Rebecca Fleetwood Hession - Write Your OWN Story: Three Keys to Rise and Thrive as a Badass Career Woman

Copyright 2022 by Rebecca Fleetwood Hession

All rights reserved. This book may not be reproduced or stored in whole or in part by any means without the written permission of the author except for brief quotations for the purpose of review.

ISBN: 978-1-957723-00-6 (hard cover)

978-1-957723-01-3 (soft cover)

Edited by: Erika Nein

Published by Warren Publishing

Charlotte, NC

www.warrenpublishing.net

To your dreams and your stories.

May our collective courage to boldly write these stories transform our lives and careers into a world we cant wait to show our children and grandchildren.

KYLE CREEK, AKA THE CAPTAIN @SGRSTK

PREFACE

M aybe youve had this conversation with yourself: Whats wrong with me? Why arent I happy? Ive got a great job, a family, a nice house I should be grateful. So many people have it far worse. I need to suck it up and be grateful, be happy. Maybe Ill just buy a new journal and try harder to be grateful.

Anyone? Just me?

Thats our default: try harder.

If youre honest, though, some days youre done trying harder and you fantasize about running away to another country, living on the beach, and starting a hair-braiding business for tourists. You can picture it, you in that flowy floral maxi dress, barefoot, with sandy feet. Your hair is loosely knotted with those perfect little wisps that fall around your sun-kissed face. Youre smiling, not the forced smile you use in meetings with shareholders and customers; its the real smile that starts in your heart and spreads up to your face, your lips, your eyes. The smile that radiates out from your soul.

Then you wake up and realize youve got a family, the house, the dogs, all the things youd have to deal with just to run away. Dammit, even running away feels hard. You snap out of the dream, push your hair out of your face, and open your laptop to tackle the next thing. First, you make a note on your task list.

Buy a new gratitude journal.

Get up at 5 a.m. instead of 5:30 so that you can be grateful.

We dig deeper, straighten our skirt, put our shoulders back, open the laptop, get back to work. The email, the meetings, the jerk in accounting, the PowerPoint presentation due Friday. Shit, did I forget a thing for the kids school? Where is that form? Why cant schools use technology like the rest of the free world? Why is it all so hard? Truth be told, digging deeper isnt going to work much longer. Were getting to the bottom of that well that weve been pulling from for years.

Every night, a high achiever falls into bed exhausted from the day. But there are two kinds of tired. One is the tired that a nap or a few more hours of sleep wont fix. Its the tired that comes from striving, the tired that comes from not feeling valuable or relevant in your work and your life. Then theres the kind of tired where you fall into bed exhausted, and you dont dread the next day. Waking up ready to do it all again tomorrow because you know the value, relevance, and impact you have with other humans by the work you do. Thats thriving.

Im going to guide you there! Let me be your Thrive Guide.

Table of Contents

INTRODUCTION

Business Is Human

M y earliest career memory is crawling under a house with my grandfather. He was a plumber. I was a plumbers helper. The great thing about being a ten-year-old plumbers helper is the ease with which you can crawl in and out of tight spaces. Wed go in and hed diagnose and send me back to the truck for the tools he needed. Theres something so powerful about being valuable. For all I know, he was sending me to the truck so Id stop talking in his ear while he worked, but in my young mind, I mattered.

This is when I became passionate about work. The feeling of being valuable and relevant continued to grow from there. I used to think it was just about my work ethic or discipline of my checklist and plans, but its far more. Our jobs arent something we do just for the paycheck; theyre a part of us, a part of our purpose.

Over the next thirty years, I acquired mountains of experience and education, none of which I ever could have imagined as that ten-year-old plumbers helper surrounded by swearing and toolboxes. A small-town girl living in a trailer on her grandfathers farm didnt know there was such a thing as sharing the stage with the worlds thought leaders, contributing to best-selling books, or being a consultant to smart, talented executives in corporate America. She had only her feelings, and feeling valuable was good; she wanted more of that.

Thirty years later, with a truckload of glass awards stored in a box under the stairs, an abundance of shining accolades, and unending expectations, I found myself home for two months with pneumonia, wondering, questioning, and reflecting. I was conflicted. By all standards, my life was a shining success worthy of my awards and recognition. I lived on a twenty-three-acre estate with two lakes, a big house I designed, two kids, two dogs, and a husband. The American dream. Sure, I was sick, and that was a bummer. But being sick holed up in your Barbie mansion is a first-world problem.

Success didnt necessarily feel like what I thought it would. I had this ache for something moreand it wasnt more meetings. I was a top performer. I knew all the buzzwords, the corporate speak, and the productivity techniques. I could teach you all of my best practices for selling $35 million and lead classes on innovation in global consulting, but what I didnt know was how I felt. Im not talking about the pneumonia pains in my chest; this was a different kind of deep ache. From the outside, my life looked like a fairy tale. But I wasnt sure how I felt about my life, about who I was, and who I wanted to be. I was aching for more meaning, but I discovered that the answer wasnt out there. The answer came from within.

At some point, I realized what I needed and what my business required were very different. Business is human. We are humans serving humans with products and services in exchange for currency. I was a business consultant, a sales professional, steeped in profit and loss, productivity gains, and investment return. I knew how to control, measure, and optimize a business like a boss! I had the awards and the paycheck to prove it. What I had lost track of were my human needs. What did I really want? Who really knew me? Would I be loved and accepted if I wasnt number ten on the global sales report? Whom was I serving? Was I serving other humans or the machine of the business?

The more I allowed myself to reflect, the more I craved to know more. I wasnt sure who I was anymore. Without the distraction of my striving life, a pain and a longing began to bubble to the surface.

Was I happy?

When had I been truly happy?

What would I be doing if I wasnt so damn busy all the time?

What were my dreams? Did they still matter?

Had I allowed my house and my things to be enough? Had stuff replaced my dreams?

Had I accomplished anything meaningful?

What was the cause of so much stress and anger in my life?

What did I really want?

And, most troubling, who really knew me? Who knew the real me?