What you have achieved to date can tell you about your future potential
When I was a student, I worked in what was then “Dillons” bookshop on the Kings Road in Chelsea. (I think it might now be a Waterstones).
I loved this job. I worked all day Saturday and Sunday, and on Wednesday evenings, serving behind the till, packing away stock, tidying up the shelves and gossiping with my fellow booksellers.
Lots of A-list celebrities would come in and buy their books from us which made things exciting. Keanu Reeves came in on my day off at the height of his “Point Break” fame (which I’ve watched approximately 52 times). I sulked for days.
As well as pretending to be nonchalant when serving a celebrity, the best bit was when customers would come in and ask me to recommend books for their holidays. I would wander around the store, pulling together a selection of things I thought they might like to read. I loved recommending books, and I once raved so much about a novel called “Like Water for Chocolate” to a woman buying it, that everyone else in the queue behind her also asked for a copy.
I know I made a difference to that team and that store (they offered me a job once I’d graduated), because I was so passionate about books, and so enthusiastic about the ones I read. I also worked really hard, and took on my fair share of the dull jobs like cleaning up the staff room. I was also calm, usually in a good mood and was fun to be around.
This week, my Substack is all about encouraging you to think about the value you add to the role that you do now – or to previous ones. More often than not, we’re operate at warp speed, and once we’ve finished one thing, we move on to the next without a glance backwards at what we’ve accomplished. We don’t slow down to think about what we’ve achieved so far. Which means we can often overlook our full potential.
There is an exercise from the Firework Career coaching programme designed to tackle this tendency which I want to share this week with paid subscribers:
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