3 critical enablers to taking a leap
For this article, we spoke to Alex D’Sa and she shares 3 enablers that have supported her personal and professional leaps - trust, community, and being clear on her non-negotiables.
Earlier this week we spoke with Alex D’sa, Head of Programs at WERKIN and actor. Alex’s leaps have spanned how she has navigated and pursued her acting career and balanced it with other professional roles. In our conversation, she highlighted 3 enablers that have been helpful to her as she’s taken leaps – and these enablers are applicable regardless of industry, background, or the type of leap Alex has taken.
1. Trust – Earn it, build it, and look for it
2. Community – Find it, invest in it, and give back
3. Non negotiables – Identify them and be ‘selfish’
Community – Find it, invest in it, and give back
Alex’s community has been an essential form of support for her throughout her decision to pursue her career in acting, her ability to have a ‘day job’ to support her acting career, and to find professional environments that have supported her. At work when she was in finance, she found community in the LGBTQ+ employee resource group, which led to even more community building and set her up for her role at WERKIN. Alex has also invested in her community not just through developing trusting relationships but also looking for new opportunities to build it, such as through House of Pride, her collective for queer women and nonbinary individuals.
Trust – Earn it, build it, and look for it
For Alex, trust has been a major enabler to her leaps, and that trust has been twofold – that she has earned and maintains trust of others and that she trusts herself. In terms of trusting others, she’s been able to trust that she can lean on and rely on her community of support in her personal and professional life. More importantly, she’s trusted herself – that when she takes a leap that she’ll be able to handle it, that she trusts she knows what she wants, she trusts her capability of getting there, and that she’ll find and accept the right opportunities at the right time.
Alex has been able to build this trust with individuals and her community by being vulnerable. Vulnerability is one of many ways of developing close, trusting relationships.
Non-negotiables – Identify them and be “selfish”
The final enabler to Alex’s success was being clear with both herself and her workplace on what was non-negotiable to her. This meant having the time and flexibility to pursue her acting career alongside her ‘day job’. She initially described this as being selfish, but conceded that being clear on what she needed to thrive was not selfish at all, and should be normalized. Just as important to having non-negotiables is also having ‘negotiables’; Alex also knew which parts of her life she was willing to be flexible on, such as where she lived and the nature of her work.
Non-negotiables can take on many forms and aren’t always clear. Often, they come in ‘packages’ that need to be distilled down by asking “Why?” For example, a specific salary number might be a non-negotiable for some, but upon being asked why that number, they realize it’s not so much the salary as it is having financial stability, and that financial stability can come in different forms.
The lesson here is to be very clear on what the non-negotiable or negotiables are in your life. By knowing and having that clarity, the decision of whether to take a leap or not becomes clearer, as does general day to day decisions in terms of whether they are serving your larger objective and goals.
In closing, the three enablers of having community, building trust, and communicating non-negotiables all underlie major leaps. They are not mutually exclusive and do reinforce each other quite a bit – communicating non-negotiables first requires trusting that you know what they are and believe in them, building community also fosters trust, and communities also help support you in your pursuit of your larger goals. By continuing to invest in these three areas of our life, we can better prepare our own internal mechanisms for whatever leaps are to come.
Image courtesy of Alex D’Sa
