Unleash Your Potential

The past year has been an eye-opening journey for me…emotionally, mentally, and physically.

 

In 2023, I reached a new apex in my career.  The financial goals I achieved broke the ceiling of any thought I’ve ever known possible for someone like me. I have been able to prove my independence as a single mother of four.  My children are thriving and generally happy and content, well that is most days at least (chuckle).  The reality in my career is that I sit next to all male peers during leadership meetings at work.  And since I personally know them, I know they ALL have support at home, helping them with their household commitments.  And knowing this motivates me to go after more.  It lights a fire in me and pushes me forward to see what else I can accomplish.  After all, I made it this far, so I might as well keep going until someone tells me no or something happens to stop me. 

 

I believe in timing, and today this quote came across my desk for a reason, “The only impossible journey is the one you never begin.”  Thank you, Mr. Tony Robbins for this Friday inspiration.  So what is impossible?  I suppose everything is until we begin.  Knowing I am an outlier fuels me at times but also has held me back.  Over the last year, I have begun to get out of my way more and throw more gasoline on my fire.  I found a spark not too long ago and I haven't done much the last few years to keep that lit because I have been so intensely prioritizing everyone but myself.  I accept the challenges of more responsibility and then show you how I balance grade school homework, batting practices, sport holiday parties, concerts and hiking adventures, happy hours with girlfriends, and evening basketball games as I continue to drive architecture modernization for commerce systems in the cloud compute arena.  Bring it. I am not going to say no to you.   

 

I come from a “blue-collar” upbringing, of which I am very proud of.  The values and my good-old Cleveland roots keep me authentic and grounded in my life.  Graduating from college was a goal my parents impressed upon my brother and I at an early age…and maybe that was because they didn’t have this opportunity and so they were committed to us to have this option.  Life after college was not really discussed – likely because none of us knew what that world could look like.  I remember my mom always told me I can do whatever I want and whatever I put my mind to.  I was not familiar with the “white-collar" opportunities because we didn’t live in that world.  The only job I remember being in awe of was being a pediatrician.  That was white collar to me – the doctors even wore those white jackets as they walked into those small, office rooms where I sat in fear thinking every visit would result in a shot!  They always had the answers for my parents as to why we were there.  Now that was what "white collar" was for me – literally and figuratively. 

 

I was a frequent flier at the doctor’s office in Euclid, Ohio…my badge of honor in my youth was being a strep throat warrior and swimmer’s ear fanatic.  By age 10, I was scoring penicillin shots on the regular.  I adopted a vision that I would one day be a pediatrician.  They needed college degrees so I thought, this is what I should do.  I wanted to solve people’s problems.  I wanted to be significant, and I wanted to feel valued.  I wanted to have all the answers.   And I wanted to live a life where money was never a problem.  And that was my dream and I would continue to be focused on this dream for the next 10 years.     

 

This past summer, the little girl in me was reminded of a different dream she had for a very brief moment.  This memory was lost on me until that day it surfaced.  As I was leaving the parking garage and walking the streets of Seattle to work one morning, I was reminded of a vision I once had, where I was walking the big city streets in a fancy pair of high heels, in some far distance place, in some glamorous, metallic, and shiny downtown area.  It was so futuristic feeling and so far away from anything I thought would ever happen.  I never even visited NYC until I was 22 but I am sure this vision was inspired by all magazine pictures and TV movies.  I remember having that vision as a little girl.  It tied to a grade school project, where we had to write a paper about a dream we had of our “future self.”  It was an assignment tied to Martin Luther King. Up until that moment, I only remembered wanting to be a doctor.  That memory hit me hard that morning, and stopped me on the street.  I remembered that grade school assignment so vividly, some 30 years ago.  For most of the spring and early summer, I was experiencing heavy homesickness and starting to question things in my life.  I was looking for answers that I was doubting and believing at the same time. 

 

That morning in June, this memory came out of somewhere in my mind and I connected it to what I was doing at that very moment.  It was an incredibly powerful connection from my past to exactly what I was doing in my present.   I was at the corner of 2nd Avenue and Union (if you are unfamiliar with downtown Seattle, this is a few blocks away from the world-famous Pike Place Market in the heart of downtown Seattle).  I stood still on that corner for a few minutes and just took everything around me in.  I was overwhelmed with energy.  It became quite an emotional discovery for me.  I still feel the slight burning in my feet as my bony toes held up my weight in my stilettos.  I don’t wear heels often anymore since most of my workdays are in pj's and slippers at home.  That moment hit me hard…I remember feeling a lot of energy and validation of who I was.  This moment started my emotional journey.  And I still think I am on it?...

 

I have conquered mountains in the last year and proven to myself at 41, I could be healthier, stronger, and more physically fit than I have ever been.  I mean, I have been eating flowers for crying out loud!  Much in my physical world paints a story of my success.  But truthfully, my mental and emotional journey has become more active and noisier than at any point in my life.  I kid at times with mid-life crisis jokes but maybe there is some realness to approaching midlife and beginning to see things differently and starting to explore new goals, priorities and building new dreams.  Someone shared with me that we spend the first half of our lives focusing on money and time.  And then at some point, things begin to shift and it’s no longer about the money and the time.  It becomes more about the magic in life and what you can do with your time and money to create magic to feel more alive.

 

When I went away to college, I had a plan…and I experienced some challenges personally that changed this plan.  I faced hard realities about who I was and who I wasn't.  I made new commitments and released old commitments so I could grow and become a better version of myself.  I have always wanted to achieve, and I was realizing that I needed to grow more to achieve more.  Being in a new environment opened my eyes up to a bigger world too.  I was scared.  Things were emotionally and mentally overwhelming and I became very homesick.  I didn't want to live away from home for longer than the four years that my undergraduate program required.  For that sole reason, I took a dream of being a doctor and changed in an instant.  I did not want to go to medical school and be gone from home for 8+ years.  Hell no.  Absolutely not.  I wasn’t sure I was going to survive the four in front of me and dropping out of college with a pre-med degree was not going to afford me anything useful, so I made a change.  I did, however, be somewhat strategic and picked what I believed to be the best major in Miami's business school.  During the first few months of my freshman year, I researched the average starting salary of all business majors that graduated from Miami from 1998 through 2000.  And that exercise led me to my major – Management Information Systems.  It had on average, the highest paying job offers and the "big-four" auditing companies (at that time) were scooping up Miami University MIS graduates left and right.  As I was afraid out of my mind in my first few months away from home, I focused on what the reality around me and completed a variety of meetings with the counselors and career center staff, interviewed a few MIS juniors and seniors on the class curriculum to figure out what I was up against.  I took advance math and science in high school - skipped every business class my high school offered - because I was going to be a doctor.  As I floundered around Miami, looking for answers, trying to figure out if this change was right, I did notice the stigma of MIS majors and they were considered the drop-out computer science majors.  Their was a social class hierarchy between the two.  That bothered me because I am wired to over-achieve, so why in the hell would I pick second best? I eventually concluded that I didn't want to be a computer science major because I valued the business school curriculum as being more expansive for career opportunities after college.  If I wanted to be in engineering at a corporation, I would need to know how to code and develop software so I picked up all CS electives on top of my business degree.  I am not kidding, I was on a mission in the first 5 months of college and by January 2001, I developed a new plan, committed to a new major, and changed a decade long dream. 

 

Voila.  Done.  New life plan.  I’ll be home in three years now and I’ll have a high-paying job at a very large company that had locations in Cleveland, Ohio. 

 

I eventually grew out of my homesickness and ended up graduating Suma Cum Laude and was the 2000 Richard T. Farmer School of Business Class Representative.  The graduation ceremony was actually quite amazing…my parents and brother got preferential seating (front row) in Miami University’s Millet Hall arena (holding 9,000 people and it was jam packed with students and families of the business school graduating class).  I was part of the ceremony processional and I was able to sit on stage with the rest of the faculty and I gave the graduate speech to my business school peers.  It was incredible. It was surreal.  See you later doctor dream!  I found something magical.

 

Ironically, I never returned home after graduating.  I moved to Cincinnati, Ohio and then eventually my career moved my family and I to Seattle, Washington, a decade later.

 

That is how I became an engineer…an impulsive dream change, because I was homesick and didn’t want to leave Cleveland, Ohio.    

 

It's humorous that I am presently living in arguably the farthest city (“in the lower 48”) from my hometown now. 

 

And this last year, I felt again, a strong sense of homesickness.  I haven’t felt these emotions since that difficult first semester of undergrad.  I made a huge change in college.  And I don’t regret it in the least.  I am now juggling quite a few more responsibilities now than when I was 18.  My abilities to make a change, take on something new, or chase some magic, will require a bit more strategy now.  

 

As I work on myself emotionally and mentally, I am realizing that I want magic.  It's not about the money and the time constraint is opening up for me.  To find that magic, I must sit with myself and face who I am.  I haven’t done this kind of work since my early college days.  I have been just progressing forward on the Lisa Owen roadmap.  I haven’t really needed to stop and try to figure out who I am.  I have taken input and feedback from people along the way, and I typically continue to evolve my plan based on the curve balls thrown in my direction.  But my roadmap hasn't really changed much since college.  I am realizing the dream is where I am at now and I am beginning to face the question of "now what?"  And I am discovering I don’t have a plan beyond this point…I am not taking your input to build my plan, no offense.  What I do next will be tied to my dream - not anyone else's.  But is it really a dream to just keep doing what I am doing?  Maybe get paid a little more, work a little harder doing what I am doing today, and that's it?  That doesn't feel like a dream anymore. 

 

Now let's be clear, I am happy with my career, and I will always work hard and continue competing in that arena.  I think? I will continue my commitments as a mother and help my children reach their potential.  My children are my legacy, not the code I deploy at work...because my successor will overwrite eventually every bit of code that I was ever responsible for.  I have started to spend time in the last year trying to figure out the magic I want in my life.  The magic I want to create in this world.  Maybe this magic connects to being a mother or maybe an engineer?…it’s still unclear to me.  I think my answer lies in the continued progress of my emotional and mental investments.  I really enjoy spending time with people.  I am also finding out that spending time with myself is the hardest relationship I ever had.  And I can't divorce or break up with myself.  Yikes!

 

Dr. King had a dream.  I had dreams and I am realizing that I am living a life now that completed those little girl dreams.  And now what's next for me?  And when and why did I stop dreaming for myself?