Are you running the right race?

You’ve seen them. The motivational quotes.

·      Grow your comfort zone

·      Find your own lane  

·      Start to win the race you choose to run

You may even have rolled your eyes at them as you plough through a mountain of stuff to do at work and home. I get that. I do too sometimes depending on what mood I’m in.

Or you may have them stuck on your mirror or on post its on your desk. I do that too.

Motivational quotes without accompanying action can feel empty and sometimes make us feel worse as we don’t have enough headspace to think of how to move forward. I’ve learned this through experience. But over the years, the three statements above have turned out to be not just motivational but helped me navigate changes in direction and forge the path I wanted to rather than the path others thought or assumed I should take.

My self concept isn’t always consistent with my behaviour. In fact my first nursing tutor told me he had never met someone with such a skewed self perception. I used to describe myself as cautious and nervous about change. I would have said that security and stability were important core values for me.

And yet this is how those statements worked out for me...

Grow your comfort zone

I’ve got a history of stepping outside my comfort zone. I change jobs usually every four to five years. In fact, I don’t just change jobs/roles but I’ve changed professions too and retrained in something new three times. I’ve gone from Mental Health Nurse, to Public Health Specialist, to Senior Lecturer to Burnout Coach. I also became a trainer/facilitator despite the fact that I was, in my early career, painfully shy and remain a happy introvert who revels in quietness and solitude! I set up my own coaching practice – something that’s definitely not for the faint hearted. Lots of people called me brave at that point but although it felt scary, it didn’t feel brave, it just felt like the right thing to do.

The changes were never because I wasn’t enjoying what I was doing. I’m lucky enough to have loved all the jobs I’ve had even if I wasn’t entirely enamoured with the systems they were in!

These changes all brought that feeling of going from ‘expert’ (or at least confident and competent) in a role to feeling like a novice again. Even if other people didn’t see me as a novice, I certainly felt like one as each time I got to grips with new teams, meeting new colleagues, new ways of working, new cultures, new bodies of knowledge and new skills. All things that had felt outside of my comfort zone each time.  

But here’s the thing. The more often I made these changes, embraced a learner mindset and tried new things, my comfort zone grew to accommodate these new experiences giving me more armoury to make the next step.

I’ve jumped out of my comfort zone so often that the concept of ‘comfort’ has changed its meaning for me. I feel as comfortable as a complete beginner in a new field as I did in my fields of extensive experience. That doesn’t mean I still don’t feel trepidation and self doubt but I’ve done it enough times to know that this feeling will pass if I just take the next best step. This has been so liberating as I know I am much less scared of trying something new, risky and exciting.

I’m planning another big shift within the next 12 months and I’ll draw on everything I’ve learned to grow that comfort zone once again.

Find your own lane (but not necessarily stay in it)

I learned early on that I didn’t want to climb the leadership ladder in terms of hierarchy. I had a particularly harrowing few months early in my nursing career (too early) that I ended up in by default covering maternity leave that put me off people management for quite a few years. Acting up for the Senior Sister on a 29 bedded acute mental health ward in the NHS as a 23 year old not long qualified nurse gave me many sleepless nights. The patients were never the problem – it’s always a privilege to be alongside those at their most vulnerable. It was the time required for people management that put me off. All promises of Executive Support fell away as soon as I’d accepted the challenge. I’ve never been so happy to welcome a new mum back to work!

I was encouraged by those Senior Leaders who had disappeared when I needed them to continue to work my way up the seniority ladder and it would have been easy to just fall into that. But I stepped out of that lane and looked for a different route.

Although I did return to positional leadership years later and enjoyed building and leading a fantastic team in one of the Island’s best loved charities, that space in-between had given me the opportunity to develop my interests in different ways. Instead of following the tried and tested route to manager, leader etc, I’d decided to specialise in terms of knowledge and skills. The interests I followed in those early days have reaped their rewards later on:

• Completing a Masters in Public Health saw me researching the best forms of mental health support and prevention for those in high stress nursing roles set the early foundations for the work I do now within Healthcare as a burnout coach today.

• My focus on suicide prevention as a nurse put me in good stead when I led on the suicide prevention aspects of the Mental Health Strategy in Public Health

• A focus on evidence base and knowledge management wherever I work has meant I am usually the person within a team that disseminates information, updated research to others and ensures it is the foundation underpinning everything I do.

 I often used to get asked when nursing, why I wasn’t applying for leadership posts but others used to provide the answer for me...

“She’s found a niche she loves.”

A question to consider: how many different lanes have you strayed into during your career? How have you chosen that lane and who/what has influenced that choice? Is it still the right lane for you? What might you like to do as a complete beginner?

Run the race you want to be in

You can only do this by knowing who you are and what’s important to you. If I had been tied to my values of safety and security (which are still important but were much more important in my early days), I would still be nursing and would probably have climbed that hierarchical ladder.

Instead, I realised that what was even more important to me did not involve getting to a particular position, earning a specific amount, having positional authority or following a path that others thought I should follow but instead I enjoyed:

• Learning, learning, learning!

• Overcoming obstacles and testing my own self doubting limitations

• Feeling like a beginner

• Making a difference on the ground

For me, the journey, the passion and the interest has been more important than a position. It may be different for you – what’s important is that you know that you’re in the race you want to be, not one that someone else has entered you for.

Many of you may be aware of Bronnie Ware’s research on the regrets of those who are dying. The top one was:

 “I wish I’d had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me”

This one is on my mind right now as I plan the next big shift and as I speak it out loud, listening to what others think I should do...

And yes, I do have post it’s on my desk and one of them is this...

“She silently stepped out of the race that she never wanted to be in, found her own lane and proceeded to win.”

What lane do you want to continue the race in? 

Onwards!