Week 67: Taking the High-Profile Assignment- #AlphaFemaleFriday

“ WEEK 67 / 133 – 133 WEEKS TO SUCCESS ”

I had an ongoing observational joke with my friends for a while. I was that friend that people came to when the you-know-what hit the fan and they needed some direction. I joked I should charge them a consulting fee or become their life guru with all the free advice I was giving away—out of jesting love, of course.

By sheer coincidence, a few months later after coming to the realization that I wondered what would happen if giving advice wasn’t just a joke, a CEO and Founder of an up and coming Silicon Valley startup reached out to me. She wanted my advice to become a hotel industry advisor for their startup. I had nothing to lose and everything to gain, so of course I jumped on that opportunity.

I felt like I was ready to take the high-profile assignment. If you had asked me a few months earlier, I might have said no because a few months ago, I was too off balance, too stressed out, and the last thing I felt like I needed was yet another duty on my plate!

Rewinding to just a few months earlier when my friends first started asking me for advice, and I, with false bravado, was giving out that advice willy-nilly, I had wondered in the back of my head if my advice was really coming out genuinely and from the heart. I felt like a fraud. I was talking the talk, but was I following the advice I was dishing out?

My life was so incredibly off balance a few months ago. I was stressed out, my mind was in a million different places at once, and it was beginning to show. I was no longer doing the things I loved, not because I had lost the love for them, but because I kept on asking myself, “when am I going to have the time?” After a few months of giving myself the same sad excuses (not enough time, too busy, too stressed, it’s just not in my horoscope for today!), I realized that the circumstances would never, EVER be perfect!

So, slowly but surely, I started making the time. I had to take the initiative in my life instead of just being a whiny victim the whole time and just find where I could fit in the things that I loved in my day. The truth is that we all have an extra hour or two a day that we are devoting to doing things that we don’t LOVE to do. We’re devoting them to things that we find easy to do because, well, doing the things we love can often require putting on pants.

I started going back to the gym after (embarrassingly admitting this) several months of not going to the gm. I started practicing yoga again (even more embarrassingly) after several years of wearing yoga pants and not doing any yoga.  I rejoiced when I started walking into Lululemon again without feeling like a complete poser. I even found time for reading novels and writing my own—FOR FUN! For the sheer fun of it.

I believe the universe allows everything to fall into place if you open up your heart and allow it to do so. I stopped fighting so hard against myself and my desires. By giving myself permission to be more well-rounded once again, I believe that other career opportunities had opened themselves up to me in return. So, the moral for this week: devote yourself completely to all that you love, and may what you love be both your personal life and your professional life. Namaste!

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Cheers,

Kelly

@AlphaFemSociety tweets by @KellyRGonzales

About:

Each week, I take a tip from Lois P. Frankel’s book, Nice Girls Still Don’t Get the Corner Office, and explore how each of these tips affect myself and other women in similar positions on the road to becoming the women we want to be. There are far and few between who are a few steps behind me, and many more who are far advanced. I found that Lois P. Frankel’s advice applied to novice, intermediates, and experts alike. It helped me see that I was already doing right, served as a reminder to keep on doing what I was doing and how to keep that momentum going. The book also showed me areas where I could improve, and gave realistic tips to jump on board. There are a total of 133 tips, and explore one tip per week in a program I call: 133 Weeks to Success.

Join the movement using the hashtag #133WeeksToSuccess with posts which are posted every #AlphaFemaleFriday.