Omg. 4 days to go. In four days I'll be leaving behind some of my most beautiful years but also some of my most traumatic. All lovely learning experiences nevertheless.
Speaking of learning experiences, today I want to very quickly talk about being a bit more assertive. A couple of years back my manager at work then told me - I think you need to speak up more and be more assertive. Let's work on these skills and then let's also work on your promotion - At that time I silently said in my head "yea right, just tell me straight up you don't want to put me up for promotion instead of giving me this corporate mumbo-jumbo". I have always been a believer of hard work speaks for itself and you don't need to be screaming from the rooftops about your "work" for you to get ahead in life, or for your worth to be recognised and rewarded. I have always been and will always be an introvert. I do not come across as one because I am very social and I have genuine conversations with people and those conversations are fun. But internally after 30 mins of being in a crowd, I start losing energy and I have spoken earlier about how I see introverts or extroverts as people who lose/gain energy with people respectively. So when I was told at work to "speak up" I wasn't very happy. Why shall I speak when I have nothing valuable to add to the meeting?
But, i also personally believe that I was a lot more outspoken when i was in Hyderabad. I would share my opinions with folks at work including my boss, I would talk about things that needed to be done, things that needed to be solved, things that needed to be more efficient etc. Somewhere in the transition from Hyderabad to Singapore I lost that confidence. For no outward reasons at all. Maybe it was a move from an environment I was comfortable dealing with, an Indian one and hence culturally more closer than an international one. I also lost a bunch of friends who made work fun to come to, i lost a whole life that I never really built back up in Singapore simply because I couldn't find people who liked to do the things I liked to do. My idea of fun stopped being "let's get drunk friday and saturday nights and spend sunday nursing that hangover" and so I instantly didn't want to join 9 of the 10 groups that invited me over. I have been that prude who went and slept in her room at 1am when her roommate was hosting a party in the living room outside. I just had to get to yoga to 7 am and I didn't want to drink anymore okay!
But, i also personally believe that I was a lot more outspoken when i was in Hyderabad. I would share my opinions with folks at work including my boss, I would talk about things that needed to be done, things that needed to be solved, things that needed to be more efficient etc. Somewhere in the transition from Hyderabad to Singapore I lost that confidence. For no outward reasons at all. Maybe it was a move from an environment I was comfortable dealing with, an Indian one and hence culturally more closer than an international one. I also lost a bunch of friends who made work fun to come to, i lost a whole life that I never really built back up in Singapore simply because I couldn't find people who liked to do the things I liked to do. My idea of fun stopped being "let's get drunk friday and saturday nights and spend sunday nursing that hangover" and so I instantly didn't want to join 9 of the 10 groups that invited me over. I have been that prude who went and slept in her room at 1am when her roommate was hosting a party in the living room outside. I just had to get to yoga to 7 am and I didn't want to drink anymore okay!
Eventually i found people I would like to hang out with, which was a small group but I was ok with a small number - it's never about the quantity of friends but the quality of people you choose to spend your time with. And I hold that to be true even today. And when Singapore and the culture in Singapore and the office and folks at work started feeling more like home, I once again found my voice and I changed teams and loved working with my new team and my new boss - i once again found the confidence to speak up, to share my opinions, to talk about what I thought was wrong or right. Until something drastic happened and I lost that confidence once more and now I am again trying to muster the courage for my voice to come back out from it's hiding place. I do not think people appreciate the positive qualities of an introvert as they do of an extrovert, and I feel even less people know how to deal with one - how to coach them, how to mentor them and how to pave a path for their growth by supporting them to flourish in their own beautiful way - not by speaking up in meetings when they have nothing to say but for valuing their contribution when they do have something to say. If I were given the chance to ever run a team or manage people and I found people like me working with me, I know I would have a difficult time dealing with them but I would hopefully be able to do a better job with them and support them instead of having them fit into a mould that they were never meant to be in.
Anyway again I digress from the point. I started this post today to say along with my introvert-ism comes this immense inability to tell people off when they are very obviously being shitty with me. When they don't hold up their end of the bargain or don't complete a task or make me look bad because they don't fulfil their promise in the deal and many more such things. And this is a quality i would like to change and one I haven't learnt how to. And in that way I would like to be more assertive and if my bosses had tried to tell me to change that instead of telling me "speak up in meetings" I would have been better off. Or maybe they tried telling me this anyway but i took it the wrong way.
I have a difficult time asking for what rightfully belongs to me and is something i have earned. A lot of people say, women generally have a tough time with regard to this - they have a tough time asking for a raise or a promotion or even a vacation. Men don't seem to have an issue at all. I would cringe asking for a day off until I realised I deserved every bit of it - when I did not have a problem staying at work until 3 am trying to complete work for an upcoming event - why should i cringe when I write an email to my boss saying I want to take the day off - not because i am sick, not because I have to go look up my parents, not because I want to attend a friend's wedding - but just because I want to take the day off. Why should i reason with myself and him why I deserve what I deserve. And the thing here is he wouldn't have a problem with it anyway - I have in my own head told myself that it is wrong to take time off without a "valid" reason - and so I myself put this immense amount of pressure on me to justify it to myself and to him. Again i take off on a tangent, basically this standing up for myself is a skill I haven't learnt and it is now high time i learn to "speak up".
I have a difficult time asking for what rightfully belongs to me and is something i have earned. A lot of people say, women generally have a tough time with regard to this - they have a tough time asking for a raise or a promotion or even a vacation. Men don't seem to have an issue at all. I would cringe asking for a day off until I realised I deserved every bit of it - when I did not have a problem staying at work until 3 am trying to complete work for an upcoming event - why should i cringe when I write an email to my boss saying I want to take the day off - not because i am sick, not because I have to go look up my parents, not because I want to attend a friend's wedding - but just because I want to take the day off. Why should i reason with myself and him why I deserve what I deserve. And the thing here is he wouldn't have a problem with it anyway - I have in my own head told myself that it is wrong to take time off without a "valid" reason - and so I myself put this immense amount of pressure on me to justify it to myself and to him. Again i take off on a tangent, basically this standing up for myself is a skill I haven't learnt and it is now high time i learn to "speak up".
I have spent the last 3 days along with a friend busting my ass trying to put out a pop-up with a gentleman who over the course of the last three days has been anything but supportive or helpful or a gentleman. We are actually doing him and his company a favour by working with them - yes of course we are getting something out of it as well. We are getting our feet wet in this big bad world of the food business, so both sides are benefitting out of this. And when the time came to discuss the feedback from the event and to pay us our dues, he did not sit down and chat about it but instead decided to push off. So while my friend and I were wrapping up the kitchen, the person wears his helmet and is ready to ride away. Granted we have all had a tough day but you need to close things out and 30 mins more is not going to hurt anyone. If anyone should be complaining about being knackered, it should be me and my friend who have worked non-stop in the kitchen for the last three days. And then at that moment I could have either said - I am sorry, we need to sit down and chat now because we need to leave early tomorrow (look to me making excuses or justifying again) or I could have said to him - sure, let's chat tomorrow, which is the easy way out, the people pleasing nature of mine. And what did I do - I smiled and said of course, we have all had a long night, let's chat tomorrow. Chances of him showing up tomorrow are 40% and chances of us getting any money or feedback from the event (which is what is more important to us rather than the money) is also 40%. I wish, I could have "spoken up" here and done what is very obviously the right thing to do for my friend and me (she happens to be exactly like me by the way, so between the both of us we are pretty useless at confrontation or pushback).
If there's two things I would definitely like to start changing in my thirties, it is to get that confidence back up after last October, and to learn to say no when I need to say no and to not take shit from other people because I want to appear to be good and please them. This test called the Enneagram speaks about 9 different kinds of energies and styles - and all of these 9 styles are something all of us have and one or two styles dominate us more than the others and hence dictate our personality. My number is 9, the mediator or the peacemaker - surprise, surprise eh? Now, the point is not to change my Number, because that is who I inherently am - the point is to know who you are, what your strengths are, what your weaknesses are and then act with them and on them accordingly. The enneagram test very clearly says that the Type 9 has a basic tendency to avoid conflicts and self-assertion. Like I needed a test to tell me that.
Wow I went through a lot of writing to speak about my emotions from this evening - this isn't just about this evening though - this is about how I have spent the major part of my twenties, trying to hide away and run away from problems when they clearly exist and hoping that they would go away if i shut eyes or pushed them under the carpet. But the truth is they don't and I have learnt this the hard way - by either getting hurt or worse, hurting people. More about that in the next post. For today, I hope I have the courage to ask for what is rightly mine in the future and I promise to work on that.
My song for today is "Main aisa kyun hoon", translated it means, "Why am I like this" :
मैं ऐसा क्यों भोपों
मैं ऐसा क्यों हूँ
मैं जैसा हूँ
मैं वैसा क्यों हूँ
करना हैं क्या मुहको
यह मैंने कब हैं जाने
लगता हैं गाऊँगा
ज़िन्दगी भर बस यह गाना
कोई तोह बताये मुझे
गड़बड़ हैं यह सब क्या
कोई तोह बताये मुझे
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