Life
4 Things Work Experience Taught Me About Business and Life

You never know when your next opportunity will appear. What my past job experience taught me about the land of the working is to never underestimate the time spent on any job, even if you love what you do or cannot wait for the next career move. The important thing is to be present and respond to each situation as if you are taking away a major nugget from that experience.
Here are 4 things I learned from my work experience:
1. The experience gained is vital to your future
I began my sports career as most do – an intern. But upper management could not have guessed that my long-term goal was to be the first minority woman to own a basketball team. That goal powered me through cold call sessions, sales training and foot canvassing in the Texas heat.
You’ve invested several years as a low-level service manager and now it is time to take hold of the dreams bubbling inside of you. Use your past as a springboard into a new opportunity. Even if the new break is unrelated you still have a ton of information at your advantage. Connect the dots. Challenge what you think you know about how these two professions correlate; use what you need, leave the rest.
You don’t want to shortchange yourself, disqualify your experience, or take for granted the knowledge you have stored in your head.After working hard and learning everything about the process of selling people on sports, I hit $100,000 in new ticket sales and landed the senior director position the following year.
“The only source of knowledge is experience.” – Albert Einstein
2. Experience is useful for determining your market place value
How do you know you are worth sixteen dollars an hour or twenty-three? Your pay will probably be based on what you were paid in your last job and what you can negotiate. Invariably, you will not be able to determine that value on your own without past experience to at least point you in the right direction.
“You get what you can negotiate”. I learned this early in my professional career. Before I took the full-time role with the basketball team I did my research. I learned that each year the National Basketball Association took a trip to three developing countries, and I have always wanted to go to Africa. In a post-internship interview with the team’s owner I expressed my desire to tag along. In 2011, I went on my first Basketball Without Borders trip to Johannesburg, South Africa. I was granted access because of hard work and my dedication to the organization.
Your negotiation strength lies on your track record of hard work and talent. Without experience how can you negotiate things like: pay, benefits, bonuses, commissions, and extras?
3. You must know when to leave
I am a believer of not forcing the inevitable. If you have dreams to start a business, write a book, or launch your photography business staying at your accounting job for another eight years is delaying the foreseeable. Know when you have learned all you need to take confident strides in the direction of your dreams. The same belief applies to relationships and business partnerships.
I released my first book in 2014, two years after my first job in sports, and a few months into a director position for a team in New York. I resigned that same year and have followed my appetite to write ever since, making a few stops along the way.
“Every new beginning comes from some other beginning’s end.” – Seneca
4. Fail forward
You have heard this before but just because you have it does not make this statement less true. I will repeat it for those who, like me, believe that hearing things over confirms the truth that they hold. There are no bad breaks, failures, or mistakes. Everything that has happened to your personally and professionally happened for a reason.
Today, you may not understand that experience or know why, but challenge your perception of the situation. Challenge your emotions. Ask yourself, after the tears and fits, could something be learned here? If there is, use it. If there is not, reconstruct your thoughts around the situation and realize new thoughts that strengthen your position.
What have you learned from taking an internship or doing work experience at a company? Leave your thoughts below!
Life
The Imbalanced Problem with Work/Life Balance
Balancing is for your checkbook, gymnastics, and nutrition; not for your people’s work/life ratio.

Balance…it requires an equal distribution of value between two or more subjects to maintain steady composure and equitable proportionality. (more…)

It’s 2023, a new year, new you, right? But how do we start over? How do we make the changes in our lives that we crave so much to see? (more…)
Life
Failing is More Important Than Succeeding
Failure is an integral part of life as life is incomplete without failures.

People often consider failure a stigma. Society often doesn’t respect the people who failed and avoids and criticizes their actions. Failure is an integral part of life as life is incomplete without failures. Not to have endeavored is worse than failing in life as at some stage of your life you regret not having tried in your life. (more…)
Life
5 Indicators of Unresolved Attachment Trauma

Trauma caused during specific stages of a child’s development, known as attachment trauma, can have lasting effects on a person’s sense of safety, security, predictability, and trust. This type of trauma is often the result of abuse, neglect, or inconsistent care from a primary caregiver.
Individuals who have not fully processed attachment trauma may display similar patterns of behavior and physical or psychological symptoms that negatively impact their adult lives, including the choices they make in relationships and business.
Unfortunately, many people may not even be aware that they are struggling with trauma. Research estimates that 6% of the population will experience PTSD in their lifetime, with a majority of males and females having experienced significant trauma.
Unresolved attachment trauma can significantly impair the overall quality of a person’s life, including their ability to form healthy relationships and make positive choices for themselves. One well-known effect of unhealed attachment trauma is the compulsion to repeat past wounds by unconsciously selecting romantic partners who trigger their developmental trauma.
However, there are other less recognized but equally detrimental signs of unprocessed developmental trauma.
Five possible indications of unresolved attachment trauma are:
1. Unconscious Sabotage
Self-sabotage is a common pattern among individuals with unprocessed attachment trauma. This cycle often begins with hurting others, which is then followed by hurting oneself. It is also common for those with attachment trauma to have heightened emotional sensitivity, which can trigger this cycle.
This pattern can manifest in lashing out, shutting down, or impulsive behavior that leads to feelings of guilt, shame, and self-loathing.
Many people with attachment trauma are not aware of their wounds and operate on survival mode, unconsciously testing or challenging the emotional investment of those around them, and pushing them away out of self-preservation and fear of abandonment.
This can lead to a pattern of making poor choices for themselves based on impulsivity.
3. Behaviors That Block Out Trauma
4. A strong need for control
5. Psychological Symptoms That Are Not Explained
What to do next if you’re suffering from emotional attachment trauma?
There are several ways that people can work to overcome emotional attachment trauma:
- Therapy: One of the most effective ways to overcome emotional attachment trauma is through therapy. A therapist can help you process your experiences, understand the impact of your trauma on your life, and develop coping strategies to manage symptoms.
- Support groups: Joining a support group of people who have had similar experiences can be a great way to find validation, empathy, and a sense of community.
- Mindfulness practices: Mindfulness practices such as meditation, pilates, prayer time with God or journaling can help you become more aware of your thoughts, emotions, and physical sensations, and develop a sense of spiritual connection and self-regulation.
- Trauma-focused cognitive-behavioral therapy (TF-CBT): This is a type of therapy that is specifically designed to help individuals process and recover from traumatic events.
- Building a safety net: Building a support system of people you trust, who are there for you when you need them, can help you feel more secure and safe in your life.
It’s important to remember that healing from emotional attachment trauma is a process and it may take time. It’s also important to find a therapist who is experienced in treating trauma, who you feel comfortable talking with, and who can help you develop a personalized treatment plan.
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