I was recently asked to consider the advice I would have given to myself as a 20-something woman with big dreams, knowing what I know now about how my career would pan out. On reflection I would probably advise something like this:
- Persevere for your passions.
The path to success won’t be a straight one. You will rarely be the obvious or first choice for the job you want in the early part of your career but don’t ever give up. Take the next best job, show them what you can do and then you will eventually get the job you wanted.
- Every knock back is an opportunity so never give up on the plan.
You will use setbacks and rejection to hone your creative and strategic skills, forcing you to think outside the square for both the businesses you run and also for how you manage your career and life.
- You will make many risky decisions for your children and won’t regret a single one.
Your world and priorities will alter forever once you become a mother. You will be prepared to risk everything, often, for your children. The good news is that every risky move will eventually be seen as a positive step forward for you even if painful at the time.
- Teardrops by Womack & Womack will always remind you of your fabulous carefree twenties.
This will become your go-to song after a tough day of life when you wish you could be that twenty-something young woman whose major decisions each week revolved around the weekend’s nightlife. Teardrops will save you many times over, but your sons may never warm to it or the way that you break into song and dance whenever it is played.
- You will care less about popularity as time goes by
There will always be detractors who will want to bring you down. They will wound you in the early years but you will reach a point where you won’t care what anyone beyond your tight circle of family and friends thinks about you. You will feel liberated when you reach this point.
- You don’t need 100 pairs of shoes.
You will develop a life-long love affair with shoes that will at times threaten to destroy your credit rating. However, the older you get the more you will come to realise that you will only ever wear 90% of them once. Also, housing 100 pairs of shoes in a manner befitting of their price tag will prove a lifelong, irrational obsession.
- That career wish list will be smashed.
You will spend many sleepless nights worrying about your career check list as a young journalist starting out and will look back 25 years later and laugh about it. As you achieve each career milestone a new goal is immediately added to the list. But you need to realise that at some point the list should end.
- You will develop a very thick skin
People will disappoint you but you will learn from it, move on and grow stronger.
- You will never compromise your values.
Your uncompromising belief that equality is a basic human right will cause you much pain throughout your career, but will also be the driving force behind your leadership.
What advice would you give your twenty-something self?