Facing down your inner dialogue

This post is an interesting one to write, because over the nearly 25 years of my professional life to date, there have been such a variety of challenges that I have faced and ultimately navigated through. I hardly know which to tackle first, to be completely honest with you.

I was fortunate enough to secure my first professional job during my first year of university; in fact this is an interesting story of how it came about. I think I'll start there.

I was a middling student at best at school, I tried hard and my parents pushed me, but I was more of the "sporty type" excelling at most sports, but academically I didn't consider myself all that smart. After finishing Year 12 (Matriculation), having thrown everything at it (and my parents really pushing me) to get decent grades, I think I was pretty burned out. Despite that, I got the tertiary entrance score I needed to get into the degree I wanted, so I just went for it. Needless to say, my first year wasn't exactly a stand out. I was more interested in the Union Bar and the various pub crawls that the student union organised. After running slightly wild for the first semester, I knuckled down and actually started to apply myself. I got reasonable grades, averaging credits across the board, so I was reasonably happy with that.

During the semester I saw an advertisement from the Institute of Chartered Accountants calling for first year students to apply for a new scholarship-type/internship scheme where 10 people were awarded fully paid work placements with Accounting firms for the summer. You had to put together a written application, submit your academic record and then, if shortlisted you had to do a panel interview. This opportunity was open to every student studying commerce/accounting at any of the universities across the state, so potentially thousands of people, for about 10 places. There was absolutely no way on earth that I was ever going to be in with a shot. I am not sure exactly what possessed me to apply, but I guess I figured that you have to be in it to win it. Right? So I applied, sent it off, and forgot all about it.

Four weeks later, I received an email saying that I had been shortlisted for panel interview, which completely blew me away. Had they not read my academic transcript? After about an hour of wondering what had just happened, the excitement kicked in. That night I sat down with mum and dad and had a long chat about how I was going to approach the interview and how to "set myself apart" from the other, clearly more intelligent candidates. I had never done a professional interview in my life and had no idea what to expect other than I needed some sort of advantage other than "brains". We sat around the dining room table and set about listing all of the things that made me uniquely me, and thus suitable for the internship. Ultimately, and no word of a lie, it came down to the fundamentals of my personality. I was extremely competitive and driven to "win", I could studiously apply myself to learning a thing (what ever it was), and above all else I was a "people person". I could confidently talk to anyone, anywhere and from any walk of life. I took an interest in people and asked questions.

With all of that behind me and a couple of "mock" interviews that my dad put me through, I went into the panel, confident that they would "like me" regardless of my less than exemplary academic record. And I was right, they did like me. Out of 1000 applicants and 340 interviews, I was one of 10 selected for the internship. I was absolutely ecstatic, however, upon meeting the other 9 successful candidates, I quickly started suffering from a severe case of imposter syndrome. They were so much smarter than me, they were so much better presented than me. OMG WHAT WAS I DOING! HOW AM I HERE! Were just a few things that started running through my head. I got home after the award ceremony and burst into tears. I had that horrible sinking feeling in my belly that everything was about to go really horribly wrong. I didn't deserve it, I am not good enough and I am going to be found out for being a fraud and then my career (albeit not even started) would be over. The fear of failure was crippling. What was worse was the little voice in my head telling me that I wasn't good enough and that I would let my parents down. All of that excitement I had been feeling because of the brilliant achievement of succeeding had evaporated and what replaced it were some pretty dark self-dialogue. It took a couple of weeks of reassuring from my loved ones, and a hell of a lot of "looking in the mirror" and questioning myself and critically evaluating why I was thinking these things, before I moved past my mind-monkey and realised that the only thing that was holding me back, was myself. Why did I feel like that? Probably as a residual consequence of schoolyard bullying as a child/teenager. I was made to feel less than, constantly. However as I thought about it (in my own reasoning/rationale), why would I let those horrible people ruin my future? It was enough that they damaged my past, I wasn't going to let them dictate where I go from here. They have no power over me anymore. They were no longer in my life and the only person who had control of me, was me. I was not going to let them bring me down. So I moved past it; I had an internal "glow up" so to speak.

Having dealt with those feelings and moved past it, the internship went so well that the firm took me on after the initial 12 week period, and I continued working for the firm for the next 4 years (studying my degree part time) until I graduated. I subsequently applied and got a role with PriceWaterhouseCoopers in the UK and moved over to follow my career for the next 3 years. My career from there, as they say, is history.

If I had not faced myself down over those insecurities and dealt with the residual effects of the bullying, I wouldn't be where I am today. If my parent's hadn't put the time in to coach me and mentor me, again, I wouldn't be the person I am today.

Four life lessons I learned from this:

1) You do not have to be the smartest person in the world to be successful. You just have to take a chance and dedicate yourself to believing that anything is achievable with hard work.

2) If you don't deal with things in the past, they will creep back in down the line and hold you back from moving forward. It might not always be immediately evident, but it will get you eventually. Do the work on yourself now and move forward with confidence.

3) Have people in your life who are invested in your best interests. People who will promote, challenge and at times push you to be the best version of yourself, without any vested interests for themselves. Without my parents and wider support network, I would have floundered.

4) The only person who has the power to change your circumstances IS YOU. The only person who can fix your mindset, fix your fitness, fix your grades, fix an unhappy career is yourself. If you don't believe in yourself, why should anyone else? IT STARTS WITH YOU.

Thank you again for reading this blog,

Be Kind, Respectful and with big ol' hugs

The Cotswolds Girl

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