Rebellious Reflection: The Biggest Mistakes We've Made So Far
Before we started our Corporate Rebels project, we had few expectations of what our progression in the first few weeks was going to be like.
We don't like to make detailed plans on what we should accomplish at what moment in time as to evaluate our progress. Let's just say that jumping straight into the deep end fits our personalities a lot better :). So that's what we ended up doing and resulted in the fact that we grasped every exciting opportunity that arose.
This led to a satisfying list of things that went surprisingly well. But it also led to a long list of mistakes and things we should improve upon. We'd love to share with you the most important mistakes we've made so far.
Blogging about content only
So far we've written and shared mainly about content. Facts and views on purpose, self management, office perks, employee engagement, et cetera. We have tried to share all of the things we learn on the topic of happiness at work as much as possible with you.
But what we didn't realize enough is that the number one strength of Corporate Rebels (at least at this moment) is our personal journey itself. In the many conversations we had about our project, you told us that you got mainly inspired by the fact that we have quit our jobs to focus all our time and efforts on Corporate Rebels. You want to know how we feel, how we experience certain things, where we succeed, where we fail, how we deal with the uncertainty, and many more.
Therefore, we'll be adding some personal elements and twists to our blog posts. The blog posts are a perfect way to show you what we are experiencing on our big, scary adventure. So we'll not just be taking you with us on our intellectual journey, but from now on we add the story of our mental journey as we trial-and-error ourselves towards our goals.
Glossing over the reality
Social media seduces everyone to gloss over the reality by sharing only the things that fit a happy and successful life. Pictures of great parties, lovely beaches, good food, and smiling people help us to build an image of success and glory. At the same time, sharing our doubts and setbacks makes us feel uncomfortably vulnerable. It kind of feels like failure. Like it devaluates the image of our success.
And oh yes! Don't be surprised. We have fallen into the trap as well! Last weeks we have bombarded you with blog posts, Instagram pictures, tweets, and Facebook posts that solely conveyed happiness and positivity. It's weird that it's so easy to make this mistake and not to share things that are annoying, uncertain, and frightening.
We realize that the message becomes much stronger when its completely transparent and honest. For that reason we are changing our style in order to make it a journey that you can better identify with. For now on we will start bothering you with our frustrations and fears as well. So, please be prepared!
Fitting too much information into one blog post
This week we realized that the blog posts that we enjoy reading differ from ours in another important aspect. Most inspiring blog posts focus on one specific topic only. This approach provides room to explore a certain topic in greater depths. In this way it's possible to discuss the topic's background, definition, pros and cons and our opinion.
But most importantly, it's possible to put new views into a greater perspective. This is important since we are meeting a wide variety of people with an even wider variety of theories!
Till this moment we have tried to include too many things in just one blog post. Doing this felt like stuffing a lot of experiences and learnings into one post. We therefore are missing out on sufficient detail and room for opinion. That doesn't feel good. To improve this, we'll be blogging on more specific topics, but as you can see: old habits die hard ;).
More mistakes to be made
Surely, we'll be making tons of other or similar mistakes in the future. We'll keep on reflecting, learning and experimenting with new things to continuously improve our skills and message. During the learning experience, we'll update you on all the challenges we face, errors we make and solutions we find. We really appreciate your feedback in this, so just keep shooting at us!
Soon we'll release a story (new style) about our meeting with Carin Wormsbecher, one of the heroes on our Bucket List. A truly inspiring and exceptional woman that is transforming the way organizations are run.
