My recent nomination and finalist ranking for the Women of Influence Award caught me by surprise.
Throughout my career I have been fortunate enough to receive several awards for my work. I remember receiving a flurry of awards shortly after my first cancer diagnosis, and I recall at the time joking that people wanted to celebrate my contributions before I “checked-out.”
Clearly that didn’t happen, and I am alive and well and still doing meaningful work to help women succeed.
But this award is different. When I first heard that I was a finalist, I was thrilled of course, but then I realized that I needed to ask people to vote for me. Not my comfort zone at all. First I’ve always had difficulty asking for help. Second, it felt presumptuous that people would even want to vote for me. So needless to say, I’ve found the whole process very uncomfortable.
And reality is there are some serious contenders in this “race” who truly are women of influence and who also have massive databases to draw on. So I have concluded that with this American Idol strategy, it’s not going to happen.
So I am letting this one go – I am voting myself off that island. You won’t be hearing any more from me as I don’t want to get further embroiled in this vote-seeking campaign.
At the end of the day, none of what we do in life is done to win awards. For me, it’s always been to make a difference - and that is honour enough.
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