Irina's story: Finding my value after a long journey

For three years, I had focused on everything but studying. My teacher once even said that I was hopeless.

Thanks to some contacts I had, I went to Israel for a gap year. I worked in different jobs, from hotels to souvenir shops, getting to know the country and its culture. At that point I thought sales was fun. I liked it. Business became my dream.

It all changed about a year later when my mother called and suggested that I take the next flight home. I had been accepted into a university. I was confused. I hadn't applied anywhere. At that time, in Sweden, you applied to university with an upper secondary school certificate and, for certain training programmes, in a foreigner’s quota. My mother had applied for me, copying my signature. She left me no choice. I had to get an education. So, I started studying at the University of Gothenburg. To become a teacher.

My first job was in the savannah of Tanzania. I worked as a teacher at a Swedish school. However, just before the end of my first academic year, I had to leave due to a number of tropical diseases that I had caught. I was flown to Nairobi to recuperate by Flying Doctors. I was all skin and bones. My only option after a week in hospital was to return home to Sweden.

I got a job as a teacher in comprehensive school and still felt like this was not for me. However, my studies in education turned out to be useful. In addition to having a profession, I had learned about self-analysis. Utilising this became the first essential step in my own development journey. I also learned Swedish and grew my first professional network in Sweden.

The steps to the Parliament House felt as steep as they looked

I missed Finland. I wondered what it would be like to live and work here. I found an advertisement online, seeking a Swedish-speaking coach for working life communications. That was me! A young woman with an accent in speaking her own mother tongue stepped into her first job in Finland. The steps to the Parliament House felt as steep as they looked. Soon I was coaching in large companies, SMEs as well as various ministries. Every now and then I got an urgent call and a taxi whisked me from A to B to prepare the highest state officials for negotiations on the following day. I was also soon signed on to teach at the University of Helsinki as an expert on the same topics, and my workload there increased through positive feedback. At under 30, I was at the peak of my career at the time. "I have coached everyone but the President," I said and decided that I wanted to develop and achieve more. 

I was a young mother when I started as a management consultant. I felt a profound sense of inadequacy, but mainly received positive feedback. It was also an exciting experience for me to speak Finnish for the first time in my career. I mainly focused on coaching for interaction and communication as well as management and sales. I learned a lot and was invited to become a partner. It felt crazy. I felt like I didn't really know anything. I was struggling with impostor syndrome and felt like it was impossible to coach at the level I demanded of myself, without seeing the whole picture. I thought that in order to be credible, I needed a second, Finnish Master's degree. 

I got into university, studied, worked, built the house of my dreams, had a second child, completed yet another degree on the side and worked some more. I was driven by having a career and economic well-being. At just over 30 years of age, I had degrees from two universities in my portfolio and more than ten other diplomas for various studies as well as several certificates. I was as interdisciplinary as they come: A behavioural scientist and humanist with a focus on communication and a thesis in business as well as a developer of business and service design.

I was the mother of two young children. In practice, everything was alright professionally, but I craved for a genuine work community and thought that so-called normal work would be more suitable for my life situation. But jobs in my field didn’t grow on trees and the world was in a precarious situation. I got the managerial titles I had striven for in sales and business management, and through an old customer relationship, I also got into corporate communications at the manager level. But within the space of a few years, I also experienced a dissolution of a merger, ramp-down of business and cooperation negotiations that started on my first day of work. For the first time in my life, I also made a value-based decision to resign.

I wondered if this was what life was about

I was completely done one day when my children stood in front of the door and said: "Mom, your job doesn’t make any sense. Could you stay home?” I wondered if this was what life was about. Was this what I had always dreamed of? What I had given everything for? I had two children standing in front of me, for whom a parent's genuine presence was the most important thing for their own development. My options were my career or my children. I chose the latter.

In that situation, I wondered what had just happened. I had built my whole life around my career. It was difficult to stop a moving train. With a heavy heart, I went back to being a teacher. I wondered if I had gathered all this know-how and networks for nothing, only to get back to square one. It was also harsh to see how many people disappeared from around me as I stepped away from my title of director. But this time, as a teacher, I got to work with young people and adults. Teaching felt rewarding and fun. I particularly enjoyed teaching in a university because I could connect my lectures to working life from many different angles. 

At around the same time, I started paying more attention to my well-being. I got interested in nutrition and exercise. A tired mother turned into a woman who started to see a whole range of colours instead of grey. The glow attracted attention and soon, I was running my own direct sales business alongside teaching. I learned a lot more about sales and sales management. I also learned about my own strength and how everyone can choose to build their lives using unconventional methods. By believing in what I did, I no longer cared about what others thought of me. I experienced many great successes and outdid myself. I was conscious of the fact that this was also another milestone to learn from.

My personal life had been a flashing red light for a long time. I was good at shutting my ears and eyes from it. I thought about ways to make a change. Finally, I hit a wall. I got a bacterial infection, and according to my doctors, I was hours away from death three times. Lying on the floor of the hospital toilet, throwing up while clutching my drip stand, crying, I promised myself that if I survived, I would be ready to let go of everything I had believed in before and what it was time to give up.

Sometimes I hear that I act like a small intelligence agency

Now, just over three years later in my life, what I have left of that time are my children and a sofa I let into my new home, from which I am typing this. At the moment, I am responsible for competence development services for business development and customer relationships, from educational institutions to organisations. I still have my business on the side. It went through some shape-shifting after a few words of encouragement from a former consultant colleague. As a result of a number of discussions, they said that over the years, I had accumulated so much experience, expertise and courage to tell it like it is that not using this would be a waste. I have indeed had the opportunity to spar managers, support recruitment, do some personality profiling, moderate major events, coach people on how to utilise diversity, give motivational speeches...

Sometimes I hear that I act like a small intelligence agency. Perhaps the multidisciplinary competence that I acquired during my times of inadequacy and the opportunity to get to know different organisations and positions so extensively have given me the ability and enthusiasm to see the bigger picture. To build bigger puzzles. To question standards and assumptions. To think about how things impact one another and what is happening around us. I enjoy solving challenges. And I'm no longer afraid that I won’t. Much less consider myself hopeless.

In recent years, I have written and spoken more and more about this topic that lights a spark in me every day. About how an achiever who felt inadequate found her own value. About what is actually underneath the bubble and shine in many cases and how you can find your inner spark. About how I believe that the value of an individual is part of the value of a community. And about the fact that a community of individuals who value themselves can create the kind of value-based power that can, at best, change the world. I look forward to seeing where my life and work will take me. Years of work have created a story. And this is the story that I can offer people and organisations with all its lessons, hoping that it will empower even one person to search for and find what is really important. Yourself. Your value.

Irina Kalmi

Photo: Julia Alakulju