On our final\u00a0“Leadership Friday”, the fellows, leadership team, and I took time to reflect\u00a0and give gratitude for our\u00a0time together in this great city. We were asked to bring an item that represented the year and talk for a few minutes about the meaning behind that object.\u00a0Throughout the week prior,\u00a0I tried to pinpoint who and what I was most grateful for and what single object might represent my year. My thoughts circled around the following questions: Why was this year so meaningful? Why and how was it unique? Why does it matter?<\/p>\n
I thought about how grateful I am for the endless number of people I have encountered, been inspired by and befriended this year. I thought about how\u00a0appreciative I am for\u00a0the opportunities that have been presented to me and for those that I have discovered on my own. Throughout my week of reflection, I was constantly amazed\u00a0by the number of \u00a0experiences I’ve had over the past year\u00a0that taught me lessons that I will remember forever.<\/p>\n
Beyond these people, opportunities and experiences I’ve had though, I realized that I am most grateful for something very unique about this year: the physical and emotional investment it has\u00a0has demanded.<\/p>\n
When I think back on the six challenges the fellows and I engaged in this year, the\u00a0topics we covered, issues we discussed, presentations we gave, risks we took, questions we raised, and frustrations we worked through, I immediately think about how many times\u00a0I had to take a deep breath and calm my rushing blood and beating heart.\u00a0I remember standing in front of a crowd of 75 people at our RecoveryPark presentation back in October thinking, wow, am I ready for this? I remember engaging in emotional discussions about race and privilege, about to\u00a0share deeply personal thoughts, and thinking, how did I get here? How have I not considered these concepts in depth before?\u00a0I remember the times we went into a community in hopes of talking candidly with complete strangers\u00a0and thinking,\u00a0this is terrifying, can I do this? But each time, I did. I\u00a0was presented with the opportunity to push myself outside my comfort zone again and again. That is truly a unique opportunity.<\/p>\n
How many people get to say that for an entire year, they\u00a0engaged in jobs, activities, projects and discussions that got their heart beating and blood pumping in the best way possible? How many people get to say they cared immensely about their role\u00a0in a job, on a project, or in a city for\u00a0entire year? My answer: not many. This is not because they weren’t a part of a program like Challenge Detroit. It’s because we so often sell ourselves short, we settle, we fear the ambiguous and discomfort and we let it dictate our lives. We forget why it matters so much to care and to engage with the world around us. I\u00a0can say with conviction that this year, I did not settle.<\/p>\n
For the rest of my career, and my life, I will remember what it feels like to do work that I truly care about and that pushes me beyond my limits. This year has helped me become very aware of the things that drive me personally and professionally, and for that I am eternally grateful. I know I won’t love every job or every city that I live in. Of course not every day will be more engaging and challenging than the next.\u00a0However,\u00a0I will never forget the feeling that I get when I do <\/em>care deeply about what I’m spending my time on. I challenge you to find something to dedicate yourself to that will make stop and say,\u00a0“Wow.\u00a0I can’t believe I just did that and\u00a0I am SO glad that I did.”<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" On our final\u00a0“Leadership Friday”, the fellows, leadership team, and I took time to reflect\u00a0and give gratitude for our\u00a0time together in this great city. We were asked to bring an item that represented the year and talk for a few minutes about the meaning behind that object.\u00a0Throughout the week prior,\u00a0I tried to pinpoint who and what […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":294,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13101","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.challengedetroit.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13101","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.challengedetroit.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.challengedetroit.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.challengedetroit.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/294"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.challengedetroit.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13101"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.challengedetroit.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13101\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.challengedetroit.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13101"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.challengedetroit.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13101"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.challengedetroit.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13101"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}