Are you taking full advantage of every single perk your current work has to offer? Often it’s easy to overlook privileges that go with the job we have now.
One of my favorite hobbies is interior design, and living in NYC has provided many inspirational moments through the years. Surprisingly though, I lived in NYC ten years before realizing there was a HUGE perk I had simply overlooked.
The Decoration and Design Building (known as “The D&D”) is like a huge 18-floor mall filled with over 3,000 manufacturers. These showrooms feature furniture, fixtures, wall paper, fabrics, room after room of the most exquisite design ideas. I knew about the D&D, but thought I had to be a designer to gain access. I was partly right. You DO have to be a designer to BUY, but you don’t have to be one to LOOK. About a year ago a designer friend took me in for my first tour and I’ve been hooked ever since. Right now I’m remodeling our master bath and stopped by last week to be inspired with fresh ideas.
It strikes me that often in our professional lives we similarly miss opportunities that exist right in our own backyards. We are waiting for permission, or think we need some special credential to qualify for a role, opportunity, or introduction to someone we really want to know. We sit back and wait, admiring others from a distance, just hoping we’ll be invited in to our next big move. Experience tells me those invitations rarely come, and we DO have privileges we simply never take.
My advice is this — raise your hand, raise your voice, sit at the front of the room, be bold and walk up to those leaders you want to meet, make conversation, let those around you know what you’re dreaming of doing next, look around, ask questions, get proactive. When I walk into the D&D I ACT like I’m a designer and the showroom managers don’t know any different! We often FEEL unqualified, awkward, reluctant in our careers. But those feelings don’t help us get where we really want to go. ACT confident and bold and you’ll BECOME confident and bold.
No need to wait, start designing your dream life now….