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When I came to the realization of where my bad habit came from, I didn’t understand why I was still doing it, with my relationship with my father being done, and done for a really long time.

A conversation with one of my direct reports about our bad habits triggered it. I do not even remember what she said, but my jaw dropped open and I realized that my relationship with my boss was about the same as with my father. Nothing was ever good and no matter how well of a job I did, there was always a criticism. This of course just triggered my bad habit to continue.

Just like with my father, I tried to address it. Double down on the amount of time I researched something, or the amount of details, etc. Never worked. I had a similar response, wait until the last minute. But I did have to up the game; I had to keep myself busy with other things to explain why I wasn’t able to spend much time on it, and therefore if it wasn’t perfect I had an excuse. Sad, I know. But that is how I survived for a very long time. Sad, I know.

Oh, those deep seeded feelings, hurts, trauma and the like can cause problems later in life, and you may not realize it. I have always had this problem of what my mom calls “sliding.” I would skate my way through things until the last minute and pull it out on the end. So in school, I would ride the B or C, until the end of the quarter, double down on everything, pull all-nighters and the like, and pull out an A. But it was exhausting and I tended to have to give up a couple of fun nights or weekends with friends and family.

Forever I thought this was just my bad choices in enjoying myself during the slide period, and that I just needed to stop making bad choices, sit down earlier in the process and do the projects. It didn’t work. Not once. I would sit down and start the project and become so overwhelmed with the picture of the perfect end product and worried I could not achieve it, I would then give up and avoid the project until I could not anymore and rush to get it done.

One day, I realized where this bad habit came from and why it continued to control me. It goes back to my childhood, and my few interactions with my father. He used to make fun of my and my failures, and praise my sister for her great work. The problem was if I didn’t fail, he made up stories to the family that included me failing. And in my defense, anything I did I tried to do to perfection so that he couldn’t find anything to criticize me, but again, he just made up things to criticize me. I was in a no win situation. As a child I didn’t realize it, and just kept trying to perfect my perfection and solve for things that he would make up. Nope, did not work either.

And with that I adapted this way of thinking. Try for perfection, get overwhelmed by it, and just do it at the last minute so when it was criticized I didn’t take it as personally because, you know, I didn’t have enough time to do the best. Amazing how your mind tricks you into thing that worked.

The problem was I didn’t realize what I was doing, or why I was doing it, and what is really bad, why I continued doing it. More on that tomorrow.

Yes, I deserve a day off, even from unemployment. Which means a day off of searching for jobs and just relaxing at the lake. Oh, and contemplating my vision. Really, I can’t get it out of my mind. Tell my story. I just keep repeating those words in my mind.

As a recovering workaholic and perfectionist, I tend to overthink large projects. I become so overwhelmed by figuring out what success looks like and worrying about the minute details of the end product, I get wrapped up in its perfection. I tend not to start things until I have way over analysed it and only seen in its perfected form.

It is exhausting. It is basically looking at an expert baker’s four-layer wedding cake, deciding to take it on even if you have never decorated a cake before, and worrying it will not look anything like the expert and doing so much research on the decorating technique until you run out of time and just throw it together. And they only place it belongs at that point is a Pinterest failure blog

I identified this issue of mine over time, starting with my anchor issue in my forum and moved into self-reflection. And it bubbled up some really negative feelings that I had not gotten over for years.

But more on that tomorrow, it is July 4th, we can deal with the hard stuff on a non-holiday.

I knew I had to take a few interviews while on vacation. With the way the holiday fell, some people are taking the week of the holiday, and some are taking the week after the holiday. To accommodate, I had to take some interview calls today. And of course, one gets a little messed up with cell phone coverage in rural Michigan, but it all worked out.

It is amazing what I learned in my training, in talking to my forum about hiring and of course conducting hundreds of interviews for positions on my team. One of the things I realized I was not feeling very confident about was my vision. I know I want bigger and better, I want to keep moving, growing and propelling forward but why, with what and how?

Time to relook at my vision. And one thing that keeps coming back to me is “tell my story.” I’m investing my time in my journey, and the more I tell people about it, the great feedback I am receiving. This has to be a large part of my next move.

Yesterday was a bit tough. Two hours in the car with the dogs. It was hot, they got over excited, spilled water and drooled. But that was just part of the journey. It would not have been two years ago. It would have been a fight with my husband.

I would have put us on a schedule and freaked out when we didn’t leave on time. I would have been upset about the dogs being so hot and the drool. I also would have insisted on driving. Instead, I did this my husband’s way, which involved me riding in the back seat with the dogs in the trunk area so I could keep an eye on them. In exchange, hubby gladly played the license plate game with me (31 states, including Alaska!).

What is the difference? This journey with emotional intelligence and leadership I went through. Last I left off, we had just had our first class on hiring/firing that was extremely helpful.

Next was a series of long forums on Saturdays. Yes, 7 a.m. on a Saturday morning, in downtown Chicago in River North. I used to hang out in River North in my 20s, and usually when the sun was up in River North I only saw it as I was getting in the car to go home. But here I was at 7 a.m. meeting with complete strangers.

And not only was I meeting strangers and spending the day with them, I also had to share my life line which entailed plotting your life with major events, and rating your happiness scale from 1-10 at those times. It was a hard exercise to do personally as it made me relive some very painful moments. I, and others, cried as we told their stories. Some were heartbreaking. After a long day, we bonded as a group. The group was made up of all the co-founders or number twos in the companies in our cohort. They mostly had my mindset of an integrator, like myself.

This was my group for the next nine months. My therapy group as I used to call it. I finally realized I was not the only one. They were all having similar problems to me. It was amazing and I finally had an opportunity to talk to people that understood and give me feedback, e.g. shared experiences.

We would meet about every three weeks, and I looked forward to every meeting. This forum gave me the opportunity to learn new listening skills as well. This is was started taking me to the next level.

Here we are on the start of the first week of unemployment, and I’m leaving on vacation. Yep, vacation. We rented a cabin on a lake in Michigan. And I need this. Besides, it was already paid in full, so it was either go or lose money.

My husband and I have wanted to do this trip for years. Pack up the dogs, head a little ways north and chill out, fish, swim, cook, eat, drink and just enjoy ourselves. But too many times I put my vacation on hold for other people. And magically about five years ago, my husband was decided he needed to make the move and called my boss and requested time off for me and booked a tropical vacation.

I had a wonderful time, and we have booked a tropical vacation every year since – because I need it. He needs it. We need it. The fact that my husband had to call my boss and get the approval for time off was not enough of a signal that I was working too hard and not taking care of myself.

And while I enjoyed myself, I received several phone calls and urgent emails while on vacation. The second year we went on vacation I had to conduct a phone interview from breakfast on the beach. And the candidate was horrible. I was disappointed to find out that my vacation was disrupted to be the first to interview this candidate. They brought her in the following day to interview with the rest of the team only to have them all veto her. I actually had to make a rule that I was not the first interviewer if on vacation.

It wasn’t until last year, and again this year, did my vacations actually not include work. And that was because I hired a fantastic director, who respected my vacations and took care of things while I was gone. Did she do everything the exact way I would? I’m not sure, but I don’t care, it got done and no problems resulted. Perfect.

This time on vacation I am unemployed. No worries at home, no catching up on email, no phone calls to take, no late nights leading up to vacation or after. I am taking the time to self-reflect and recreate my vision. I’ve made so many changes in my life in this past year, time to review my vision. That is my focus this week!

Never fails, right? The day you don’t have to get up and hurry out the door or do anything on a schedule is the day you awake up at 4:30 a.m. Even before the dogs are up. But all good, got sourdough going, 6 mile bike ride, my month and week planned for my goals. All that is left is writing this blog and packing – for vacation!

I was never a morning person until I made another major change in my life, but more on that later. First we have to continue on Day 2 of making a radical change and the history that brought me to this point.

Here we were February 1, 2017 and we started the apprenticeship program at The Junto Institute. We were the oldest company to-date to join the program. A few individuals from alumni companies spoke to the new companies joining to give their final feedback, advice and any other tidbits.

I remember an individual saying he fired his entire management team by the time he graduated as they were not the right people to get his company to the next level. I remember thinking to myself, that can’t be a normal thing. Another women said most likely at least one person on the management team would be gone. And finally someone else said as a team you go through a process of “storming forming norming.”

There was no way I thought I would be one of the management team that would not be there just over two years later. But here I am, and I could not be happier.

Other than those little tidbits of information that I failed to see as my warning signs, I was ready to take on this new challenge. And there it was staring me in the face the following morning. At 8 a.m., downtown Chicago, in February. And remember, I wasn’t a morning person.

First class was all about hiring. Which ironically also comes in handy now as an interviewee to answer questions appropriately. Probably one of the best classes to teach me what to say and not to say in an interview, although I didn’t realize it at the time. Good thing I paid attention!

We were so fired up after that class. So many things in our heads were spinning. We should have scheduled lunch so we could talk through all the ideas. We will do that next class, and all the classes. But really we never did. And the example sheet we received in class, we used, but no for the purpose it was intended. And then we stopped using it, randomly. Oh, and the one question we had, when provided the answer, it wasn’t liked, but we instituted it over six months later. Successfully.

I should have seen the warning signs, the red flags, but I kept on believing and thinking if I continued to improve, and try, and succeed, the pay off would come. And it did, in the form of me finding a new job now.

Off to pack for vacation!

Yesterday was the day I made a radical change. I left my job after 11 years and I don’t have a another job yet. Yep, no job. Unemployed. No severance. No next paycheck. And I could not be happier.

And it is the first time I have been happy about work, I guess my non-work now, in over two years, almost three years now. And the last year I have been miserable at work, but so happy and propelling in my personal life. And that is how I figured out I needed to leave.

Today, while a Saturday, was my first day of unemployment. And besides this blog, I updated my home laptop as I had not used it for quite some time, applied for a couple of jobs, went for a 6 mile bike ride, did my usual morning routine sitting outside, made oatmeal, put the new dog bed together, ate lunch my husband made and went to the pool. And the only thing I have to do tonight is pack for vacation.

Yep, vacation. We leave on Monday for a week in Michigan, on a lake with the doggies. While we had planned it months ago, and it is already paid for as well, I need it. This is the first vacation in 18 years where I have no professional responsibilities I am leaving behind or have to worry about. And I can’t be more excited.

Some of you will think it is irresponsible of me, but you know what? You aren’t my people. And that is all right. Not everyone in the world can be part of an amazing group I call my people. My people support me, do not judge me. That does not mean that they won’t mentor and coach me when I do different things, and they might tell me I’m crazy, but they still support me, emotionally, professionally, personally and financially.

How did this journey start? It actually started at my previous mentioned company as it began struggling with growing pains, ones I and others on the management team weren’t sure how to fix. As a grown-up start-up, we found a unique opportunity to join a training program that was made for entrepreneurial companies. And we signed up for the nine month program.

And this is where every went right and wrong. But more on that tomorrow. I need to take a nap! Remember, if this upsets you, you are not part of my people, and that is o.k.