#funnily enough this blog has more emotional significance to me than my old main have lots of fun memories

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Blog post numero 2

So, following on from my previous and very first blog post last month, I would firstly like to say how genuinely surprised I was by the amazing comments and words that people fed back to me. I would like to thank those individuals and to anyone who took the precious time to read what I wrote as I really hadn’t thought ahead of any consequence after posting the blog.

I would also like to add how great it felt to open my mind and heart and just blurt out words that were there for all to see, I found it therapeutic and I would urge anyone else who is thinking of doing something similar.

You will come to learn that by reading what I write, if you didn’t already know, I am honest, perhaps a little too much, but I love that about myself (oh yes, a woman in 2019 affirming a positive quality about herself without the need of validation from anyone else). And by being honest I will say that this blog post was particularly difficult for me to get started on. Not difficult in the sense that I found it emotionally testing but perhaps in trying to articulate myself genuinely.  

The topic that I would like to talk about this month is school, jobs and careers. Funnily enough, the definition of the word “work” as a synonym can also be known as “exerting oneself” or “to slave away”. The word “career” can be defined as “an occupation undertaken for a significant period of a person’s life and with opportunities for progress.” Now, I’m not sure what thoughts or opinions will cross people’s minds when they read this to themselves, but for me, here’s why I have trouble accepting both definitions.

Let me start from the beginning, buckle up.

From a young age, I was never really interested in school, I mean realistically why would a four-year old child who has spent the only years of their life so far playing and being free, understand or let alone choose why they had to go to a place called “school”.

But I knew and believed that it was important for my future. I believed so based on the values that my mum had taught me and that it was important for me to study hard and pay attention. My Mum had a difficult childhood and upbringing and therefore she never really got the opportunity or better still, the choice whether she wanted to go to school or not. So out of respect and love for my Mum, as well as sensing that she wanted to ensure I got the opportunities that she didn’t.

The school years are a blur from the age of 4 right up to high school and then university. The things that I enjoyed outside of lessons were dance class, singing (I cannot sing but that didn’t stop me) and reading. I remember being called a book worm and my teacher once called me his human dictionary. I would despise doing homework and think it was a load of crap. All I wanted to do was read, and read aloud to anyone who would listen, I would follow my mum around the kitchen reading aloud to her frequently.

As I got older, I enjoyed art class and it was the only hobby I happily and actively chose to do, I was good at art, I think it was the only subject in my entire life I ever achieved an A in.  All the hobbies that I have mentioned above all have one thing in common, they are all creative and imaginative activities. Yet, that wasn’t enough for me to realise.

Throughout my teenage years, I didn’t excel in anything at school, along with raging hormones and my primary concerns being if my trousers were tight enough on my arse (I didn’t have one back then) or if the vending machines would have sold out of Chocolate Milk by the time I got to the canteen at lunchtime.

 For me, I was at school because what else was there? It’s not like I had a choice to do anything else, or did I? I had a great social life. Life was carefree in comparison to now and “being an adult”. You aren’t taught life skills or what to expect once you leave school. To a certain extent you are protected in this bubble where there is no need to think outside of that. Teachers and parents alike would say, school will help you get a good job/career like it is the only thing that matters on planet Earth.

When high school finished at the age of 16, I still had no idea what career I wanted to pursue or what I wanted to be. I felt an element of pressure for that, like I would slip behind in life if I didn’t decide quickly. I often thought, when will I know what I want to do, or I would ask myself what was wrong with me? I told myself that the best way for me to have a successful career was to educate myself more, and by doing so I chose to go to college and study for A Levels. I told myself, Dayna you didn’t put your all in before but now is your chance to get higher grades and I cannot accept failure because then where will I get in life?

For my A levels I chose to do Psychology, Travel and Tourism and Health and Social Care. I was happy with these subjects because for the first time in my academic life, I was given the choice to decide for myself.

I loved Psychology, I absolutely loved it, it helped that my teacher was bonkers and 80% of his vocabulary was the word “fuck”. He had worked in prisons with sexual offenders for most of his career and once he even brought in a schizophrenic patient with multiple personalities to class. I have always had a real interest in how people operate and theories etc. Travel and tourism was something else I was interested in because I am a real geek when it comes to travelling, and not in the way that you think either. You could be thinking that it’s because I want to see the world (who the fuck doesn’t?) but that wasn’t the driving reason. It’s because I’m a massive geek and I have a weird genuine interest in modes of transport; planes, trains, you name it (but mainly those two). Again, I unashamedly love that about me. And, lastly, Health and Social Care was for me personally, the least interesting choice, I think I chose it at the time in case I decided to work with children or the elderly.

  Anyways – I don’t want to bore you with my every single life choice I had made by the time I was 17 but I did my A levels and I was still not getting higher grades. Not because I wasn’t capable, but because I was lazy and couldn’t be bothered. Sure, I loved listening to the facts and information that I was being taught but I used to think, why do I have to write an essay about this topic that I have just learnt. What does it prove? I remember thinking to myself, I don’t want to do this. But I would also be thinking that I was lazy and that I was sabotaging myself for not caring enough about my future. In hindsight, I have since realised and learnt that the schooling system is just wrong. On so many levels. It makes me smile when I think back as a few of my closest friends made the decision to leave college before the first year was over to go down a different route in life, i.e. get a job etc and I remember my mindset at the time was; omg they are going to fail at life (quite literally).

During college I decided I would go on to university. I still couldn’t give a definitive answer about what I wanted to do long term as a career, but I did want to experience more and let’s be honest, university was a 4-year party. I started university at Leeds Metropolitan in September 2011 and graduated 4 years later with a degree in International Hospitality Management. I absolutely loved university. I still stand by the decision that university was hands down one of the best experiences of my life. Whilst I was at university, I had a part time job because I couldn’t afford to live without it. I worked as a Kitchen Assistant for Wetherspoons and for the most part I hated it. The main thing that made it worthwhile was that I worked with completely crazy people who were fun and had something to teach me as I had never met people similar in the past. Working in the kitchen helped me rule out a chef career and gave me an insight into the hard work, long hours and stress that chefs endure.

My university course was a sandwich course which meant that I had to complete a year’s work experience in the industry to count towards my degree. I always had a real interest in hotels and the way they operated so I decided I would apply for a receptionist role in a hotel in Leeds. I remember writing my CV and printing 50 copies, putting on a suit and then walking around the entirety of Leeds walking into each hotel handing in my CV to a member of staff. I would like to add that I could have easily just looked for jobs online and applied that way, but I thought that it showed willing by actively going in and introducing myself. I never heard back from any hotel, except for the one that I got the job in.

The hotel I worked in was a large hotel with 134 bedrooms and a leisure club and spa that had 5,000 external members alone. When I started it was tough and on my first day, I was so nervous I couldn’t even answer the phone. But I stuck at it and was promoted to Team Leader 8 months after I joined, and I worked there for just under 3 years. I remember when I started working there, I really enjoyed it. I would work long shifts, up to 12 hours per day and double shifts where I would finish at 11pm and be back in at 6am the next day. I would bend over backwards based on the knowledge that I was doing a great job. But then I began to realise that I wasn’t appreciated. I wasn’t appreciated through words or emotions, or through tangible elements such as pay incentives or reward. I write all of this for a reason, I began to realise, and things started to add up. I started to focus more on the employees and how they felt and what motivated them rather than the business or how many people I could sell an upgraded room type to.

Motivation is a word that can be defined in a thousand and one ways, I would know, I wrote 12,000 words for my dissertation on that topic alone.  Motivation is something that has been researched and built upon over the years and is something that all companies should take seriously.

For me personally, I am motivated intrinsically, I like to feel warm and gooey inside knowing that I have achieved something to be proud of or I have made someone else smile with my words etc.

Other people may be more motivated by objects and items, money, and what they can purchase with the money.

For example, you could argue that a Doctor or a nurse must be intrinsically motivated because we all know how little they are paid for the years of studying and ball breaking dedication they put into helping others and saving lives.

Eventually I realised which career path I wanted to embark on, Human Resources. It had clicked in my mind that I wanted to work with the employees of a company as my customers rather than the customers that were buying the products or services from a company. So, I started searching for HR roles within the hospitality industry, I still loved the hospitality industry so I wanted to remain there, but I wanted to work more with supporting the employees and by doing so, they would support the company. Richard Branson, one of the greatest entrepreneurs of all time says, “A company is people. Employees want to know, am I being listened to or am I a cog in the wheel? People really needed to feel wanted”. I got my first HR trainee role and relocated back home and started my first ever “real 9-5” job.

To cut another ultra-long story short, about a year after I had started the new HR role, even though I really loved it, I began to think to myself – is this all there is? You could call me overly ambitious but knowing myself I am just impatient. And somewhere along the lines, between graduating university with all the hopes and excitement that I first had and being a few years down the line in my career, reality set in and the little voice in my head said, be realistic.

But why should I tell myself to be realistic, I am a millennial. I come from an era where parents told us we could be anything that we wanted to be. When you are five years old and you dream of being an astronaut or a cowboy, your parents agree with you because it is harmless right? so why would you ever think that you were being unrealistic?

Working in HR I know that it is still widely frowned upon to look at an applicant’s CV and see that they have “job hopped” since they graduated. Recruiters and employers who aren’t willing to adapt to change believe that it shows a lack of stability and loyalty from a person if they change roles and companies every year or so. Well gone are the days where our grandparents would start a job at the age of 16 and do the same job until retirement at the ripe old age of 65. The world today is changing at an ever-increasing rate and who is to be certain of what tomorrow brings?

I am now in this process and point in my life where I have started to expose myself to new information and learn something that was foreign to me. As I said in my previous post, we don’t know what we don’t know. But when you start to focus your attention towards something, it manifests. Another core belief of mine is that everything happens for a reason, and that we are exposed to certain life events on purpose.

I have realised at the age of 27, that I don’t want to work for another 40 years until I can retire and live off state pension. I don’t want to work for someone else’s goals and objectives, I don’t want to be told how many hours I must work per week. I don’t want my financial stability to be in someone else’s hands. The list goes on and on.

It is fine to say, I don’t want this, I don’t want that, but the question is: do I have the power to change it? Absolutely. I revert to my previous comment about the fact that we tell children they can be anything they dream to be. So why is it that if I tell someone at the age of 27 that I am starting my own business and I am going to be an entrepreneur they look at me like I am batshit or tell me to be realistic? My grandma used to tell me when I was a teenager, study hard, why don’t you become a doctor. And even at a young age I would think in my mind, the only reason is because it would look and sound good to others so that she could say, “My granddaughter is a Doctor”.

I write all of this with no disrespect to a single soul. No disrespect to my loved ones or friends. Because 6 months ago, I was included in the 93% of the population that all live within the “rules” and norms of society. The rules being that you go to school, study hard, get good grades and then get a good job and jump through hoops for 40+ years of your life to provide for yourself and family and then you get to retire just a few years before death (if you make it that far). The late Jim Rohn, who was one of the world’s most famous entrepreneurs and motivational speakers said, “Formal education will make a living; self-education will make you a fortune”. It is correct, formal education does make you a living. I can honestly say hand on heart that I have never needed to use Algebra in my life since leaving school and that a calculator gets me through just fine. Self-education is what we choose freely, we have the choice to invest in ourselves or not.

One of my pet hates, which I am totally guilty of doing in the past is when people say, “Happy Friday” or “thank god it’s Friday”. Isn’t that sad? Society has created a monster, to the point where people may not even be necessarily conscious of what they are doing daily because it is like being on a hamster wheel. The daily commute to work at the same time every day, the same route, the same things that we see each day.

Maybe it is just me reading too much into it. But I do believe that to a certain extent, Instagram is also promoting the hamster wheel by having emojis that say “TGIF” or a Camel with the word Wednesday above it. I feel like people are wishing their life away, for 5 days of the week to be over, to then “live” for the other two.

I need to keep emphasising the point that I am not writing any of this as if I am better than anyone else, I have been doing most of the above for my entire life up until this point too. I am simply sharing what I have experienced and learnt and where I am at present in my life.

I have been at the point where I would wake up in the morning and would have rather done quite literally anything else but go to work because I hated my job, and I knew that I didn’t have a choice but to go because of one reason – money. Money was the primary reason and control over me having to go to a workplace. As Charles Bukowski famously says, “how in the hell could a man enjoy being awakened at 6:30am by an alarm clock, leap out of bed, force feed, shit, piss, get dressed and fight traffic to get to a place where essentially you made lots of money for somebody else and were asked to be grateful for the opportunity to do so?”

The reason that it strikes an emotional reaction inside me is because I have come from a family and background with little money. Most things have been a struggle. For example, when I turned 17, the legal age to drive a car, I didn’t pass my driving test straight away because my family couldn’t afford to fund the lessons, and neither could I. So, I passed my test when I was 19 instead, after I had earnt the money myself out of stubbornness. My mum offered to help me countless times, but I was adamant I would do it myself even when my friends would mock me for being lazy and not passing sooner. I have never had money chucked at me for things, holidays etc. And when I did have the financial capacity to have more freedom, I chose wrong and got myself into debt because I went to Ibiza and festivals etc. I don’t regret any of the decisions I made, because it was all a part of the learning process.

But since I started to invest in myself to become better, I realised that in the past, I had chosen to accept what was handed to me, instead of trying to create my own journey or spending time trying to find what my passions are to create a life that I chose, not that I slept walked through.

One of the most eye opening and invaluable books that I have read is “Rich Dad, Poor Dad” by Robert Kiyosaki. There’s an old saying, that the rich get richer and the poor get poorer, I used to believe that the rich were conniving and unjust. People say that the rich keep all the money and don’t help “the poor?” Why aren’t the poor doing anything to help themselves? Well, Robert also says that the word JOB stands for “Just Over Broke”. Perhaps I am being overly cynical but for me, this quote stands true as the sky is blue.

I find myself talking and talking so I guess I should wrap it up.

What I have learnt based on reflection and through changing what I pay attention to is that most of society is messed up. We are sent to school from a very young age and are kept there until the age of 18. We aren’t given the freedom or information to understand that we can think outside the box and that we don’t have to go to work for someone else. But then think of it another way, if everyone was taught at school that they could be an entrepreneur and teachers provided real life and world changing examples like Warren Buffet, Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos, Steve Jobs… then wouldn’t there be too many “successful people” in the world. But that wouldn’t happen because people are like sheep, they follow what is “normal” or they prefer living in their comfort zone.

The world is forever evolving and whilst it is scary, it is also so exciting. Mary Augustine says that we become happier in life when we realise that life is an opportunity rather than an obligation. The amazing entrepreneurs that I mentioned above should be the people we are thanking and counting our blessings for, for the opportunities they have provided to the entire world. Mark Zuckerberg for Facebook, Steve Jobs for Apple, Mike Krieger and Kevin Systrom for Instagram, to name a few. They have enriched so many people’s lives because of their innovative minds, for being brave enough to think outside of the box and push and believe in their dreams even when the fear of the unknown was greater. Astoundingly, millions of people choose to spend their precious time keeping up with the Kardashians plastic faces on Instagram, so if they became rich for doing nothing… then the world is our oyster!

Much love xxx