Getting Lost to Get Found

an e-book is Coming

An excerpt from Chapter 5: No is a Complete Sentence from the pages of my upcoming e-book titled ‘Getting Found: A Core Value Experience’. This will be book 1 in a 4 part series of e-books to launch by Summer 2025. I am excited to build the story and share with you in this way.

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…It took me a couple tries out of college but around the fourth job, I found a great one. A small athleisure company not well known in the USA yet with ample opportunity for growth. Their values (at the time back in 2007) were listed loud and clear on their website and went along to the tune of : personal responsibility, greatness, entrepreneurship, connection, and fun.

I left a small boutique PR firm I was working for (who did not have a website or core values) to start on the ground level in retail. My parents had a small fit, which was fun. And while the company sold spandex and packaged your purchases in a re-usable tote (innovative at the time), the corporate values, company culture (the back room had a company library in every store, neat) and emphasis on goal setting took me over an edge.

And so, I became spandex, too. I literally took on the identity, persona, voice and values of a corporation at age 24. It got really weird there for a while and my best friend looked at me and said, ‘Jacki, go to your room, remove the spandex and put on jeans. We have lost you’. And he was not wrong.

I had collapsed my identity with that of another. The way of the brand seemed like the smartest way to grow in the company so I was a ‘yes’ for anything and everything they needed me to do.

I burned hard and fast. And my work began to suffer as did my relationships, my health and my wellbeing.

Fast forward, I burnt all the way out.

This was a great lesson in saying yes to what felt like alignment with external validation aplenty and saying no to my core values and my unique body of existence and very little of any internal validation.

I got lost. It wouldn’t be my first time. And it would not be my last time.

My mother had come to visit me and we spent a few days together. My work schedule was packed to the gills and I had just started my very first blog. I was frustrated as I kept getting overlooked for a promotion. I was checking all the boxes, saying all the company-aligned words and making myself more than available beyond work hours. On my fourth try for a floor leader role, I still did not land the job. Compounded rejection had me feeling a certain type of way and I felt lost.

My mother listened. She ideated with me and asked if I had gone in to ask the manager directly why I was not being selected and what I needed to work on? All great points. I had to work the morning she left to the airport that trip and when I came home, on a green post it, she had scribbled ‘some times you have to get lost to get found’.

And I remembered a huge exhale.

I didn’t want to disappoint my parents. I am the oldest daughter, I like to keep things moving smoothly, have my proverbial shit together and never rock the boat and keep everyone happy true to my double edged sword of being. The permission slip she gave me that day to be okay in the lost, it was like soul salve.

There was a moment I can vividly recall later in my career where I (finally) took a stand. I started to lean into my voice, disagreed with some of the higher ups and their marketing ideas and pushed back with boundaries that began to honor my core values and detour from those of the company.

And do you want to hear the most annoying thing?

When I started to push, listen and lead with my voice, I got promoted. Twice in one year. My past version of self trying to conform to fit a mold and live the company values as her own had her jaw on the floor and I mopped it right up with my sense of self, new salary and boundaries.

Honoring my values of family, health, adventure, balance and connection, I started saying no.

No to company calls outside of the time zone I lived in.
No to work trips that would compromise my health.
No to extracurricular work activities.
No to work email at all hours on my work phone.

And I started saying yes to myself.

Yes to date night with my then boyfriend, now husband.
Yes to weekend days all the ways off.
Yes to trips to see family without sneaking in a work visit.
Yes to turning all my notifications off.
Yes to mental health days.
Yes to ending the day early because I worked longer hours the week before.

I have done this so many times over and over again because you don’t just get lost once.

You keep getting found.

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