Weekly Musings: Career Sabotage, Mindy Kaling, Meditation, Ray Bradbury

Some good articles popped up in my LinkedIn Pulse, Muse.com daily email and Twitter “popular in your network” feed this week.

• 12 ways women unknowingly sabotage their success by Minda Zetlin at BusinessInsider.com
• A LinkedIn post by Deepak Chopra MD, From Hazy to Clear: How to Gain Clarity About Your Life.
• Ray Bradbury’s Demolished Home Turned into Bookends article by Andrew Liptak
• Mindy Kaling is Great at Life by Fan Zhong of W magazine

Couple things struck me…

1. I have quite the unique feed of information coming into my Gmail and social media accounts. Interesting, informative yet full of zest. Just like Mindy Kaling. The similarities continue.
2. A brick. Not literally but a brick-sized gut punch from missing a piece of history – 451 bookends were created from the demolition of Ray Bradbury’s house! How did I not know about this (hello, social media!)? And why did I have to read the comments section where one reader touts his prize: bookend #100?!
3. I am seriously killing my career and I didn’t know it. I’m embarrassed to say which sabotaging fouls I’ve repeated in my career … promise to self: STOP BAD BEHAVIOR. CLAIM YOUR POWER BACK. NOW.
4. I need to take more time to define who I am, be more intentional about personal goal setting and learn how to center myself every day, multiple times a day to gain a vision of clarity and fulfillment – when I might be spiraling out of control. I’ve tried meditation but I’m like Julie Roberts playing Elizabeth Gilbert in Eat, Pray, Love the movie trying to meditate in India. My mind roams to food, work, my social life or lack thereof, work, food – you get the picture. This.will.be.hard.
5. Both items #3 and #4 re-iterate the same message “set stretch goals, define who you are, and damn it, own it!” Coincident?
6. I love watching a show about a character, and I quote Kaling, “… [who is] one of the worst-behaved female leads in the history of television….” This counter-acts items #3 and #4. Self-fulfillment Prophesy? Dear Lord.

What does all this mean? I’m not sure yet. So, I will ponder all of this information over a nice glass of Pinot Grigio and mediate on the following quote from Debbie Ford (thank you Deepak Chopra):

The greatest act of courage is to be and to own all of who you are – without apology, without excuses, without masks …