Earlier this week I was interviewing someone about their strengths in the workplace. And, because despite all this work I still have a considerable ego, I then turned to interviewing myself in my head.

It’s rather amazing that I’m able to tell a coherent story of my strengths in the workplace. In the past, I would either have told you (meaning it) that I had no strengths in the workplace, or I would have lied and told you some inflated stories about things that I could pretend had gone well. But I would have been thinking, of course, Megabank Corp (or insert name of company as appropriate) never really gave me a chance to use my strengths. I was quite sure that when I found the right environment, my genius would finally be able to flower and be acknowledged.

I don’t believe either of these stories now, thank the Lord. It’s hard to decide which one is more unhelpful. I know that I have strengths that I can use in the workplace and I also know that there are areas where I am not strong. I could now answer interview questions truthfully on either subject, without defensiveness or resentment.

The second is harder to answer than the first, because I have changed so much this year. It’s a bit of a generalisation, but for the most part my workplace strengths are strengths of skill, whereas my workplace defects have been defects of character. I have screwed things up at work because I have been very emotionally reactive, because I have taken everything personally, because I have had very messed-up ideas about what I am responsible for. (Everyone else, but not me, broadly. Any flaw in that logic?) I have screwed things up at work because I have been paralysed by my perfectionism and fear of failure, because I have carried approval-seeking to pathological lengths, because I have taken my drama addiction into the workplace. I’m sure there are more.

I’m not here to say that I’ll never do any of these again at work. They’re habits that I’ve practised assiduously for sixteen years, and they’re not going to go overnight. But the balance has shifted. I now know I am doing it, and, more importantly, I now know that I am responsible for it. I’m no longer emotionally reactive. (I just checked this on the phone with my flatmate. It really is true.)

I hope this doesn’t sound like I will be a perfect employee. I am quite, quite sure that I will have new weaknesses at work. It’s just that I don’t know what they will be. My concentration span is still not great – I’m working hard on that one, but it is a difficult change and I think it will be a while before the balance shifts. (I’m not certain it would be a great idea to admit to that in an interview.)

The other thing that comes to mind is that I still make things more difficult for myself than they need to be. I am very bad at keeping it simple. I don’t have a great judgment about when to keep working on something and when to compromise. I get things done, but I often make heavy weather of it and tire myself out unnecessarily. I have achieved more this month than in any other month of my life – and I’m proud of it – but my goodness I have been exhausted for a lot of it and, if I’m honest with myself, that probably wasn’t necessary. I don’t yet know how not to do that.

It’s a journey, and starting a new job will be a new phase. It won’t be what I expect. And maybe I’ll never even get asked that in an interview. But it feels good. I have strengths, and I have weaknesses. Just like everyone.

I am currently not depressed. (It appears that sometimes the drugs do work; the effect is, quite frankly, little short of miraculous.)

I can’t actually remember the last time I wasn’t depressed. I have definitely been depressed for the last two years (more like two and a half now, in fact). I think that I was probably depressed for at least six months before that. I also know that I have been depressed on and off for most of my adult life, although it’s hard to say now how much was ‘on’ and how much ‘off’; I can vividly remember a conversation with F this spring where I insisted that I was absolutely fine, that I wasn’t particularly depressed, and I know now that my perception of my state of mind was completely skewed. I might have been less depressed than I have been on occasion, but I was certainly depressed. So although I don’t think that I have been continuously depressed since 1988, it’s not actually impossible.

I’m amazed by how different the world looks now. Not just the sights and smells and sounds and tastes, although I keep finding myself torn between laughing for sheer joy at the number of wonders the everyday world around me contains and weeping for all the time when I couldn’t see that. Not just the fact that, released from the bell jar of depression (copyright Sylvia Plath), I’m suddenly finding myself taking a real interest in people and not just going through the motions of small talk with my colleagues. No, what’s really different is the way I see myself. I can see now that I’m not perfect, and I’m not terribly important in the grand scheme of things, and I’m totally OK with that.

Because the thing with depression is how closely it’s tied in to low self-esteem. I think that for me there were several layers to this; underneath the obvious Impostor Syndrome and the constant quest for positive feedback and recognition there was a monumentally arrogant conviction that I really was special and brilliant and that I was right and everything else was wrong. And I was clinging to that for dear life, because it was all that there was between me and the abyss of having to recognise that it was all true; I really was unlikeable and stupid and terrible at my job and my life, and I completely deserved all the bad things because they really were my fault.

And now that fear has gone. I don’t feel the same need for recognition, and I know that if I turn out to be wrong about something it won’t be the end of the world. And if something needs to change, sometimes it isthe world around me, but sometimes it’s me.

I have an awful lot to learn. (And a lot to make up; I don’t quite know how to make amends to all the people I’ve behaved terribly to because of this.) But at least now I’m actually able to listen.

This post is not for Ankaret, because it is about evangelism and that is very much Not Her Thing. You have been warned, m’dear.

Not particularly Christian evangelism, although I expect I’ll get to that. Any evangelism will do. (Sung to the tune of ‘Any dream will do’, from Joseph, clearly.)

Moi, I am evangelical about the following: Being stylish*. Having some kind of a spiritual life**. Twelve-step programmes.. Aloe vera, both to drink and to put on your skin. Mindfulness meditation. I’m sure there are other things I’ve forgotten. ***

Before you decide that I must be hell to be around (that’s a whole ‘nother post), let us examine what I mean by evangelical. Because mostly I do not evangelise, at least I don’t think I do. (My flatmate might disagree about the aloe vera.)

I’d like to, don’t get me wrong. I’d really like to spend the whole day telling everyone about all these wonderful things that have changed my life so much. I would like everyone to have a chance to benefit from this great stuff – and I really do believe that practically everyone would do so. I think the world would be infinitely better if we all practised transcendence and living in the present, and if we all worked step ten on a regular basis.

However.

When is the last time you did something because someone else told you how good for you it would be? For most of my life, I have pretty much gone out of my way to do the opposite of what was suggested to me, and I’ve noticed consistently that other people do the same. It’s one of Frankie’s Laws of Change: people do not like being told what to do. (I do believe that people change through admiration of others. I think I’ve written here before that one of my favourite quotes is from St Francis of Assisi: “Evangelise wherever you go and, if necessary, use words.)

So I’ve never really understood evangelism. How does it work? Why does it work?

I have recently got to know someone who is an evangelical Christian. He is a really, really great guy. But in our first conversation he suggested that I should come to HTB with him. As it happens, I might sometime, because I really like evangelical services. The singing is fantastic. But it’s not my particular aisle of the broad church that is Christianity, and I would have guessed that I am more likely to be warm towards the idea than most people he asks. I can’t imagine how many times his offer’s been rejected, and I would guess that sometimes that’s accompanied by harsh words, harsh judgments and / or a real sense of invasion and offence.

I’m fascinated. What does it take to keep doing that? I’m torn between admiration of the principle and the struggle to understand the kind of mind that thinks it’s the best way to work – or, even if they can see the pitfalls, so deeply believes it’s the right thing to do that they do it anyway. (Did I get the pronouns right in that sentence?)

I am not that person. I’d like everyone to have the great things that I have. But I don’t think it is my job to make it happen. And I don’t think I could make it happen, even if I felt far more deeply about it than I do.

* That’s a technical definition in my world. It does not involve being fashionable, trying to look like someone else, defining oneself in terms of one’s appearance and various other things designed to enslave women. That’s a whole ‘nother post too.

** Please note that this does NOT mean believing in God. Not not not not not.

*** This is actually quite a small sub-set of the list of things that I’m passionate about and would like to share with the world. I really do get that there are some things that work for me but wouldn’t work for everyone, which is why black cats are not on this list.

I think this is a great post. I identified with a lot, especially “A lot of my problems with work over the years have stemmed from the feeling that I wasn’t doing all I could, that I ought to be achieving more.”

I was a high flyer. In school I got top marks without, um, ever doing any work at all. In college, likewise. This has had many consequences for me, not all bad. But one is that there’s always been a little voice in my head, repeating, “People are looking at you. You can’t let them see you fail.” That hasn’t been particularly helpful, because, as Trunk and SJ point out, the standard of achievement against which I am judging myself is of course a myth. (And other people aren’t thinking about me anyway, except in the vaguest of terms.)

I also agree with SJ that what we are taught in schools does not fit us well for adult life. I cannot imagine a circumstance under which I will be called upon to solve a partial differential equation. I adore knowing Latin, but its only value in my life is for crosswords and showing off. The only things I regularly use that I learned in school are English grammar and typing.

It is of course more complicated - my academic skills have some value, even if my knowledge doesn’t. It’s useful to be able to tell real from false logic, to be able to analyse each situation and look for the patterns that unite them. It’s exceptionally useful to be able to read. But I think SJ’s right to point out that, without the requisite social skills, the careers in which I can be successful are limited, whatever my abilities. Rocket science, IT, engineering, that thing in investment banking where you work out the value of obscure structured finance products, or the Treasury - and that’s about it. (Counter-intelligence, perhaps?)

I’ve spent most of my adult life teaching myself the social skills I need. It’s been hard going, and I’ve often been very resentful of the fact that I’ve had to do it myself. I used to go round posturing about how it would be different when I Am In Charge: children would be taught things that would be of use to them, such as listening and cooking and self-awareness and how to live within one’s income and where to find the main stopcock and why good manners are a Good Thing. (And reading.)

But it’s not quite that simple. If I look back on myself as a teenager, could anyone actually have got me to pay attention to such lessons? Was the environment safe to practice them? Could I have understood them, and why they were useful? If I wasn’t willing to study language and literature, would I really have shown up for personal development?

It’s a conundrum. I disliked school very much indeed, and it is true to say that it didn’t fit me for the world. Personally I no longer want to blame the institution for that, because I prefer to take the responsibility. I don’t like the idea of being a victim of my school days twenty years on. But I’m also aware that I am very privileged, and I should not generalise from my own experience.

I also think that Ros is right (in comments) to question the roles of the school and the parent. Carol Craig, whom I admire, points out* that a major danger of incorporating social and emotional aspects of learning into the curriculum is that it is letting parents off the hook for their part of the civil contract. To her, the privilege argument is irrelevant - we are disempowering all children by doing this. It doesn’t matter that some parents have more resources than others.

I absolutely agree that we could get a lot better at scoping education so that it is useful for both the individual and society, but I’m not certain I’d start from there.

* The main report is 100 pages, but there’s an 18 page ’summary’ hiding somewhere on the site if you’re really interested.

I spent a fair chunk of this morning phoning law firms and asking them for their VAT registration details. (Which was (a) not very exciting and (b) rather stressful because I don’t like talking to people on the phone.) I was doing this because I currently have no staff; normally I have two, but one of them left at the start of the summer, and there didn’t seem to be much point replacing her until the new academic year, and the other one is on holiday. So currently, I have no staff, which means that if anything needs doing (such as setting up customer accounts and invoicing the fees for a new postgraduate diploma) I have to do it.

And actually, this is probably a really good thing. Partly because I deserved to be the person who had to ring up the law firms and ask for their VAT numbers, because I didn’t mention to the course administrator who was asking the students for payment details that we need a VAT number to set up an account, but more because it’s good to get in touch with the basic stuff every now and again. It’s useful to know what my staff have to deal with, what problems they come across. And also, it really helps me, on a personal level, to be reminded just how much I don’t know. It doesn’t matter that these are simple, straightforward processing tasks; because I don’t normally deal with them, I have to get the manuals out and work my way through step by step.

I’m far too prone to assuming that I know, if not everything, all I need to. I’m clever and well-qualified and, in my current workplace, I do know much more about accountancy than anyone else. But that’s all theoretical knowledge. I know exactly how various transactions and processes work in theory. I may even have practical experience of them in previous jobs. And it’s all too easy to step from knowing this to assuming that it means that I know all I need to know to do my current job. Sometimes it really helps to be reminded that I have only been here eighteen months (and I’ve spent a good part of that practically crippled by depression, too) and there is an awful lot about how things work in practice here that I do still need to learn, if only I can manage to stay off my know-it-all high horse for long enough.

I was thinking about my winter wardrobe, which I do a lot. In particular, I was thinking about the brown splashy-flower-print skirt from the clothes swap. I adore this skirt, and I would wear every day if I could work out how to stop it being too revealing when I walk.

It put me in mind of a black splashy-flower-print shirt that I had in college, which I idiotically swapped with my friend E for a white delicate-flower-print shirt that, of course, looked appalling on me. It was a ravishing garment, but it just did not suit me. I felt like I was trying to be E (which I was) and failing miserably. I felt like a carthorse next to her delicate beauty.* (And, of course, my shirt did as little for her as hers did for me, although I couldn’t see that at the time.)

Then I started thinking, what would happen if I saw that shirt now? It would still be utterly, utterly beautiful. But I would not buy it. Because I know it isn’t me.

So what changed?

One thing that changed is that I learned that there are things I look good in. As a student, I thought myself very plain, and I didn’t know about clothes, so I didn’t think it made very much difference what I wore. So I wore what other people were wearing, especially the people that I wanted to be, and I wore what I thought men would find attractive. And, for years, that’s how I bought clothes, as if the garment would somehow magically confer upon me the properties of the wearer.

And, over the years, I slowly found more things that I actually looked and felt good in, that were me. I started wearing long skirts because I wanted to look like someone I worked with, and I discovered that they felt wonderful, floating and sensual around me; I felt like a goddess. I started wearing colours that people admired me in, and discovered that green wakes me from the dead like Sleeping Beauty, but black and beige, the colours that the other bankers were wearing, made me look like a zombie Lady Macbeth. And I started being willing to look like me instead of wanting to look like someone else, because I started thinking that it might be okay to look like me, and because I realised that I would always be better at looking like me than I would ever be at looking at anyone else.

And, thinking about this, I started to get the glimmer of an idea that I think might be important.

My research focuses on strengths - star-shaped points. What are the unique qualities that make us who we are? What happens when we use them? And one of the things I keep noticing is that, when people use their strengths, they become more okay with being themselves. It switches from a vicious circle to being a virtuous one – the more they feel okay with being themselves, the more they value and use their strengths. And the more they value and use their strengths, the more they feel okay with being themselves.

And I’m starting to wonder, is the same true of how we look? When we see ourselves looking our best, or when someone else can see the beauty in us that we can’t see in ourselves, do we become more willing to look like ourselves instead of trying to look like others? Is this one step in the journey?

And, if so, how do these two things relate?

* Analogy nicked from Jilly Cooper

Penelope Trunk has an interesting post about the myth of “living up to your potential”. A lot of my problems with work over the years have stemmed from the feeling that I wasn’t doing all I could, that I ought to be achieving more. That feeling has led me to hop from job to job, seeking promotion and recognition which always seemed to be a step out of reach. Just as in Trunk’s example, I’ve found myself saying “I was so good at getting high marks in school. Why am I not catapulting up the corporate ladder?”

But work isn’t like school, or university. Being a qualified accountant isn’t even like being a trainee accountant, where there are exams to be passed and memory and analytical skills can still be the keys to success. As Trunk says ‘most of getting what you want at work is about having social skills, and school doesn’t measure that’. More to the point, it doesn’t even teach that. Or no, that’s not quite true; it’s not part of the formal curriculum, but perhaps that was what breaktimes and team sports and group work were supposed to be about. All the bits of school that I thought were a bit pointless. I usually spent breaktimes in a quiet corner with a book and stayed as far away from the ball as possible during netball and hockey. As for group work, I particularly remember the time in English in the second year when we were supposed to work in pairs to write an adventure about being stranded on a desert island, and I fell out with my best friend of the time so badly* that we ended up having to become separated on the island and finish our stories separately.

But the thing is, no-one ever explained that any of that was important. Getting good marks and doing your homework and passing exams and getting to university were important. Numeracy and literature and reasoning skills were less tangible but also recognisably important. Social skills, not so much. I was a fairly lonely child, but that never really mattered because I had my books, and although I was never really considered a high-flyer (clever enough, but no cleverer than several others, and too dreamy and impractical) I was a good, clever, hard-working girl and I knew that my parents and teachers all thought I was doing well.

So it was a bit of a shock to the system to find that the the world of work operated on a totally different set of principles. It’s probably just as well that my passionate political convictions meant that working for my degree took something of a back seat to campaigning and drinking; I suspect that, having failed to get into the university I really wanted to go to, I may also have become slightly less convinced about the value of academic achievement. Even so, it’s no wonder I ended up temping for a year and then got sacked from my first job. It’s probably more of a wonder that I’ve done as well as I have done, although that’s mostly been on the strength of passing exams and those count for less and less as time goes by.

I have to say, this makes me angry. It can’t be right that children are taught that success is about qualifications and intellectual achievements and then plunged into a workplace where those count for far less than social abilities, especially when all too often the brightest kids are geeky outsiders who really believe that that doesn’t matter as long as you’re clever. What is the point of an education system that leaves people completely unprepared for life?

*I thought Margaret Thatcher was an evil bitch, and she thought she was a great thing for the country, which probably counts as “irreconcilable differences”.

This week I am in a deadline crunch (or, as my predictive text enchantingly called it, a deadline brunch - how Douglas-Adams-esque). I have two assignments to hand in on Sunday and, in a triumph of character defects over common-sense, we are having a party today. So I have spent the week working very hard, whingeing (sp?), feeling rather sorry for myself, panicking, not sleeping enough, not exercising enough and eating all the wrong foods.

This is familiar for me. I have spent a lot of my life in deadline hell. In school, it was because I hated it so much that I didn’t do anything until I was under active threat of punishment. In college, it was because I was drunk. At work, it was because I was afraid - I was always convinced that when I came face to face with the work, I would not be able to do it.

When I started my course, I expected to be in deadline hell at the end of the first term, because I hadn’t written an essay for more than half my life and I had no idea what I was doing. (And, indeed, I was proved right.) And it’s not a great surprise that I was in deadline hell last term, because I went from studying part-time (two major assignments per term) to studying full-time (four major assignments per term) and I was derailed by personal stuff as well. It was all fine, but it was not comfortable and it was not necessary and I resolved that I would not be doing that again. After all, there was no need. I am studying full-time, not trying to balance the course with a job. I am no longer a drunk. I like what I’m doing, and I am not afraid of it.

I have worked on these assignments steadily. I started early. I made progress most days. It’s been completely different from anything I’ve done before.

So why do I find myself here again?

I’m sure that one reason is that old habits die hard. I have not been employed, true, but I have been doing a lot of step work, which has taken up many hours. I expect I’ve procrastinated more than I think I have, and been slower and less organised.

But there’s another thing.

I always thought that working on an assignment was like doing a project. You have a project plan and you work through all the actions and when it’s done, it’s done. But it turns out that this is not true. On an assignment, the more I do, the more possibilities I see. There is no natural time to stop. I was going to be in deadline hell whatever I did.

I am not enjoying this week, and I will be happy when it is over. But I am pleased with what’s brought me here. For the first time in my life, I’ve worked hard enough to learn that there is no natural time to stop. I guess most people learn this before they get to thirty-seven, but learning it at thirty-seven is better than not learning it at all.

I’m not quite sure what to do with this knowledge. I have one more assignment to hand in at the end of the month - more deadline hell in a couple of weeks; it’s too late to fix that one - and then it’s all over bar the dissertation. I don’t want to be in deadline hell over the dissertation. I’ve seen that happen and it’s not pretty. And I might have a job by then (although it’s not the most likely scenario); I don’t want to exhaust myself and make the start more difficult.

But I like that I’m handling work like a normal person. This feels like really great progress.

I come from a mixed marriage, religiously speaking. My father was brought up in the Church of England, and became a Quaker later in life. My mother is Jewish.

I did not have much in the way of a religious upbringing, because my mother does not believe in God at all and my father is not mad keen on organised religion. He used to take us to church once a month, but I only remember my resentment about getting up early and how cold it was. Apparently I knew many bible stories then; I remember few now. (Most of my knowledge of scripture comes from the Gospel of St Matthew as translated into Godspell, which I stage-managed when I was sixteen.)

I think they sent me to church rather than synagogue because it was easier. Christianity is our national religion. There is a church in every village; synagogues, not so much. And my father is at least interested in God, whereas my mother is a worldly creature. So I grew up thinking that if I had a religion, it would be Christianity, and when the time came for me to choose a religion, I chose Christianity. I like to tell myself it was a thought-out, conscious choice, but it’s probably closer to the truth to say it’s what I know.

I don’t think about my Jewish roots very much. I like being a mongrel. I have ancestors from England, Wales, France, Germany, Poland and other Slavic nations, and this charms me. But I think of it as a race thing, not a religious thing.

When my mother and I were in Prague, we went to the Pinkas synagogue. I have a bit of a thing about Holocaust memorials, and I try to go, because I think it’s important that we remember. The Pinkas synagogue is particularly moving because the names of Prague’s Jewish dead are written on the walls. It’s four years since I went there and if I think about it hard enough I will still cry. And we saw the ghetto, with the cemetery where corpses were stacked twelve-deep. And I thought, that would have been me.

But I don’t know what it means to be Jewish, not in myself. I’ve never led a Jewish life. I don’t know a Jewish God - and I am not a fan of the God of the Old Testament, who seems to me fearsome and capricious. I’ve visited synagogues as a tourist only - I’ve never been to a service.

I was reminded of this because I was rereading the Lyubomirsky book and one of the epigraphs is from the Talmud. If I am not for myself, who will be for me? If I am only for myself, what am I? And if not now, when?.

I like this. It intrigues me. But I don’t know how to read it. I know how to interpret Let he who is without sin throw the first stone, or Perfect love casteth out fear, because I am deeply submerged in a Christian tradition. But I do not know what the Talmud is telling me.

At my parents’ party, I was serving drinks to my aunt, and someone made a remark about sin. And I said lightly ‘the only sin today is not having a good time”. And she responded, “In Judaism, that would be true. It is a sin not to find pleasure in something that’s enjoyable, when there’s no reason not to.”

I’m interested in that. I like the idea of a God who encourages pleasure. I’m curious about what it would be like to grow up in that tradition. It has a lightness that Christianity lacks. Christianity is serious business.

I’m starting to become more aware of my Jewish roots. Not today, because I already have more than enough to do right now and I’m mostly writing this post to avoid it. But maybe someday.

Last weekend I drove just over 300 miles. This is about the same number of miles as I drove in the preceding five months.

Unlike F, I consider myself a reasonably good driver. I have been driving for half my life now; I passed my test five days before my 18th birthday and I have been a car owner since 1997. At one point I used to drive fifty miles a day to work and back. In that time I have had three accidents involving other vehicles, and two of those involved someone else driving into the back of my car at roundabouts.

However, like F, I don’t enjoy driving. I’d like to say that’s mostly because it’s selfish and bad for the environment, but really it’s because I find driving simultaneously boring and stressful. It’s boring because it involves doing the same thing mile after mile after mile, and I can’t multi-task and read or knit at the same time. I can listen to the radio, but even there I can’t really give it my full attention. And it’s stressful because any lapse of attention could be fatal, to me or to someone else, and because it requires complicated and instinctive analysis of visual and spatial information (which is not my strong point), and because there are an awful lot of idiots out there. I only drive when there isn’t really a viable alternative (this happens rather more than I would like, because although public transport in the city where I live is excellent, public transport outside the city is appalling, and I can’t afford taxis).

What strikes me, though, is that when I do have to drive I just get on and do it. I don’t even stress much beforehand, and once I get behind the wheel I just concentrate on driving, on observing what’s around me and reacting appropriately. When I’m driving, I really do exist in the moment. If I make a mistake I’ll wave an apology at other drivers if that’s possible, but then I’ll let it go. I can’t dwell on a mistake half a mile ago, or worry about a tricky spot half a mile ahead; I have to concentrate on where I am.

This is very much what I want to be able to do at work. Thinking about how I drive suggests that actually, I do know how to do it; I suppose I just need to work out how to apply the same mentality to work as I do to car journeys.