People who love me,
As some of you know I’m starting a new job on Monday. It’s my first “first day” in almost six years. I’m excited. I’m nervous. I’m hopeful. I feel it in my marrow; this has the potential to be something really great for me.
Like what happens with many things that feel so right, the voices are starting to tell me it’s wrong, that I’m wrong, that maybe I can’t do it after all. The voices were there during the interview process too. I found a tool to beat back the voices then and I’d like to call upon it again now with your help.
On the podcast Being Boss, Brené Brown talks about the value of, “having visual reminders around your workspace of what’s real and important to you…” and she went on to describe one way she builds this for herself, “[When] I wrote in the beginning of my career, literally I pictured a mobile over my head with every potential critic in my life…so today when I write I actually have a physical mobile of my friends and family members over me and all I ask is that I’m being true to them. That when they read it they say, “She’s showing up. She’s being who she is and she’s telling the truth.” To me to make explicit who those people are and what that looks like is super important…People who love you, not despite your falls, not despite your imperfections but because you’re brave enough to try and you put yourself out there…just ask them for a picture and one sentence and just hang it up.”
So I’m asking you for a picture. One of you smiling your biggest, brightest, truest smile. I’m also asking for one sentence, a reminder to me of how I show up when I’m being who I am, telling the truth and brave enough to try.
When the voices whisper in my ear during my first day, first month, first year I’ll have your face to turn to instead.
Instructions: DM or email me your pic and sentence by Sunday evening. Your sentence doesn’t need to be fancy or poetic, just some words of encouragement, advice or a reminder of how I show up when I’m at my best.
Thank you,
JRM
P.S. If you want to see the original “smiling faces” collage I made for my interviews check it out here. If you don’t see your face, don’t think too much of it. I made this in 15 minutes an hour before the interview.