Joy - Autonomy - Impact: Anniversary reflections

Last April, I felt the fear, and did it anyway. I started my own consultancy, Equity by Design, a boutique firm focussing on student equity and the student experience in higher education.

I had left the safe harbour of my full-time, senior management job with 17% super at a Melbourne university and stepped into the unknown - and what a marvellous ride it has been!

I’m a firm believer in self-reflection and the anniversary provided a prompt to spend some time with my thoughts and to put them in writing. I’m sharing these reflections because I have come across many people over the past 12 months who are looking for different ways of working, are actively exploring self-employment, or are generously coaching others who are creating their unique path of contributing to their industry or community while making enough money to support themselves and their families. I want to add my insights to that conversation.

My reflections are structured around the three core values which guided the jump into self-employment: Joy – Autonomy – Impact.?I tried to consciously live into these values in the last year and have learnt a lot!

Big career decisions usually originate from major life events and a wider personal context. So, I’m including a bonus value on Energy to provide that context.

I’d like to start by offering a heartfelt ‘thank you’ to all my client partners who have shared this journey.?I have found fertile ground for exploration and learning wherever I went in the past year, and that has been the greatest reward of all.

Joy

A major source of my joy is to see others thrive. It’s particularly rewarding when I know I’ve played a part in enabling that thriving. Professionally, I strive to be a Multiplier in Liz Wiseman’s definition: a leader who uses their intelligence to amplify the smarts and capabilities of the people around them. This was my core motivation for setting out as a consultant: I saw my colleagues were struggling with the expectations articulated in the sophisticated Student Equity in Higher Education Evaluation Framework (SEHEEF) and knew I had the skills to support them in tackling that challenge.

I care deeply about the students we are supporting as equity practitioners. This stems from my own background as a first-in-family student from a regional area who experienced the transformative power of education first-hand. But I care even more about my colleagues and want to see them thriving as expert practitioners and institutional change agents. Bringing about structural and cultural change to create a more accessible and inclusive environment for students is difficult and can be exhausting. What if my colleagues had a critical friend during this process, an expert advisor in making tactical decisions, moral and practical support for staying the course in the face of obstacles? It might make all the difference…

Moments of joy were aplenty across the last 12 months and often shared: in the spontaneous mini-tutorials which enable just-in-time learning on the job, in the debrief of a meeting with Execs to translate all the coded info that has just been shared into concrete actions for equity practitioners, in the pushing of boundaries which brings about actual change, in the challenging of assumptions which leads to the breakthrough insight. Picture my deeply satisfied grin as I jump into the cab to the airport, knowing that through our work together my colleagues are off on a different trajectory of practice based on new insights. Pure joy, right there.

Autonomy

Autonomy as self-governance has been the most interesting and challenging of the values for me. The design principle of my business plan was and remains this: enough money with much less stress. I wanted to be more present for and relaxed with my child instead of being on edge by 7:30 a.m. because I’d just spent half an hour troubleshooting on Teams and was now worried about not making it to the office for my 9 a.m. meeting via another teary school drop-off.

When I started being my own boss, I thought I would struggle with motivation. I didn't. It turns out, I can drive myself (too) hard all by myself. I don't need anybody else to do it for me. I find it hard to say ‘no’, I take on too much, I overschedule myself, and I pay the price in terms of stress. Or, more precisely, my body pays the price in the form of migraines, poor sleep, muscle soreness, and compromised organ functions.

And here is where I had to learn to catch myself. I had to pull myself back and prioritise my well-being. It is the lesson the universe keeps offering me, daily. Autonomy as self-governance meant I literally had nowhere to hide. I had to face this particularly unhelpful habit head-on. Luckily, I have an amazing support crew who keep me honest: I work with a professional coach who knows me too well and pulls no punches, a psychologist who treats psycho-somatically, and an osteopath who straightens out my spine and energy flow.?

It’s ok to ask for help with things we find difficult to do ourselves, to build an accountability structure to keep ourselves on the path when the going gets tough. Because self-governance, I’ve learnt, doesn’t mean being a lone-wolf hero.

Impact

As someone who is supporting universities in evaluating the outcomes and impacts of their equity programs, I made a point of grappling with this value. The outcomes of my work are mostly intangible and complex to measure. But this isn't to say that they are vague. The best metaphor for the nature and impact of my work that I've come up with is that of an organisational electrician: in working with equity practitioners, their senior leaders and key stakeholders, I can illuminate the value of student equity work, of program evaluation and of evidence-informed decision-making. I assist in connecting related organisational areas and in generating new insights about diverse student cohorts and the effectiveness of targeted programs.

In SEHEEF speak, my work classifies as institutional development activities which support universities in recognising structural barriers to equity students' access and success and embed more targeted, equitable and evidence-informed policy and practices. Like all of the Supporting Outcomes in the SEHEEF, we need to operationalise this measure, and there’s a lot to unpack. But in essence, this is exactly what we have achieved in the universities who have engaged with the spirit and practice of program evaluation and evidence-informed program design.

Energy, Bonus Value

My journey to self-employment started with the commitment I made to myself that I did not want to live with chronic pain anymore. While I had accomplished professional success and financial independence, this had come at a personal cost. Combined with a global pandemic, it turned into a perfect storm. By early 2022, I had white-knuckled an ugly separation through the Family Court, rolling COVID lockdowns in Melbourne, and unprecedented organisational changes at work, back-to-back since January 2020. I had come out of that period physically and emotionally exhausted and was on a cocktail of daily medications.

But my spirit was intact. If anything, I had managed to tap into a source of strength I forgot I had in me. And it helped me form a commitment to greater well-being. That this horrible experience I had been through had to be good for something. That I would thrive again if I learnt the lessons and made the required changes.

Since then, I have made some big changes to the way I exercise, sleep, nourish myself and engage socially. I’ve learnt to trust my own judgement. I have a daily meditation practice, I am a long-term yogi, I make time for creative expression. And I walk: to get around, to think, to relax. Walking literally saved my sanity during the COVID lockdowns and it has been critical in my recovery.

In January 2023, I had a conversation with an enlightened gastroenterologist who observed that because of the severity and duration of the stress I’d experienced, my fight-flight mechanism was permanently switched on, throwing my hormones into disarray. He recommended two things: a low-dose anti-depressant as a circuit breaker and significant lifestyle changes.

I started the anti-depressant and quit my job in the same week. Neither decision was made lightly. But that combo was the game-changer. My symptoms, all of them except for the migraines, cleared within a few weeks. For the first time in 15 years, I was free of chronic pain. When I woke up and scanned my body for aches and pains, I came up clear. But with energy!

I came off the medications one at a time. By the end of last year, I was off the anti-depressant. I have been free of daily drugs ever since. It's changed my life. I honestly didn't think that I would return to pre-COVID energy levels, given the level of damage I had accumulated. But it happened! The body is a magical thing if you support it.

Lessons

So, what have I learnt through my year of self-employment (and a couple of years of digging myself out of a deep hole)? That, in the words of Caroline McHugh, “individuality is really all it’s cracked up to be”. That your job is to be the best version of yourself on this earth every day. And that you have to put on your own oxygen mask first. Because without that, everything else is so much more of a struggle.

The good news is that real change can be made at the right time, with courage, with daily effort and with not too much financial cost. These are some ideas to get you started: Insert more steps into your daily routines. Be tuned into the beauty of your environment while you’re walking. Stretch. Sit for 10 minutes in the morning or at night and concentrate on your breathing. Breathe through your nose, always. Reduce the worst offenders in your diet. You know the ones: alcohol, deep-fried, highly processed stuff. Be in bed well before midnight (took me years!).

What it takes to make change is an unwavering commitment to your own wellbeing, a belief in your own self-worth, and trust that the universe will show you doors where previously there were none. Fear will be the first to greet you at any of those doors. The trick is to take a deep breath, hold your nerve, and step through it anyway.

What would you do if you knew you couldn't fail?