The Way of the World
Lots of things happening around these parts.
And lots of commentary in the world about the way of it.
Interestingly, similar themes…people’s histories coming back to hunt them, or empowering them to have more opportunities in their present.
I always had issues with the phrase “I am not my past”. It always sounded like an excuse to remove accountability from whatever.
Perhaps I don’t understand it?
That somehow what…you were in the past doesn’t defi….
Yeah I can’t.
I feel like OF COURSE people are the sum of what’s happened to them or what they consciously chose to do.
If you did crazy terrible and bad things, while you can change, you still were that person and you did those things….or had those things done to you.
There’s knowledge that comes with doing good and bad things, making mistakes, and learning lessons. It’s you being accountable for what you’ve done and/or you learning how to adapt to certain situations based on your past experiences.
Besides the obvious examples of how the past can come back to bite you, this week I also saw how your past can position you for greatness.
I personally have only been working professionally (generally post college) for 7 years, but during those 7 years, I have had virtually all of the major federal agencies across the Department of Defense, Intelligence, and Civil as clients…mostly at the CIO’s of those divisions. I’ve seen how different orgs run, their strengths and weaknesses…learned, adapted, applied lessons learned. This experience landed me the opportunity to carry a lean and fast high priority project with one other person…because we have a wide cast of systems development experience both from a “politics” POV and a “technical” point of view (being able to perform multiple roles on a development team.)
It seems like a daunting and almost impossible task to a couple of people, mostly because they generally do silo type work. But for us, and especially me, I was a one person development team handling everything from server administration and security to coding and designing the site on almost all my projects in those other sectors before I came here. Not really a big deal, more returning to my roots.
My past defines me as someone who senior people trust to be able to do this…and my confidence is rooted in me doing this multiple times in different types of environments.
I’m confident in saying I’m a pretty big deal work wise.
In my personal life, my past defines me as someone who is weary of any sort of relationships due to my probably over generosity being taken for granted repeatedly. You don’t get paid or accolades or promotions or really anything for going above and beyond for others…you mostly just get used.
I’m confident in saying that I suck at figuring out who to personally invest in because I have not done it multiple times and have only done so in limited environments….and I probably reside in my work so much because that’s where I’m comfortable…which in turn limits relationship opportunities and exposure to different environments…
…
But yeah. I say all that to say, YES your past defines you.
You also define your future though.
Yes your past may limit your opportunities sometimes, but it’s really 100% your responsibility to find opportunities for the things you want to do in the future. Things won’t be handed to you. You have to consistently demonstrate your competence and willingness to work for the things you want.
It’s also up to you to BE AWARE of how what you’re doing now may impact your future.
An awareness that apparently not many people have…
(I know I need to take my own advice…priorities man, priorities…)
