We were lucky to catch up with Meghan Coyle recently and have shared our conversation below.
Hi Meghan, appreciate you sitting with us today to share your wisdom with our readers. So, let’s start with resilience – where do you get your resilience from?
Resilience comes from two places for me. My mom is a Vietnamese War refugee, and she immigrated to the U.S. without her parents at the age of 13. Learning my mom’s story of survival from the war, her experiences as a foster child in the U.S., and working her way out of poverty to eventually building a successful and fulfilling life for herself are reassuring to me that anything I face is surmountable.
Of course, it took practice in my own life, though. I figure skated competitively from the age of 6, and I learned pretty quickly that it took resilience every single day to quite literally get up again after I fell. In figure skating, there’s one jump that weeds out the casual figure skaters from the committed ones. It’s called an Axel, and it’s a half revolution more than all the other jumps. Most young skaters will spend a few months trying to land it, and quit the sport if they can’t land in about a year. I couldn’t land it for two years. I spent weeks and weeks practicing the same jump dozens of times every practice, and failing. Most other skaters would’ve probably quit, but I believe that I can learn anything, and once I did land it, it unlocked so much confidence. It also became my best jump for my entire competitive career.
Appreciate the insights and wisdom. Before we dig deeper and ask you about the skills that matter and more, maybe you can tell our readers about yourself?
I’m an editor at NerdWallet, where I write and edit stories about traveling with points and miles (and occasionally host some episodes of NerdWallet’s Smart Money podcast). On the side, I’m also an audio storyteller. I’ve produced features and podcasts for NPR, KCRW, Tom Brady’s company Religion of Sports, ESPN 30 for 30 Podcast, Blind Landing and many others. It’s a crazy time to be in media, but it is exciting to see how some stories do become a cultural touchpoint that bring people together. For example, I ate up all of the Paris 2024 Olympic coverage this year and am loving seeing the movement for people to watch more women’s sports. For me, though, I love this career because I spend every day learning something new and talking to people about their life and their passions. It’s an honor that people trust me to tell their story to a wider audience.
There is so much advice out there about all the different skills and qualities folks need to develop in order to succeed in today’s highly competitive environment and often it can feel overwhelming. So, if we had to break it down to just the three that matter most, which three skills or qualities would you focus on?
Resilience, range, and ownership are some of the traits I respect the most. There will always be challenges, and I’ve found success by keeping on after most others would have given up. I’ve had interviewees ghost me or get cold feet or cancel, but my tenacity to continue pursuing the story and building trust or finding alternatives has always helped me accomplish my creative goals.
Range helps fuel my creativity. I think learning about a lot of different disciplines, and being able to see the patterns or identify new strategies that might work if you apply it to a different field, is absolutely crucial in thinking outside-of-the-box, whether you’re in a creative field or not.
Lastly, ownership is important to prove out your own ideas. Whether you’re a solo entrepreneur or working within a big company, you are part of a system. I think taking initiative, problem solving, taking a project from start to finish — these qualities demonstrate that you can work within the confines of a system to make something your own.
Thanks so much for sharing all these insights with us today. Before we go, is there a book that’s played in important role in your development?
I just finished “Slow Productivity” by Cal Newport. Just like the book says, I think I was caught in this unsustainable cycle of performative productivity. I was addicted to checking things off my to-do list, even meaningless admin tasks. I had already read Newport’s work on deep work, but Slow Productivity truly convinced me that it was beneficial to create systems that allow you to focus on more impactful work and that my desire for variety and range in my work could be taking me away from the projects that I would be most proud of.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://meghancoyle.com/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/inkwaves
- Other: https://www.tiktok.com/@inkwaves?lang=en
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