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Chapter 1
Iāve Been There
āIāve learned that making a ālivingā is not the same thing as āmaking a life.āā
ā Maya Angelou
Having a meaningful career can be challenging, but only you can create that career by going through a journey of self-discovery and consciousness.
What is a meaningful career? In my words, it is a career that provides me the opportunity to grow, thrive, add value, and ensure I do work that mattersāthat I leave the world in a better shape. It means that from my perspective, it is essential to learn about what matters to me, to be conscious that every action that I take has an impact, not only on my journey but also in the people that surround me.
Many times in the mentoring process, I got the question from a mentee: how do I connect my job, which is so mechanical, to life meaning? Let me tell you, that question usually leads to a wonderful conversation where, through meaningful questions, she identifies the why and the big impact that she is having on humanity.
Some of those questions would be: What is the company vision? If your job didnāt exist, would the company reach the vision? How your job enables other groups to reach their objectives and every group as a whole acting together reaches the company vision? Every single person in the organization has a role that helps the company reach that vision. What I find many times is that people are so focused on the day-to-day that they donāt connect the dots and connecting those dots is essential not only to find meaning, but also to build your elevator pitch.
Of course, there are jobs that wouldnāt fit with my set of values and what I expect in life. Let me give you an example: the smoking industry. I know that I wouldnāt be able to work in an industry whose products are scientifically proven to damage peopleās lives. That is my choice. It is my choice, because I want a world that nourishes and enriches the life of every human being on earth. I make my choices based on that perspective and I am still working on those choices.
At this point I havenāt been required to work with anyone that had needed to justify or connect their purpose in life or meaningful career with an industry like that. Although my approach in life is not to judge, there are three universal principles that I apply in my life and that are part of my life compass.
Those principles are:
- 1.Respect everyoneās opinion. This doesnāt mean that I will agree with everything you tell me, but I acknowledge that the different opinions will allow us to reach a better and more inclusive solution.
- 2.Everyone is on their own journey. We are all at different stages in life and are here in this beautiful journey called life. A career is just a piece of that journey. Showing compassion for myself and others will allow me to understand the different moments that everyone is facing in this shared journey.
- 3.Compassion. Be compassionate with yourself first to understand that when you have specific non-positive feelings about a situation or a person, it is probably because there is something inside you that is ringing a bell for you to go to explore and work on that specific situation. Being compassionate is being sympathetic of othersā distress, with a desire to alleviate it. We need to understand that all of us have a history behind us that has impacted the way we behave and that our perspective in life is not unique or perfect, it is a reflection of our background. With that in mind, I see others through a lens that seeks to understand behavior or situations that may be creating tension. That puts me in a neutral position instead of a position of judging.
- 4.Forgive. Itās a simple and short word, many times so hard to process, but so important in our development and growth. Forgive yourself and forgive others. I keep recalling to myself Jesusā words: āFather, forgive them, because they do not know what they are doingā (Luke 23:34).
Let me explain to you why. I learned over the years that people donāt wake up stating: āI will be mean today,ā or āI will do x, y, or z to this person.ā What I learned is that all come from a state of fear, from a state of lack of self-love, so the best that we can do is to be compassionate and forgive from the heart. This doesnāt mean that you will allow a lack of respect or damage to yourself, because you need to care about you, but do what is required and forgive to move forward.
I will share my story to illustrate some of the challenges and opportunities that have helped me build a meaningful career, but itās not just my story, I asked seven amazing women to share their stories with us. You will get here a little summary of their stories, which is expanded in the coming chapters.
My Story:
In my 20-year career, I lived through and witnessed many challenges. As I advanced in the leadership ladder, of course, those challenges became bigger in terms of responsibility, impact, and complexity. A very important moment was when I decided to get certified as Vital Voices Mentor of the chapter in Costa Rica.
As a representative of the company that I work for, I attended several board of directors meetings. In one of those meetings, the board vice-president, my dear friend and mentor Alexandra Kissling, invited me and the other female board members to be part of a mentorship process for women that were owners of small businesses. She is the president of the Vital Voices Chapter in Costa Rica. Many of us joined the journey. We were recruited as accomplished business women, but what we didnāt know was the impact that this process would have on our lives.
Vital Voices is a global non-governmental organization that identifies, trains, and empowers emerging women leaders and social entrepreneurs around the globe. Vital Voices looks to invest in and bring visibility to extraordinary women around the world by unleashing their leadership potential to transform lives and accelerate peace and prosperity. Iāve been a mentor for entrepreneurs and women at work. Mentoring is an amazing way of give yourself to others but at the same time to intensely grow by getting to know yourself better in the process.
The process took us on a journey inside ourselves, as in order to guide others we needed to know ourselves very well. This is a process, like peeling an onion, takes you layer by layer deep inside. In that process, you see things that you donāt like about yourself, but also get to understand where they come from and feel empowered to change them. One revealing aspect was not feeling adequate or enough to bring my thoughts and perspectives to the business table. I discovered my cover as smart/quiet, āstrategicallyā communicating what others wanted to hear, but as soon as I became conscious of this and identified it as a practice from childhood that I had learned to be accepted and get what I wanted, I decided to work this out in this mentoring training. The results: things started to flourish in an accelerated way. It was painful, but getting a safe space to discuss what I was going through allowed me not only to get it out of my system (my body) but also to find new ways to raise my voice, feel empowered, and to grow faster. That was the moment when I really understood that my unique thoughts and perspectives were not only valuable, but required. They were not always appreciated by everyone, but itās okay because I am showing up now sharing my own perspective and adding more value, which also helped me to move faster in the leadership ladder. The mentoring process is not about giving solutions but guiding the mentees with significant questions to reach their own goals.
As mentor and mentee, I learned that many times the challenge that arose in the moment was just the tipping point of something bigger and deeper, but the key element on all this is the inside. As we discover our essence, we also learn that all the answers are inside us.
Another key moment was when I was called to become Aspen Institute fellow under the Central American Leadership Initiative (CALI). Every year a diverse cohort of proximately 23 people is selected to start a journey that takes them from leadership to significance. That was especially important as in my job, I was part of the team that was leading a layoff for the company and although there were very clear business objectives on my plate and I am a focused person delivering results, there were also many people that would be impacted by the process, which of course meant pain to me. Of course, those processes are managed with a lot of confidentiality and you are very lonely in the process that can sometimes take many months. This fellowship came just in time to become a relief in the middle of a hard process, during which time I appreciated the full support that I got from my manager. This was a relief because, as part of the fellowship, we deeply explored our leadership styles, our moral compasses, and our footprints on the world and actually made a social impact commitment with a diverse cohort, understanding that all of us face the same leadership and human challenges. The members of that cohort became brothers and sisters of my heart, and I certainly became more a Central American and global citizen after this transformational process.
I highlight those two moments as transformative moments in the journey back home to my essence and in learning more about myself to become a better leader and human being.
My family support has been essential in my career. There are not enough words of appreciation for the support received from my parents, my siblings, my aunt Ofe, and other aunts, uncles, and cousins, like Jhise.
Although we are told many times that we need to separate the personal stuff from work, the reality is that we are holistic multidimensional human beings. We are a package, so understanding the different āpocketsā of our life and having awareness helps us to better manage different situations.
Through the book I share many stories from myself and my mentees, as those are rich examples and, just by accompanying them in their own journeys, I learned that many teams have the same general challenges or questionsāthough I also learned that all situations are unique as we all are unique and have different needs.
I moved from Costa Rica to United States back in 2017 and new mentees keep coming to me, so I decided to create the seven-step workshop that I summarize in this book and guide them on a process to identify their current challenges and build the career of their dreams.
Others that Have Been through the Inner Journey Process:
While I was writing about these amazing women, I was telling myself about how fortunate Iāve been to have women like them in my life. Women who not only have a positive outlook on life, but also have the determination to keep growing, despite the circumstances and challenges that life bringsāand guess what? They not only overcome their challenges, but they keep expanding their footprint by taking the others around them, ensuring others grow with them. I will share with you more about their challenges in the following chapters, but I didnāt want to wait to share a little bit about them since I know you may identify with them.
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Chapter 2
A Toolkit to Build the Career of Your Dreams
āAnd when your journey seems too hard, and when you run into a chorus of cynics who tell you that youāre being foolish to keep believing or that you canāt do something, or that you should just give up, or you just settleāyou might say to...
