Admit This, and Soar to New Heights

Are you a finished product? We hope not, because if you were, by definition you’d be “finished.”  If you’re living, then you’re growing and learning, or evolving.

And this is a boon to your professional development.

As the principal says in the song “Dudley Pippin and the Principal” from Marlo Thomas’s Free to Be… You and Me,

Most people spend their entire lives trying to get un-mixed up!

Every one of us is a work in progress, including First Lady of the United States of America Michelle Obama.

Featured recently in a New York Times article titled “Michelle Obama and the Evolution of a First Lady,” the Harvard Law School graduate and former Sidley Austin associate is portrayed as one who’s learning and growing on the job. Author Jodi Kantor writes:

Michelle Obama’s trajectory in the White House was changing. She was mastering and subtly redefining the role that had once seemed formless to her, and becoming more acclimated to her new life.

You thought she arrived fully formed in her role as First Lady? To the contrary, like all of us, Obama is allowed to give herself space to acclimate to her professional role, and develop from there. Determining how to take up our role and task is part of what makes work engaging.

The wife of the President is aiming for new heights this year. If she can meet success by taking time to define her own work-life trajectory, so can you.  Or rather, so should you.  Admit that you’re in the grips of an evolution yourself, then see how high you soar.

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