Reading the Desire chapter of The Joy Diet stirred something in me this week.  Martha Beck writes that if we are attuned to our heart’s deepest desire, we will recognize our calling, our gifts – our true purpose in life.

One of the places my journey toward more fearlessness has taken me this year has been toward a deeper understanding of my own truths – my desire.

Here is one of my truths that has been unearthed – I have a deep desire to speak with my own voice, and I want to do it out loud, in public.

I think I’ve known this for a long, long time, but it’s been buried under many layers of “I’m not good enough”, “Public speaking is about showing off – you shouldn’t show off” and one of the original ones… “women aren’t meant to speak in church.”

The first message was pretty constant, growing up in a conservative Christian home.  Again and again, I watched men do what I wasn’t allowed to do. When I was around fifteen, I practically begged my dad (who had taken over the leadership of our tiny church in the absence of a pastor) if I could at least be allowed to do the scripture reading on a Sunday when there were few men available to take on the duty. He said no, it wasn’t appropriate.

That message stayed with me through two years of Bible College. I could join the drama group, but I couldn’t speak in chapel. I could be the vice president of our class council, but I couldn’t be the president. It was there that I learned to “lead from behind” as I did all the work but let the male president pretend he was in charge.

I tried to honour the longing in my heart by sinking myself into drama. I went to University and studied theatre. But I wasn’t really meant to be an actor – speaking in someone else’s voice didn’t fit me very well. I learned fairly quickly that I was better at writing plays than acting in them.  I got pretty good at writing and directing plays, but I felt the longing as I sat in the audience watching other people speak my words.

After university, I started working in government, and soon I put my skills to work by becoming a professional communicator.  I wrote dozens of speeches, and then watched politicians and bureaucrats use my words on stage. I wrote hundreds of press releases and “quoted” the experts in my words, but with their names following the quotation marks. I wrote endless newsletters, web content, reports, communications plans, etc. – always telling someone else’s story and letting someone else be the expert.

Things started getting better when I left the government and started working in non-profit. I still mostly wrote for other people, though – about passions that were not my own, and stories that inspired me but didn’t really dig into the places where I wanted to dig. I got to do a little more public speaking, but more often than not I was preparing presentations for someone else to deliver, producing videos for someone else to narrate, and planning media events where someone else would step into the spotlight.  All the while, I wondered why I wasn’t more fulfilled, considering I was getting to do so many of the things I loved to do and writing about things I felt at least somewhat passionate about.

But then this year came, and more and more I began to realize that there was something else stirring – something that I’d been burying while I thought I was following my calling and sharing my gifts in the best way imaginable. I think the turning point came when I won the Communicator of the Year award and realized that, for me, the best part was when I got to speak in front of a room full of professional communicators about my experiences and expertise.

The truth is, the times when I’ve felt most alive are those times when I’m speaking and/or writing from my own truth, my own passion, and my own wisdom.

Having a blog (or two) has helped a bit, but it’s not enough. I want to speak and I want to lead workshops. I want to write more, but I want that writing to lead me to more opportunities to speak.  I don’t want to be behind the scenes anymore. I don’t want to write for other people or edit other people’s work.

That’s my truth – my heart’s desire.  Now that I’ve acknowledged it, I need to find ways to fulfill it.

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Maddie has no doubt that she’s an artist. “Of COURSE I’m an artist,” she told me one day as she put brush to paper, just after I’d mused “maybe you’ll be an artist when you grow up”.  Why would there be any doubt – if she can pick up a paint brush, dip it in the paint, and apply it liberally to the paper – that she’s an artist? Sheesh! Moms are SO silly sometimes!

Maddie is seven.  Last night, I picked her up from her weekly “young artists” class at the local leisure centre. After waving her art in front of my face, she bounded through the parking lot, talking a mile a minute about all the projects they were going to make. “Next week, we’re making DOLLS! Can you imagine? I don’t know HOW we’re going to make dolls! I’ve never made a doll before! And then the week after that, we’re making paper maché. I don’t know what paper maché is yet. Today we did finger painting and I forgot to wear my paint shirt, and – Mom – I’m sorry I got it all over my clothes, but the teacher says it’s washable. And why would you EVER make any paint that wasn’t washable? ‘Cause really – kids are gonna get it on their clothes!” She didn’t stop chattering – from the moment I picked her up, all the way through the grocery store, to the moment she got home.  I think the only reason she stopped talking was because she needed to divert her mouth to the task of eating!

Oh the joy and confidence of a seven year old in love with art!  I want that effortless joy, that confidence that I really AM an artist just by virtue of picking up a brush, that willingness to experiment with things I haven’t tried yet, that willingness to give away my art without doubting that it will be lovingly received, that unabashed delight in getting dirty, and that ability to make mistakes without translating that to mean I AM a mistake.

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I’ve had a few people tell me lately that I’m “one of the most fearless people they know”. Gulp. Part of me is flattered and wants to wrap that description around me like a colourful jacket and wear it proudly as I strut down the street. But part of me is completely uncomfortable accepting that moniker. It just doesn’t fit the real Heather I know deep in the hidden parts of me.

Sure, outwardly I do a fair number of things that might appear “fearless” to some. I took great delight in jumping out of a plane when I turned 40 (as you can see in the above picture). I’ve wandered in parts of the globe where few North Americans will ever set foot. I’ve taken pictures of gun-toting rebels in Ethiopia. I’ve slept in a tent on a farm in Kenya. I’ve stayed in bed-bug-infested hovels in Bangladesh where wild dogs sang me to sleep (or, I should say, howled me awake). I’ve para-sailed in Mexico. I’ve back-packed in the Rockies with a bell hanging from my pack to warn the bears. I’ve climbed on top of a bus in Tanzania to get good photos of lions 20 feet away (lions that could have bounded over that bus faster than I could say “oops – shoulda stayed INSIDE the bus”).

It all looks rather fearless, if you line up all of those adventures and stitch them onto my jacket like Girl Scout patches, but if you look a little closer at that picture at the top of this post, you’ll see the undeniable truth. That’s fear written all over my face, plain and simple. Yup, I was terrified. Even questioned my own sanity when the plane door opened.  But I’m kind of stubborn and more than a little bit proud, and I wasn’t about to admit that I was too afraid to do it, so I jumped.  And OH MY GOSH am I glad I did! 

The thing is, I was raised in a family of adventure-junkies.  All four of us siblings would rather take an adventure over a material possession almost any day. Offer us something exciting to do, and we’ll all be out of our chairs so fast our spouses barely have time to shake their heads and give each other that knowing glance that’s their universal sign for “the Plett siblings are at it AGAIN!”

But this post isn’t really about all the times I’ve managed to conquer the fear and do it anyway. No, this post is about the times I had no right to wear that jacket or accept the Girl Scout badges. This post is about the many ways that fear has limited my life.

In some really important ways, I feel like I’m the most fearful kitten in the litter, hovering in the corner of the room, hoping that the big hand swooping in will be gentle, but almost certain that it will not. Sometimes I even hiss like that little kitten, mustering up all the courage I can to send the big scary dragon back to where it came.

This year, I’ve been dealing with a lot of that fear.  At the end of last year, I’d had a growing realization that fear was limiting me in far too many ways and it was starting to feel really, really icky. I was being held prisoner by my fear dragon.

I was afraid people wouldn’t like me, so I made decisions that wouldn’t offend anyone. It’s kind of hard being a manager who never makes unpopular decisions, but I was trying my hardest.  Mostly I was accepting mediocrity and my team wasn’t growing because I wasn’t challenging people to try harder and I wasn’t standing up to bullies.  I was just trying to make sure everyone on the team got along, and ironically it meant that nobody was really getting along because nobody was hearing how their behavior was affecting people and excellence wasn’t really being expected of anyone. The team was stuck in old patterns and I was enabling them by being too afraid to address it.

Beyond the fear of not being liked, one of my biggest fears was failure, so I wasn’t taking some of the risks I wanted so desperately to take (in work or personal life).  Even though I longed to be an artist, I hadn’t ever tried to paint because it felt scary and overwhelming and I didn’t know who to ask to help me and I didn’t want to admit how chicken I was.  I hadn’t tried yoga because I had too many memories of how clutzy I’d been in aerobics or jazz dance classes and didn’t want to make a fool of myself again.  Even though I’d been writing for years, I wasn’t always writing from my most authentic truth because I was afraid of what people would think of me and afraid I wouldn’t be able to take the criticism when they didn’t agree.

So when the new year came, I knew it was time to do something about the fear dragon. Even though I knew I would never be truly fearless (in fact, everyone needs some fear because it tells us we’re alive and passionate and it helps guide our paths), I chose “fearless” as my word for the year.  In retrospect, I probably should have chosen “courage”, as I knew from my sky-diving experience that it’s not about not having fears, it’s about feeling the fear but doing it anyway.  But I stuck with “fearless”.

First, I created a little video montage to mark the beginning of the journey, and then I started chipping away at my fears one by one.  I took my first watercolour class. I signed up for yoga at the local fitness club. I learned to release my daughters into their own bold lives. I laid my soul bare in a frighteningly authentic way in front of my staff team. I put some more of my writing and art and creativity out into the world (including this website).

It’s been good and rewarding in so many ways, but I won’t lie to you – it has also been really, really hard. Sometimes it seems like every dragon we conquer reveals an even bigger dragon hiding just behind it.  I started painting, for example, and fell in love with it, but then people wanted copies of my paintings to hang in public places and one person even asked me to participate in a charity art exhibit. Yikes! Was I really ready to open myself up to critique? What if nobody liked my art?

One of the really big fears I’m still dealing with involves my leadership experience.  This has been a rocky journey for me lately, and the dragons just keep getting bigger.  After being really honest about my fears and failures with my team, it seemed like everyone responded really well and things got better for a while.  But then things started slipping again and even bigger problems started emerging.  Was I ready to conquer these dragons too?

Gradually I’m facing more and more of those dragons. When it came time for annual performance reviews, for example, I was much more honest than I’d been in the past.  But that led to some hurt feelings and even anger, and my first instinct was to brush it under the rug and pretend it wasn’t there.

I wish I had a nice simple way to wrap this up, but I don’t.  Today, though I’ve conquered some of the dragons, others feel even bigger than ever and there are more things to be afraid of.  And the truth is, I’m ready to walk away from some of these leadership challenges, but my fear of failure is telling me “you can’t do it! Imagine what people will say when you’re gone! You have to SUCCEED!”

But one way or another, I have to face these dragons. I do not want to end the year on a fearful note.  Whether I need to admit defeat or find a way to forge ahead, I have to do it with courage.  With God and my community (that’s you, dear readers!) on my side, I will carry on.

 Are you with me, dragon-slayers and sky-divers?

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If I’m starting a Treasure Hunt, do you think I should start talking like a pirate? Ay matey!

I’m so excited about the Treasure Hunt that I introduced at the bottom of this post!  It’s all about going on a journey to discover the clues that lead us to our passions, our values, our gifts and our calling. It’s all about finding treasure and learning to share it. It’s all about celebrating the beauty we see along the way and the beauty that is revealed in each of us.

We’ve got lots of fun and exciting clues to unpack as we set sail on this amazing voyage of discovery. The whole idea has inspired me so much, in fact, that I made a map on the weekend! What do you think? Does it look like a journey you want to go on? Think about all those lovely inviting islands! Imagine how invigorating and challenging it will be when we sail past the dragons and monsters together!

A few things to keep in mind as we set sail on this Treasure Hunt:

1. This will not be a straight path. You can not go from point A to point B (without detours) and expect to learn all that you are meant to learn about who you are and what you have to offer.
2. Even if you didn’t recognize it, you’ve already been on this voyage for a long time – probably since birth. Sometimes you’ll need to dig up clues that were already revealed to you (but perhaps forgotten) back then.
3. Sometimes there’s no other way to move forward unless we circle islands and re-learn things we’ve already learned in the past.
4. Sailing a boat like ours through so many islands, past dragons, and over rough seas takes patience. We can’t rush the process.
5. Yes, there will be dragons. Some of them will be big and seem impossible to pass, and others will be little but equally deadly if they get under your skin.
6. You have to pay attention and watch carefully for the clues. If you miss one, you might have to backtrack a bit before you’re ready to move on.
7. Treasure hunting is much more fun when you do it with people whose company you enjoy.
8. But… even though we’re in this together, sometimes your clues will look different from mine. That doesn’t mean you’re doing it wrong.
9. When you find treasure, it’s best not to hoard it or its value will wilt. It may even turn out to be fool’s gold.
10. Sometimes you’ll be offered false clues by well-meaning (or not) people. Be sure to test them before you accept them at face value.
11. We’ll need nourishment along the way. Pack well, bring good food, good wine, and some musical instruments for our entertainment.
12. When we’re weary from the journey, we need to cast anchor in a peaceful cove and just rest. It will be okay – the map will be waiting for us when we’re ready to move again.

Just one more thing… there’s a GIFT! Two lucky commenters will get to record their Treasure Hunt stories in this very special journal created just for that purpose! Any comment will do!

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In my travels in Africa, India, and Bangladesh, I’m met a lot of people making profound sacrifices for their passion, values, and beliefs.  Elizabeth was one of those people.

Though I never met the people in this photo, I know that they made sacrifices too.  We were staying in a pepto bismol pink staff housing complex in Northern Ethiopia. It was the Ethiopian Christmas season, so most of the staff had gone to spend the season with their families – probably 800 miles away in Addis Ababa.

I don’t know whether the tiny sparse bedroom I stayed in belonged to the husband or wife in this picture, but I know that it was only one of them and I know that whoever it was had made a major sacrifice to live and work in this remote site. Working in a village with the poorest of the poor, helping them plant gardens, build roads, grow trees, and protect the hillsides from erosion, this life was probably a far cry from what they dreamed of the day they married their sweetheart.

But something drew them here. Was it a passion to make a difference? A deep compassion for the poor? A commitment to following their heart? A faith-related calling? A sense that this was what they were meant for?

In our comfortable, affluent lives, we don’t have to make a lot of sacrifices. We have the luxury of dabbling in our interests and hobbies, trying our callings on for size, testing the waters of our passion – all within the comfort of our weather-proof homes.

What if it were harder? What if we had to make sacrifices? Would we still be willing?

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I remember her words so clearly. “You’re an orange.  I don’t see many oranges in government jobs. Most of them don’t last.”

I was working for the federal government at the time, and yes, I was one of those orange misfits she was talking about.  A lightbulb went off at that moment (an orange lightbulb, I suppose). “No WONDER I never feel like I fit here. No WONDER I just feel so dissatisfied with the status quo when so many of my colleagues keep insisting that they are so lucky to have good-paying government jobs.”

I was in a “True Colors” workshop at the time, and the person who spoke was the workshop facilitator.  She probably had no idea what a breakthrough moment that short interchange would prove to be, and how much I’d still be thinking of it as I continue to forge my path nearly 15 years later.

True Colors is a personality assessment that’s similar to Myers Briggs.  It’s much simpler than MBTI, though, in that there are only 4 colours (instead of 16 types). (Okay, I have to interject here to say that my Canadian brain is having trouble jumping from “color” to “colour”, but I have to be true to their trademark and at the same time, true to my country’s choice of spelling.) I’ve done both tests numerous times and have used them in workshops, but I keep coming back to True Colors because it resonates more with me.  I think it resonates because it is simple yet elegant, it places a special focus on relationships, and you are never just one type but a rainbow of colours with one being the strongest and others supporting that strength. The truth is, I think my artistic brain appreciates colours more than letters. One other thing I’ve come to believe over time is that your strongest colour may shift in different times and spaces in your life. (Green has always been my strong secondary colour, and I think lately it has overtaken Orange.)

(You can find some True Colors tests online, but I’m reluctant to link to them because the freebies I found seem too simplistic and not entirely accurate. It’s better to take a workshop, if you really want to learn more. I’ll also be writing more about it here in the future.)

I was an Orange misfit in a Gold world

In True Colors, Orange represents vitality, energy, action, excitement, and creativity. Orange people tend to be spontaneous and energetic.  They need new things to stimulate them on a regular basis.  They’re rarely satisfied with the status quo.  Doesn’t it make sense why I didn’t fit well within a government bureaucracy? “Energy, excitement, and creativity” aren’t exactly descriptors one would equate with the government.

It took me a while to leave the government, but I eventually did. Now I’m in a position that is a much better fit for an orange personality, and I’m not stopping here.  In the coming months, I want to move even further into what fits me by stepping away from a 9-5 job and growing my consulting business.  If I dig deep enough in my memory bank, I think the catalyst for this change was probably birthed the day I took the workshop and thought “I want to BE that workshop facilitator, not just learn from her!”

Don’t rush the journey

My point here is this – none of this stuff happens overnight.  It’s been 15 years since that workshop and I’m still learning about some of the stuff that got introduced there. Uncovering and embracing our giftedness is a life-long journey.  Just like a treasure hunt, you get little clues along the journey that point you to the next discovery. Sometimes those clues appear in quick succession, and sometimes they take years to decipher. Like me, you might have a tendency to be impatient, but sometimes the best thing to do is wait for the timing to be right and learn as much as you can along the way.

Though I stayed in a government job longer than I probably should have, I managed to eek everything “orange” I could have out of the experience. I changed departments every three years, I experimented with new and exciting roles, I progressed up the corporate ladder from clerical roles to a director position, I traveled, I interacted with media from around the world, and I learned as much as I could from mentors and teachers and workshops and books.  When I left, I took with me a whole arsenal of tools that helped me move into the future – tools that I probably wouldn’t have if I hadn’t been patient for the next clue and made the best of the situation at hand. (As much as I can, I try to live without regret, but rather gain value from every experience – even the ones that don’t fit.)

Let’s go on a Treasure Hunt!

For me, that True Colors assessment was an important clue in my treasure hunt. It pointed me to other similar workshops and books, it awakened a passion for self-discovery, and eventually it lead me to a place where I began leading my own workshops (including some on True Colors).

In the coming months, I want to start a new series on this blog that I’ll be calling “The Treasure Hunt – Discovering and Sharing your Giftedness”.  In this series, I’ll be offering tips, exercises, and advice about how you can learn more about who you are, what you’re passionate about, how you are gifted, and what you have to offer the world.  I hope that you’ll join me in the hunt. Now and then, I’ll throw in some special surprises, gifts, and interviews with amazing people, so come back often to ensure you’re part of the fun!

If you have any questions, comments, or suggestions for the Treasure Hunt, please let me know in the comments. One of the things I’m considering is a community space where we can enjoy the hunt together and learn from each other’s hunting tips.  Let me know if you think that would be helpful to you.

Welcome to the Treasure Hunt! Let’s have fun hunting together!

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When I ride my bicycle to and from work, I take a meandering path that adds at least 10 minutes to my time. Instead of taking busy thoroughfares that travel in a straight line, I take out-of-the-way side streets, bike trails, and little paths nobody else knows about.  Through a graffiti-lined tunnel. Down a quiet tree-lined street in a picturesque neighbourhood. Along the quiet river trail where a guerrilla gardener has planted raucous flowers. Behind the local ice cream joint. Past a little waterfall in a tiny park. Along the edge of a golf course where I occasionally stop to toss golf balls back over the fence to the gratitude of the golfer who overshot.

When people ask how I get to work, I try to explain, but I’m usually met with a lot of blank faces when they try to understand the logic behind my wandering journey.  When one of my co-workers moved into my neighbourhood and wanted to start biking to work, I took him along only once before he declared that it didn’t make any sense and he’d rather take the direct route.

If you’re looking for logic behind this… well, there is none.  It’s not a choice I make based on the utilitarian task of getting from point A to point B. It’s a choice that’s made because it makes me happy. I get to stare at big trees and soak in the scent of seasonal blossoms. I listen to the sound of the rippling river and the bubbling fountain. I marvel at the lush green growth on the riverbank.  I watch the birds fly in wide circles overhead. I meditate, I contemplate, I write blog posts in my head. I work my under-used muscles on unnecessary hills. I plan my day. I process the stuff that’s bothering me. I mentally prepare myself for the urban jungle (in the morning) and the demands of motherhood (in the afternoon). I run through conversations (both past and future) in my head. I create. I pray. I do so many other things than just transport myself to my destination.

The truth is, even if it didn’t feel like valuable time for thinking and processing and meditating, I’d still do it. Just for the pure joy of it.

What are the things you do that don’t make sense to anyone else?  What “frivolous” choices do you make just for the joy of it?

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“I appreciate the compliment,” I said, brushing it off, “but I really can’t take credit. The stuff you’re talking about happened at a grassroots level among the volunteers and had little to do with me.”

“Stop,” she said, interrupting me right back. “You need to listen to me. This organization has been transformed since you’ve been in leadership. You need to take some credit for that.”

I wasn’t prepared to hear her the first time she said it.  I was having a bad day (well, a bad week, really… maybe even a bad month) and was fairly sure that almost everything I’d done in the past 5 years that might look like success was probably a complete fluke and that there had been more failure since I’d been at the helm than honest-to-goodness accomplishments.

Just the day before, this same board member had sent me an email when I’d responded to her request for a powerpoint presentation I’d created.  The email had few words, but the ones I remember were “YOU’RE AMAZING!”

When she stopped me in the middle of the conversation where I’d tried to pass off any credit I didn’t think I deserved, I took note.  Maybe there was something in what she was saying.

The rest of the day, my footsteps around the office hallways took on an extra little bounce.  Someone believed in me. Someone thought I was amazing.

A little later that same day, I got a simple voicemail from one of my employees.  “You don’t have to return this call, but I just thought you should hear that you’re doing a good job.  Keep it up.”

Really? I’m doing a good job? Ha! Who knew? I grinned. The bounce turned to a little dance.

When I was growing up, there were two simple words that came out of my dad’s mouth almost every time we left home. “Be kind.” Simple as that.  No big speech about how we should live out our dreams, stand up for the oppressed, or be important in the world.  Just “Be Kind.”  In his mind, we were living successful lives if we were offering some kindness to people along the way.

The day those two people offered me simple kindness in their encouraging words marked a noticeable shift for me. My faith in myself grew, my commitment to my job grew, and, more than anything, my ability to perform up to the standards they believed I was capable of grew. Even better? I paid it forward by being kind to the next person I met, and the next, and the next…

It’s such a simple concept, this kindness thing, but it can have a transformative affect. It can change someone’s outlook on life. It can shift the path they’re on. It can spread like wildfire when they pay it forward.

Be kind. Be an encourager. Be a supporter. Offer the compliment someone needs to hear to help them get past a bout of self-doubt. Give someone ten minutes of your time just to listen to their stories. Value each person you speak to today. Leave a voice mail. Buy cookies. Take someone out for lunch. Drop a coin in a busker’s hat. Give someone the grocery cart for free instead of expecting the dollar it cost you to unlock it. Pay for the coffee of the person standing behind you in line. Tell your boss she’s doing a good job. (News flash – managers need encouragement too!) Send a thank you card. Put a love note in your husband’s brief case. Leave a friendly comment on a blog. Leave an extra tip for your hairdresser. Help someone carry a heavy load.

A few months ago, my friend Jo-Anne told me that after the planes struck the towers on that fateful day in September, she’d been struggling with how she could respond.  In reaction to the evil that she saw, she decided that the only wise response would be to start a kindness revolution. Starting with extending simple kindness to whomever she met, she believes that kindness has the potential to spread and heal and hopefully transform the hurts that cause anger, violence and evil. (I can testify that it’s working at least a little bit, as I’ve been the recipient of her kindness more than once.)

On this, the anniversary of 9-11, let’s start a kindness revolution.  It’s simple. Just be kind. It will change you. It will change the world.

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Moments ago, I spilled tea all over my desk. Fortunately, the only thing that got ruined was my certificate of completion for “Leading Virtual and Remote Teams”.  Frankly, it’s a bit of a relief that it got ruined, because now I can give myself permission to throw it in the recycling bin.

It’s been sitting on the corner of my desk since March when I took the course.  Normally I would have filed it in my portfolio where I put all of the course certificates, published articles, and reference letters that mark the learning and growing journey of my life’s work.  

There’s a good reason this one never made it to the portfolio, though.  It’s because I spent the three days of the course doing little more productive than doodling on scrap paper (hence the artwork at the side of this post).  I didn’t really deserve the certificate of completion, because I didn’t really feel like I’d completed anything.  

It was one of those expensive courses in a high-end training centre in a fancy high-rise building in a city I had to fly to.  Trust me – I felt huge amounts of guilt over all the doodling I did, considering the non-profit organization I work for had paid boat loads of money to send me there.  

I signed up for the course because I’d been having lots of challenges managing staff spread across the country.  It’s the one part of the job I never believe I’m doing right.  Building good team relationships with people you see only twice a year and speak to on the phone two or three times a month is tough soul-grinding - and usually disappointing - work. I thought maybe the instructor of this course would have the magic bullet that would propel me to success in an area I’d been floundering in for 5 years. 

It turns out, he didn’t have the magic bullet.  Truth is, there IS no magic bullet. (I guess I knew that going in, but a person can still hope, right?) The other truth is, I knew as much or even more than the instructor did.  I could have taught the course.  In fact… you know what? I think I might have done a better job.  Okay… can we be brutally honest here? It’s not that the instructor sucked, but… I’m almost POSITIVE I would have done a better job because I think I have a more natural presence in front of people, I have more relevant stories related to the course material, and I’d be more honest about my failures as well as my successes. (Yikes! That feels so close to bragging I want to hit the “delete” key, but I’ll leave it in there just to illustrate my point.) He did a fair enough job, but he was mostly regurgitating material written by someone else (one of the risks of taking a course at a high-end training centre where they pump out courses like an assembly line) which made him less genuine and less inspiring. 

I’m not about to start teaching workshops on leading virtual teams any time soon (I’m still feeling a little too tender about my many weaknesses and disappointments in this area), but I learned an important lesson during those three days of doodling.  Sometimes, we know more than we think we know.  

It’s not easy to begin to think of ourselves as “experts”. If you’re like me, you tend to assume someone else knows way more than you do, regardless of what the subject matter is. Why would anyone listen to you with your limited knowledge, plus a track record that includes failure in the journey toward that knowledge? What if you write something or teach a course and someone who’s a REAL expert shows you up as an impostor? What if someone asks a question you don’t know the answer for and you look like a fool? 

The truth is, an expert isn’t necessarily someone who knows more than you do – an expert is usually just the person who’s worked up the confidence to talk about what knowledge they’ve gained.  Chances are, you ARE an expert already (or at least close enough to teach someone else) and you just don’t know it.  Chances are, there’s a skill that you have WAY more experience in than I do, and you could enlighten me and/or others who may be interested in it.  You don’t have to be a PhD to start teaching workshops or writing articles – you just have to find an area where you’ve been passionate enough to put in the practice, do the research, and gain slightly more than an average amount of knowledge, understanding, and ability.  

There’s a good chance that someone who’s new to the skill and knows less than you do will be receptive to learning from someone who’s passionate enough to be interesting, honest enough to admit their failures and areas of weakness, and authentic enough to invite people to come alongside them in the learning journey rather than flaunt their “know-it-all” status.

What things do you already know that you don’t give yourself credit for?

Note: To give them credit, the training centre refunded my tuition fee when they found out I wasn’t getting much out of the course and I told them their marketing material falsely promoted it as being for more experienced managers than what the course actually targeted. That eased my guilt at least a little.

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Yesterday afternoon, I spent a little too much time reading blog posts that were mostly about “reaching toward the better version of me”.

Since I’m in a bit of a transition mode, working on building a consulting business, I’ve been reading a lot of books, articles and blog posts about all of the things I should be doing, could be doing, MUST be doing and would be a fool if I’m NOT doing in order to grow a business, be creative, market myself, blah, blah, blah.

At some point, I reached the breaking point.  Enough, I thought. ENOUGH. I am exhausting myself with all of the gaps in my understanding and the weakness in my efforts.  I am reading about everyone else’s ideas of how to reach my goals, and suddenly I don’t know for sure what my goals ARE anymore. I am comparing myself to way too many people’s ideas of successful living, and I am almost always coming up lacking.

I turned off the computer, walked away, and went for a nap.  It was the best thing I could have done.

Sometimes you just have to stop all the efforts toward self-improvement, and just realize that you are enough. Sometimes contentment is less about “being who you were meant to be” or “reaching for the stars” and more about “being who you are and accepting that as enough”.

And that’s why I’m going to stop this post with this paragraph, because it is enough.  I could try to be wise and witty and say things that inspire you, but that’s not where I’m at today. Today I’m busy playing, resting, eating, and just letting enough be enough.

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