What I Really Think About Growth!
“Everything can have purpose, if you allow it “ — Noah Roklov
I recently had an in-person chat with one of my mentors. I hadn’t seen her in over 6 months and to be honest, the last time I did, I was not my best. She’s warm and open and kind. She’s also brutally honest which is exactly why I like her.
I showed up to this meeting on-brand: composed, level-headed, and confident. I had a rough idea of what I wanted to catch up on and knew that she was going to ask me about what I was up to. Like the over-prepared maniac that I sometimes can be, I had some version of a good-enough response prepared in case the question about my future came up.
After some casual chit-chat and a lot of how’ve you beens, she pulled the trigger and asked, “What’s your plan?”. I started rambling and gathered ideas from the answer I didn’t rehearse but I might as well have. Somewhere between the story I was telling myself and the story I wanted her to believe, she stopped me and said with both compassion and authority, “You seem lost”. She was neither asking a question nor expecting an explanation. It was factual, like she was describing the weather.
There was a good 30 seconds if not more of pure silence between her statement and my response. During that time, I considered all my options. I could…
