My latest epiphany came on a quiet morning last week as I was sitting in the kitchen talking to my wife over her morning coffee. She was drinking from a black coffee mug that reads, “Relax, I’m an expert”. I found myself ruminating over that final word – EXPERT. What does it mean to be an expert? Who gets to claim that they are an expert? And, just because someone says they’re an expert, how do we know it’s really true?
After staring at that mug for a few minutes, I said to Pam, “You know, I don’t think I am an expert in anything.” In that moment, I felt my heart sink – such a depressing pronouncement! After all, I’d gone to school and worked over 30 years in corporate roles, I’d achieved and risen to executive ranks in a Fortune 500 company … to actually think I was not an expert in anything was like a mic drop moment (and not the fun kind). So, I employed the strategy that we do when we have a negative thought … I started to think about all the positives. I flooded my brain with thinking about my knowledge, my skills, my career … and a theme quickly emerged. I have a broad swath of skills and experiences, and I’ve applied them across diverse roles and with a variety of collaborators. In college, I studied Math and Philosophy. I held roles as Accountant, Financial Analyst, Programmer, IT Manager, Global Support Lead, PMO Head, Business and Strategy Ops Lead, and Executive Director … I’d authored articles for publication, SOPs for process management, training courses for people who needed to learn new ways of working. I had led teams of up to 60+ people in virtual settings and in person. I did a lot of stuff! Still, when I used the term “expert”, I could only envision those folks who study a single/focused discipline and then proceed to apply that to create a career that is DEEP within that one discipline. My “story” (limiting belief) was that the only expertise worth recognizing was that of deep, focused learning and experience. This story has plagued my happiness for a long, long time – at least at work it did.
But then, as I continued to think about my life’s journey and how I approach the world, the word “engineer” popped into my head. Unlike “inventors”, who typically fall into that deep/focused phenotype – remember those were my “experts”, I felt myself start to embrace the term “engineer”. Engineers need to have broad knowledge about a lot of different subjects. They use that knowledge and their creativity to pull ideas and concepts together to make something new and useful. As I tossed that idea around in my mind, I was able to look at myself and my life through a different lens, and “Voila!”, the Engineer showed up. Oh, not just in technical applications (though I did figure out how to modify my wife’s website without a spot of WordPress training), but also in the way I see and operate in the world. I am a connector. I can see new and interesting ways to put ideas together to create something new. I can see ways in which people can bring their uniqueness to situations and live into something even greater than they may be able to imagine. Because they are looking deep, and me? … I’m being the Engineer.
And as I embraced this discovery within myself, I found my “expertise” … I am REALLY good at putting various ideas together, to bring out a breadth of human experience in ways that are unique, to help create something new, or to uncover something that has been merely untapped potential in the past. This was my expert moment, and my dharma became so clear … and I was feeling light and joyful!
What changed from the start of the story, when I could not imagine me being able to embrace the term “expert” and today? This activity I took myself through was an exploration of Meaning. As human beings, we walk through our days making meaning of our experiences. Sometimes the meaning we make is passed down to us from our up-bringing and we don’t stop to question or challenge it. Other times it is simply how we put the facts together from our experiences or our imagination. And because meaning is something that we ascribe to a thing or a situation (it is not inherent in the thing or situation itself), we have the power to create a new meaning and write a new story or change the plot line of this one. My old meaning for the term “expert” was limiting my ability to own and embrace my own genius. It was holding me in a place of negative energy. But with a little creativity, a little perspective, and a real desire to have a better meaning … I found a piece of my dharma, my purpose.
You can do this too! Are there stories that you tell yourself that are holding you back from your happiness? Try to take a new lens and see if you can reshape or re-write that meaning. If you want help – talk to a coach. That’s what we do!
Expert Epiphany
