As women it's often important to be amongst fellow women and be empowered. Life can often consume us leaving us with little to no time at all to know or remember who we are. The proclivities of life then takes shape reforming our mindset and can have us going through life falling at the wayside. But ask us (women) what our dreams and goals are, and hear the fumbling of our minds digging into the depths of our inner us trying to find our hearts desire out of the regimes that has made us.
Today (04/06/16) I went to an Empowerment Session called 'Aspire To Aim Higher' run by Life coach and mentor Sola Dawkins through the company Women with A Purpose- Their motto is "Inspiring, Empowering and Facilitating Women". I walked into the room very apprehensive as to what was before me:
Was it going to be conference based?
Would I need to interact?
Will they talk and I listen?
Who, What, Why questions bounced around in my head.
Unlike my thoughts it was very different from what I expected- A very intimate enclosure allowed you to walk into the room and straight away feel relaxed.
Sola's style of mentoring was unlike others, rather than she speak and we listen, it was we listen and then we interact. Today's sessions we were given a series of Proverbs and asked to discuss amongst ourselves as to what it could mean. As the theme was Aspire To Aim Higher and empowerment session about building the inner me, I made sure my answers were themed based. I needed to get to the inner me, I needed to soak up all that was being given out.
One of the proverb that stuck out for me was, "Do not look where you fell but where you slipped." And it laid most prominent in my head because in life (and this won't be the case for most people) once we've fallen we have hit rock bottom, we are now wallowing in our pit and on the rare occasion we are inviting others for a pity party.
We've fallen, and we have looked at the impact of the fall and how bad it hurt and unlike children we don't look back at what caused the fall (slip). As I work in a school I'll use this analogy:
🔹Small kids fall and they just get back up, dust themselves (may have a little cry) and off they go again
🔹Big kids fall, look around at the environment to see what caused them to fall (often embarrassed) have a laugh about it and off they go
🔸 Adults fall and often forget to look back at where and why they have slipped.
Now bringing it back to its original context, in life we will step out and make mistakes/it just may not go right, which will cause us to fall but rather than sit there and say "I will never do this again, look at the impact of me stepping out." Let's change our attitude to, "Hmm that went wrong, what caused this?" once identified some sort of rectification can be done.
Sola Dawkins challenged us to think outside of our present everyday life and to set goals for our personal life growth. One of the challenges was, "What will I do different tomorrow?" She told us not to set drastic task that we know we wouldn't be able to complete, she gave us an example of having a dentist appointment or an interview the next day… the day before your appointment or interview, there will be a preparation stage, where we will maybe go to bed early ensuring to have a goodnights rest for the morning, our clothes will be prepared from the night before, any last minute things will be done beforehand. So in reference to our challenges this is something that we want and are prepared to do, what will your different tomorrow entail?
This really challenged me as I have found myself in a place where procrastination and stagnation have consumed me. I thought to myself what could I really be motivated to do the next day that is very different from my stagnate and nonchalant life?
And then it struck me, my very thought process reminded me of how dissatisfied I was with the routine of my life. If I just decide to do ONE thing I would have firstly eradicated the stagnant routine I had going on and that in turn would be a change.
So the question was, how do I go about doing that. What's my passion? Surely it isn't just waking up, going to work, coming home from work, cooking, looking after my brother, going to sleep and continuing that SAME pattern… what do you enjoy?
✒️Writing… for many many years I enjoyed writing, went to college and uni studying journalism, then the vicissitudes of life came upon me and I tucked that passion away. It was recently evoked and one minor set back and I was that person who looked at the impact of the fall rather than the slip. But again here today it was awaken to reblog and to take my time with this passion, it will be my end result!!
Now we all know that we can all leave and empowered session and be empowered but that feeling will not last, some of us will fall back into comfortability and our objectives will not be kept, so we were set a 30day challenge to do something about our personal development or our personal goal (even if it's just to market ourselves on Facebook just anything) and with our 30day challenge we was each given a person to liaise with, someone to help encourage, someone who will motivate.
As the proverbs go, "Sticks in a bundle are unbreakable" which quite simply means we are more powerful as a collective than individually.
I set my 30 day challenge to Consistently and actively pursue my passion whilst also finding myself. I set myself this challenge as I want to persue a career in journalism, I want to be able to do what I know I am called to do. I also what to break the cycle of my everyday life, my everyday routine has clouded me, to the point where I have lost me.
As I continue to go to the WWP Empowerent session I will continue to blog about the progress I have made to Aspiring to aiming Higher.
Nicolle 💋
