“Change is the essence of life. Be willing to surrender
what you are for what you could become.”
The above was part of a promotion for AIOP’s Annual Office Professional Breakfast held each year here in Australia. One of my team had posted an invite to the Sydney breakfast and wanted to know if anyone else at the forum was intending to go.
Seeing the promotion took me back several years.
It was 1993 and I attended the breakfast in Melbourne. In those days it was called “Secretaries Day” and it was put on by IPSA (Institute of Professional Secretaries Australia), now known as Australian Institute of Office Professionals (AIOP). They announced the inaugural ‘Member of the Year Award’ and my boss and a couple of other co-workers were at the breakfast with me. Cyndi Kaplan was the speaker and I bought her book ‘There’s a Lipstick in My Briefcase’.
It was at that breakfast that the seeds were sown for me to start up my own business. I was getting fed up with the rat race of travelling in traffic, or getting held up by cancelled trains and I just so wanted to stay home for my family. Cyndi was very inspiring and I wanted to be like her – free to meet people, go places, not be trapped in a corporate office. It was also at that breakfast that one of my co-workers said to my boss that they should nominate me for the award. I thought they were joking. If only they knew the thoughts that were going on inside my head!
Advance forward 6 months and I’m at the awards ceremony where the winner was to be announced. I’d already gone through interviews and knew I was a finalist. My name was announced and my husband whispered in my ear ‘I always knew it was you’. Microsoft amongst other companies provided prizes for the winner – the MS Office Suite 2.0. I didn’t have a computer at home and didn’t need the software for my computer at work. So my husband and I decided to purchase our first PC for home at Tandys at Christmastime. It was late 1993, the computer was huge, a 40mb hdd and it cost us well over $4,000AUD.
3 months later I was opening the doors of my brand new business. I wonder if my boss and colleagues would have nominated me if they knew it meant they were going to lose me?
Re-read the words at the top of this post. Was I scared of what I was planning to do? You betcha! But I was also scared of what might happen if I didn’t try! I could become permanently trapped in a world I wasn’t enjoying.
Why don’t you book to attend a breakfast this year? Who knows what it might lead to for you?
Rachel Reeves says
You have been on a really awesome journey Kathie – you really are an inspiration to many. If we surrender to change… and allow for it to constantly grow us in ways that we never ever imagined then we can do big things. On the other end of the stick if we decided that we had already reached our destination and there was going to be no more change in our lives, then I’m thinking that we would be likely get bored pretty quickly.
Heather Villa says
Making a huge life change on this magnitude is never an easy decision. Thanks for sharing your story. It’s a great inspiration that is sure to help others who are struggling to make the same decision.