Two Tuesdays ago, I was given my two-week notice that I was being laid off and that today would be my last day.

Knowing that my career may take a pivot, I was inspired to write about the top lessons I’ve learned during my time at Accenture.

During my 3 years as a consultant, I learned the following three lessons that everyone can apply in their own career:

Lesson #1: Learn & Earn 📝

Whether you’re just starting your career or in a senior role, learning will be a constant.

Take advantage of being paid to learn new skills. The best way to learn is to just jump into a project and begin doing “it”. Even if you feel unqualified, if they offer the opportunity, jump at it and figure out the rest later.

Ask as many questions as possible and surround yourself with colleagues and mentors who are open to helping you grow. You’ll find that many people want to see you succeed; you just gotta ask for help.

Lesson #2: Network & Relationships 🗣

“It’s not what you know, it’s who you know”.

Everyone has heard this quote. I’d actually say it’s “What you know AND who you know.”

The knowledge you gain through the years will be the foundation but the doors will only open if you know how to market your skills to your fellow colleagues.

Once you’ve cultivated meaningful relationships with people who know you can provide value within your derived skillset, it’s easy for your network to build and get referred. This can be a domino effect of opportunities down the line.

Don’t be afraid to engage and immerse yourself in communities.

Lesson #3: There’s Always Something New 📈

Being in consulting teaches you that the project is temporary, which can be good or bad.

If you have an amazing client that you work with, it could be bittersweet to move on but if you have a bad client, there’s nothing better than looking forward to the deadline of the project.

Nonetheless, you have to have the mindset that there’s always going to be something new and refreshing that’s waiting for you. I like this because it teaches you that you’re never truly “safe” and that you have to be able to adapt to the market and move forward.

Summary

We’ve seen many big tech companies with their huge layoffs and Accenture followed suit with laying off as many as 19,000 employees worldwide recently.

Although Accenture made the decision to lay me off, I was lucky enough to pull off a last-minute miracle by getting selected for a project and building a case for myself for the firm to reverse the decision.

I know many others, however, haven’t caught that same break. Just know that if you’re reading this and if you’ve been affected by layoffs or know someone who has, don’t give up hope.

The layoffs aren’t a reflection of your worth, it’s the reflection of the company. You’re worthy, you’re resilient, and you have the skillset.

Stay ready for your next opportunity because it’s right around the corner 🙏

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Examining the time throughout life to gain clarity of your Why.

Many people go through life idly. Seconds turn into minutes, minutes turn into hours, hours turn into days, and by the time we realize it, years have gone by but nothing has changed.

The moment we are born, our life manifests itself by answering a question that can be asked in many ways:

• Who am I?
• What is my purpose?
• Why am I alive?

Do we create our lives through free will? Or is our fate determined by thoughts and decisions that are manufactured through societal constructs?

Before we can understand our life’s purpose, we need to examine life’s stages. Through observation of my life and others, I’ve gained insights into three stages I’ve experienced throughout my life.

The Three Stages of Our Lives

1) Inception

Self-esteem and beliefs developed during childhood affect our actions and perceptions throughout adulthood. The brain of a child is extremely malleable — we begin to develop our thoughts, beliefs, and values from our environment and surroundings. Whether it be from parents, teachers, television, or others — every interaction will affect our views.

My parents treated me with unconditional love and taught me to treat everyone with respect and compassion and in doing so, it would be reciprocated. However, growing up as a child of color in a predominantly white suburb of Minnesota would shed a different reality.

I was an easy target for bullies in elementary school. I was fat and unathletic, I had crooked teeth, and I dressed differently from the other kids.

My name “Reksmey” was a traditional Cambodian name that both teachers and students either chuckled at or refused to pronounce. I attempted to be the class clown and made fun of myself before others could as a defense mechanism. By any means necessary, I would try to distract others from my flaws and insecurities — that included making fun of others or causing mischief to entertain the class. Those were tactics for self-preservation.

When our environment is filled with hostility or despair, we’ll grow up to accept that the world is a dark place. When our world is filled with the affirmation of love or positivity, we’ll grow up convinced that the world is warmhearted. Both these experiences can be true and will be the foundation of how we see the world in the next stages of life.

I experienced great cognitive dissonance my entire childhood because I was loved at home by my family but the second I stepped out the door, I felt unworthy of fitting in a society that didn’t accept me.

2) Growth

As we grow into adulthood, we endure the trials and tribulations of the world under the lens of the implicit biases and beliefs we learned as a child. I learned about stereotypes and how society likes to put people in a box through labels and assumptions.

We’ve all heard some version of the following:

• Poor people are lazy.
• Men do all the work.
• Women are supposed to cook, clean, and care for the kids.

These stereotypes that I learned conflicted with everything I knew and were debunked as I matured. After surviving the Khmer Rouge Genocide in Cambodia, my parents continued to endure poverty here in the United States.

My mom couldn’t cook and clean because she was too busy working to provide for our family with my dad — That meant feeding my young uncles and aunt and supporting my grandparents while we lived in public housing. Through years of sleepless nights of working and schooling, my parents eluded poverty by saving every penny and investing in themselves through business and education. My parents did such a great job providing for me that I never even knew we were poor.

I say all of that to say: viewing others based on stereotypes is fallacious. Ignorance in this context can be dangerous because assumptions are made based on nothing of merit because individuals are unique. We need to do the work to understand that not everything can be viewed from a monolithic point of view.

“The more I learn, the more I realize I don’t know.” — Albert Einstein

Every experience we go through will often challenge what we know. We’ll begin to recognize what we were taught was either wrong, right, or somewhere in between: the grey area. I’m confident that life falls in the grey area a majority of the time — nothing is what it seems and it’s up to us to interpret.

How we deal with opposing perspectives is vital to building relationships with other people because confrontation is inevitable. Once we have an understanding of how and why human beings are conditioned to think a certain way, we can provoke critical thinking and real dialogue through empathy and listening to one another.

The important takeaway is to surround ourselves with a diverse group of people. Question everything we know — It’s the only way to challenge assumptions and build perspective.

3) Reflection

Reflection — the moment of self-awareness that not everyone arrives at. Every decision or indecision you’ve made up until this point has gotten you to this very moment.

A specific event can create an inflection point and put everything on pause to reflect on who we are as a person. It will be a life-changing experience: a child’s birth, a death of a close friend or family member, a career opportunity, etc.

“There are decisions in your life that will change the entire trajectory of your path in a split-second. There are times where you’ll be called to blindly leap over chasms with the faith of landing softly.

It’s only when you’re well beyond the decision, when all the memories are blended in hindsight, that the true purpose of your actions are revealed in distinct clarity.” — Keenan The First

It takes self-awareness to intuitively realize if the decisions we make are our own or if it's based on the consequences of manufactured thoughts through social conformity. Self-awareness is the key to understanding why you get up every morning and why you do what you do.

Determine how you will choose to live every second from here on out and when things get hard, remember your Why.

This is the first person account of my mother’s survival in Cambodia to her salvation in the United States.

Introduction

My mother wasn’t afforded the luxury of a childhood filled with the security of food, shelter, and safety. Instead, she was forced to live her youth in the state of survival.

She is a woman of few words but prolific action. Even though she rarely talked about her past, there wasn’t a single moment where she wasn’t busy.

She was always active.

I figured she just wanted to make sure everything was taken care of for the family.

From what I’ve examined, staying busy was a way for her to deal with her childhood trauma. She doesn’t have to think about the atrocities she’s experienced and seen if she’s always preoccupied.

The following story will be a first-person account of my mother’s experiences as a child growing up during the period of the Cambodian genocide known as “The Killing Fields” and her ultimate liberation.

Childhood Trauma

My name is Houng Hem. I was born on April 25th, 1972 in Battambang Province, Cambodia. On April 17th, 1975, the Khmer Rouge Communist Party regime began its reign of terror in Cambodia and wiped out an estimated 2 million people, a fourth of the population. The havoc and destruction they caused decimated the economy that left the country in shambles. We see the everlasting effect of one of the highest rates of poverty and corruption today.

I had six siblings: five sisters and my older brother. One of my older sisters passed away at the age of three years old. She was simply sick with a virus. At that time, there was little access to medicine, let alone hospitals or clinics.

Every day I was frightened and anxious. The possibility of my family and I being captured or killed by soldiers were all too real. The Khmer Rouge targeted lighter-skin people and educated individuals such as doctors, teachers, lawyers, and monks. You were even killed if you wore glasses because you were perceived as “smart”. It was a death sentence to be educated or be affiliated with any Western influence.

In 1984, I vividly remember running away barefoot from the Khmer Rouge in the cold and wet jungle while bombs were exploding around us. I cried in the midst of confusion — I couldn’t process what was happening. My mother told me to go with these strangers to meet my grandma but they were actually taking me to a “Freedom” camp for safety (a freedom camp is different from a refugee camp because it was run by political factions opposing the Khmer Rouge party.)

I stayed in the stranger’s home for about a month until my cousin found me. I was scared of being alone again so I begged her not to leave me. She explained that we had to go with these strangers because they were going to smuggle us into the freedom camp. They were known as “coyotes”. We proceeded to go with them.

Once we got to the freedom camp, the rest of my family was there to greet me. I was ecstatic to see them!

Now about a year later in 1985, my mother got sick. Some people took her to the Red Cross at the Khao-I-Dang refugee camp because they supposedly had doctors there. A week later she passed away.

It broke my heart.

She passed away alone.

No one was there to comfort her in her last moments. The news of her passing left a void in our family but my dad picked up the pieces to raise the rest of us.

Shortly after my mom passed, we traveled to a refugee camp near the Thailand border. We stayed there illegally for about 8 months before getting the legal paperwork to stay there. My family and I lived there from 1985 to 1991.

During my time at that camp, I was able to work with the United Nations from 1989–1991 as an operator and receptionist. When people showed up at the camp, I checked them in and gave them their badges.

To support our family, I helped my dad sell food as a meat distributor. A lot of vendors would come to us when they needed fish, chicken, and beef to sell. Money was hard to come by because any profits made were taken by the Thai government due to their unreasonably high taxes. So I began doing make-up and hair for other girls in the camp for extra income. This is where my passion for beauty began.

My oldest sister had her husband get in contact with a man who lived in the United States to see if he could help my family and me. Within months, I was writing back and forth with this man. After months of letters, we began talking on the phone and got connected in an intimate way. We decided to get married.

I got married to my husband in 1992 and I moved to the United States in 1993 shortly after.

Manifesting the American Dream

My husband and his family were already settled in Minnesota as refugees years earlier after being sponsored by their family friend. I had no idea what to expect in the United States. Being in a new country was just another obstacle I’d have to face. I had all these questions:

• How were people going to treat me?
• Will they accept me?
• Is this country safe?
• How will I survive here?

There was an immediate culture shock. People were different — White people, Black people, Mexican people, and Asian people were all immersed in the same location. We lived in public housing with support from my husband’s parents at first and the food stamps kept us fed for a while. My husband went to school during the day and then worked nights and weekends.

I had my son on February 28th, 1994. After giving birth and holding him in my hands, I knew I had to give him a better life — a real childhood filled with love and security. I needed a way to make a living and support my family but the only skill I had was doing hair and make-up.

I decided to go into beauty and worked to get my cosmetology degree. My English wasn’t great but despite the language barrier, I was able to get my degree with the help of my husband. I started getting hands-on experience right away and began working in full-service salons like Great Clips.

We were able to move to a suburb called Woodbury right before my son started kindergarten. This house was filled with an excess of people — it was a three-bedroom home that had more than ten people at any time. We housed many family and friends — if they needed a place to stay, we didn’t hesitate to welcome them.

Throughout my early years in the U.S., it was strictly about work. We didn’t have time for leisure. I got my citizenship within three years of moving to the U.S. and we paid off the house within five years of moving to Woodbury. It seemed as if all of the hard work we were putting in was starting to manifest.

By 1999, We had my second child Sophanny and by 2000, my family and I opened a restaurant and bar called “The New Moon” in Cottage Grove, MN. The business was extremely stressful and mentally taxing on my family and me. We decided to give up on the business in 2006 to try something else — something I remembered that brought me joy.

In 2006, we opened the New Century Salon in Cottage Grove and we’ll be going on our sixteenth year of business by the end of the year.

Perspective

After everything I’ve been through, I don’t feel sorry for myself. Life will take you to the depths of hell because the harsh reality is: life is not fair.

Fight back by empowering yourself through the decisions you make. The circumstances you’re raised in do not define who you are — how you react to those circumstances will ultimately dictate the person you become.

Don’t be the victim in your story.

I wake up every day with a smile because my life is a blessing and I count every single one:

• I’m alive.
• My children are healthy and smart.
• I have a loving husband.
• I have the best family and community that support me and cherish me.

From growing up in pain and poverty to seeing the beauty that life has to offer, I’m here to tell you that anything is possible.

Tragedy teaches

On February 16th of 2018, Joe Ditthidet was tragically taken from our family. And it changed me forever.

I first met Joe through my aunt when we were kids. Joe was my aunt’s youngest brother and he was an older brother figure to me. Joe had this aura about him where he could make you smile and laugh in any given situation. He cared about you and uplifted you. I was an insecure boy who hated myself and he made me feel valued — like I was special.

I got the call the next morning from my aunt. I picked up the phone like it was any normal call and greeted “whats up?” There was a long pause and I could hear her sniffling.

she cried out:

“Joe died honey, he’s gone.”

I yelled “What? What do you mean? what happened? what’s going on?!”

She explained that he had gotten shot three times: in the chest, stomach, and leg. The one that killed him went through his side, under his armpit, and went through his internal organs.

While he was fighting for his life, my aunt’s sister made the decision to drive him to the hospital because it would take too long for the paramedics to arrive. He was holding her hand in the car and with his last breaths, he cried out “I can’t breathe…”.

My eyes filled with tears immediately after the phone call. I was congested with anger because I couldn’t understand how someone could just take another human being’s life over nothing. I dropped to my knees and asked God why?

Three days before the shooting, we were just talking about going to Miami for my birthday a week later. My mind was racing and all I could think about were my younger cousins who no longer had an uncle to embrace them with love. I thought about my aunts losing their baby brother who always brought them joy. And I thought about his parents who lost their youngest son who was filled with so much life left to live.

“The only thing worse than death, is a regret filled coffin” — J. Cole

Life lessons

A lot of things will happen in our lives that are out of our control but one thing for certain is death. We’re going to die. People are fearful of death because they haven’t come to terms with how things will end. What I’ve learned is that you can only control what you can control.

Joe passed away at age 25 and I’ll forever be grateful for the memories we’ve shared together. He’s taught me to love myself for who I am and live free. I used to be scared of death because I didn’t know how it was going to happen and I still don’t. Now, the thought of death gives me clarity: it gives me purpose to become more than just a memory. I no longer dwell in the past, I don’t stress about the future — I live in the present.

Replacing excuses with execution will spark mass productivity.

The moment my life changed was when I finally called myself out on my bullsh*t and took responsibility for my actions. For the longest time, I told myself “I want this — I wanna do that — I’m going to be great at this — etc” but my actions told a different a story.

Over and over again, I made excuses and procrastinated on tasks that would improve myself.

• Financially, I never made a budget and spent money like it grew on trees.
• Physically, I avoided difficult lifts or workouts like pull-ups and squats because it made me feel weak.
• Intellectually, I bought courses and books on things I wanted to learn but never ended up opening them or finishing them.
• Emotionally, I never addressed the root causes of my pain, trauma, and insecurity because I was too scared to face them.

Now, the following 3 steps are things I’ve done to help myself become accountable for my actions and in doing so, I’ve created prolific productivity in all facets of my life.

1) Develop self-awareness

Life will throw curve balls at you, sh*t will hit the fan, and you’ll be left wondering “why is this happening to me?” A lot of us will not have the privilege of having the dream life of big houses, nice cars, and a white picket fence where the grass is greener. When you go through the pitfalls and struggles of life, you’ll have 2 choices:

1. Blame others and complain about the problem.
2. Create a perspective of life where you control your own destiny.

The easy thing to do is to blame everything else but ourselves for the problems that happen. Although some problems won’t be our fault, we have complete control to how we react to it.

We need to become self-aware of what we can control and find solutions to those obstacles. Call yourself out on your bullsh*t and hold yourself accountable. Take direct ownership of your life.

2) Audit your time

Time is a commodity. Time is an asset. It’s the most important factor for creating the life we want. The opportunity cost of procrastinating on something productive, is creating long-term value and delayed gratification. When we catch ourselves saying “I’m too busy, I don’t have time for that” — we are just fabricating excuses to justify the behavior. It’s not that we don’t have time for something, it’s just not a priority.

So to understand my priorities, I did a little exercise to see where I was allocating my time:

• I calculated a budget for weekly hours which came to 168 hours (24 hours in a day * 7 days in a week).
• I listed my weekly activities, the hours per day for the activity, and how many days a week I do them. For example, I estimated on average 8 hours a day for my 9–5 job for 5 days a week which is 40 hours, and I subtracted that from 168 hours which equals 128 hours.

After doing the math of how many activities I do in a week and the time it took, I found that I have 36 free hours left in the week! That’s almost another full time job.

So the takeaway is: audit your time. Utilize all the time you have to create value for yourself. You can make money back, but every second you spend, you will NEVER get back.

3) Challenge yourself and face your fears

It sounds very cliche but in order to grow, you have to get out of your comfort zone. It’s very easy to go through the motions and feel “safe”. It takes immense courage to be aware of your insecurities and fears and to still say “I’m scared of ________ and I’m still going to do it”. In the face of fear and vulnerability, is where we find our strength.

You can systematically challenge yourself by setting goals and creating a plan on how to tackle them. This is my formula:

1. Create at least 1 yearly goal for the following categories: Financial, Health, Learning, and Mental.
2. Breakdown your yearly goals into monthly goals.
3. Breakdown your monthly goals into weekly goals.
4. Breakdown your weekly goals into daily goals.

It will be less overwhelming when you break down your goals into smaller steps, especially if they’re big goals. Doing this will hold yourself accountable each day to get closer to your objective.

Accomplishing your goals allows you to “level up” — creating new goals and challenges every year. The result of your accomplishments will be a mindset shift into a mentality of ambition, fearlessness, and conviction of believing that you can do anything when you set your mind to it.

Conclusion

I’m still a work in progress myself and it takes a lot of discipline to apply the steps above. Live everyday with intention and be mindful of what you’re doing and why you’re doing it. With that said, everyone is different and you need to find what works for you (self-awareness is key).

P.S. If you learned something from this article, please share, “clap”, or comment!

Download the Time Audit template HERE.

About

Reks is an entrepreneur, business model architect, data engineer, web designer, and consultant. He has worked in healthcare analytics, technology consulting, e-commerce, and creative branding.

Reks is an education and business enthusiast aspiring to reform outdated public school policies and systems by building innovative organizations that cater to students and young professionals.

In today’s world, we seem to compare and judge ourselves based on others. We scroll down our timelines and see the lavish lifestyles of celebrities, the happiness of our friends, and fantasy lives that are unattainable. This leads to negative effects on our mental state where we begin the process of self-hate. In my own experience, I’ve learned 3 things that have helped negate the feeling of being worthless and unloved: controlling the environment around me, developing a positive perspective on life, and simply loving myself for who I am.

1. Controlling Your Environment

Negativity is all around us. It plagues our society through social media, friends, news, and events that take place daily, but it’s the people around us that have the greatest effect on our environments. How do we counteract a negative environment? We have to block it out. Friends that engage in bad behavior or complain daily can be toxic. Sometimes the most toxic people can be your best friends or family.

When you’re constantly feeling uncomfortable or are around behavior that you don’t condone, it’ll eventually lead to bad outcomes or unintended consequences. You’ll be drained mentally and spiritually. The best thing to do is see less of those friends or family, or try to explain to them how you feel about what they do and if they don’t respect your perspective, you need to let them go. This isn’t easy but it’s the best thing to do for your long-term mental health.

2. Developing a Radically Positive Mindset

Almost everyone goes through some type of adversity growing up. They’ve been bullied for being overweight, for how they look, for their race, etc. We as people can do 2 things: 1) Dwell on the negative aspects of how we’re perceived or 2) Drown out the noise and change the way we see ourselves. Personally, I’ve developed a “glass half full” mentality where I can always see the positive aspects out of any situation. What many consider to be life failures, I consider lessons learned. Make a list of the things you have and the people that love you, then everything else becomes irrelevant. Once you have that perspective, you begin to have a better appreciation of life.

3. Love yourself

Fall in love with yourself. And I don’t mean romantically! Begin the process of discovering who you are, what you love to do, and being healthy physically, mentally, and spiritually. Love the process of making yourself a better human being. Start asking yourself “Why Not?” instead of “Why?” Develop monthly and yearly goals where you hold yourself accountable for self-development. Once you understand your self-worth, you’ll reach a state of mind where nobody else can ever tell you about who you are.

Originally published at http://sideofkail.com on October 1, 2018.