Paula Thompson

There are actually two pieces of career advice that always stick with me. The first is from a former employer when I was fresh out of college working a temporary position in Charlotte, North Carolina. This young man looked at me and said, 'Young lady, never be afraid of no. Never be afraid of walking away and saying no. Know your self-worth enough to be confident to say no, because if you say no, just know that you're leaving yourself the opportunity to walk into a bigger, better door. So never be afraid to say no if you don't feel that it is right for you, it's okay.' I was probably not even 23 at the time, but I remember it just as if he was telling it to me today. I'll be 54 on Saturday, and I've lived with that voice in my head when I've made decisions, both personal and business-wise, for years. I haven't always followed it because of circumstances I've been in, thinking maybe I'll just take it just for now, I'll settle. But I don't beat myself up about it, because they're growing pains, things that you go through through life. The other piece of advice was from my mother. She told me, 'Don't be so business. It's okay to be personal sometimes. You're so business, but it's okay to be personal sometimes.' And she was right. Sometimes when you're in a professional environment, your peers, your staff, your clients, our participants, sometimes they need for me to take off the business hat and put on the personal hat. They need me to be transparent, they need me to be a little vulnerable, just so they understand that I'm also human.

The advice I would give them is to know that it is okay not to be okay. You are going to meet other people that are truly hurting mentally. You are going to meet people that are challenged by their mental capacity and their behavior diagnoses. It's not personal to you. They may say things, they may do things because of their trauma, because of their past situations, or even sometimes still current situations, but it's not personal. If they lash out to you, if they speak out, if their interaction is maybe isolation, it's not personal. So walk into it, walk into the environment, walk into the situation with an understanding that regardless of what happens, it's nothing personal against me. I think you have to carry that armor on you, because sometimes people get overwhelmed in this environment because they tend to think, 'Oh gosh, I'm trying to help them the best that I can, and it's like I'm not getting anywhere, or I'm doing everything that I can for them, and it's like they are still lashing out, or they're mad at me, or they're upset.' Just know that it is absolutely nothing personal. It is something that they are going through. And you just continue to do the very best that you can with all that you can, with the resources that you can. Continue to fight for them, because sometimes they don't have it to fight for themselves.

I'll go with the positive first - the opportunities. Number one, knowing that you have a job, a position, a career, that you are actually impacting individuals. You physically can see it. It's not like sometimes you have a job or task that you're given where you may not see the return on it, someone else may see the return or get the benefit, or there may be a time frame like investments. In this position, you literally get your return, you literally see that impact, in certain cases immediately. We have a participant who was aspiring to become a chef, and he's currently wheelchair-bound. I actually met an advisor of a particular school, a university here in Houston, and we established a rapport. When I found out about this gentleman's pursuit to become a chef, I contacted that advisor immediately. He said, 'Let's cut the red tape,' and walked him through the steps. We got him enrolled in school, and he starts on June the 1st to pursue his career as being a chef. He will earn his Culinary certificate. Being a part of that is amazing, and it's just things like that that makes me really appreciate my position here and being able to help others, because they help me. That's therapeutic to me. As far as the challenges, because I am dealing with individuals with mental health and behavior diagnoses, I do see the stereotypes put on individuals with mental and behavior diagnoses. I do see and hear the ugliness from other individuals, from different entities that are not supportive of where we need to grow. You get pushback sometimes. But one thing that my mother used to teach me is that you're gonna get no's along the way, but you can't allow that to stop you, because out of the 10 no's that you get, that 11th one, it's gonna be a yes. And if you stop at that 10, you would have never gotten a yes. So you have to keep going. It helps you to continue to be persistent, to have tenacity to keep going, because eventually you will get the yes, as long as you don't stop.

Respect is number one. Respect is at the top of my list, because to me, respect comes even before love. I feel that you really can't love someone, or even show them love, if you don't respect them first. When you respect someone, you may know and understand that you're going to have disagreements. However, you respect their decision, you respect their perspective on things. And because you do that, you can move forward with working harmoniously, because we're not always going to agree - everybody's different. We've made our thought processes different. We can both look at a point and say, okay, we know that we've got to get across the street. Me and you, we're standing here at this light, we gotta get across the street. The way that we get across the street may be completely different, but we have the same mindset. But as long as we both get there. So respecting each other's boundaries, respecting each other's perspective, is very important to me. And I think it carries you a long way, both in life, personally, and business-wise. Other things that I look for is determination. You have to have your own determination. You have to have your own drive to get you up, because every day you wake up, you make a choice to be great or to not be great. You have that decision. You make the decision to be happy or to be sad. It's a choice. And however your mindset is, that is what's going to take you to the next level or it's gonna keep you down. I actually, every text message, every email, probably 95%, I always end it with having an amazing day, on purpose. And I mean it. You live an intentional life. I think it's important for us to be intentional in everything that you do and that you say. Because if you do it intentionally, you will have the mindset of being conscious of what you're doing, and why you're doing it, and how you're doing it. Those are a few of the ones for me: respect, intentional, determination, self-motivation. Those are things for me that I think are very important in both my work life and my personal life.