Jodie Michelle - Architect?

After many months of soul-searching (which is a term I had previously undervalued), I recently started to understand why I had decided to become an architect - something I had never even questioned or analysed before.If I am to be honest, I think I always knew that my interest in architecture stemmed from my perception that it was an exceptional, challenging, maybe even a little bit glamorous (Oh how wrong I was about that!) career, not from an underlying passion to design and document buildings.What came as a shock to me though was uncovering WHY it had been important to me to establish an exceptional, challenging and glamorous career.It was simple…I had to make up for being a less than acceptable human.

Becoming an architect was one of the many masks I was wearing to make me feel worthy and valuable…to make up for the fact that I was less than acceptable because I wasn’t beautiful and skinny…I was fat and ordinary. It made me sad to learn that many decisions I had made in my life were not soul-based, but instead were my attempt to offset my appearance – in particular my body, which I had perceived as my short-falling. It took a lot of inner work and honesty to uncover that I had a developed a damaging subconscious belief that I was not acceptable the way I was and had to exceed all expectations of me in every area of my life – including my career, in order to place me on an even playing field with everyone else. The pressure this placed on me was HUGE. It changed the way I did everything. It changed the way I behaved around friends, the way I acted in social situations, the way I raised my kids, even the way I conversed with clients at work. When I got to the truth behind the person I had become, I was able to start the process of rewriting the values and beliefs I was living by…the freedom this gave me was mind-blowing.