Joanna Denton - A Different Truth: Reject the Truths That Are Killing Your Career, and Learn to Make Choices That Are Better For you

A Different Truth

Reject the Truths That Are Killing Your Career, and Learn to Make Choices That Are Better for You

Joanna Denton

Copyright 2019 Joanna Denton

All rights reserved.

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. This book contains material protected under International and Federal Copyright Laws and Treaties. Any unauthorized reprint or use of this material is prohibited. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system without express written permission from the author/publisher.

ISBNs:
Hardcover 978-1-64184-154-2
Paperback 978-1-64184-155-9
ebook 978-1-64184-156-6

For Peter, whose death reminded me it was time to live.

Contents

You can be the most successful leader, but if you are exhausted and running yourself into the ground, you will be no good to anyone. The problem is that often we believe we have to chooseour careers or our health. Its time to breathe a little and get back some headspace, and I will show you how to have both your career and your health.

Lifes too short for you to stay small. Its time to step out of your comfort zone and step into your awesomeness. The only problem is, when you dream bigger and step up, those niggling self-doubts and criticisms come thick and fast and tell us we are not good enough. I will share three ways to rewire out of the fear into the possibility and manage your doubts so that they dont manage you.

How many times have you ever felt that you were on your own in this journey through life? There are people around you, but do they really get you? Do they really understand what your life is like? Do they really have any idea? What if that were not the case? Oh, to be celebrated for who you are and not merely tolerated for what you do! To be in a community that is there for you on the tough days and cheers you on the good ones, particularly as you start your journey toward dreaming bigger and stepping up. I will give you some exercises to build a community that encourages and empowers its members.

If you have gotten this far in your leadership journey based on technical genius alone and want to reach the next level, you have to tell your story to people outside your immediate community. But often we are brought up to believe that to do so would be far too aggressive and in your face. Here, I will give you three exercises to help you share your story in the wider marketplace without coming across as boastful or aggressive.

You are passionate about your subject. Hells teeth, you wouldnt be doing what you are doing after all these years if that werent the case. But its easy to forget that mere mortals dont always understand what you are talking about, and equally easy to think they never will. I will give you three ways to connect with your audience without losing them in the technical weeds.

Truth

Its 5 a.m.

5 a.m. on my thirty-fifth birthday and I just got home from work.

For the last couple of months, I have been working on a project with a West Coast client, and for the last couple of hours, I have been finishing some documents to send to them.

But now, everything is done and dusted, and I have come home.

Its been a particularly long week, and I must admit that 5 a.m. finishes are very unusual. I must also say that it feels like years that I have been working twelve to fourteen-hour days. And you know what? I am tired.

Its 5 a.m.

I should be sleeping, but instead Im on the phone with my ex-boyfriend, and I am opening the present my parents have sent me. Its a framed picture of me and my sister from when I was fifteen years old.

Fifteen years old and my entire life ahead of me.

And at that moment, looking at the photo, I realise it.

The sum of my life is work.

I am a lawyer by training, and by now, I am nearly ten years into my career as tax consultant for an international accounting firm

On the face of it, I am some definition of success; I am the go-to person for my teams, my clients, and my bosses. I am someone who can come up with innovative solutions to very tricky problems, and I am also a role model for other women on my team.

But behind that definition of success is a pretty lonely existence. One of working long hours, nights, weekends, and holidays.

And slowly, my life is starting to fall apart. Always having to be the strong one, never asking for help.

I am just so tired of it all.

In that moment, looking at that picture, I realise that I dont want my life to be like this anymore. There has got to be more to life than this. And I am right, of course I am. There has to be.

But heres the problem.

I feel trapped.

Intellectually, I know there has got to be more to life than this, but emotionally, viscerally, in every other way of my being, I also believe that this exhaustion is the price you pay if you want to succeed in corporate life.

Because to work in corporate life, if I want to succeed and excel, means putting the hours in, sacrificing my personal life, and always being in competition. I learned that when I was young, and its been reinforced all through my life.

If I want to succeed in the corporate world, I have to choose work because I sure as hell cant choose life.

Because if I were to choose lifein other words to rest, take time to breathe, look after myselfI would be committing the cardinal sins of being selfish, lazy, and unprofessional. And worse still, if I were to ask for help, that would mean I was weak.

So, in that moment of realization, I dont have a choice. This is all there is. Work.

And the very next day, the day after my thirty-fifth birthday I get out of bed and I continue to do what I have always done.

I choose work.

Not to rest. Not to look after myself.

Work.

Because I believe I dont have a choice.

* * *

In the years that followed my thirty-fifth birthday, I kept on working to the same rhythm because I didnt know how to do anything else.

I didnt know how to slow down or breathe or take time for me. I just knew how to work. And so I did, and I kept on working till I burnt myself out.

Not once. But twice.

Until one day in 2014, six years after the photograph incident, when something happened that made me challenge the truth and change my choices.

By early 2014, I felt like I was constantly walking through molasses in a world where all the joy and colour had been sucked dry. I woke every morning filled with fear and dreadfear about going to a job that I no longer enjoyed and dread that others would see through this faade of success to see what I sawthat I was an imposter, bad at my job, and good for nothing.

It was burnout number two, and I was super-glued to the sofa.

Didnt want to wash, to eat, to go out.

And I sure as hell didnt want to tell anyone.

But on 6 March 2014, I had my life-changing wake-up call.

Not some gentle nudge from the universe like that twenty-year-old photo, or the panic attacks, or the OCD behaviours, or the trips to the emergency room with chest pains that I had had since my thirty-fifth birthday. No, it was a real, in-your-face wallop that I had no choice but to listen to.

That was the day of the funeral of a colleague, Peter.

At the age of sixty-seven, Peter had died suddenly, and I just had to be at the funeral. He was a gentleman, and a gentle man, and I needed to be there even if it meant leaving the apartment for the first time in weeks.

During the ceremony, I realised something. Peter hadnt just died of a heart attack. He had committed suicide.