Staying Meant Change - episode 180
Sometimes a pivot comes from within. You want to change something. What about when the thing coming is external? For Shannon Ziolkowski, the company she worked for since college was moving headquarters from Minneapolis to Miami. She did not want to make that geographical change and uproot her life. Shannon chose to stay.
Staying would mean leaving the company she loved. Faced with lots of change she did three things to pivot. First, she rewrote her resume even though it’s something she hates to do. Looking at her accomplishments, she got some help in how to translate those in an appealing, marketable way. Next she put herself out there creating a digital presence and applied to many openings posted. Not easy but necessary. Then she networked. Connecting, talking with others she was able to lean on the people in her circle as she valued their opinions. All the while she took the advice she would give to her 10-year old self: Believe in yourself. Your decisions will be ok, and it’s going to work out.
Shannon was on the podcast before in You Can Still Have Fun in the Sun episode 153.
Believe in yourself. Your decisions will be ok, and it’s going to work out.
— Shannon Ziolkowski, advice to her 10-year old self
Grace is All You Need
Thoughts from Staying Meant Change
Honestly sometimes I look at this blank space and I wonder what on earth I can write about that I haven’t already written. And then something happens within and the next thing you know my fingers are pressing away, expressing something that hadn’t quite come to the surface. Where are they headed today?
Today I believe I will reflect on the pivot. We are soon coming to a close on this series, and I have been intrigued by the guests and how they have made changes in their lives. They say that is one thing we can count on. Change. And of course death but that’s for a different blog post.
I am reading The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. I’m only on habit one. I didn’t realize it would be so dense and like a textbook almost. Not that that is bad, it’s not. I guess I thought it would be a light breezy read about these seven habits. Wrong. How does this factor into pivoting?
My biggest takeaway so far is the realization that we have the power of choice. It sounds obvious yet when you break it down you can choose to get in the habit of reframing how you look at things, how you react, or rather the choice that you won’t react in the same old way. You can be proactive instead. That’s the pivot I’m talking about. That is the change I want to make. Choosing to look at things differently than maybe I have in the past.
Case in point: a former family member. She was unkind. Let’s leave it at that. We had to be at particular functions together through the years and that brought back the hurt, each time. All the years it stung to know we were going to have to see her, to put on the brave face, and to be pleasant. There were times it was a very tall order. I wanted to say, We are sad it didn’t work out but that doesn’t mean we love you any less. So we felt rejected, and hurt when the unkindness came. The thing I now understand better is how painful it was for her to see us and to have to interact with us even on a civil level. No doubt her hurt was deeper, maybe the association was just too much for her to bear. Any way you look at it, she was doing the best she could.
Therein lies the pivot. To choose to believe she was doing her best. Yes, it fell short of what we hoped for, yet here we are. To choose to let the hurt go, to choose to hope for her well-being, to pray for her. I’ve gotten better at it. I think they call this grace. It’s a gift that is immeasurable, lavish and life-giving. Grace is really all you need. That is my choice. To extend more and more grace - yes.
Extend grace because you already have more than you know what to do with.
— RCN
