Top three things I learned in May

The wisdom of the (Optionality) crowd

1. Perhaps the most important lesson of the month: You do not have to wait until your anxiety is at an unmanageable level or until you truly cannot be functional to ADDRESS IT. Our May webinar with Minaa B and Morra Aarons-Mele was chock full of wise and supportive nuggets, but this lesson from Minaa struck right at the heart of both my pride and hubris. Even if some level of anxiety, fear, and stress is normal, and everyone experiences it; even if you can gut this one out (just like you’ve probably gutted out a lot of other things over your life and career); even if you have been socialized to believe that “paying your dues” means you have to put up with just about everything to get to some mythical level where you’ll be relieved of having to put up with anything. Despite all of the ways you have normalized or managed your stress or anxiety so that you believe you are being functional, you can still reach out for support before anything rises to a critical level. There is indeed a difference between functioning and functioning well.

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2. I learned from Shelley Paxton, our May podcast guest, that there is a difference between being/feeling successful and “doing success.” (I also realized I am pulled to the latter, and it’s not motivating; it demoralizing.)

3. I had the aha moment during one of our May Conversationalitys that workplace morés will be changed when senior professionals and the newest wave of workers collaborate to do so. Below, Libby Rodney from The Harris Poll talks about how that new wave thinks about the current system, which prompted me to write my most recent newsletter.

I know there is a time for study, for research, and for reflection in solitude. I also know that hearing ideas articulated by someone with a different voice, perspective, angle, experience, expertise, or point of view can trigger epiphanies that may have otherwise taken longer to reach. Listening to and learning from others can be a shortcut, and those shortcuts were plentiful this month.

One of our Optionality premium members told me that she really appreciates the Optionality community as a sounding board. Like so many of us, she has a Slack with her work colleagues where they confer and collaborate on the regular, and that’s great. But there is value in throwing ideas out to an entirely different group…people who bring different perspectives to a question, people who have more capacity to surprise, people who are not as embedded in our work. Maybe people to whom we can vent too, who am I to say? It’s the value of community.

What’s a top thing you learned in May? And from whom?

Optionality has entered the chat. i.e. we’re experimenting with Substack’s chat feature. Check out our first one: