When I was 29 and three quarters, I had a brief moment of panic.
I was three months from turning 30 and all the things I thought you should be by the time you hit 30 — a proper, real life, confident adult — I didn’t feel I was.
So I did what any good 29 and three quarters woman does, and I frantically wrote a list of all the things I had to get done in the next three months so that I could turn 30 knowing I was appropriately qualified to be that age — as well as being the successful and accomplished woman I always thought I should be by then.
Looking at that list, I wondered what I had been waiting for all those years before getting started on the things I’d written down. More importantly, I wondered why I believed I had to wait to achieve those things before simply being the adult I wanted to be.
My mother didn’t write a list when she was 29 and three quarters. Born at a time when many women were married in their early twenties and pregnant shortly after, she was well and truly a qualified adult with three kids and a career by the time she was 30.
Gen Y women have been given a whole extra decade that our mothers didn’t have. Our twenties. We’re no longer expected to use these years to have and raise children – although we can still do that if we want. We can travel, continue our education and work at building amazing careers.
But are we making the most of it? Or are we waiting around for all the stars to align before finally finding our career confidence and being and believing we’re the adults we always expected to be? Are we waiting so long that we miss out on that extra decade altogether?
My life crisis at 29 and three quarters was a turning point. A dull and unremarkable day that turned out to include a very personal moment that made me reconsider success and what I wanted from life and career.
We all have turning points. The real question is whether me make them occur or wait for them to happen. Also, it’s whether we make the most of them when they do come up.
A little over a year ago, I set out on a mission to specifically interview women about the turning points of their careers.
What I wanted to know was what separates those who are ambitious and achieve remarkable things, from those who’re simply ambitious — but never get around to achieving the success they want.
I found a number of things — and have summed these up as 11 career lessons in my book, Women Who Seize the Moment — but underpinning all of them I found that it comes down to either waiting or not waiting.
There are many forms of waiting. It’s not simply a matter of being unambiguous, lazy, or lacking confidence.
It’s more a matter of this self-limiting belief that the things we want will eventually happen. If I keep working hard with my head down I’ll get promoted. If I get the right education, I’ll get the job I always wanted. If I spend enough years in the one job, somebody will notice how good I am and pay me what I deserve. If I’m ‘lucky’ enough to make the right contacts, I’ll get the network I need to build that business. If I get to the right age, I’ll finally be ready for what I really want. If I WAIT, the great career opportunities I’ve always wanted will eventually arrive.
Interviewing women who achieve remarkable things as well as the success they want, I found that they don’t wait — or they at least got to a point where they stopped waiting. They made the most of the turning points that came their way. They took every opportunity to create their own luck, improvise their careers, voice their ambitions and build a support network that could help. Things didn’t always work out. They made mistakes. They failed. They experienced adversity. They had to give up on well thought out plans to create new ones.
But no matter what setbacks they encountered along the way, they kept going.
I’m now what I like to call a ‘reformed waiter’. If you really want it, there’s nothing stopping you from trying to have it today.
This is an edited extract of a speech I gave at the launch of Women Who Seize the Moment last night.
The book is available in all good bookstores, at Booktopia and Jane Curry publishing.