How many of us go to work each day and feel like we make some sort of difference in the world? How often does that feeling happen for you? When I began my climb up the corporate ladder, I’m ashamed to admit, the last question I asked myself was ‘how can I make a difference?’. For our talented girlfriend Bianca, or B as she is known, this question has always been at the forefront of her mind. For almost her whole working career, she has been involved in not-for-profit organisations, with her current focus on Multiple Sclerosis Queensland.
Over the past month I have been fortunate enough to play a tiny role in the lives of people with MS, given the opportunity to work with B to design and build a website for her upcoming cycling event.
B and I – great friends, not-so-great lawn bowlers
When the idea to help B was just a little seed I believed this would be a great opportunity for the company I work for, Myriad Technologies, to get involved in the community and make a difference in the lives of people much less fortunate than us.
The Myriad team volunteering at the MS Moonlight Walk.
What I didn’t count on, was how much I would personally grow from such a project. There is something to say of the satisfaction and growth that comes with doing something selfless.
I was excited by the challenge but also a little scared to be nominated as the project lead. I only work two days a week, the timelines were tight and all our resources were already fully booked. How was I ever going to pull this off?
I think, as women, we often doubt ourselves. If we don’t know 75-100% of the knowledge we feel like we don’t know anything. Fear is a funny thing. It can cripple you into thinking you’re incapable of achieving and honestly, for the majority of my career, I have been terrified; terrified of making mistakes; terrified of failure. I’m a knowledgeable business analyst and a project manager, there’s no real reason why, but many days I still feel unequipped.
My Dad often says to me in reference to work, life, fear “You get that on big jobs”. In other words, stop moping about and just get on with it (good advice Dad!). So this time I consciously decided, I guess partly because this project was for such an amazing cause, that to let fear overtake me was just wasted energy; energy that would be better put towards making this website as successful as it could be.
I can’t claim victory all to myself. There is a very talented team of technical people at Myriad Technologies who donated many hours of their personal time to make this site successful and to deliver it on the given date. But I was part of that, and for that I feel proud.
This project taught me so much about myself and other people. I learnt that I am great at organising things, planning and managing expectations. I learnt to stress less, trust my instincts and that communication is so important – it is much better to talk in person than to email. I learnt how to encourage people and thank them for their hard work. I learnt that most people want to make a difference in the world and will donate copious hours of their own personal time if they understand and see a worthwhile cause.
But best of all I learnt that fear’s bark is definitely worse than his bite. Quite often the only thing that holds us back is the fear we have in our own head. That niggly voice that says “You can’t do it. You will fail”. I can’t say that voice is gone for good but it’s definitely much quieter than it was before. And now there’s another voice, one which continually reminds me of the success of this project and says “You know, you can do the same for anything else you put your mind to”.
You can check out the site at www.mscycledefrance.com.au.
Love Alana xx
No food with a face 