CAREER POST SCI: PIVOTING TO FIND PURPOSE
One of the toughest journeys to define post spinal cord injury (SCI), is your career. This year I was invited back to speak at In-Voc’s workshop: “Working and Studying with SCI Webinar Series”. With the global pandemic, social restrictions and health concerns, this year we went online rather than face-to-face.
It is a program to help define a career path for participants who have incurred a spinal cord injury. The core structure of the program completely reflects the journey I have been on since my SCI back in 1989. The need to pivot and re-define purpose and path is part of the post SCI career journey.
It was rewarding to meet people with unique stories on a path to redefining their career goals. It’s not an easy task visualising yourself doing something new. We had a mixture of injury levels, life and career stages in the group. It was a small group and we were able to personalise the discussions to truly find positive outcomes from those willing to make the changes.
There are some key points to acknowledge when you want to create a career unbroken. My career has certainly not been linear or predictable, if anything it has been a series of ad-hoc moments that collectively has brought me to a point where I have some expertise in my area of purpose now – disability. I couldn’t see it at the start of the journey but utilising the strategies below, I look back now and see the path I have been on.
Strategies
1. Living with uncertainty
2. Being open to learning
3. Go with the flow v’s planning
4. Taking risks
5. Failure is also learning
6. When things get in the way
7. The power of volunteering
1. Living with uncertainty
It is fair to say that you live with uncertainty, you don’t know for sure what tomorrow will bring. Post SCI the uncertainty amplifies and can create fear and anxiety when trying to define who you are and what you will do now. The toughest thing to get a grasp of first, is the ability to get comfortable in the uncomfortable.
Much like the feeling you get when you are passing a 10-tonne truck in a tunnel. That lurch in your stomach that gets you as you go past. You hope you make it through without touching it, the fear is there and you hope you don’t lose control of your car but you push through that uncomfortable feeling and do it anyway.
For some, you hold back until you are 100% sure you feel safe, others will take a calculated risk that it will be ok, even without knowing 100% what the outcome will be. This is the attitude to take when jumping into a new job or new career. Push through the uncomfortable and define a new normal. Say yes to everything and see what works for you.
When I left the spinal rehab unit, I knew I wasn’t going to fulfil my goal of a hospitality career like I had planned prior to my injury. I had to push through and explore, try opportunities that were presented to me even when I wasn’t sure I was going to be able to do it.
2. Being open to learning
A strategy that will do you the most good in redefining your career is being open to learning. Today you can’t afford to stop educating yourself with new techniques. Technology has changed the way you evolve career wise and the more you learn the better asset you will be in any job you do to stay current.
One of the most important parts of learning is self-development. The more you learn about yourself, the better you are at accepting who you are now. Your self-development journey helps you understand why you do the things you do, and it helps you visualise yourself doing something new in your career.
3. Go with the flow v’s planning
Before my crash I was definitely a planner, I had mapped out my life post HSC. I wanted to go into hospitality, work for a multinational which would in turn give me travel opportunities for work, I was going to get married by 25 and start a family by 30. Very defined goals and gung-ho that it would all happen that way. The crash brought everything to a sudden stop and a need to re-define everything.
I had to learn to go with the flow now because there was so much uncertainty ahead of me. What you find is that going with the flow is just as important as having a very defined career. As much as my career has seemed a bit ad-hoc and often making me feel like this was not normal, a few years ago I watched a TEDtalk by Emilie Wapnick “Why some of us don’t have one true calling”. It gave me a word to define what I had been doing all these years – multipotentialite.
Are you a multipotentialite?
The ultimate message here is to embrace who you are and how you are wired. If you are a specialist at heart, do that in whatever format you can post SCI. If you constantly like trying new things, you may be a multipotentialite. Value the importance of this type of person in society. The options are so broad for you post SCI, embrace them.
4. Taking risks
Following an SCI injury, taking risks may seem like a crazy thing to do but taking risks means facing fear. When you talk about career post SCI, you need to take risks to mitigate that fear. Taking risks challenges the cultural norms and what society expects you are capable of. The COVID pandemic has been devastating for so many, however it has also made employers realise that there are other ways of achieving the same outcome.
Working from home can be more productive for some. For people with SCI, this has taken one of the obstacles down as a barrier to work. Flexible hours are what you need and allows you to participate. The employers who will succeed are those who will take the risk and trust their employees working from home now.
It is a mindset change, for employees as well as employers. Will Smith has a great quote “The best things in life are on the other side of maximum fear”. If we don’t take risks and get conformable with that uncomfortable feeling, we will never experience the best in life.
One of my career risks was studying Cert IV in Training and Assessment. I had no idea what I would use it for, but it gave me the tool to instigate a career change. It led to teaching at TAFE, to delivering training workshops about disability and road safety, it gave me the courage to share my story and develop my own brand.
Embrace the fear and make it normality.
5. Failure is also learning
Sometimes you go down a path in your career that seems like a fail. It may not have achieved what you initially intended, or you may get bored with it and want to change. All of that learning is never a waste. The skills you learn doing something new is always an asset. Your skills are transferrable. You don’t always know how they will be transferred, but then one day you will find yourself doing a task, and it dawns on you that if you had not learnt those skills way back when, you wouldn’t be able to do what you do now so easily.
Choosing to cease our business, Epoq, to me felt like a failure for a long time. It created doubt in my abilities and reduced confidence in moving forward. It took me a while to work out what I wanted to do next. Again, I had to push through that uncomfortable feeling and adapt.
So called ‘failure’ is also learning. Don’t let it make you feel unworthy or less than. All the successful people in business have all ‘failed’ at least once. You can’t study those lessons in a course, they are learned through experience. Experience creates wisdom and knowledge. It gives you perspective. It is only now as I apply those lessons in my current work, that I realise the value of all that ‘failure’. It is why I can do what I do now.
6. When things get in the way
Life never goes to plan. With SCI there are so many variables that can impact how you work and how much work you can do. Things like nerve pain, health, wear and tear of your body and daily tasks like toileting all can impact the hours you can manage.
Don’t start the SCI journey expecting to be in full time work straight away. It may be impractical and certainly the journey needs to include self-care to heal from trauma. I do say definitely get into work or study as soon as you can, that helps define the new you. Do it part time but do it! Keeping life balance is important so you don’t burn out. Incorporating work with exercise and leisure activities is crucial to keep balance. These days there are more and more opportunities to find ways to exercise with a SCI. There is no excuse to do nothing really.
Disability disclosure can also be an obstacle. At what point should you disclose? This can be a bit individual. I found quite often I didn’t want to disclose my disability in the first point of contact unless it was an inherent asset to applying for the job. However, at some point you do need to disclose your disability and be open to the response. You still have a lot of attitude around disability in society, it can be an obstacle. That is reality. However, don’t forget the impact you may have on the response. What we project is reflected back at us. If you think it will be an obstacle, you may self-sabotage a perfectly good opportunity. Be mindful and project a positive expectation.
Be honest about your disability and your needs. The right employer will work with you and appreciate your skills. They will accommodate your needs (don’t forget to remind them of Job Access – government funding for work modifications required due to your disability). It doesn’t have to be an obstacle; you just have to find the right employer for you.
The further along I have been on my multipotentialite journey, the less my disability has been an issue. More and more I have been head hunted for positions instead of actively looking for new work. In these instances, prospective employers know much more about me before we even meet, and disability is not an obstacle. Past good performance pays forward to been sought out.
7. The power of volunteering
Volunteering can be the best first step into a new area of interest or a way to dabble in the working world post SCI. My first volunteering job was going back to my high school and sharing my story with students. It became part of my healing process and my first indication of the importance of teaching about disability. Use your existing network to create opportunities to participate in society again.
Although I’m not a very sporty person, I know many people are. A great way to feel like you still belong to your favourite sport is to volunteer. When my family all got involved in soccer, I chose to volunteer as a team manager and use my administrative skills. This gave me a sense of belonging and being a part of what my family were all a part of. It got me out on the fields and be present within community..
You gain other benefits by volunteering too. You are able to transfer your skills, for some it could be their sporting knowledge and expertise from previous participation in the sport, for me it was my admin skills.
It can be a great way to network and meet new people. You are able to teach about disability and change attitudes through personal interaction. You are able to belong to a community and create some new norms in your life. Taking the step to paid work may not seem so daunting when you do some volunteering first.
Life is how you handle Plan B!
Developing a career post SCI is challenging and rewarding at the same time. It will take you into areas you would never have thought you would go. Your injury, your life journey is all part of the fabric of what your career will be. It has taken me 30 years to map out a journey with purpose. It evolves as you go, you don’t need to know the answers at the start.
Own your journey, let go, be open, be curious to learn, talk to people, be seen, get in the community. Don’t say no, take the opportunities that present themselves and see where they take you. Be adaptable, keep trying new things. The world is truly your oyster if you let it.
