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Professional Human

Humans are professionals.

Professionals are humans.

Welcome to the Newsletter...

... for humans who worry about how much of their authentic selves is safe to reveal in so called "professional spaces"

I'm Jess And I'm a Professional Human. Who's too often grappled with just how much of my authentic self is "appropriate" in professional spaces...

...And I'm just really tired of feeling resigned to hiding myself, to toning it down, and to endlessly attempting to acclimate to an outdated professional ideal - aren't you?

Each edition of the newsletter contains the following sections:

• On Being Human
• On Being Professional
• In Hindsight
• Professional Human Strategy
• (Coming Soon!) Spotlights

Today we talk about principles vs rules, how professional spaces are a lot like middle school, navigating temporary time change, and visual aids as professional tools.

Let's dive in!

On Being Human

Was watching Zombieland: Double Tap the other day...

🧟‍♀️ 🧟‍♂️ 🧟 (the sequel to Zombieland)

A primary theme is the main character's set of rules 📜 that keep him alive in Zombieland

A lot of people live their lives according to a set of rules — they illustrate this in the Zland sequel

when they introduce us to a second set of characters who comically resemble the 2 main characters, and of course, the counterpart has his own very similar set of rules.

Religion is designed to shepherd disciples 🐑 through sets of rules.

Me?

I live my life according to a set of principles.

Rules are rigid, they don’t have a lot of flex or bend before they're straight up broken

and when things break 🥚 it’s gonna be a bad time.

Principles over rules

Principles are like lights

that guide me through difficult decisions and situations 🕯️🔥🏮

Principles are like the music 🎶 playing in the dark

Providing me with 🔍 clues 🗝️ as to where I should be

What direction 🧭 I need to head in.

Many of my foundational principles I learned in 12 step recovery

(where each of the 12 steps is associated with different “spiritual principles”)

The step work is meant to connect you with a certain principle (or set of principles) and they build on one another.

In the first step, the principles are acceptance, awareness.

In the 2nd, faith, honesty.

In the 3rd, willingness.

Another very helpful aspect of 12 step recovery that reminds us to practice the principles in our day-to-day lives,

Are what they call “slogans”,

conventional wisdom and guidance wrapped up in simple phrases

Live and Let Live,

Do the Next Right Thing,

This Too Shall Pass,

I learned a new “slogan” on day 0 of my copywriting training,

and I believe credit is due to Chanti Zak for this one:

And this is THE guiding principle underpinning all that is wonderful in my life.

It's hard to be disappointed when you don't have any expectations 😉

On Being Professional

Showing up in professional spaces can feel a lot like showing up in middle school 🏫

Conformity is rewarded and celebrated

Outliers are outcasts,

Those who are too outspoken or too openly themselves are criticized and typically excluded by the group.

You’re worried all the time about what other people think,

About the way you look, sound, move

Your work is graded and evaluated but so are your personality and preferences 😣

And depending on the intersecting points of your identity,

You're judged more harshly and unfairly than your peers

who match more closely the social standards and ideals

(cough cough whiteness, cis-maleness, these are the standards, but that’s for another day cough cough)

Yes, just like middle school,

showing up in professional spaces gets harder for folkx,

The further they are from those social standards and ideals.

It’s unfair and it’s unjust - and we all know it.

But we just accept it to be the way it is

We concede that middle school is a terrible awful place that chews kids up and spits them out.

We concede that professionalism is rigid and sterile...

Well, I sent my son off to middle school this week

And it brought me back to my own experiences there,

😧 The misery I experienced,

😧 The rejection,

😧 The pressure to conform.

It isn’t fair to accept that it’s just the way middle school is

And it isn’t fair to accept that it’s just the way professionalism is.

I intend to use this newsletter 📰 as a platform to call for change in the way we navigate professional spaces,

And I'm so glad you're here for it ♥️

In Hindsight

I went on a business trip for the first time last month —

🛫 I flew from Toronto to Seattle for a weekend of workshops and training with my mentorship program.

In case geography isn’t your thing 🗺️

Toronto is on the east coast, Eastern Standard Time (EST) ;

Seattle on the west coast, Pacific Standard Time (PST)

There is a time difference of 3 hours.

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In EST, my bio clock has me waking up between 5-6 am 🕠

Do you know what time that is in PST?? That’s 2-3 am!! 🕝

I did not think this through before I went out there.

I knew intellectually about the time change of course. But I’d never experienced it, and so I didn’t really know what to expect.

When I thought about my schedule for training, I didn’t process the idea that 10-6 PST was much more like 1-9 EST

What went wrong

One thing I know about myself is the rhythm of my executive functioning.

And there is a sharp drop off approaching 4pm EST

Which fell around lunch time of my PST adventures.

Is this a little hard to follow? I bet.

Which is why I want to call attention to it,

I know I'm not the only one to experience this,

And so we should talk about it.

Instead?

I would have known to keep my schedule as close to normal as possible, being that I was only away for a weekend 🌅

What might this have looked like in practice?

Well, I should have let myself go to bed at 8pm when the sun was still out, like my body wanted (instead of forcing myself to stay up to 11pm PST, 2am EST)

I should have let myself get out of bed at 4:30/5am PST (a compromise, between the time my body wanted up and the time I ought to be up) 🌄

I might have looked at my weekend schedule on PST, and then created a visual aid so I could SEE what my schedule looked like on EST.

If I had a visual, of the calendar in PST plus a duplicate in EST, I could have, at a glance, made better informed decisions about navigating the time change.

It’s been almost a month since I got home from Seattle and I’m only just getting back to my normal schedule.

I’ve been sleeping in closer to 7 EST (remember, that’s still 4am PST!) and having trouble going to bed before midnight EST (that’s 9pm PST).

If I knew then what I know now...

...I would have taken a beat to really think through the effects of a time zone shift.

I would have relied on strategies I already use, and I know work, to protect my executive functioning

Like incorporating visual aids.

Which brings me to this week's...

Professional Human Strategy

Not all strategies, tips, tricks and tools are meant for everyone.

And this has contributed to very toxic ideas about what professionalism is — and isn’t.

Because we tend to value certain strategies as more professional than others (like rigid schedules and productivity trackers)

My office space looks like a learning space, not a working space.

It’s full of bright colours, Post-it notes arranged on boards and in agenda-style fashion,

And there’s no shortage of laminated “visuals” to support my success.

​

These laminated visuals, these colour coded post-its, this very juvenile in appearance workspace,

They are strategies that I use to show up as a Professional Human.

What’s the “least professional” strategy you use in your business?

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And that's a wrap on edition 1.

Fun fact?

Not a single reader unsubscribed on our transition from the Business of Healing to Professional Human !!
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I value each and every one of you so very much.

Thank you from the bottom of my heart for your continued support. Let's change the world together ♥️ -Jess

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See you next week!

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