While I wade into being a community member of IEEE, I’ve been posting my posts with hesitance of adding myself to group communities. Today, after posting something, an IEEE member reached out and said:
“Hello @Chris Deputy, I would recommend posting this and your other posts in some of the communities on IEEE Collabratec! This will help get them additional exposure
🙂 When you create it as a post as I noticed you have been doing, it only goes out to those in your network, and if you don’t have a large network yet it won’t reach too many people. To discover communities in which you are eligible to join, click “Communities” from the main menu, and then select the “Discover” tab at the top of the page. You can also go to ieee.org/about/Collabra.. for more information.”
I’m working on some of my weaknesses and doing my best to do what I tell others they should do so they can notice my mistakes, my challenges, and the struggle that it takes for me to rise above the negative people who urged me that I will never be enough.
It takes the willingness to be bold enough to lean into our weaknesses. It takes time to break the mold of our generational conditioning so we can inspire the leaders of tomorrow. With every post here, my heart races with the questions:
- Am I good enough?
- Am I eloquent enough?
- Am I smart enough?
- Am I brave enough?
My entire career I was told that women couldn’t be, shouldn’t be, would never be a pilot, a good engineer, a mathematician, a scientist, etc. My entire life I was listening to the wrong people instead of listening to the desires inside of me. It is this moment of challenging myself to step up and step out that I hope for generations behind me to never have to fight through what I have had to fight through. I dream of a day where young girls across the globe will know that grit can be their vehicle to rise above those who desire to tell us what we cannot do.
The world is full of critics and I joined their criticism by criticising myself for long enough because I believed what they believed with blind faith simply because they said so. Not anymore. I’m wading in because enough time has been wasted listening to the wrong people.
Question everything. Question even me.