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THIRTEEN
STARTING OVER
Say yes to make your life more interesting
♦
tarting over is hard, especially if it means moving to a new place.
In the eight cities I moved to as an adult, my first year was
lonely, my second year I made a few friends, but by my third year, I
had many friends I really enjoyed. I just had to accept the fact that
starting over is hard. The main reason is, I work on my own. I wasn’t
in an office where I could connect with colleagues. That’s also why I
started by contacting all the dietitians to get together. Some became
friends. Some are still friends.
When you start again somewhere new, you have to get out. You
can’t sit and wallow in your loneliness and hope your social life and
business pick up. You have to get out and socialize and network with
people. You have to start meeting people, because that’s where your
work comes from. That’s where your friends and partners come
from. You know, you have to kiss a lot of frogs before one turns into a
prince. In a new place, even getting out to try to socialize feels like
work. That’s because it is.
• • •
It’s not easy being on your own at events. It’s stressful. Nobody
knows you, and everybody’s air-kissing and hugging each other. All
you can do is stand there. You can’t interfere in their friendship
circles and their little crowds; that would be weird. If you’re lucky,
someone will be nice enough to come over and say hi to you. I
sometimes give myself one hour to have someone talk to me, then I
will leave. I have seldom left a party.
I learned that when I was thirty-one and newly divorced. A friend
said to me, “Go out all the time. It’s the only way you can start
meeting people in a new town.” I did, but I felt often as though I was
sticking out like a sore thumb.
I have since realized that everyone has this feeling, too. Sometimes
even celebrities can be alone. When I was running the modeling
school in Bloemfontein, I was asked to take my students to the
airport to welcome Miss Universe. She stood there alone. I was very
polite and didn’t want to approach her and impose.
It was exactly what I had experienced at parties when I didn’t
know anybody, until somebody took pity on me. I thought, “I
remember that feeling.”
I went over and said, “Hello. I’m the director of the modeling
school. I just wanted to welcome you.”
She said, “Thank you for talking to me! It’s horrible to stand
alone!”
So remember: even Miss Universe feels awkward at parties.
• • •
With my completed master’s degree in hand, I moved from
Bloemfontein back to Johannesburg to be closer to my family. I had
to build up my practice quickly.
If you go to a job where you are surrounded by the same people
every day at your work, they can become your friends. I didn’t
network to build my career; I networked with my colleagues to learn
more about what is going on and to share my success as a dietitian in
private practice. I wanted more dietitians to be available to open
their own practice and to dispel all the fad diets that are so popular.
However, it did end up that my colleagues were good to me and
referred me for talks, spokesperson work, and media work and sent
me counseling clients. Connecting with people will increase your
business more than sitting alone waiting for the phone to ring. And,
nowadays, waiting for emails to arrive.
My strategy, along with accepting invitations, was to join every
association that I could. I joined the Dietetics Association and got a
list of dietitians in my area. If you can get on some committees, that’s
where you are seeing the same people and can get to know them. I
started holding a meeting for dietitians who were in private practice
or wanted to be, gave some advice on how to be successful, and then
we all had time to chat. I got to meet new people, and they met each
other. My colleagues appreciated it so much that I decided to keep
doing it.
Over that time, I was building up a solid list of clients. After two
years, I was seeing twenty clients a day!
• • •
Then the unthinkable happened: my phone stopped working. The
phone cable to my home office was damaged, and as this was in the
eighties, South Africa was not manufacturing such things. It was
going to take six months for the cable to come from Europe.
The phone was how I made all my appointments and the only way
my clients could reach me unless they stopped by or wrote a letter.
To make matters worse, there was no message letting people know
that my number was out of service. If they tried to ring me, all they
would get was a busy signal! I needed a plan if I was going to survive.
I thought I had it figured out, so I bought a pager and sent letters to
all my clients and doctors, letting them know that all they had to do
was page me, and I would find a phone and return their calls.
That plan didn’t work. Within three weeks, I had only one client
each day.
I was falling apart. I was losing income steadily. I didn’t know
what I would do.
At the next meeting with my colleagues that I had organized, they
told me they had been trying to call me, but my phone was always
busy. I broke down and cried. Then something wonderful happened.
They told me I’d been helping them for two years; now it was their
time to help me. They passed on six of their part-time consultancy
jobs to me—nursing home, private clinic, research on infant feeding,
writing, teaching, and giving nutrition advice at a supermarket. Each
job required four to eight hours a week and no phone calls. I was
excited to be working again and exploring a new area of nutrition
that I hadn’t done before.
When the phone cable was repaired, my practice picked up again,
and I was busier than ever! And consulting became a new form of
income, which would help me for the rest of my nutrition career.
Sometimes the best plan is accepting help.
This also worked well when one of my fellow dietitians stepped
forward with information about a job for one of my kids.
When we were newly moved to Toronto, Elon needed to find work.
I attended a dietitians meeting, and I mentioned that my son needed
a job. One of the dieticians’ husbands worked at Microsoft.
“My son is great with computers,” I told her. Every mother says
things like that. In this case, they were very surprised to find out how
right I was.
• • •
Throughout my career, I have always worked hard to help others be
successful. The surprising part was that sometimes I needed their
support as well. Don’t be good to others just to get something in
return; do it because you enjoy it, and it helps them do better.
At seventy-one, I have met some of my best friends through my
work over the years. And I continue to make so many wonderful
friends in my nutrition and modeling careers!
Now, when I go to any event and I see someone standing alone, I
walk up to them and include them in our conversation. If you see
someone else who is completely alone, talk to him or her, too. You
could embarrass yourself, but actually you don’t. Mostly, you meet
nice people that way.
L
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