Our professional effectiveness, our leadership promise, our influence, even our general well-being can be surmised based on which word of this question we emphasize.
For example, if we regularly think (or say), “What can I do?” with a sense of exasperation or a feeling of powerlessness, our outcomes will not be as robust and positive as we would hope.
However, if we regularly think (or say), “What can I do?” with a sense of competence, capacity, and potential, our outcomes will be far more promising.
As advancement professionals, we spend our time planning for, and encouraging others to envision and participate in making tomorrow better than today.
In order to do that work well, it helps to make sure we are doing that for ourselves.