Foundational Work
When I was younger, one of my school teachers wrote in my report card “Works very hard but has little to show for it”. Sadly this is rather a story of my life. I do work incredibly hard and yet I am often the person who achieves the least. I have a reputation for being the person that always seem to take forever to get my head around things. Many a time someone has had to step in to help me out. I lack confidence, I am filled with anxiety and doubt about the things I’m doing, I look around at what others are doing and feel like a fraud. Too often have I felt the tears welling up in my eyes because I’m so behind.
Yet others will look at my CV and feel intimidated by my education and by my career experiences. They don’t see the shy girl who lacks confidence. They see an impressive career path supplemented by educational achievement and a shiny future ahead of me.
Today, as I was out running I was pondering this situation. How can someone work so hard and achieve so little? I found myself thinking what I would say to anyone else who told me that they worked so hard and felt like they achieved so little. I would say something like “ no experience is wasted”, “every experience is valuable at some point in your life”, “life is not a race, don’t compare yourself to others”. And then it hit me. What I have been doing is foundational work. Building the foundations for a strong future. Taking my time to make sure that I’ve used the right materials. Yes I’ve experimented with different things, had to re-do a few things, given up on some things, but I’m slowly starting to feel as if my life is starting to become clear.
Of course it would be folly to build a house without strong foundations. The difference between life and a house though is that we don’t always plan what we’re building. I know I didn’t. I just set off doing things I loved doing. I’ve done a lot of stuff. Some of it has stayed in my life. Some of it has fallen by the wayside. Either way, none of those experiences have been wasted. They’ve all been used to build the foundations for my future. I can have confidence in those foundations because I know they’ve been well researched.
