Have you had a challenging month, year, season that felt like no matter what you did, it left you racking your brain wondering what you did in a past life to have deserved this?
Or perhaps you’re currently in the midst of one right now, trying to find a reason or purpose for it.
Whichever one it is, we’ve all been there before. And at other points in our lives, we’ll be there again.
But what if I offered another lens to see this challenge through? What if, instead of this challenge coming into your life as some sort of punishment,
it actually came into your life to prepare you for something better that hasn’t arrived yet?
That’s here to teach you the valuable skills in order to sustain this new future success. Would that change how you perceive this challenge and show up differently to it?
As humans, our psychology is such that we only begin to digest and process events when they’re in the rearview mirror – or in other terms, after they’ve happened and mostly behind us.
After living in the city for a few years and after the long-term job I had left for another one that had come to an end*, I found myself back on the job circuit. Having been working since a teenager in high school, I was no stranger to the job circuit or interview process.
Did it induce a sense of dread and anxiety-bordering-on-panic-attack? Yes, absolutely. But I didn’t let that deter me from finding gainful employment to pay for life? Hell, no.
Despite the countless job interviews I had been on throughout my working career, I could never fully shake those anxious nerves I would get leading up to and right before each interview. Probably because these interviews were so few and far between that I was never really able to fully expose myself enough to them to grow accustomed to it.
Sorta like an allergy exposure therapy – one slight exposure to the allergen at a time.
Needless to say, this current period in life would prove to teach me how to shake the pre-interview anxiety I had grown so accustomed to.
*another story for another time.
After a few short stop-gap temp jobs I took while I remained on the job hunt, I was now back on the circuit as if it was my full-time job…to get a job. With the government only recently passed laws requiring the salaries posted in job postings, most of the interviews I went on ended after the initial phone interview because the salary was either too low, the interview process would progress on only to end after a conditional offer was presented where the salary was much lower than previously discussed, or they offered me the lowest end of their sorta-doable salary range. And in some frustrating cases, allll of this was after countless unpaid hours spent on assignments, assessments, and presentations all in the pursuit of gainful employment.
Sorta like dating someone for months only to find out they have a secret family or a secret life…or as Alanis Morrisette would sing “like meeting your future husband then meeting his beautiful wife”
At one point after my most recent temporary stop-gap position ended, I ended up with 8 second-round panel virtual interviews all in one week. Most days I had two interviews, which was manageable if one was in the morning and one was in the afternoon, and hectic when they were either back-to-back or more than two in one day. Regardless, I was determined that at least one of those jobs would pan out - which it did.
I had unconsciously and unknowingly approached my job search as it if were speed dating, but more to do with speed interviewing…and more to do with money not love, which in this modern dating era, not a bad idea.
What I had failed to see throughout this entire process, mainly because my mind was so focused on landing a job, was that with each interview, I was getting slightly better at perfecting my “about me” pitch, got more clear and more concise on the achievements I had in previous roles, and was able to be fully present in the moment with each interview….perfecting the ability to ask insightful questions and follow up questions to learn more about the role, manager, and company.
This challenging experience of finding another job was actually preparing me for this very moment: The moment where, unbeknownst to me at that time, it was preparing me for this stage of life where I’m able to go into any interview or speaking gig without any of the panic-attack-inducing anxiety I used to experience before a job interview.
Now don’t get me wrong, those nerves are still there immediately before any interview or before I hit a stage, but now instead of allowing it to dictate my current experience that’s rooted in fear, I flip it to one of excitement.
If you were to come up to me two, three, four years ago and tell me I would be where I am now with posting regular content and article and doing lives with tons of viewers, I wouldn’t have believed you. I didn’t know any of that then. I didn’t know then that the reason aside from the need to support myself with a job, this experience was indirectly teaching me the skillset required to sustain and grow with public speaking…aka: what I’m doing now.
Look, I’m not saying that by adopting this new hot take on perceiving challenges will remove them from your path. But what I am saying is, this new hot take gives you the mindset to navigate it in an easier and more successful way.
So next time you’re in the midst of a challenging or difficult time, pause and ask yourself: what is this teaching me, and how is it going to benefit me in the future? Because life has a way of preparing us for things well before they happen or even on our radar.
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