Embracing change... when you don't want to.

Humans are creatures of habit; we love our routine, being able to predict patterns, and being aware of what goes around us. However, life is not so mundane and keeps trying to throw curveballs at us - while we flounder helplessly trying to adapt to its challenges. We run from change and in the end, are forced to endure it. Life would be so much easier, if we were prepared to face whatever is thrown at us.
There is so much we can do to to make us comfortable with what we know is inevitable - constant change.

Anticipate change:  Change is movement, forward momentum, path to success, and growth. Change is seizing the present and the future in our hands and reveling in the dirth of knowledge. It is the quiet certainty that everything we know now could be blown away by God's plans/fate/karma in an instant. Once we anticipate and look forward to something so life altering, we refuse to fear it. And we start preparing ourselves for all that life throws at us savoring what is now more than we did before.

Enjoy change: Remember being scared to take a roller coaster ride, then finally taking it for the very first time. It terrifies you initially but there is a moment in which the very thing that you were afraid of becomes the embodiment of all that is enjoyable and you revel in it.  Life is like that - the more you are scared of doing something, being someone, the more you will end up experiencing it. This inevitability is bittersweet and learning to enjoy it will clear away the stress and bring peace while going through change.

Prepare for change: Babies are born, they grow up. People die, life goes on. Common and trite phrases that define our existence. But we can prepare for these and other events ahead of time. It seems like a morbid excercise to go through but sometimes, imagining the worst at first and then imagining the best, and preparing for both mentally helps us be ready for whatever comes next. We feel the rush of panic imagining the worst that could happen in a particular situation, feel the raw emotion coursing through us, endure the flight or fright response in some cases... and let it wash through us. It becomes almost a cathartic experience and once we bear it, we can go through the practical side of preparing for a situation without getting distracted by the prospect of failing.

There are millions of infinite possibilities presented to us at each juncture of our life. If we keep choosing safely, we will never get to explore our strenghts fully or see what else the world can offer us. Change is never comfortable but it is the catalyst needed to jar us out of our complacency and force us to walk a different, better path.

Work smarter not harder

I am inherently lazy and I am quite proud of it.  This means that I will always find a faster and more efficient way to do something because I do not want to waste my precious time any more than necessary. As a working mom of twins whose husband travels every week, each minute is precious and I like to wring out as much as I can from the time I spend at the office or with them.

Working in a development environment presents many sets of challenges to this philosophy. Something that seems easy, uncomplicated, and quick at first can take hours, days, and many resources to accomplish. There is always an element of surprise when servers go down and things stop working but when you are working in an environment where all products are changing constantly, down time should not really be a surprise. Things that work for me are:

1. Rapidly evaluate the problem, seek out a solution, and reach out to resources if you cannot resolve it yourself. However, depending on how long it takes, you will be left with large periods of waiting... where you are just waiting for stuff to happen and cannot hurry the process along. 
2. To learn faster, pair up with the actual resource who may be able to fix the issue.  You will learn a lot and the next time such a situation arises, you will know what to do.
3. Waiting time is learning time! Read how - to articles from your knowledge base, query old tickets, and generally take this down time to do something meaningful and work related.
4. Finish up loose ends - take that training that HR mandated you do. Clean up your resources folder, make sure your data is backed up somewhere in case of machine failure, or clean out your test case repository.
5. Take a walk. Go outside and take a quick, brisk walk to get your blood pumping and your mind clear.

You are not a drop in the ocean. You are an entire ocean, in the drop. ~Rumi

How to Deal with Negativity and Strife

Positive outlook towards life is one of my greatest strengths. It ensures I stay hopeful even in the face of extreme negativity, which in the world today seems to be a constant growing thing.

It could be that this world had this negativity, this pervasive evil all around but as I grew older, I began to take note of it. It may be that in this world of instant knowledge gains, and constant deluge of information, it is easier to feel this cancerous chaos. It feels like the chaos of civilizations, where the world is reverting to the survival of the richest, most powerful and the lesser beings caught within that struggle are being crushed by the mammoth ambitions of those wielding the power.

Rumi said it best. 'You are not a drop in the ocean. You are an entire ocean, in the drop' is my mantra for dealing with this. A few things that help me meet that mantra are:

1. Keep the positivity going: Irrespective of your situation, know that you are better than a million others who would LOVE to be where you are. This helps when you know that your very worst day is better than someone's very best one. It grounds you and lets you focus on the positive. In any situation, try to think of the pros not the cons. Once you start this way of thinking, you will notice the difference in the way you evaluate everything around you.

2. Be grateful: Keeping the context of your life as compared to others is what keeps a person grateful and humble. I may be ONE person but being grateful for friends, coworkers, and FAMILY is the single most important choice I can make. It will color everything I do in a minute, a day, a week.

3. Keep in touch with your feelings: Before giving birth, I thought keeping my innermost feelings hidden was the way to go. Having kids changed all of that. That is the single most terrifying thing you can do in your life. To have someone so dependent on you for everything means you are constantly struggling with feelings of insecurity, being overwhelmed and plain scared. However, being successful at it despite your insecurity means that you are braver for it. Keeping your soul intact means letting out your feelings and just FEEL.

4. Be Aware: This world may be in strife and turmoil but it has a lot of beauty to offer. However, if you are scared of opening up, you will miss the beauty in the middle of the ugliness. For every story, I hear of a war torn place, of unfairness or evil, I hear ten more of people trying to battle it, of reaching out to help, of just being there with a kind word. If I never try to listen, I will never hear anything.

 ‘Unfold your own myth.’, as Rumi said. If you want to leave a mark in this world, YOU can. However, you have to start TRYING first.

Traits and Goals of a great Quality Engineer

Just a few things to get started in your professional life being the VERY best at what you do. It never has to do with technical skill, though that does help; it never has to do with connections or your network, though that does help; it only has to do with what you are willing to learn and your ATTITUDE.

ALWAYS be a part of the solution not the problem.

If you are always raising problems, never creating solutions, you will never succeed, in life or in your career. Think of things that could make your life better then extrapolate them to apply to others around you.
Example: As a QA engineer, do not wait for someone else to fix your issue, be a part of the fix. Ask what the issue was, understand the solution, document it so you can share it/ reference it if it happens again.

Do not wait for others to help you, help yourself.

Life is too short to be a passive being. Be a go-getter from the start and learn how to help YOURSELF by ASKING for help. Too often, we get into a rut and forget that to learn something, WE have to DO the learning.
Example: If you are blocked from doing something, find the resources to unblock you. Do not reach out to someone and if they do not respond, wait for them indefinitely. Follow up personally, ask them if they are the wrong resource, research documentation and/or search your knowledgebase/issue tracking tool for similar issues.

Gather information but do not hoard it.

If you run into a problem, chances are many before you and many after you will run into the same issue.
Example: If you get a question from a team member about a particular issue, answer it and save it for later use. If you see the answer coming in handy on a regular basis, create a library to save the useful answers. Do not wait for that library to magically be created or maintained. Promote it and when it becomes useful, others will automatically start adding to it and maintaining it.

Think Leader Mentality Not Hive Mentality

I have been worker bee. I have liked been a worker bee. But being the core building block of a  company means that you see first hand the issues that plague the company. There will come a time when your voice will be heard and be ready to have ideas to make things better.
If we think of the whole, the absolute, as opposed to the specific, the detailed, we think about the cracks that could potentially arise down the line. Spending a little more time to address those cracks ahead of time may mean more time  and effort saved down the road.
Example: Always think of the whole after you finish working on a feature. For a QA Engineer, this could mean thinking of additional scenarios that are more edge case, of regression impact, of even making it easier on the next resource by documenting something that was not called out.

Be Prepared to Explain Yourself - multiple times to multiple people

Public speaking is by far one of the most useful tools in a person's arsenal. If you don't like speaking publicly or get nervous, PRACTICE! There is something to be said for practicing a presentation 10/20 times so it becomes so ingrained in your psyche that when you are facing a crowd, you subconsciously do well.
Example: As a QA Engineer, I get a plethora of chances to explain myself each day. Why are you pointing this story so high? Why do you have to test so extensively? Why did you find so many bugs (this one's my favorite- Answer: Because there were so many bugs to be found???)

Learn to speak calmly, objectively and clearly. It helps to have some predefined reason for your process ahead of time because you will be asked these questions. And you will be asked again and AGAIN.