Blog 6: Perspective

Blog 6: Perspective

7/17/19

Our first day of orientation, we talked about perspective.  How it is important to look at things from other people’s point of view and try to understand where they might be coming from.  I took that as a reminder to listen and digest, not to worry about speaking my own truth, but worry about hearing other’s.  This week I was reminded of the other side of perspective.  Each person you come into contact with has a perspective of you and who you are, your skills and gifts, and what you might be well suited for. 

Honestly, I don’t feel like I gave 1000% to my job this summer.  I don’t say that to say I slacked off or did nothing.  Looking at the summer objectively, I did a lot.  However, going into this internship I purposed to put self-care first and make a habit of good work/life balance.  That is not a skill I’ve had in the past.  If something came into my inbox, no matter what time or day, I was going to deal with it immediately.  I would spend hours more working on things than was healthy, and in my ‘younger years’ I thought that was how it was supposed to work.  At the age of 17, I thought a full-time job equaled 80 hours, before overtime.  Let that sink in.  My understanding of the amount of work a person was supposed to do minimum in a week was 80 hours, and quite frankly I thought that was a low base line considering there’s 168 hours in a week and subtracting for eight hours of sleep a night, you’re left with 112 hours in a week.  Forcing myself to enact work/life balance was not easy, I constantly felt like I wasn’t doing enough. 

Yesterday, in talking with a reverend we’d flown in for Climate change meetings on the Hill, he said with full confidence he could see my gifts for lobbying and then went on to advocate for me being present at additional meetings.  I had only seen myself from my own warped perspective all summer and I hadn’t stepped out of that bubble to realize how my gifts and skills had been cultivated and grown in this amazing opportunity.  Perspective is a tricky thing to nail because there are so many facets to it and like everything else in life it requires balance.  I’m deeply grateful for my perspective gained this week/summer.

-Helen