What Fuels you – swagher.net
Happy Tuesday! It’s Day 2 of this week, and we’re on, keeping’ on keeping’ on and achieving this week! Reflecting on our careers, ambitions and dreams, some of my girlfriends and I have come to discuss the sources of our motivation. Many a time, we tend to set goals for ourselves, especially career-oriented goals, without exactly thinking about what motivates us, what fuels, what is behind our hard work and tenacity? Yet by asking ourselves the question, we can very often uncover truths about ourselves that will steer us int he right direction…
My friend Annabelle S. is a multicultural, overachieving chick from the Caribbean. She was raised by a single mother who struggled to make ends meet to provide all of her six children, Annabelle included, with a roof over their heads, food on their plate, and what she even thought most important, an education. After her family moved to the US, Annabelle went on to become a successful lawyer, stopping at nothing to reach education and career milestones. Cliche? Maybe, as it is the story of many a successful Black or multicultural woman facing and ultimately surmounting the odds. What tends to be overlooked in this, and many other similar stories, is what has come to fuel these successful women, and ultimately keeps them on top of their careers, or end up depleting them to the point that they unfortunately don’t achieve as much as they could! Is it anger, a sense of betrayal from society, a burning desire to beat the odds and prove everyone wrong? Or is it a sheer, authentic, self-regenerating and self-sustaining vision? What fuels us to give our best, and is it enough to sustain our success over time in order to build a lasting legacy?
As women, we are often dubbed as “creatures of emotion”. While it is true and represents in most cases a great source of strength, it is these same emotions that when misunderstood and misused, can derail us from our paths. In our quest for success, whatever success may mean to us, it is important that we understand what lies behind our motivation. That we dig back through our past, our mothers’ and grandmothers’ past, to uncover those truths that are to be the foundation of our journey, for the good of all concerned.
Once we understand these truths, then we know what we’re after, and we know to steer ourselves in the right direction, whether it is to heal the sometimes strong yet ineffective in the long-term anger of our youth, or to redirect the hurts of our past towards a positive difference, or even to fulfill the legacy of those who came before us in a healthy, positive, fulfilling way.
What fuels you?
The Corporate Sister.
