From a very young age I remember that whenever I was asked what I wanted to be when I grew up, I would confidently answer "a gymnast". Sports were my love. Whenever I wasn't in school, I was with a ball and playing soccer and basketball. I had formed an image of myself that I was only good at them and that sports was one of my talents because in all my school subjects I was a little let's say..... "scrappy". So I slowly started to form this story about myself and I was like "Philothei you're not smart, you can't be anything other than a Gymnast or a Soldier". I started saying it so many times that I finally believed it and convinced other people around me that this is indeed the case so don't have high expectations of me. I had already decided what the limits of my abilities were.
Some years later I happened to read a story by Jorge Boukai that changed my life:
"Once a child and his dad went to see the circus. There the child saw a HUGE elephant with a rope around its neck that was tied to a pole nailed to the ground. The child wonderingly asks his dad, "Dad, the elephant is so strong and so big that with one move he could not only escape from the rope, but he could destroy the whole tent why doesn't he do anything?"
His father replies "This elephant, once he was a little one like you and whenever he was tied to the same pole, he tried to escape with all his strength but he couldn't because he wasn't strong enough. He tried for a long time but one day he stopped and DECIDED that he was not able to make it after all, that he couldn't... and that became his reality, so he never tried again."
All of us in our lives have formed a story about what we are capable of doing and what we are not capable of doing.
When was the moment when you decided that these were your limits? Is that as far as I can go, is that as far as I can go? You may not see it as limits or restrictions but it's behind the phrase "This is who I am". Think about how many times you have heard this phrase said by your friends, your family.... yourself.
If you think about it, all the decisions you make in your adult life are based on the beliefs, convictions and values you have formed since childhood. Beliefs about what you can and cannot do, what is right and wrong, what you like and dislike.
It is these beliefs that form your glass ceiling and limit you without you even realizing it.
You may think that you don't have any special skills, any talent. You may think you don't have any particular passion for something. You may have told yourself a long time ago that you're not good at something you'd love to try to do so you didn't do it.
I am here to tell you that ALL of the above is not true. You have talents, you have passion, and I'll prove it to you.
I want you to imagine that somewhere inside you is a box full of treasures, full of abilities, skills, talents, passion and so much more. You don't know where it is or what's inside and it's locked up tight. But there is a "magic" key that opens the box and the treasures slowly emerge to the surface.
This key is called EXPERIENCE...yes, you read that right. EXPERIENCE.
HOW? Certainly not by attending the class, sitting at a desk, listening to the professor explaining HRM and you thinking "Ahh that sounds interesting, I think I like it, let me do a master's degree in it". That's how you end up at 35 cursing the time and the moment that you didn't try first, that you didn't experience it, that you didn't try to look into it more because in the end theory is very different from practice.
If you have had experiences and you still feel that you are not sure, then it means that the right experience has not come, because we don't all have the same key.
To find the career that suits you and suits you, you will need to challenge the beliefs that people around you have formed about you and about yourself. You will need to live, to fail, to try beyond the auditorium and the book.
Only after 3 years of volunteering, 2 Internships abroad, 2 Internships in Greece and founding my own business, I can confidently tell you that I have developed my talents and found the career that suits me, the one I can't wait to go to work in the morning. But now I know that this can change and evolve because I have broken the glass ceiling and my potential has no limitation.
I know you can do it too, start now and don't put it off any longer.
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