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Behind the sparkle
May 26, 2023
How often do you doubt what you’re doing, or get discouraged?
Tina Turner, the legendary singer who died this week, overcame well-documented hardships throughout her life to enjoy huge global success. I heard on the Today programme yesterday (starts at 2h 38m) that when asked by Oprah Winfrey in 2013 to describe her legacy, Tina replied ‘My legacy is that I stayed on course from the beginning to the end because I believed in something inside of me that told me that you can get better, or you can make something better, and that I wanted better’.
We're not all Tina Turners, but her words are powerful. Towards the end of last year, I met up with an old friend I’d not seen in person for some time and who has worked for big businesses all of her career, progressing to a very senior role and managing a busy home life with children as well. To my amazement she told me she was deeply impressed by my entrepreneurship, profile and achievements since setting up my own business and that in comparison, she felt she had just trodden the corporate path in a far less exciting way. Whilst very touched by this, I was quite thrown by her comment.
Because the truth is, I’ve frequently wondered whether I’m doing the right thing and even whether anyone has noticed what I’m up to (there, I’ve aired my inner critic’s favourite jibe publicly). In this blog I’m finally coming out of my ‘self-doubt closet’ and confessing all. I’ve probably worked harder than I’ve ever worked before since setting up solo, spending 9 months writing my book, another 7 months finalising it and preparing to launch it, a further 15 months (and counting) post-launch promoting it, speaking, writing and podcasting about it. It has been a huge investment of my time and energy, and yes, I’ve pondered on a weekly basis what I’m getting back on that investment.
It's all too easy to compare ourselves to others in similar lines of work and to unhelpfully measure ourselves up against their external indicators of success and find ourselves coming up short. Believe me, authors building their businesses are just as prone to this as any other professional! There’s a whole raft of measures that can stoke our insecurity, including:
• How many print runs your book has had
• How high profile your speaking opportunities are
• Whether you’ve landed any bookshop signings and events
• Whether you’ve licensed any foreign language editions of your book
• What media coverage and appearances you’ve garnered
• How many positive online ratings and reviews your book has
I could go on. But what I’m learning is that book success (for which read: any kind of professional or career success) comes in many forms and flavours, and each of us follows our own path. As authors we helpfully swap ideas and learn from what each other is doing, which I hugely appreciate, but unless we’re Margaret Heffernan or Malcom Gladwell, we’re unlikely to be ticking all the boxes off the ‘Global Business Book Success’ checklist.
Sure there are the shiny moments that we celebrate publicly but for every one of those there are hundreds of hours of invisible graft behind the scenes. That’s one reason why, when I hit 2 years of daily running in November last year on an unusually bright day, I chose not to post a sunshiney celebratory photo of me out running with my husband, but instead I posted this photo of me out running alone the next day in the rain. Because that was the reality beind the big milestones.
Don’t get me wrong. I do feel very proud of what I’ve accomplished so far and it felt great to put my gladrags on last week and celebrate with other published authors as finalists at the Business Book Awards 2023. And it was utterly amazing to hear my name and my book’s title read out as winner in the People, Culture & Management category! Thank you to all who have commented on and celebrated this achievement with me on Linked In and in real life. (If you missed the news last week, my Insta reel has the highlights). My May newsletter is an unusually joyous edition. But as I float gently back down from cloud nine, it’s back to normality and writing this blog, updating my website, following up with clients enquiring about my talks, workshops and coaching programmes, booking in podcast guests and preparing my VAT return.
Because it’s putting the effort in every day, come rain or shine, that moves us forward; that grows our business or our book’s reach bit by tiny painstaking bit, each and every day. Success for me is just as much about the ‘keeping on going’ as it is about the occasional celebratory or highly visible moments that come along. If you’ve been plodding away at something in your work life, feeling like it’s slow going, or if you’ve been admiring other people’s successes, then this message is for you:
If you love what you do, if it you believe in it, and if you can afford to keep doing it, then don’t give up. As the saying goes, if it was easy then we’d all be doing it all of the time. The harder the effort and the longer the wait, the more rewarding that moment of success feels, as a wise teacher once gently explained to my 9 year old daughter who was sobbing after failing yet again to win her first ever medal at a school sports day.
I like the way James Cleare, author of Atomic Habits, puts it: ‘complaining about not achieving success despite working hard is like complaining about an ice cube not melting when you heated it from 21 to 31 degrees. Your work is not wasted; it is just being stored. All the action happens at 32 degrees’.
So when you’re full of doubt and feeling like you’re pushing water uphill, remember that to someone else your hard graft looks like enviably shiny success. And good things will come. So don’t give up.
Tina Turner, the legendary singer who died this week, overcame well-documented hardships throughout her life to enjoy huge global success. I heard on the Today programme yesterday (starts at 2h 38m) that when asked by Oprah Winfrey in 2013 to describe her legacy, Tina replied ‘My legacy is that I stayed on course from the beginning to the end because I believed in something inside of me that told me that you can get better, or you can make something better, and that I wanted better’.
We're not all Tina Turners, but her words are powerful. Towards the end of last year, I met up with an old friend I’d not seen in person for some time and who has worked for big businesses all of her career, progressing to a very senior role and managing a busy home life with children as well. To my amazement she told me she was deeply impressed by my entrepreneurship, profile and achievements since setting up my own business and that in comparison, she felt she had just trodden the corporate path in a far less exciting way. Whilst very touched by this, I was quite thrown by her comment.
Because the truth is, I’ve frequently wondered whether I’m doing the right thing and even whether anyone has noticed what I’m up to (there, I’ve aired my inner critic’s favourite jibe publicly). In this blog I’m finally coming out of my ‘self-doubt closet’ and confessing all. I’ve probably worked harder than I’ve ever worked before since setting up solo, spending 9 months writing my book, another 7 months finalising it and preparing to launch it, a further 15 months (and counting) post-launch promoting it, speaking, writing and podcasting about it. It has been a huge investment of my time and energy, and yes, I’ve pondered on a weekly basis what I’m getting back on that investment.
It's all too easy to compare ourselves to others in similar lines of work and to unhelpfully measure ourselves up against their external indicators of success and find ourselves coming up short. Believe me, authors building their businesses are just as prone to this as any other professional! There’s a whole raft of measures that can stoke our insecurity, including:
• How many print runs your book has had
• How high profile your speaking opportunities are
• Whether you’ve landed any bookshop signings and events
• Whether you’ve licensed any foreign language editions of your book
• What media coverage and appearances you’ve garnered
• How many positive online ratings and reviews your book has
I could go on. But what I’m learning is that book success (for which read: any kind of professional or career success) comes in many forms and flavours, and each of us follows our own path. As authors we helpfully swap ideas and learn from what each other is doing, which I hugely appreciate, but unless we’re Margaret Heffernan or Malcom Gladwell, we’re unlikely to be ticking all the boxes off the ‘Global Business Book Success’ checklist.
Sure there are the shiny moments that we celebrate publicly but for every one of those there are hundreds of hours of invisible graft behind the scenes. That’s one reason why, when I hit 2 years of daily running in November last year on an unusually bright day, I chose not to post a sunshiney celebratory photo of me out running with my husband, but instead I posted this photo of me out running alone the next day in the rain. Because that was the reality beind the big milestones.
Don’t get me wrong. I do feel very proud of what I’ve accomplished so far and it felt great to put my gladrags on last week and celebrate with other published authors as finalists at the Business Book Awards 2023. And it was utterly amazing to hear my name and my book’s title read out as winner in the People, Culture & Management category! Thank you to all who have commented on and celebrated this achievement with me on Linked In and in real life. (If you missed the news last week, my Insta reel has the highlights). My May newsletter is an unusually joyous edition. But as I float gently back down from cloud nine, it’s back to normality and writing this blog, updating my website, following up with clients enquiring about my talks, workshops and coaching programmes, booking in podcast guests and preparing my VAT return.
Because it’s putting the effort in every day, come rain or shine, that moves us forward; that grows our business or our book’s reach bit by tiny painstaking bit, each and every day. Success for me is just as much about the ‘keeping on going’ as it is about the occasional celebratory or highly visible moments that come along. If you’ve been plodding away at something in your work life, feeling like it’s slow going, or if you’ve been admiring other people’s successes, then this message is for you:
If you love what you do, if it you believe in it, and if you can afford to keep doing it, then don’t give up. As the saying goes, if it was easy then we’d all be doing it all of the time. The harder the effort and the longer the wait, the more rewarding that moment of success feels, as a wise teacher once gently explained to my 9 year old daughter who was sobbing after failing yet again to win her first ever medal at a school sports day.
I like the way James Cleare, author of Atomic Habits, puts it: ‘complaining about not achieving success despite working hard is like complaining about an ice cube not melting when you heated it from 21 to 31 degrees. Your work is not wasted; it is just being stored. All the action happens at 32 degrees’.
So when you’re full of doubt and feeling like you’re pushing water uphill, remember that to someone else your hard graft looks like enviably shiny success. And good things will come. So don’t give up.
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By asking ‘are we there already?’ or ‘am I there already?’, we can look differently at what we spend our time on today and appreciate those things we do that are working well for us right here, right now. In other words, the ways in which we’re already living our future today. In my #timeintelligence workshops, I help teams identify all the positive aspects of the way they work that is enabling them to deliver on their goals, often under intense time pressure and resource constraints. In parallel with celebrating these strengths and successes, we look for changes within their control that can help them overcome the challenges or frustration and make best use of their time at work. So instead of setting some traditional resolutions, why not try setting some ‘living my future today’ resolutions? 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Cup of tea and large slice of cake in hand. 5. Saying yes to coffees and phone calls with friends even when work and life feel too busy and I’m tempted to say ‘not this week’. I never regret making the time. Why not ask the same question to colleagues in your team? Your close friends or family? It might spark a new kind of conversation. And you might well discover that your future has already arrived.
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