
It may sound stereotypical that my every other post is about gratitude. After many years of mentoring, I decided to be a protégé. Thanks to my leadership, Executive Women’s Forum on Information Security, Risk Management & Privacy, and my countless blessings, I am being mentored by Linda Dolceamore, PCC, EWF’s Chief Leadership Development Officer. For the first few minutes of my first session, I couldn’t speak much because of my fangirl excitement.
Despite my resilient past, apparent success, contribution to the community and having a voice that matters, I didn’t realize that I was not framing worth of my impact acceptably. While I captured all my metrics on how many this I achieved, and how many that I completed, more than imposter syndrome, it felt materialistic until I talked this through. A simple question on why those numbers matter led to my ‘Bodhi’ flash. I was fostering a deep-rooted antagonism from comparisons (not from my parents) while growing up that curtailed me from being gratified by my true value.
There were so many ‘aha’ moments during my session how even the most tough amongst us have ‘gremlins’ (in coaching terms is a habit that stops people from achieving their goals in business or life), or how we prevent ourselves being our inner champion, that reminds us of our superpower and resolve, the inner voice that prevails, and the qualitative effect of setting SMART goals. Conceivably, mentoring is healing and coaching is convalescence. And as Oprah Winfrey rightly said, “A mentor is someone who allows you to see the hope inside yourself.”