Today was an interesting day. Firstly, 616 as a number has followed me around for a very long time. Actually, now that I am thinking about it.. it has followed me since my Gramps passed away (January 2019).
Let me elaborate. I had the numbers 666 following me a lot before Gramps passed away, which mind you was not my favorite thing to have happen. Especially as a hypochondriac to a certain degree. Anyway, I noticed that when Gramps passed away, a 6 dropped away and I was seeing 616 everywhere. Between 616 and the inverse 919, I see this configuration of numbers an ungodly amount of times in my life. Anyway, this is important because leading into today (which is 6/16), I was a little uncomfortable about the day. I kind of thought something bad might happen. However, today was anything but a bad day. It was actually quite impactful.
Why making the previous connection to my Grandfather is important is because when I woke up this morning my mom sent a group text saying ‘Happy Birthday Gramps’, and then I realized that 616 was a message from Gramps. I remember often wondering what my sign from him was. He passed after my dad, and ,now that I was more aware of the death process, I knew he’d still be with me. However, I always failed to know what the sign would be that connected me to him. Well I guess now I know! In fact, earlier when I asked the universe, is this true? Is this Gramps? I did not get the tingling sensation I usually get when my body discovers a deep truth. However, I was meant to make the connection right in this moment. Anyway, I digress a bit.
So that was just to start the day. Then, I had a nice conversation with my project leader at work. The past few days I have turned to her a few times as a leader/mentor for me. She has given me a lot of insight into myself the past few days and because of that I am so grateful. Additionally, she has shared a lot of her experience of learning how to manage other people which also has been really helpful. Anyway, today the floodgates opened on personal development, growth, and introspection. That also led to me discussing my desire to get a masters degree in psychology. She then questioned if I had heard of Industrial and Organization Psychology. The funny thing is that this is the exact degree I am interested in pursuing. Very synchronous. Anyway, we had a lot of good chats about that. The one that stood out was about being reactive vs. proactive. I had a leadership training that actually discussed the same concepts a few months ago. She mentioned that I fall more into the proactive camp. While I do agree, I find it interesting that I know I have not always been this way. So when did I change? Was it when my dad died? It feels like that was the turning point for so much of my success and drive. Something to still think more about.
Almost immediately after that conversation, someone I worked with through their internship reached out to me and we had a conversation about working habits. I then began to discuss with her how the different departments have a psychology about them that facilitates a certain work environment. I think I questioned if my working long hours is directly impacted from being a part of Engineering (which definitely promotes working longer hours semi unintentionally) and this project team (which also operates the same way). I see successful people do these things and so then I subconsciously follow along and do it as well. It is possible that I would not be this way if the environment was different, which I find absolutely fascinating.
At the end of the day, I took this conversation from our old intern to another co-worker and mentor of mine. We had previously talked about how he tries to inspire his team to leave early, but he does not abide by his advice. I told him that his team will want to work long hours if he does. Not because they feel like they have to, but because they respect him as their leader. If I respect my leader and I see them working hard, it makes me want to work hard with them. While in this conversation with him, I realized that he also played lacrosse (and broke a collarbone playing it) which is off topic, yet a also very synchronous.
Lastly, I had some karmic experiences today. The first was when our new engineering intern reached out to ask a question. I was not able to respond right away and then within 3 minutes she said ‘never mind, I figured it out.’ I told her that she possessed a great skill as an engineer (the ability to find out the information on her own). She told me about her professor and how his motto is “you are the instruction manual”. I told her that was a good attitude to have. I also shared a bit of my experience in starting my job and switching roles a few times. I told her that often times I was waiting for people to teach me what I need to know. It wasn’t until I went on my own and found the answers with my own initiative, did I really find success. She then told me how her first few days she was very lost but she started to look into all of the different software programs we use and really learned a lot about it. I told her that it showed, and it definitely does. Between our two new interns, she is more proactive and I’d prefer to go to her every time. However, I know that to be a good leader I need to continue to include the other intern as well.
After I told the intern that her hard work really shows, it seemed to make its way back to me. Recently, I have been putting a lot of hours in at work, but today I finished up with a training session with some people and I was really starting to feel like all of those hours paid off. I felt like people were really understanding everything and it felt great. While talking to my boss, he repeated the same words to me. ‘It has really shown’. I found it karmic and synchronous that he was completing the circle by telling me what I had told the intern earlier in the day.
