Part One: Career Courage
A word from Susan
In this part…
Priya’s Story: Seeing the Patterns
Famous characters in films have their own spin on what it means to be ‘Brave.’ We can be a warrior like Braveheart or a Disney Princess like Merida from the movie, Brave. Both characters possess an underlying air of romanticism, a rebel inside who cannot be contained and must surface and disrupt the status quo! And their actions, visually striking, emotionally haunting, with an added touch of orchestral music in the background…ah…that is what we like to call Brave.
But finding ‘Brave’ in everyday life is not as easy to pinpoint. As a trader who has built much of her career on pattern recognition, I asked myself, reflecting on my own life, if there is a pattern common to the build-up of a Brave moment.
The First Pattern: Taking Action
I have found, yes, there are three common features that curate a Brave moment. First, we must treat Brave as a verb. It is action—not standing still. Pushing through. Throughout my career, I have raised my hand for roles I wanted, rolled up my sleeves, and got to work. I took opportunities to speak up. I asked for help so I could improve because I was not going to disappoint the people who sponsored me, and I was not going to disappoint myself. I came in early, left when I couldn’t think anymore, read, wrote and studied, and produced as much and as often as I could.
The Second Pattern: Suffering Uncertainty
Second, we cannot be brave without taking risks. When we take risks, we disrupt the expected and crack through the predictable. We must endure the pain or uncertainty that comes with the decision to take a risk. There is no glossing over this. We make difficult choices, and sometimes we must suffer the consequences.
In raising two children, now fifteen and twelve, I’ve missed soccer games and hockey tryouts and worked through Halloween and holidays. In the moment, yes, there can be guilt. However, I have learned how hard yet rewarding it is to be Brave. Both things can be true—hard and rewarding.
And the kids are not any worse off. They don’t remember that I missed a Christmas concert or wasn’t there two Halloweens ago for trick or treating. They are healthy, happy, resilient children that both my husband and I are proud of. They know they are valued, and when I am present—boy, am I present!
They also know that I am a better mother because I have a career that is fulfilling. How can I ask them to pursue their dreams if I am not working to pursue my own?
Third Pattern: Influencing Change
And finally, we do this—we only do this because we want the situation to change. We want a better outcome. I have no regrets, because I’ve wanted the finance industry in which I work to improve. I want diversity of thought at every level of an organization’s hierarchy because it improves shareholder returns and uplifts society. All of society.
Today, I am a managing director at my company, and each day, I see the returns of my efforts for my company and for the women I’ve helped to elevate. For our larger society.
Would my strategy be different if I wasn’t a woman or a minority? I don’t know. Being an outsider is perhaps what being Brave is all about—being confident enough to do the thing that is uncomfortable because you want a better outcome.
Big Brave Truth: “Brave” is a verb—taking actions, not standing still, even if those actions are uncomfortable.
Action Step: Do one “uncomfortable” thing today. As you put your head on the pillow tonight, consider how you pushed through that moment, what you learned about yourself, and most importantly, the feeling of accomplishment in pushing through it.
Priya is the Managing Director and Head within Capital Markets for a financial organization.
Pina's Story: A Secret, and a New Beginning
I got my Master’s degree after being out of school for twenty years.
In college, I’d been pursuing a degree in Social Work/Psychology and had taken many courses in these areas. One day, I walked into the Placement Office at my school to talk about jobs, and they gave me a good reason, it seemed at the time, to switch my major.
“Oh honey,” the woman there said, “social workers make below the poverty level.”
So, I switched to Merchandising Management. Twenty years later, I realized this work was not my dream. While I did enjoy the business aspects and fashion, what was tugging at me was the original plan—to work as a therapist.
Staying Quiet About the Plan
Still, it was terrifying to consider going back to school. I didn’t tell anyone I was doing it; I just signed up for one class and assumed I’d drop it the next day. I was sure all the “kids” there would scare me away.
Somehow, although mortified I was older than most, I walked into the classroom. And I stayed with it. One class led to another.
Honestly, it was hard because I was also raising two young girls while my husband worked full-time. I did my homework after the kids went to sleep at night. But each day and each night, I plugged away, and three years later, I graduated! My whole family, especially my girls, got to see me achieve my goal!
At My Core, A Good Choice
I think back on that time seventeen years ago, and I can’t believe I was resilient enough to stick it out. But I did, and today, it’s a privilege to work with the brave souls who show up for our work together every day.
Big Brave Truth: We create our lives one dream at a time.
Action Step: If you want to make a life change, you can do it! It doesn’t have to be a big thing, like a wholesale career change. It could be starting to see a trainer to get stronger, when you haven’t set foot in the gym for years. You don’t need to tell anyone until you’re ready. Never forget: Any new beginning is brave.
Pina is a therapist who practices in the Midwest.
Justine’s Story: Don’t Say No to Yourself
I was a late bloomer. I never knew what I wanted to do. One reason was, I never thought I could do what I wanted to do.
I always loved animals and nature. I could spend hours watching National Geographic as a girl. My dream was to be a marine biologist, but then I thought, that’s not a real job. That’s playing with dolphins. Everyone wants that job—there’s no way I could have that job. I thought scientists must be good with math, and I didn’t identify that way. I was praised for my writing, my soft skills. I believed boys were scientists, not girls.
Bouncing Around School
I bounced around. Went to school, then dropped out of school. Then I went back. I kept trying to be someone else. Through a friend I got a job in marine biology as a seasonal employee, and that’s when I learned resource management was a job. It involves managing our natural resources—water, wildlife, and clean air.
I started looking at these kinds of jobs but didn’t have the qualifications. So I went back to school, and I got a degree in Wildlife and Fishery Science.
But another challenge came along. All park rangers and managers in my home state of Tennessee are also commissioned officers, so I had to go through a full police academy too. That was really hard. My husband-to-be and I had just started dating, he was pulling out of a divorce, and I was going to the police academy every week. A lot of crying. I did a lot of crying during that time.
Growing Professionally, and Personally
I grew professionally through the police academy and through going back to school. But those are just professional gains. I continue to grow as a person, by seeing all my choices as trade-offs. I’m forty-one. I know now I don’t have to get every certification. There are certain levels of stress I don’t want to mess with. I know now: Enough is enough. Enough means being able to pay our bills.
And today I love what I do! I get to work out of doors, and with wildlife, and I strategize about how to manage and conserve this little piece of property I have dominion over.
I tell people I meet and work with: “Don’t say no to yourself. Let someone else say no to you. That’s fine if they do. You can deal with it. But apply for what you truly want to do. I applied for jobs I didn’t get. Interview. Go for it.”
Big Brave Truth: “Let what you love be what you do.” Rumi
Action Step: Go outdoors. Find a stream to sit by, or feel the sun on your face. Nature stirs wonder in us, and reminds us we’re a part of a bigger whole.
Justine is Park Manager of a state park in Tennessee.
Susan’s Story: At Forty-Two, Crazy or Brave?
I’m forty-two and on top of the world. I have the most exciting job anyone could imagine—chief operating officer of a promising new media brand called HGTV. I have the best boss and the most trustworthy team. Our network is setting records in growth, satisfaction, and ratings, which are key benchmarks for success in the television world.
I am finally impacting real change, especially for women by helping to elevate them, and realizing a career aspiration.
And yet. I sometimes find myself feeling completely disconnected. Groundless. It’s like I’ve lost a part of myself, some mission-critical part like an arm or a foot. Except this is not a part I can see.
I’ve made a career of foreseeing every contingency, every play. What have I missed?
I push harder. There are moments I doubt myself: Do I not have the focus and confidence to succeed? This might be called “Imposter’s Syndrome” but it really goes much deeper than that.
Then the book arrives.
A book shows up in my office mailbox.
“This must be for someone else,” I tell Jennifer, who works with me.
“No, it had your name on the package,” she says. We look at the return address and see it’s from a friend I know who works in talent sourcing. The book is called The Heart Aroused-Poetry and the Preservation of the Soul in Corporate America, by David Whyte.
The soul. A poet’s expression, I think. No relevance to work. Yet I feel a tug inside to know more. I open the book and can’t put it down. It travels with me to doctors’ offices as I await routine checkups. It comes to my son, Andrew’s soccer games because they always start late. When I finish the book, there are just more questions. Which I ignore.
A few years pass. Mostly I’ve dodged what the book wants me to understand, but glimpses break through. My dad dies two years after getting the book. Sitting alone in a quiet church one morning, I hear “There’s work to do.” Somehow, I know this work is not about my day job.
A few years later, one gut-wrenching winter, my mom and sister die too. I take a leave of absence, and in the quiet of that grieving time, I keep wondering: What is my purpose?
Yet after taking that leave, I return, not pausing my work pace. I’ve begun our International group, and my team and I are spearheading distribution of our programming to more than 100 countries. Through collective efforts, we grow to six brands, many in close to 100 million US homes. We keep winning.
But the pull to do something else, some undefined thing grows stronger, and I decide to quit the company.
It doesn’t go very well.
I see my boss, Ken Lowe, the CEO of our now, multibillion-dollar company, in the hallway.
“Ken,” I say, “I need a moment of your time.” I walk into his office and I close the door.
“I’m quitting.”
He is silent for several moments.
“Can I ask why? Is it about losing your mom, dad, and sister?”
“Yes, but I also feel there’s something else I need to do. I don’t know exactly what, just something.”
We talk a while longer about my restlessness. He asks if everything is ok with the job, the team.
Yes and yes.
“I have terrific leadership in place so the company will be fine,” I say. “The thing is, Bill (my husband, Bill, is a stay-at-home dad) and I haven’t really saved for my leaving. So… I’d like you to get the board to approve early vesting of my stock options.”
They are years from vesting. I do have my moments.
The silence lasts longer this time.
“Why would I do that?” Ken responds. “We haven’t asked you to leave. This is all your idea.”
Let’s just say the vesting doesn’t happen, and I don’t leave. Bill and I begin saving like crazy, downsizing from a 6,000-square-foot home (I know) to a 2,500-square-foot fixer upper. Our former neighborhood had no kids, but now Andrew can just run out, find kids and play. And it’s a great place to live because the neighbors don’t mind when you have a dumpster on your front lawn for six months. In fact, at Christmastime they surprise us one night by creeping over and decorating the dumpster with lights. We really kind of love this new neighborhood.
When I leave the company a couple of years later, the dumpster’s gone, Andrew’s starting high school, we have some rainy-day savings, and I’m proud of what I’ve accomplished at work. Still, I’m not going to a new job. I don’t know what my future is. It feels like I’m walking barefoot in muddy ground. Maybe my brain is leaking. There must be a reason I uprooted my whole career.
Later, I asked my spiritual director, Joe, about this seeming madness.
“Joe, I still don’t understand why I left the job. It felt like some part of me was missing, like my center of gravity.”
“The work was too small for you.”
Pardon? I was chief operating officer of a billion-dollar company!
“The work was a role. A role is not who you are; it’s not who anyone is. You were starting to wonder if you could be more than that role. But you had no map, so you felt lost. You were actually creating your own map. It’s heroic, really, what you did.”
He continues: “Anytime you’re willing to break through to new ground, that’s heroic—a hero’s journey. It’s everyone’s journey if you are willing to be called to it. It’s the same as the soul’s journey. Our souls are unknown territory, especially in this culture. That was the force moving you to get to your next place.”
Big Brave Truth: Joseph Campbell, best known for his writings about a hero’s journey, says:
If the path before you is clear, you’re probably on someone else’s path.
Action Step: Do something today that gets you out of your routines. Something to stretch your heart.
