Last man at the dog park (The Fridge Exercise)

I was made redundant four times over a long corporate career. Six months after one of them, my wife said, ‘You’ve got to do something about this.’

‘What?’

‘You're down in the dumps. You go down to the dog park in the morning and obsess about what jobs people are going to.’

Every day I was the last person to leave the dog park in the morning because I didn’t have a job to go to. 

I was so off and down. I was miserable.

My wife said, ‘Get out of a piece of paper. Write down what you want in a job and be as specific as you can about the criteria.’

So I wrote about culture, leadership, the role, what the office looked like, how much travel, salary, location. I put the list on the fridge, and about four months later, I got a job at Fonterra. 

I was happy as Larry. But about three months after I started, I come home miserable again.

My wife asked me ‘What's up?’ 

‘The job.’ 

‘But you said it ticked all the boxes.’

‘Yeah, I can't remember the list, but I thought it did.’

‘So what's up?' 

‘It's not paying me enough. I’m earning less than I was back in 2007.’

‘Where is that list?’

’It's under the power bills on the fridge.'

I got out the list and everything I’d written on it, including salary, I was getting.

I had to own it, they were my intentions!

Now I had to own my negative self-talk, I had unconsciously positioned myself in a certain way. Out of fear and not valuing my worth, I ‘low balled’ myself. 

So I reframed. ‘Okay, within 12 to 18 months, I want to be earning plus 30% on my current salary.’ I started to reposition my own sense of value in the role, because all the other boxes were ticked.

Within 18 months, I got a promotion and re-negotiated my salary to plus 35%. 

I had to own the negative talk and get clean on what I wanted. 

When we review what’s going on in our professional or personal lives, and own what is present, see our role in it, we start to see our patterns and appreciate our ability to create stuff. 

Once you own your shit, you realise ‘I've created what's going on here. I've got the power to create what I am willing to own.’