,
though, the way to uncover brilliant sanity and to alleviate suffering is by
going more deeply into the present moment and into ourselves as we already are,
not by trying to change what is already going on. (Wegela, 2010)
The only sense of relative importance of my social identities
has been the feeling of personal responsibility to conduct myself as a good
role model for my nieces, nephew, grandbabies, and cousins. I am the oldest
everything in my family…oldest daughter, first grandchild, first niece, oldest
cousin…I was the first. I carry that responsibility and take it seriously
because as we know…the first one through the wall is usually the bloodiest and
I want to be supportive as my younger relatives go through it.
Working in the electrical distribution industry and then
later in aerospace, my role as a woman has always played a big part in how I’ve
experienced those professional roles. Weirdly enough, 16 years in retail and I
never really encountered any kind of discrimination…it’s like retail is more a
woman’s world. However, the more education I have and the better jobs I’ve been
able to get, the more I’ve encountered more glaring misogynistic behaviors (as
I’m sure many women have) and being underestimated and undervalued because of
my gender. Usually it’s benign…unintentional, like automatically being assigned
the duty of putting together a team gathering but never the first to be
assigned a major project at work. But I have been threatened for speaking out although
never at Boeing. At Boeing, it’s usually just that women tend to have to get
loud and become bullies in order to be taken seriously. These kinds of things
really grind my gears. I will never get
used to that, and it always comes as a slap in the face.
This is about as far as I get with this assignment. It has
been insightful and it’s shown me that I have a lot of work to do on myself
still; a lot of work on becoming more mindful. We are all works in progress
though and I hope I never stop evolving and growing to be a better version of
my real self.
References:
Boyatzis, R., Johnston, F. & McKee, A. (2008). Becoming a
Resonant Leader. Boston, Massachusetts: Harvard Business Press.
Foundation, N. (2013, February 12). Becoming Conscious:
The Science of Mindfulness [Video file].Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5TeWvf-nfpA&feature=youtu.be
Wegela, K.K. (2010, January 19.) The Courage to Be Present.
Psychology Today.com. How to Practice Mindfulness Meditation: Mindfulness is
important; how do we develop it https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-courage-be-present/201001/how-practice-mindfulness-meditation
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