On chasing the dream of becoming a “donna in carriera” and discovering that the secret of success is not always a single job title.
🎵 Link to recommended sound track: Oh Yeah, by Yello
What do you want to be when you grow up? This is the question most children are asked throughout their childhood. I guess it’s fun to hear their answers and their perception of what’s possible. The thing is, the sky is the limit for children, so much so that some of the most frequent replies have always been “ballerina”, “astronaut”, “famous singer”, “scientist”, “magician”, etc. These days we might want to add “YouTuber” to the mix, as even dreams have to keep up with the times.
Some kids stay really consistent with their answers and I know a few who have grown into their childhood dream. As for me, I never really had one straight answer to the question. And although I had no clue what job I might like to do when I grew up, I knew exactly the professional persona I wanted to embody. And that started with an 80s rom-com.
Have you ever watched The Secret of My Success? No? Well, you should. It’s an 80s feel-good comedy starring a young Michael J. Fox about a young kid from Kansas who moves to New York City, where he ends up leading a double work life: he ends up simultaneously working as a clerk in the mailroom while pretending to be a hired-by-no-one executive in the same company. Obviously, he falls in love and ends up becoming successful, but the story line storyline is not the point here.The point is the way power, career and success were portrayed in the film. I remember being smitten by the suits, the skyscrapers, the briefcases, the big-city life, the crowds at peak time rush hour, the fast pace. I remember the leading female character being this Lady Di-looking, smart business analyst woman, always impeccably dressed and in heels, leading corporate meetings and looking very much in control of her own fate, and very powerful and successful, whatever that means.
That young me, who had been born and raised in Italy’s suburbia, got instantly fascinated with the idea of becoming THAT woman and, from that moment onwards, whenever somebody asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up, my answer would be “una donna in carriera” (which loosely translate as: career woman).
And I did not care about the industry. It could have been petroleum as well as human rights. I just knew I wanted to be the strong and powerful woman strutting her stuff, commanding the room, leading everybody and wearing some damn fine clothes too. Also, in 80s/90s Italy, being a donna in carriera was a somewhat extravagant concept, especially in a very male-dominated society where women were heavily objectified on the up-and-coming Berlusconi TV.
The strong donna in carriera became some sort of social archetype for me, and I started to actively embody her style. She was lurking in there anyway. I clearly remember that at 13 years old, when switching from middle to high school, I decided that I would no longer be that shy nerd I had always been, those days were over. I wanted to be strong, a bit of a riot grrrl too and the first step was to start a punk rock band where screaming on the stage was the norm. Fun fact, my surname, Generali translates as “General”, like in the army, so some sort of hardness was embedded in me anyway and you don’t know how many times I was told throughout my life: “You are a true general by name and by character”.
So somehow, throughout my life as a young person, I started to create that very character around myself. My aura would ooze control, leadership and strength. I wanted to be somebody who could also be feared a little, with plenty of masculine energy about her.
BUT.
There was a big but. In order to have a career, one needed to know which career they wanted. You could not just be randomly successful; you needed to pick one thing and stick to it. And for me, this was always a bit of a problem. When I was young in particular, I just liked too many things and, sorry if I say so myself, I was actually good at quite a few of them.
I am the kind of person who, whenever she gets fascinated by something, gets totally engrossed in it, goes deep into the finer details, studies and works hard to reach the highest level she can, and then… then she gets bored and needs to move on to the next thing.
I have always been like this. Until recently, the pattern was to become excellent and then move on. Whatever I did, I liked to take it to the max and really try to perform to the best of my abilities, regardless of what it was. I even remember getting a cleaning job in a pub while I was an exchange student at the University of Glasgow. Within two weeks, I had been promoted to supervisor. It wasn’t because I had a passion for cleaning pubs. I just like to do things to the highest standard I possibly can. Achievement (which is very different from fulfilment) was a state of mind for me.
As the idea of having a career was attached to having ONE career, and change wasn’t socially accepted, I ended up feeling inadequate, wrong and even guilty for a large part of my life, as sticking to one thing (red more on the subject in my previous article here) long enough to want to do it forever was alien to me. I moved on many times, each time feeling guilty about it.
I remember asking myself time and time again: “Why the hell don’t you know what you want to do with your life like everybody else?” “Why do you need all the change?” And I had no answer.
The truth is, I was just different. Which is also why I struggled with getting jobs.
Even within the job market, change is frowned upon. When an employer looks at your CV, they will not be impressed if you have not kept a job for at least a few years, and any gaps really don’t look good, regardless of the reasons. Look at my LinkedIn and you’ll see what I mean.
But what if change is the constant?
I don’t remember exactly when that happened, but at some point, in order to save my sanity, I made the conscious decision to accept this side of me and stopped feeling wrong. I decided that I was done with feeling wrong and started to see my need for change as a positive trait and an asset. And if I could not get a job, I would just create my own. After a lifetime of feeling wrong, I finally made peace with this side of me. I also stopped focusing so much on achievement and started making room for fulfilment. That was a game changer.
If one thinks about it, change brings a lot of value to one’s personal and work life. It teaches you to adapt. It teaches you to withstand the frustration of starting from scratch, over and over again. It teaches you to become comfortable with uncertainty and to recognise opportunities when they arise. It requires humility, because every new beginning means accepting that, for a while, you won’t be the expert in the room. It teaches delayed gratification, because mastery takes time, every single time. And it also teaches you to withstand the judgment of people who simply don’t understand, building resilience in the process.
And for those who work for someone else rather than running a business, there is good news too. Every now and then, you come across someone who sees beyond the CV and values variety over consistency. Someone who doesn’t just see a list of unrelated jobs, but recognises the unusually broad skill set, resilience, adaptability and curiosity that a life of change can build. Throughout my career, I have been lucky enough to meet two people like that.
So after all, I have been a donna in carriera all along, just not in the way I had imagined or society wanted me to be. I didn’t build one career. I built several.
Becoming a donna in carriera had never really been about choosing the right profession and excelling at just one thing, but rather about a state of mind, an approach to everything I did with ambition, curiosity and the determination to do it well. And I think that, if this is not the secret of my success, at least it’s the trait that pushes me to do the best I can, regardless of what I do.
As for what I want to be when I grow up… I still don’t have an answer, but when I find out, I’ll let you know.
