Time to read: 5 minutes
Article at a glance:
- Stumbles are part of the journey. Confusion, impatience, and self-doubt are normal when exploring your unique contribution.
- External validation can distract. Letting go of titles and accolades helps you focus on what’s truly fulfilling.
- You can’t do this alone. Others’ perspectives are essential for discovering where you’re helpful and what you’re wired for.
The journey isn’t linear. It’s evolving, messy, and meaningful. Growth comes from reflection, not reaching a final destination.
The Three Circles journey lasts a lifetime. On the way, it’s normal to stumble.
These are part of the process, but they can still be frustrating, especially if we get stuck there!
Here are some of the most common stumbling blocks you might encounter in your Three Circles Journey, and how to handle them when they show up.
3 Circles Stumbling Blocks
Confusing recognition and accolades with fulfillment.
Our society teaches us that to feel fulfilled, you have to climb the ladder, get the awards and the fat paycheck, earn an impressive job title, wear the fancy clothes, know the fancy people, and have a parking space with your name on it.
We do things differently at Redmond, but this paradigm can be really hard to release. Even after we know—intellectually—that these things won’t make us happy, often we still want to feel and appear important, even if the work we think will make us important won’t actually fulfill us.
The more you can let go of your desire for those trappings of success (and they’re called trappings for a reason), the more you can focus on truly being helpful and what really creates meaning for you.
Starting with what fills your cup rather than helpfulness
There are three parts of the Three Circles Journey: Where you’re helpful, what you’re wired for, and what fills your cup.
We’ve learned to put them in that order for a reason.
Without a prescribed order, it’s tempting to start with what fills your cup because that’s the easiest circle to identify. It’s much harder to find where you’re helpful and what you’re wired for because those require perspectives outside your own.
You can’t do this journey without others’ perspectives!
And if you start by being helpful, you can be more helpful on the whole journey, which allows you to make more of an impact as you’re growing.
Impatience.
This journey lasts a lifetime. Change and growth can happen so gradually that you don’t even notice it’s happening.
We might feel like it’s not happening quickly enough and get frustrated. This is where Reflection can help you look back and see how far you’ve come!
Believing your Three Circles is a destination.
That area where your Three Circles overlap isn’t a place you reach and then remain forever. It’s a path you follow. And like a hiking path, sometimes you stray off the path to get a better look at a rock or a flower or something. Sometimes you get a little lost and then come back to the path later.
This is part of the never-ending journey.
Thinking your Three Circles path should be all sunshine and daisies.
Even when you’re on the right track, life still won’t be perfect. It’s not supposed to be.
It also shouldn’t be blood, sweat, and tears.
Here’s what we’re actually aiming for: an 80/20 blend.
Even if we’re in a great place, we can only realistically spend about 80% of our time doing tasks in the center of our Three Circles because there will always be tasks you don’t like to do that need to get done. But feeling fulfilled most of the time will make those icky tasks so much easier and less annoying.
Trying to do this on your own.
You cannot, we repeat, CANNOT do this journey on your own.
You can’t know where you’re helpful—or even BE helpful—without other people. You can’t clearly see your own wiring because you’re too close to it. You might not even notice what fills your own cup if you’re not accustomed to paying attention to that.
You need other people who care about you and see you clearly. You need other perspectives.
Getting stuck in what your Three Circles “should” be
Even if you’ve done something for a long time, that doesn’t mean it’s in your Three Circles. In fact, tons of Redmond associates no longer do what they were hired for.
We had an associate who thought customer service was her thing because she’d done it for a long time, she was good at it, and she liked it most of the time. Now, she works on the business development team.
One of our culture team members, who also helps with HR, actually started off in accounting.
Another associate started overseeing custom projects with our fencing unit with a small crew, but now works with our partner team because he’s good at connecting with a lot of people.
Allow yourself to explore, grow, change, and surprise yourself.
Overwhelm with the runway
Here’s a real zinger: As you move into your Three Circles, it’s natural for your confidence to start to drop.
Counterintuitive, right? Shouldn’t you feel MORE confident when you’re making your unique contribution?
The thing is, when you’re truly in your Three Circles, you start to understand your endless potential, and the never-ending road to mastery in your area.
"The more I learn, the more I realize how much I don't know." – attributed to Albert Einstein.
If you see tons of room for improvement in your work, but others tell you what a great job you’re doing, that’s a good sign you’re probably in your Three Circles, or at least doing something you’re wired for. It means you have vision in that area, which is huge.
This is when you have to start measuring your progress by how far you’ve come, not how far you have to go, because, like the Three Circles journey, the road to mastery is endless.
The Journey Is the Point
Stumbles aren’t setbacks. They’re signals. Each one invites you to get curious, reflect, and explore where else your journey might take you!
Remember, your Three Circles aren’t a destination to reach, they’re a direction to walk in, with others beside you.
Keep going. Keep growing. And don’t go it alone!
