Stop spinning your wheels, Solocast

what is up LnM Family, Jesse here with the learnings and missteps pod. Podcast. Another solo cast coming at you. This thought. Here's another one of those learnings and missteps, and I just came. To, to the realization. I, you know, I don't even know if it counts as a realization, it's kind of something that I've been observing in my behavior and observing and other people's, uh, life experience lately. And you may have heard me talk about idea to action. And keeping the space between idea and action, super tight. because of the fulfillment that I've experienced from living my life. That way I have an idea. I take action. and, and magical things happen right now. But thinking a lot about my people that are out there working hard, doing their job, earning a living, supporting their families. That are kind of spent. And thinking about how I have. How I don't ever really feel spent. I mean, I do feel tired because I get, I get going a little crazy on some of my ideas and my projects out here. But I'm having a good time. And the energy seems to be endless. And so I started thinking about. The impact of, of social media. and expanding your, expanding, our influence, right? Helping other people know. Sharing our gifts and talents with other people in a very public way. Yes. I know it's uncomfortable. It takes a lot of practice, takes a lot of time to get used to it. but thinking through all of that, what I landed on was I remember. When I had, you know, my, when I was working for the mechanical contractor general contractor, the owner. I remember. Putting in tons of effort. Uh, to be. You know, to, to get recognized by my boss and for my boss to advocate for me for salary increases, uh, new opportunities increased. Influence within the organization. And it always felt like I couldn't do enough. And I never really could tell. If that energy was going to result in what I was seeking. And I'll give you an example. This is a crazy example, but it's a true story. So back in the day, like the very first job that I ever worked, where I got paid, like by a company. Was at KFC, Kentucky fried chicken. and I was there. My gold. Was to earn employee of the month. Mind you, this was my first month. And I'll be damn. We come up to the end of the month and I kind of remember we had like monthly meet monthly employee meetings and where they would announce employee of the month, blah, blah, blah. And I didn't get it. And I was. disappointed to say the least. And I quit my job. I quit working there. I remember talking to Carol, she was the manager. And she was like, why are you quitting your you're a good employee? And I was like, well, I didn't get employee of the month. And she's like, Jessie, you've only been here a month. And I say, yeah, I understand that. But my goal was to get employee of the month. And I didn't get it. So clearly my efforts aren't. Aren't appreciated or maybe at least misguided. Truth be told I ended up going back and working there again because I did enjoy working with the people. The work was fun. I found it fun anyways, but my point in that story is. You know, it puts so much effort into being employee of the month. And then when I think about all the other jobs I've had in my career, I put a lot of effort in to Helping my manager, my boss see the value that I could bring so that I could be. Uh, given a raise so that I could get all the magical stuff you get for being a team player in an A-plus worker. And then almost always being disappointed. By the outcome. And so that makes me think like, well, what was I really working for? Was I putting my energy towards like, yes, I was looking to advance in the company and expand my career. Yeah. But like, What I was really, really doing is I was seeking affirmation. From my manager. And only my manager could see my skills and my talents and the effort that I put in. And what's interesting because I've been a manager and I know how frustrating this is. it's not always in my boss's interest to promote me because. They may not have someone else to do the work that I was doing. And I was doing above and beyond. So. That created a big gap for them to, to backfill. Which makes it easy. For them to kind of downplay all my contributions to the team and to the company so that I can stay there and make their job easier. I'm not accusing them. I know that I have felt that with people, I didn't give into it, but I did feel like son of a gun. If I promote you and you go to this other department. I got to replace you. And that's a lot of work on my part. so I think that's a natural thing now. The interesting thing is. In my experience since I got super active and visible on, on all the socials out there, I feel like by doing so as my value. Increased. In the industry, or on the omniverse, my value within the organization also increased. And so I had to ask myself, why is that? And I said, well, maybe it's because now all of a sudden I'm not hitting. Under my department heads umbrella. Right. Like, I don't have to just count. On one person to advocate for me. Now I'm advocating for myself. By letting people know where I come from, what my thinking is, what I believe in what I support. And that gets recognition. Almost accidentally, like, well, maybe not even, almost like for real, for real, I wasn't doing it. Like I didn't start the podcast for that reason. But I believe that that actually happened. And along that path of, you know, Sharing my thoughts doing the interviews, et cetera, all the posts that I put out there. What started happening is I started having impact or at least the ideas that I was sharing. And the conversations that were being shared were impactful for other human beings. And so I started contributing value to them. And somehow along the way I promise I didn't do it on purpose. Um, I started shifting my energy, meaning. I didn't focus my energy on getting affirmation from my boss or my manager anymore. I focus my energy on getting impact on delivering impact on having an impact on people's lives. People's thinking. Uh, improving the quality of life to some degree. For, for anybody who would listen. And the result of that. Has been spectacularly. Amazing. Now, back to the, like the energy required to get an idea and take it from some crazy wild aspiration and actually turn it into something real. That takes a tremendous amount of energy, um, because there is a lot of friction. There's the friction of practical thinking, meaning why are you doing this? Nobody's paying you for it. there's the friction of failure and embarrassment. There's the friction of still having a job and trying to do this other new thing. Like. But the energy to continue forward. I believe has come from the impact that I've had or that we all can have. In sharing our gifts and talents with other people. I think that's the most important thing here. At least, I think that's what I'm seeing. Is when we focus our energy on chasing affirmation from one person within the organization from, or maybe, maybe a little broader from our very localized community, like the people that are in our neighborhood, in our life. And. And our companies. The yield from all of that effort is. Almost predictable. And much smaller. Then the yield of focus on our focusing our energy on having impact in serving others. And being able to witness the impact of our efforts. Fuels us with this whole new source of energy to continue working through the friction. Required to get ideas into action. And so I'm wondering, y'all like, I'm wondering, does this resonate with you at all? Have you ever spent all your time? Or have you ever put in a whole ton of energy to get that promotion, to get that raise, uh, to get that special, sexy project? And then you don't get it. Uh, and then you see other people promote, you see other people advancing and you're like, what the hell? Like I know I'm out performing them fools. And are you really just counting on that one person? To be your advocate when you can advocate for yourself. I know that sounds a little selfish, but think of, if you think of it, in terms of sharing your gifts and talents. Uh, for the purpose of serving others, that's a whole new ball game. And if you didn't know, we do have a learnings and missteps blog out there. So if you're interested in reading, I'll make sure that the, the link. To that blog is in the show notes. Let's check it out, share it with a friend. be cool. And we'll talk to you next time.