“I have discovered that even the mediocre can have adventures and even the fearful can achieve.” Sir Edmund Hillary
As I get older and have many different experiences, I've started to learn more and more about what my values are and who I am. It's hard to say what shapes values and identity. Are they formed early and determined by nature, or by lived experiences themselves? I think it's a bit of both. Hopefully, I can share how my values and identity have been formed.
I am a United States citizen and I grew up in Illinois to two very hardworking entrepreneur parents. The US is a bit of a crazy place to grow up. So much of life revolves around what you do for a living, particularly how you make your money, and that even comes into play when you are a child. You're constantly being asked what you want to be when you grow up. At 13, I was thinking about universities and where I should go to high school so I could get into those universities. Everything, and I mean everything, centers around being productive and making money (even if not for yourself, but for the man. God bless capitalism.). My parents internalised this message very well and made sure to hand it down to their children. I was made to fear being lazy more than death. Because there was nothing worse than a lazy person (not even a dead person, because at least the dead don't cost taxpayers money). So that being said, I grew up incredibly anxious and freaked out I was going to live in a cardboard box. This made me hyperfocussed on education. I knew that my lack of sporting abilities and my quick ability to learn would mean education was the only way I was getting out of my crappy Illinois town.
Throughout grade school, high school, and university, I did decently well and graduated with above average grades. During that entire time, I had enormous anxiety, was a massive procrastinator, and generally would find myself overwhelmed coming up to deadlines and big projects. I would pull all nighters to get papers done after putting them off because I was totally freaked out about starting. I remember one night that I was studying for a Chemistry final I took caffeine pills and washed it down with 4 diet cokes. Without realising it, I overdosed on caffeine and became severly dehydrated. I got shooting cramps in my stomach and had to delay the exam because I was too ill to do anything. Not my finest moment.
When you ask what my worst and best learning qualities are - I think of some of these stories. My worst of course is my ability to get totally overwhelmed and anxious to the point where I put off starting as a coping mechanism. However, the best quality would have to be my resilience and pushing through no matter what it takes.
I know this is going to be a tiresome and challenging journey, but I'm excited to undertake knowing myself better than when I was younger. I know my limitations in terms of focus, and how easily I can be overwhelmed. I'm determined to take care of myself mentally so that I can get the most out of this experience and not spend it being miserable and stressed out. I've shared a bit about how I plan to do that in another blog post My learning plan. Head there to read more about what steps I plan to take to make this happen.
This past few years, I've learned more and more about what my values are as I spent time in New Zealand weathering the covid-19 pandemic. During that time, I also took on a new role as a product owner of the Design System at my work. It was an amazing gig and I was so stoked to get the opportunity. It also came with a lot of people challenges. The team hadn't had a PO ever and it had grown from 4 people to 9 people! Things were a bit of a mess. Some developers were picking up one story with no details that they wrote and working on it for 3 months! One of these developers was working on what would be our new design system documentation site. I was new to the team but wanted to get more information about what he was doing. I went to him to ask what he was working on specifically and whether he could give me a rundown on where he was at with the project. Instead of openness though, I got the cold shoulder. I knew this wasn't a good sign. So I got the team together to go back to basics and do a regroup so that everyone was involved. When we did that, we found that the solution the developer had created wouldn't work for the team. And the team came together to choose a 3rd party option with far less risk.
This was a tough situation to navigate. One of my core values is believing in teamwork. I believe that a strong team will always outperform a single person or even a weak team. I think great teams come together when they are honest, psychologically safe, and trust one another. I knew that having someone stonewall me was a bad sign. Especially when I learned taht everyone else on the team felt equally in the dark with the project. I feel I did the right thing by bringing the team back together to make a collective decision. I know I didn't make friends with the developer that was working on the solution for months that eventually got thrown out, but I knew that this was far less important than developing a solution the team was behind and felt good about. It sounds like this was easy now that I'm reflecting on it, but it was such a messy period of time and I really wasn't sure I was doing the right thing. I'm glad now looking back on it that things worked out. I largely think that's because the team came together and made collective decisions based on shared understanding.