This month’s T-SQL Tuesday is hosted by a dear friend, long time SQL Server MVP and book author – Louis Davidson. Louis’s call is for us to blog about one piece of advice that you wish ‘past you’ had.
To me, the one piece of advice is ‘Let go of relationships that do not serve you’. I was given a lot of advice on not burning bridges. I think that is important but has to be balanced with letting go of relationships that are not healthy for us. What do we mean by ‘serve you’? To me that just means mutual respect. Professional relationships are strongly based on mutual respect. We don’t constantly know if people respect us – we do know when they don’t. When they don’t stand up for you when you need help, or acknowledge you as worthy when they have an opportunity.
I used to be worried about breaking ties with such people. Especially people in the community. That worry led me to keeping those people on as friends, often times being too forgiving and accepting of harm they caused.
I learn best from nature. Some people learn from religion, others have mentors/heroes and various sources. My source is Mother Nature – I believe values we have to live by are present abundantly in nature. I visited the pacific northwest recently, and did some hiking on amazing trails there. Among those hikes was one called ‘Giant Spruce Trail’, on Mount Perpetua.
We walked about 4 miles into a forest of spruce trees, and ended with a tree that is over 400 years old, the oldest tree on the coast. We learned about qualities of spruce as we did the hike – Sitka wood is both strong and light at the same time. Its wood can be used for aircraft, musical instruments and lots of specialty purposes. But this mighty tree is also very vulnerable to wind. It can fall easily, since its roots are rather weak. The ones that stand tall and live long are those that sink their roots and connect strongly with the soil. We need relationships rooted in mutual respect and support, like the tree does, to weather challenges and remain resilient. Thank you Louis, for hosting.
