Many years ago as a teenager I attended a week long course along with 40 other young ladies on the different facets of engineering at Birmingham university. The course was coordinated and run by a truly inspiring lady called Lucy, she was probably in her mid to late 40’s and had frizzy greying shoulder length hair and wore huge glasses. However, I as the rest of the group could not take our eyes off her, not because she was outstandingly slim/beautiful or wore amazing clothes, it was her outstanding amount of energy and enthusiasm! She had this amazing charisma that drew you in to whatever she spoke about, she had this confidence I had not seen in a women before, a self confidence that was really reassuring, I felt very safe, interested to listen and well informed in her presence.
When she was presenting she looked like she was having a ball, exactly where she wanted to be and said everything she did with absolute purpose, her tone was firm, but excited it felt she engaged with each one of us in the room.
She inspired me to challenge myself that week whilst on the course to present in a way that I would not had not dared to do so far. I decided that it was really fun to present to people…what a useful belief that turned out to be! I aspired to be able to perform like her when I was older!
I thought about Lucy this morning as I was thinking of myself a couple of weeks ago working with a company in Sweden. I had a fantastic time, my energy levels just coasted on high all week, I never judged anything I did, my audience or anything else that came to my attention. I felt like I was always in the perfect place and everything that was going on around me was the ideal situation.
Here are just a few snippets of feedback I got from my audience:-
“I felt safe talking openly and at ease…”
“Rekha is a warm, caring person who is present and also great fun to have around…”
“Perfect lively trainer, Rekha knows what she is talking about and does it passionately with focus…”
“Really like Rekha’s humour and positive energy…”…the list could go on and on
The reason I share this is because I don’t believe any of my performance was to do with my age or working hard. I will always be grateful for Lucy showing me that behaving this way is an option. But I believe over the years I have accumulated beliefs, tools and consequently the skill set that support the way ‘I’ wanted to be. Feeling confident or comfortable is not something you have to wait for or even have modelled to you, you can be the person you want to be today, or even right NOW!
It is just about equipping yourself with the most useful beliefs to support that. The Option process dialogue is a tool that is second to none for doing this…contact me for more information.
Rekha 🙂
