How To: Know Yourself 👩‍🏫

Each month, The Yo Pro features experienced leaders as Guest Writers to share wisdom and equip the next generation. Using a Start, Stop, and Continue model, they reflect on lessons learned from life and work as previous young professionals.

So, as we close out June 2025, enjoy story and insights from Heather R. Nelson, who has 30 years of experience as an entrepreneur, author, professor, and Executive in Residence — you're in for a treat!

It is daunting, frankly, to be asked to share any sort of wisdom in the age we live in. At 54, I find myself seeking out the wisdom of my mentors, my therapist, and spiritual leaders now more than ever before in my life.

So, before I begin to share parts of my own story, never forget that there is not one person around you, no matter their age, position, or title, who is still not learning. 

From a posture of humility, I also offer to you that everyone you love, admire, or even aspire to be like has regrets. The difference lies between those who live in regret versus those who allow it to change them for the better. 

While what has defined my story is relationships, before I get to that, it is essential to note that my beginnings were wrapped in a lot of trauma and dysfunction in my family at a young age that bled into my adulthood. High school and even college found me operating in a state of full-blown survival mode. As a result, I struggled with relationships of all kinds, from friendships to family to teachers. There were beacons of light from time to time during those years, but what I remember most is my focus on working and studying. In college, I was known to have multiple jobs at the same time as I cobbled together scholarships, grants, loans, and multiple minimum-wage income sources to pay for college, keep a roof over my head, and food in my mouth. In a nutshell, I was hustling for both my survival and running from ‘something’; it would be decades before I would understand. 

I graduated from the University of Arkansas in 1994 with a Bachelor of Science in Business Administration (BSBA) in Marketing Management, with an Emphasis in Entrepreneurial Management. I would later earn an MBA from the University of Arkansas at Little Rock.

My life first began changing powerfully in my twenties when circumstances led me to an amazing professional opportunity with Nations Bank and volunteer opportunities at my alma mater, the University of Arkansas. Those two opportunities also introduced me to the concept of mentors.  Within a single year during my twenties, five of my most significant mentor relationships entered my life, profoundly changing the trajectory of my life. 

After nearly two decades of working in banking and corporate lending, I became an entrepreneur and, over a dozen years, co-founded and/or founded five businesses.

Nearly as transformational for me as first discovering mentors in my twenties was finding therapy in my forties. I spent over five years in regular therapy, and I can testify that it is the best time, money, and energy I have ever spent on anything. 

It is in the past few years in higher education, though, as a professor, lecturer, and consultant (which, for me, is just a fancy word for helper), that I feel like all of the work I have done in my life is coming full circle. First, as an adjunct professor for the University of Arkansas, now as a professor at CIMBA in Italy, and as the Executive in Residence at Arkansas State University. 

I certainly never imagined, while a college student or young professional, that I would have the opportunity to reimagine my professional life so many times over the years.

Frankly, I know it would not have been possible without the guidance of my mentors. They are the ones who guided me, encouraged me, pushed me, and brought my name into rooms where it would never have been heard otherwise. We don't get anywhere alone, and I believe that's the most powerful part of my story.

While circumstances and trauma told me at nine years old that I was on my own, mentors began in my twenties pushing back on that narrative. So, while I have had a tremendous amount of pain and loss in my life, my heart feels nothing but gratitude.

Every bit of the life I live today from the awards on the shelves, the details listed on my LinkedIn profile, the doors that open and yes, even the doors that close, the experiences, relationships, travels, and lessons can all be tied back to one or all of the mentors in my life.

I previously mentioned my childhood experiences and their impact on my life to provide context and transparency. The world tends to amplify our wins and minimize our losses. I tend to lean the other way. In my teens, twenties, and thirties, my greatest fear was failure. This is not to say that I never experienced failure during those years, but that when I did, my approach was to bounce back as quickly as possible, ignoring and denying to myself, mainly, that anything had gone wrong.

As I was officially entering “mid-life”, I failed at something important to me that took me to not simply my knees, but facedown on the floor. There was no quick “bounce back” that time, and before I had hardly caught my breath from that first calamity, other dominoes in my life began to fall. Over the course of that challenging year, I experienced failure in every aspect of my life. I could barely breathe, much less stand. 

I did stand again, though, but only after submitting to the fact that maybe failure had something to teach me. Here are the cliff notes: it did. The lessons would continue for years through more loss, founding companies, building industries, traveling to Haiti, winning awards, purging eighty percent of my belongings, and therapy. Through it all, my mentors held my hands, prayed for me, poured into me, believed in me, and continued to speak my name in rooms that led to opportunities for not only my career but also the success of the businesses I was leading in. 

I read once about a conversation between a person in their early twenties and Susan David, a Harvard Medical School psychologist and leading management thinker. 

Twenty-somethings “open up to her about all the things they wish they didn’t feel. “I don’t want my heart to be broken,” they say. Or, “I don’t want to fail”

“I understand,” Susan tells them. “But you have dead people’s goals. Only dead people never get stressed, never get broken hearts, never experience the disappointment that comes with failure.” 

Before what I call my “Facedown” years, I will confess that I had “dead people’s goals” as I was running and hustling as fast and hard as I could so as never to feel the hard parts of this life because I had had all of “that” I wanted as a child.

One thing failure wanted to teach me was that no one can outrun their humanity, and in 2012, I met mine facedown on a pine floor, all alone in the middle of somewhere I did not need to be. On the flip side of all of that, I can honestly say that the endless failures I suffered that year led to the life I lead today, which is infinitely more than I could have ever dreamed up in my twenties. I am a broken record to everyone I mentor (or meet), “Fail. Fail a lot. You will thank me for it later.” 

So, with that, what would I START, STOP, AND CONTINUE if God gave me a do-over for my twenties/thirties?

Therapy. Without a doubt, I would have run, not walked, to a therapist. In my teens, twenties, or at any point earlier than I did. It wasn’t that I was anti-therapy or wasn’t aware of therapy. I would describe it as running on an overblown confidence of “I got it!” and no one in my life taking me by the hand and saying, “No. You really don’t.” Frankly, in 2025, the whole world is much more open about mental health. It is indeed a different world than it was when I entered therapy in 2016. That said, I continue to contribute my own story to the conversation as we continue to work to normalize discussing mental health and therapy in our schools, workplaces, churches, etc.

Hustling For My Worth. One of the hardest strongholds to break as a healthy adult has been my relationship with hustling for my worth. Even once I stopped believing it was necessary, it took a long time to break the habit of operating from that belief.   

Treating My Body Like an Afterthought. It was only in the past few years that I finally buckled down and got serious about my physical health. Prior, I would pay attention to it when something “popped up” that demanded addressing. While I was diligent about keeping all my routine maintenance appointments, I was less consistent with eating and working out. Additionally, one of the first things I learned in therapy was how trauma and grief will remain stored in our bodies if we do not process them. Everything is connected.

Curiosity. Curiosity has been a cornerstone to every success I have had as a human being, much less a professional. Cultivating curiosity for the world we live in, others, places, and life. Basically, in all the things you don’t know, and let's be honest, the things you believe you do know. Curiosity keeps us engaged in a world that is constantly changing. You have one ticket for the rollercoaster ride of life, and I recommend looking at the books you haven't read, the places you haven't been, and the people you haven't met yet for the exciting possibilities that they hold… make the most of your one life.  

Mentors. Mentors have been the gift of my life. Everything I have or achieved, I owe to them. If I could, I would relive the conversations and experiences I've had with them a million times over, and I'm sure I would learn something every single time. Forever grateful. Forever yelling from the rooftops and saying to anyone that will listen, get you one or a dozen mentors in your life. 

Hard Work. I have a reputation as a workaholic that I earned honestly. I have been and continue to be a hard worker, and I highly recommend being one as it has led to a lot of my success. That said, I have learned a lot over the years – the hard way – about what hard work can look like versus what I thought it had to look like. Today, I spend a lot of time emphasizing to the people I mentor, teach, and work with that it is essential to find work and a career that matches the pace and rhythms God specifically designed for you. It was a concept that was foreign to me until I read books on rhythm and pace written by various authors. However, it was Patrick Lencioni’s The Six Types of Working Genius that cemented it all for me. I recommend this book, the podcast under the same name, and the $25 online exam to help you discover your ‘working genius’ to everyone I meet. It has forever changed how I understand and approach doing my best work, and maybe even more, understanding how others do theirs.

I am obsessed with this generation of young adults. In a world that feels more chaotic than not, it is the earnest hope I see in young adults that shores up my own hope that we can make and leave the world better than any of us found it.

This past fall, while giving a lecture at a college, a student asked me what I would say to my 21-year-old self if I could go back in time with all I know now at (then) 53. The question rattled me a bit, and while I answered it, days later, I couldn't get their question out of my head.

The truth is that there are a million things I would do differently if I could go back in time, but none more than being brave enough to sit with myself, get to know myself, and seek help from a therapist. Everything else I would change would have changed naturally if I had been in better touch with myself.

So, more than anything, I leave you with – know yourself. Take the time. Be brave. Do the work. Make peace with where you have been and where you currently are. Until you do that, you are on a treadmill. Perhaps it gets moved from one job, town, or even relationship to the next, but you will still be on that same treadmill, running the same path over and over, until you finally stop and face yourself.

God designed you perfectly, and your life has purpose and meaning. Take the time to figure out what that is, and I promise you will find yourself in a place you could never imagine – at peace.

As always, let us know how we can help you navigate your world as you navigate the world.

In Your Corner.

See you next Tuesday!