Holding on to hope

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Being a woman in the corporate world, in today’s generation, you have the weight of the world on your shoulders. You may not necessarily have put that weight on yourself but in a world where everyone is advocating for women’s rights and showing how great women can beat the elusive “work life balance”, you can’t help but feel that pressure mounting as the years pass by. You feel like you will be a let down to the whole community if you don’t succeed.

There are all kinds of inspiring women out there. There are those women of the world who are perfectly happy giving up ambitious dreams to settle down and raise a family because to them, that’s what makes them happy. Then, there are the go-getter women who break glass ceilings in every field that they choose. They achieve so much, some very early on and some after long battles, that they then become the guiding light for every women to follow.

This women’s day, I was introduced to another example of the latter kind of woman. Today, my company hosted Nicole Malachowski, a leader, a fighter pilot in the United States Air Force, a wife, a mother and now a motivational speaker. While she has a very interesting background and story of personal struggle, today, she spoke only about her career and how she fought self doubt and persevered. She mentioned how crucial it was that on two separate occasions, there were people who believed in her capabilities when even she didn’t believe in herself and gave her opportunities which helped her rise to the occasion and grow. She mentioned two powerful statements that these people told her, some that I noted down for myself –

“Nobody wants to lead a scripted life. Don’t write yourself out of the script” – Some one very high up in the military ranks told her this when she gave up on her dream and withdrew an application to a position because everyone told her she wouldn’t make it.

“It’s my job to make you successful.” – Someone who believed in her abilities even when she didn’t believe in herself.

Had these two people not have recognized her talent and given her the encouragement, these opportunities, her career may have gone in a completely different direction. That doesn’t mean she didn’t have to struggle and make her way to prove herself. She struggled. She sacrificed. She shared a picture of herself in her office with her little twins on her lap. It was night time but she had to be at work. She had to juggle her children and a very important assignment at work. Then she showed us a casserole on her desk. Someone brought her dinner because they recognized how hard she was working and that she needed help. She worked very hard and rose to the occasion but the help she received, those opportunities that her benefactors gave her, all helped her to push herself to take that extra step. This proves the power of having someone look out for you. It is very easy to drown in the world of self doubt. It doesn’t help that there are more people in the world who tear you down than who raise you up. I imagine, most women drown. I can imagine a lot of ambitious women are forced to abandon their dreams because of the common notion that women simply cannot do everything.

Nicole then went on to tell us that there is no such thing as a work life balance, or at least she wasn’t aware of such a thing. She said the way she coped was to set boundaries. On a particular day of the week, she was an officer of the air force. Everything else took a back seat. On another day of the week, she was a mother. Everything else didn’t matter that day. On another day, she was a leader, a mentor. She mentioned that soon people started respecting her boundaries. To her, that was the closest she ever came to achieving work life balance. It sounds simple but it highlights the fact that there will have to be sacrifices, on all fronts. Achieving a perfect balance is near impossible. This is something I’ve come to believe myself. It’s not something that most women like to admit openly since it shows that we are imperfect. But it is refreshing when someone readily admits it. This is only the second time I heard someone say it openly. The first time I heard it was from Indra Nooyi – former CEO of Pepsi.

Throughout her talk, she gave out some genuine pearls of wisdom. Five of her statements stuck out to me:

“Its ok to dream big”

“You will never be fully ready for your next role! You will have to grow into it!”

“Believe those that believe in you.”

“Remember to ask for help!”

“Only you can define success for yourself – don’t let anyone else define that for you!”

I have been struggling to achieve my dreams. As a woman, I have to juggle family expectations to conform to societal norms and my own professional ambitions of achieving something meaningful in life. It’s never easy and ignoring one or giving one more precedence than the other, doesn’t make me feel any better. I am at a point in my life where personally and professionally, even though I have achieved quite a bit, it seems like I’m stuck in quicksand and I am trying to reach my hand out hoping really hard that someone will grab it and pull me out or at least hand me a rope so I can pull myself out but it’s just not happening and I am just holding on for dear life. I am waiting to get that opportunity so I can rise up and show people that I am capable of handling it. In those rare moments when I am not grappling with self doubt, I know I can do it. But I just can’t seem to get those opportunities. I only have people who pull me down around me. Where are those who lift me up? I created a definition of success for myself but I am only being told I am wrong and that I should modify my definition of success. Why is that? I am asking for help but no one wants to listen. Why is that? I want to dream big but what’s the point if I am not given those rare opportunities to rise to the occasion?

I loved listening to Nicole talk today, but by the end of it, it only made me more disheartened because this was yet another story of how others were able to achieve their dreams and I am still waiting. I don’t know how long I will have to wait. While I wait, I alter my dreams a little everyday so I can avoid disappointment but then, I end up in self doubt and eventually being disappointment anyway. Nicole was inspiring and made me want to hold on to the hope that some day, I too will achieve my definition of success. But I cannot help but wallow in self doubt. In the absence of someone being there to remind me that I can do it, it’s hard to always keep saying that to yourself. At some point, you just start to delude yourself. A some point, it becomes a futile exercise because your life has passed you by! And that is my biggest fear.