May 2, 2024
Not DIYing: The True Power Move
There’s one thing that has been really comforting for me: Returning to the mindset and practice of not doing it myself, i.e., not going it alone.
A few weeks ago, I shared a LinkedIn post from the coaching firm Ama La Vida about how getting help and support is truly a power move (and I shared the roster of my support squad at different times of my life and career, right up to now!)
At the start of 2024, I signed up with Ama La Vida for career and leadership coaching to support me through the year in which I’m en route to becoming a mom-entrepreneur with an empty nest. The timing felt perfect to bring a career coach onto my team as I faced this huge life transition.
When my younger of two daughters started kindergarten in 2011, I remember standing with the ring of the other parents, our backs guarding sweet cubbies and gigantic backpacks. There we stood, beaming sentinels gazing at our tiny kiddos in their moment of big-kid launch from tiny chairs at tiny tables.
The moment sent me time-traveling, backward to my daughter’s baby years, and forward into the future fever dream of the unimaginable years to come in my mamahood journey. Two kids in elementary school. New balancing acts of home and career, new routines for all of us. I had no idea then that I’d launch Asana Consulting when that baby was in second grade.
My swirling thoughts were interrupted when I heard the teacher say, “These students are the future class of 2024!” Shockwaves rolled through my body and mind. I didn’t want to hear about 2024. I was having a hard enough time integrating this moment! I loved being a mom, the kind with her kids close in every way. I loved being the chief matriarchy officer of our snuggly, squishy, precious little love pack. I didn’t want to go to the faraway grown-kids land of 2024 when my younger daughter would graduate from high school and fly the nest, and when her older sister would be already gone flying in other skies. I stowed all that mind-boggling mom math away for a dozen years, in a box labeled “Empty Nest, 2024.”
Today, hard times are opportunities to ask myself, “Who do I have on my team for this moment?” If there isn’t someone, the question becomes “How can I grow my team for this moment?”
Now their feet and mine are in 2024. The nest-emptying is upon us. I’ve pulled that box off the shelf. I’ve been unpacking it slowly and steadily for months now. I’ll tell you honestly, I still don’t like it despite how much I love what it all means for my kids. I’m feeling it all, as emotional as a brand-new mom some days. I’ll tell you that boxes of tissues are now a grocery run staple; I’ll spare you the ugly crying details. There’s one thing that has been really comforting for me: Returning to the mindset and practice of not doing it myself, i.e., not going it alone.
It’s only thanks to motherhood that I’ve learned about and gained skills when it comes to tapping the power of Not DIY’ing it (NDIY), of Doing It With Others (DIWO). There is true awesomeness in going from Me to We. There is such relief in learning and relearning that we’re not alone, right? Plus it’s medicinally countercultural in this culture that loves to push the pulling-up of bootstraps as a mantra for being human. Therein lies the comforting energy of DIWO. It turns hard times of challenge and transition softer. Alone into together. Heavy into lighter. “It feels impossible” into “It will be okay, somehow.”
Motherhood inspired me to find role models who could teach me how to apply the principle of Not Doing It Myself to every other part of my life: professional, social-emotional, financial, and spiritual. Today, hard times are opportunities to ask myself, “Who do I have on my team for this moment?” If there isn’t someone, the question becomes “How can I grow my team for this moment?”
These questions led me to hire my coach as part of stepping into what 2024 is all about – making my nest, while emptier than ever, sweetly inhabitable for this mama bird. Working with my coach has helped me connect with enthusiasm about the changes ahead – the time that will open up in my days and weeks, the new experiences I will have, and the ways I can step into my work for the first time in two decades with fuller day-to-day focus thanks to having less day-to-day parental demands on my time and attention.
So much of life is out of our individual control. But you know what’s great? When it comes to choosing how to invest our personal resources (i.e., energy, time, talents, and/or money), we get to call those shots. That authority is mine and yours alone, but I’ve learned that one of the best investment strategies is to not go it alone.
Nancy is a Baltimore native who came to communications and marketing through her work in public health. In 2014 she took an entrepreneurial leap of faith to start Asana Consulting and she found her wings.
