Advice to My Younger Self

It’s my birthday weekend and I have a lot to look forward to.

There’s competing in The Murph Challenge on Memorial Day, my Peru trip this fall, and some cool plans for the business.

While I tend to focus on the future, my team challenged me to reflect on my past.

“What advice would you give your younger self?”

If I could go back in time to advise “young May”, I’d tell myself these four things. See if they help you too.

1. Focus on your super strengths

Your super strengths are the things you do well and love doing. They come naturally to you. And when you’re using those strengths, you feel like you’re “in the zone”. Things feel simple, easy and fun.

My super strengths have revolved around communicating with and influencing people. One boss put it this way: “May, you can say just about anything to anyone and get away with it”. And I’ve described it as being able to “bring together disparate groups to collaborate toward a common goal.”

What are your super strengths and how are you using them?

2. Value people over tasks

I like getting things done. In fact, I like accomplishing tasks so much that I used to resent family members, friends and even my team for interrupting me when I was in the thick of a project. As you can imagine, this didn’t make me a model daughter, mother, wife or boss.

I also used to think networking was a waste of time. I ended up depending too much on my narrow network and missed opportunities.

But the reality is our network of relationships are a key part of success. And since starting to value people over tasks, my relationships have improved and my network is so much richer.

Where do you stand on the “people vs task” spectrum?

3. Don’t worry about finding your passion

I’ve never liked the typical career advice of “follow your passion”. When you don’t know what it is, that kind of well-meaning statement can cause a lot of stress!

Instead of going around in circles trying to find my passion, what worked for me was to put myself out there and allow my passion to find me.

Finding your passion is a discovery process. The more you experiment, the closer you’ll get to where you’re meant to be.

What I’m doing now is exactly what I was meant to do all along, and the path I took has been excellent preparation.

Have you already found your passion? Or are you still on your way to discovering it?

4. Don’t give away your power

As a “nice Chinese girl”, I deferred to just about anyone else who had an opinion. I assumed everyone else had more knowledge and expertise than me. I valued harmony so much that I kept quiet even when I disagreed. Those with louder voices intimidated me.

On top of that, I used apology language and said “sorry!” even when others bumped into me!

As a result, I gave away my personal power and made myself small and inconsequential without realizing it.

Whether it’s a lack of confidence, not wanting to offend, or something else, you close yourself off to opportunity when you give away your power. And that means it’s harder to make a difference for the people and causes you care about.

The good news is you can reclaim your personal power at any time. For me, it began with a shift in my mindset.

Have you given away your personal power? If so, what step could you take to get it back?

Whatever stage you are in your life, you’ve learned a great deal simply by living every day. And if you’ve made mistakes, you’ve learned even more of those valuable lessons!

So pause and reflect on the most important lessons you’ve learned. Maybe they’re about relationships. Perhaps your career. Or how you want to show up in the world.

Whatever those life lessons are, they have value. And they might just help someone else too if you’re willing to share them.

What advice would you give your younger self?

I’d love to know.