Radical Redemption: Network of One
“Your network is your net-worth”… If there was a Guinness record for overused phrases, I think this one on networking would definitely be a competitor. To be clear, I disagree with the phrase, at least in the cultural application I think it has been assigned… Allow me to defend my position.
Greetings Friend, and happy new month! How was your Easter?
I like avoiding the “I hope you are fine” phrase. May be I have had really difficult situations at some points in my life, but there are times I would get so angry at the “I hope you are fine”. The conversation went as follows in my head, “If you are truly interested in my well-being, ask! Do not come to me with your ‘fake kindness’ of pretending to care about my well-being, yet what you are presenting me is an assumption meant to make you feel good about yourself, that you showed ‘decorum’ and ‘empathy’ by ‘asking about me’, yet the whole time you didn’t really focus on me but yourself! I would rather you say something like , ‘I pray you are well’ than …” You get the point. Honestly, I think this is pure overthinking, but welcome to my Gen-Z brain, haha. I really like to think that a ’97 baby I am not a “pure Gen-Z”, but almost everything in my relationship [history] with mental health and human relationships tends to suggest otherwise.
Anyways, enough of my crazy detour, let me pray that you are fine, and that if you are not, something by the end of this article will have given you some hope.
Now, networking, ‘Your network is your net worth’ … What is the first emotion you experience when you hear that phrase… or just networking in general? How do they make you feel?
I know it may be a bit too ‘Gen-Z’ of me to ask what we ‘feel’ about networking… but if there is one thing I have learnt from my over 13 years or so of severely bad mental health, it is that emotions, i.e., what we feel, is at the Centre of everything. I do not care what others may suggest, feelings are king in our human experiences. I say this because I have realized that the emotions we experience are shaped by our experiences, which experiences are what shapes how we see the world/ think the world works, and in turn this perspective ‘colors’ how we experience human interactions. And I do not think there is a more popular- and indeed unavoidable and necessary- human interaction like networking.
Now look, confessions first, I do not think I even know what networking really means… You know… but the word has been used so much, it is has become both a ‘it’s meaning should be common sense’ and ‘the standards of what it means are a mystery’ kind of situation. I do not know if this makes sense to anyone?
It is my hope that I have not lost anyone so far… but if I almost have lost anyone, let me try redeem myself by giving the full confession of my experience with networking, and what I would like to suggest as a way to approach networking for someone trying to ‘Course Correct’.
I highlight the ‘Course Correct’ because course correction implies that there’s places we may have lost our way- and we now want to ‘get back on track’ and remain in that better path. Thus, in the context of networking, Course Correction would mean that you probably aren’t the ‘richest’ person, you know, because they claim that ‘you’re only as rich as the five people you’re closest with’ … haha, what happens to those of us who can’t say we have that many people as ‘close friends’? I know it may sound absolutely ridiculous, unimaginable even, to some people- that one cannot count FIVE people they are close to- but trust me, once again, the Gen-Z life is quite different, FIVE is a very big number. Haha, ask Tiktok.
Okay, I will now get to the message of this article for real:
I think cannot talk about my experience with networking, and of the word ‘networking’, without talking about my orientation to the meaning of ‘success’. And I think I’d say that my induction to ‘the meaning of success’ was the most good-intentions-gone-wrong experience of my life. Why do I say this?
Success, to me, was presented as this mysterious, rare and almost unattainable thing, that was only available after meeting a certain number of rules. Some of these rules included: work hard, wake up early, study hard, do things that matter in the world, be a problem solver, go to prestigious institutions, start at least one NGO by the time you are 19, travel abroad, do ‘leadership programs’, ‘NETWORK’ … and so many more. In short, to be ‘successful’, it’s as if I had to become a vending machine of perfection.
This ‘orientation’ to what ‘success looks like’ was taking place when I was thirteen, and it continued till like age 18/19, repeatedly said in different forums, conferences, ‘motivational talks’ and even as advice from ‘mentors’.
I will not lie to you guys at all, at age thirteen is when my anxiety and fear of failure started, because almost everything in this ‘list of things to do to be successful’ were things I wasn’t, and they all seemed to require a lot of inner capacity/willpower and time, which resources I felt I did not have enough of. Oh, did I also mention that these advisors were saying that you needed to have made your ‘contribution to the world’ by age 25?! That if anyone was to know you, or take you seriously- and they said you needed both- it had to take place by a certain age because past that you became 'obsolete’ and no one would care what an ‘old’ person would have to say?
So yes, when I say that I started experiencing severe anxiety and fear that I would ‘fail’ at age thirteen, I mean exactly that. Do any of you relate with any of this madness? I would like to hear your thoughts/experiences.
And I mean, how could I not get anxious in the face of all these ‘bare-minimums of what one must do/be to attain success?’ I do not know how many pure Gen-Z’s [anyone from 2000s] will get to read this, but I just want to extend a hand of love to anyone who relates to this [receiving a similar ‘orientation’ to the ‘requirements of success’]- even if they are like 50 years old or whatever… and just declare that that kind of list would be overwhelming to anyone. That if you found yourself stuck somewhere because you felt like all these requirements were too much, and you just kind-of ‘froze’ from fear and feeling overwhelmed, you were not ‘weak’ or ‘not resilient’. That list, and the expectations it comes with can only induce fear of falling short even in the best of us … worse still where no further guidance than these ridiculous lists was given.
Anyways, now, networking.
When I look at ‘networking’ in the context of its presentation to me as a ‘bare-minimum’ I had to do to achieve success, I completely disagree with the notion that ‘your network is your net-worth’. Why? Because for one, the phrase is interpreted in my mind as a standard of a ‘bare-minimum’ to do to … you guessed it right … to ‘succeed’. Now, I do not know if it’s the Gen-Z blood, or that I just hate rules, or may be it is just human… but I really hate things that are presented as preconditions for something, and especially anything presented as a ‘pre-condition’ for success. [I have a few more reasons for disagreeing with that quote- ‘your network is your net worth-but I will cover them in part two of this.]
I was criticized a lot as a kid- it was the primary means of ‘teaching’ used by my parents on me. I grew up feeling as if there were rules to everything, and that given that my parents always seemed to find fault with me, it was as if I was perpetually failing against these standards I didn’t even know of.
Thus, when success was presented as thing only attainable upon satisfying a certain set of standards, I felt doomed because ‘I already had a track record of failing where standards were involved’. At least this is what I felt. And so yes, I started getting versions of ulcers and acidity due to anxiety from a very early age, because I was just so afraid of failing, and it’s like I wasn’t supposed to fail, yet at the same time all I’d seemed to do was ‘fail’ in being a proper human[you know, one who doesn’t fail against any rule/standard/condition….]
Anyway, I do not know that this [extreme criticism] was everyone’s experience in childhood, or what you were taught about ‘success’… but I know that I observe a lot of anxiety and fear in people, especially those of my generation +/-1. I also observe a lot of fear of failure and a search for the perfect meaning of ‘networking’ [as so many other things] in this generation(s)… because most things feel like standards we must meet to be “successful’ as opposed to human experiences to be mastered with time…. This is also how I see us struggling to ‘network’, or being told to ‘network’, as if it was a technical experiment devoid of context.
Here are my two cents though, on networking, based on my observations from my on-going Course Correction Journey:
Networking is organic, not something you plan for like a daily ‘to-do’ list. What I mean by ‘organic’ is that networking, i.e.- making meaningful personal and professional connections- happens more naturally than technically. One makes more meaningful connections if they are involved in something that holds meaning both to them and others. A good example is how one all of a sudden finds they know more writers, publishers, poets, organizations and individuals in the writing space the moment they become more consistent in writing… and it becomes even better when one’s writing niche gets clearer. For example, I know that my niche is primarily writing on mental health from a perspective of both psychology and God’s will for our lives [well-being], fed by my experiences. Slowly, where and whom to seek to connect with [network] is getting clearer and clearer, and suddenly, networking does not feel too difficult.
This is why I am advocating for a ‘Network of One’. That if we are to truly ‘network’, the persons we should start by truly networking with [knowing] is ourselves; who we are, what we care about and what we want to contribute to — and not based on what’s popular {eg, do not go doing ‘environmental’ or ‘food security’ or ‘gender-based-violence’ or ‘climate change’ advocacy simply because it’s what’s ‘trending’ and has ‘funding’ from the UN or whatever]. Give yourself room to objectively observe what moves you without bias for any particular field. You will thrive where you eventually land even if it’s not ‘mainstream’.
I must admit that knowing oneself is no simple feat, and neither will it take a short time… but why do we feel things must take a short time? Don’t all worthy things take time ?
However, if we truly submit to the process of divorcing our former selves -[mostly influenced by the noise, ideas and expectations of the world around us — parents, teachers, mentors, social media]- and truly start getting to know ourselves, I think a lot more things than just networking will become easier. This is because we will no longer be ‘forcing issues’- but rather things will start falling more into place- because we ourselves are ‘in place’- as our true selves, fully confident of the value we bring into those spaces.
This is probably the longest article I have written in a while… but I hope something in here has made sense for someone.
I will end it here, then do a part two for God’s place in the ‘Network of One’.
TAKE NOTICE: The next article will come next week. I am at a Retreat Centre and want to focus all my attention there. I pray that this article has given you enough to chew on for the next five days before we meet again.
Shalom.
