#APRAPD2015 and My Daily Affirmations

Loading Dock – New Orleans Marriott – July 25, 2015

Another APRA conference has come and gone, and for the first time I am starting to realize what I possibly gain the most from these conferences, and it’s not what you might think.

Most of us attend – or wish we could attend – conferences like APRA for what we broadly label “professional development.” But what do we mean by that term? Certainly, we are referring to the new approaches, philosophies, and skills we are introduced to by the leading innovators in prospect development. In addition, as Helen Brown recently wrote, we might also be looking for a little “gravity assist” to our careers, networks, and personal relationships which conferences give us the chance to nurture face-to-face.

This is not a post about how to use the energy the conference provides to put new ideas to work; that’s been done, and better than I might have. I want to talk about something else entirely. Something that I didn’t know how much I valued until after the conference concluded.

This year, I thought I was being pretty darn witty during the conference when people asked me how things were going, and I described many of the sessions I attended as “affirming.” Yes, that was a snarky reference to Al Franken’s Stuart Smalley and his daily affirmations. But does it mean I have become one of the mean girls?

And yet. On my return home, I started thinking about what I learned. You know what? That’s when I realized that some of the most important lessons I learned actually came from those “affirming” sessions: that the tools I use, the methods I follow, and the ethics I adhere to, are the right ones.

I started in prospect research as a solo practitioner; in fact, when I started, research was just one of the hats I wore. I devoted a small percentage of my working day to it and I had no dedicated budget. Fifteen years ago I went to my first APRA conference, and began my first prospect research assignment upon my return from Anaheim. In the years to follow, APRA conferences, at the state and international level, would continue to provide most of my training. I also gained a network of mentors to turn to, but they weren’t in my office. Much of what I did, I did alone. Many of the challenges I faced, I faced alone. And many of the techniques I learned, I refined on my own.

Most of us experience imposter syndrome to a varying degree, at one point or another in our careers. Five years ago, Judith Beck, Ph.D., president of the Beck Institute for Cognitive Therapy, described imposter syndrome in the Huffington Post:

There’s not really a recognized condition called “the imposter syndrome.” But it’s a handy label to describe the self-doubt that many people, particularly high achievers, experience. It’s that sense that you don’t fully know what you’re doing and that you have fooled other people into believing that you’re more competent and talented than you really are.

It doesn’t matter if you work alone or in a large shop; self-doubt can always sneak in: that worry that someone is going to find out that you are just faking it. There’s nothing quite like hearing someone with impressive credentials describing to a rapt audience a practice which you also do, to help shrink that feeling.

So yes, indeed. It truly is affirming to find that in this career – which I’ve mostly been making up as I go along – I am actually doing things pretty much the right way. This affirmation is probably just as important to me, working solo once again, as any of the new skills and knowledge I learned.

Don’t get me wrong – I value highly the new things I learn at APRA, and I plan to use some of them to my clients’ benefit very soon. Like Helen Brown, and many others on social media, I treasure the gravity assist conference attendance gives me. The opportunity to have a real conversation, about work and life, and to build relationships that extend beyond 140 characters, cannot be compared.

After 15 years in prospect research, and after my sixth APRA conference, discoveries continue. A professional development conference big enough to have two new anthems celebrating prospect research – thank you, Dave Robertson, for Prospect Gold and Research and Philanthropy – is also big enough for us to celebrate affirmation. And the lesson from those small virtual pats on the back, from those sessions that if I trust myself enough, I might perhaps deliver someday? Maybe simply that I am good enough and smart enough.