What Parkinson’s Taught Me About LinkedIn.
Preparing for my Kilimanjaro adventure while growing a business that I am passionate about has spurred me to be introspective lately.
When I was first diagnosed with Parkinson’s, I really didn’t know what I was in for and I genuinely thought that I could keep on working in my job for a very long time to come. It never occurred to me that my employer would turn out to be unsupportive, the mounting responsibilities I had might become increasingly unmanageable, and that I’d be compelled to back away from something I loved doing and did well.
There simply is no playbook for how to tackle your professional life when faced with a life altering condition. If you’re very lucky, everything falls into place and you can find a balance between your productivity in the labor force and your health as an individual. More likely, you’ll find yourself improvising a lot and reacting to your situation, leaving you disoriented and anxious about your future.
You scan your carefully curated LinkedIn profile and you wonder what’s next? There is no descriptive field for a health condition or disease in LinkedIn, and even if there was one or you had the temerity to enter the information using a different field, where would that leave you in the eyes of your existing or prospective employers and business associates? And how would it feel to be sharing your intimate health details with the public?
These are just some of the thoughts I’ve had over the past few years as I reinvented myself in ways that are adaptive to my Parkinson’s. This self-realization process has also brought me back time and again to LinkedIn as a social media platform that both reflects and masks my journey as a person with Parkinson’s.
I’d like to share three lessons I learned about the value of LinkedIn and its limitations:
You are not your job.
LinkedIn often tells us otherwise. After all, it is designed for professional networking and functions as a digital resume that is thoroughly edited by its users to present the world with a flattering image of who we are as bosses, colleagues, employees, professionals, and generally participants in the labor force. I have had a long and varied career as an entrepreneur, lawyer, educator, manager, etc. None of these positions captures who I am even though they all reflect experiences that have shaped my worldview and how I approach my life.
Your profile is not the entirety of you.
Take a few minutes to list all the things you’ve left out of your LinkedIn profile and then ask yourself which is more indicative of who you are. The answer might surprise you. Or maybe you’ll find that the list is lacking in some ways and you need to add in things you aspire to be or do and cannot quite finesse into your LinkedIn profile. You might also find that doing a side-by-side comparison of this new list and your LinkedIn profile is inspirational and reveals the contours of a new YOU.
Love your networks (and if they love you back, so much the better).
It took me far too long to figure this one out and even longer to put it into practice. Network is “net worth” and I don’t mean that in the financial sense (although it is likely true as well). I mean it in the sense of psychic, social, familial, and emotional net worth. The more you cultivate your networks with unconditional love, the more they are likely to reward your attention. LinkedIn is one such network but of course there are many, many more.
These may seem like obvious lessons to most of you but I confess that they weren’t evident to me until I had to face my own reality of living with Parkinson’s and started reinventing myself with the guidance of others, especially my amazing wife and business partner, who helped me understand that when there is no playbook to be thrown out, you just have to make one up for yourself, whether it meets the norms of LinkedIn or not.
