It happened again this week. I was talking with a fellow I had just met when he suddenly observed, “You’re like a lightning bolt!”.
Yes, that me. A lightning bolt. I can’t help myself. It’s in my DNA.
In my first ‘real’ job, I got sick of listening to my co-workers sit around and whine about how overworked and underpaid we were, so I petitioned our employer – the city government – to raise our wages.
The suits on the city council were shocked and appalled that a 21-year old, fresh-out-of-college female would have such audacity to question the status quo. They called my boss and demanded to meet “the militant troublemaker”. I found it all quite amusing.
A few months and one whopper of a pay raise later, a co-worker presented me with lightning bolt earrings and a lightning bolt t-shirt. Giggling, she said, “Cannon, those guys never knew what hit them!”
Four years later, emboldened by success, I zapped, scorched and incinerated my way to record setting profits in my first big leadership role. Determined to succeed regardless of the cost, I left a trail of charred and smoldering souls in my wake. Intoxicated with my own power, I had morphed into a lightning bolt bully.
Then one day I went up in my own flames. My mother’s childhood admonishments echoed through my head, “You shouldn’t play with fire! Someone’s going to get hurt.”
It was only then that I realized the full responsibility of being a lightning bolt.
Over time I mastered the fine art of tossing lightning bolts to illuminate instead of decimate and to catalyze instead of paralyze. In the darkest and most menacing of storms, a friendly lightning bolt is a flashlight for the soul. It shows you where it’s safe to step and helps you see your way to the desired destination.
With some work, I transformed myself from a lightning bolt bully to a lightning bolt leader.
It’s true. You can’t escape who you are… but you can master the fine art of who you are.
Thirty years later, I still can’t stand whiners… I still have the audacity to question the status quo and… I still occasionally get called a ‘militant troublemaker’ because I refuse to play the ‘good enough game’. And I’m still a lightning bolt… in a more artful and masterful way.
Have you mastered the fine art of who you are?