Today’s video blog includes 3 new teams, a launch, 3 badges and a visit from my cat Missy!
Category: Learning New Skills
Starting a transformation
Words by Vicki
Vicki Saunders founded SheEO, a movement I am very proud to be a part of.
In case you are not aware, SheEO is a radically redesigned ecosystem that supports, finances, and celebrates female innovators.
I am going to share today’s interview in a different format – a Q&A style without my additional commentary.
Fiona: Tell me about a time when you stepped out of your comfort zone?
Vicki: I am almost always on my learning edge, stretching myself. I have a lot of ambition and energy for changing systems and creating a better world and each time I reach a milestone I push myself to what’s next. This SheEO journey is one of the most challenging things I have ever done.
As a leader I am holding the space for a 14year old Activator in our community to have the same power as a CFO of a global bank. I’m asking people to go on a journey that looks very different in almost every way to how the world is currently organized. We trust Ventures to build their businesses on their own terms. We use a totally democratic process for selecting Ventures – we trust the intuition of hundreds of Activators to select Ventures vs using an expert panel. We believe that people will find each other so we don’t assign’ advisors to the Ventures. They ask for help through a regular process and those who think they can help reach out. Everything is based on relationships, not transactions. When we launch a new country it’s because women in that region have reached out over and over asking to replicate the model and they self-organize to make it happen. It’s based on trust instead of control, on radical generosity over fear. I have to constantly be shifting my mindset because we can’t get to a new world by building it with the same principles as the one we’ve got. So, Every. Single. Day. I’m pretty much outside my comfort zone.
F: Why did you do it?
V: I do it because I know we can do better. The systems and structures we have in place were designed for a different time and they no longer serve us. I want to live in a world that works for everyone, not just the “winners”. We are wildly out of balance right now on the planet. We have an economic model that is bad for the economy and society. It’s extractive, persistently unfair (by design) and has led to a world where 5 people have the same wealth as half the planet. 51% of the global population receive less than 4% of the financial capital to grow their businesses and leadership. And we are burning through our resources like the party will never end. We need a giant reset, rethink and redesign of almost every part of our society. And most importantly I think that choosing what we value is the biggest hurdle we have at the moment. At SheEO we are valuing being radically generous with each other because we believe it will help us reach our potential and create a happier, healthier, wealthier society.
F: What was the outcome?
V: We aren’t at the destination yet but to date we are witnessing exceptional results. Ventures are growing at triple digit revenues, exporting and getting what they need from the community. They are emboldened and supported to run their businesses and lead on their own terms. And most importantly we are realizing that you can create a strong ecosystem when you trust people to do things on their own terms.
F. How did you feel before, during and after?
V: Before I embark on anything that’s outside my comfort zone I feel the pressure rise. Whenever I’m afraid of something I know I’m going to have to do it. It’s a muscle I’ve been building for a long time. A friend once said to me, “how much do you really want it?”. If you really want something, you’ll walk through the fire to get there. I knew that I wanted to have a big impact in my life and when I was younger I was afraid of speaking. All through school I wouldn’t raise my hand because I was afraid to speak in public. So, my way of forcing myself to do things is asking everyone I know to help me. I told everyone I know that I wanted speaking engagements and the first one that came in was for 1000 people. I was a mess. I stood behind the podium and shook the whole time and I wasn’t very good. But, with a LOT of practice I got better. I’m still nowhere near where I’d like to be but I get up there every time and speak about things I’m passionate about so that I can create the impact I want.
F: Would you step out of your comfort zone again? And why?
V: Yes. There is no other option for me than to keep growing. I’m curious about what we don’t know. I’m open to learning. I’m appalled with the state of the world. If you are comfortable all the time you aren’t learning. I’ve gotten very used to being comfortable not knowing and trusting that it will all work out.
F: What advice would you give people about what happens when you leave the comfort zone?
V: Breathe. It’s the answer to literally everything. Take three deep breaths in a row and you disrupt your stress response.
F: Any last words?
V: Get yourself connected to a community of people who lift you up, who get you and who have your back. This human thing is seriously challenging and it’s impossible to do alone.
BIOGRAPHY
Vicki Saunders is an entrepreneur, award-winning mentor, advisor to the next generation of change makers and leading advocate for entrepreneurship as a way of creating positive transformation in the world.
Vicki is Founder of SheEO and #radical generosity a global initiative to radically transform how we support finance and celebrate female entrepreneurs.
Vicki has co-founded and run ventures in Europe, Toronto and Silicon Valley and taken a company public on the Toronto Stock Exchange.
Vicki was recently named as 1 of 30 “World-Changing Women in Conscious Business” by Conscious Company Magazine and one of the 100 most influential leaders of 2015 from “EBW – Empowering A Billion Women”, In 2001, Vicki was selected as a Global Leader for Tomorrow by the World Economic Forum.
Finding your Fierce Female
Words by me (Fiona) based on an interview with Kim
When I spoke to Kim, she talked about the fact that being out of her comfort zone had almost become her comfort zone!
“I grew up moving a lot. We moved from I was born in the UK, to the West Indies and then to Canada, back and forth. I think that when you’re always the new kid in town, you are essentially always the ‘other’ and, as such, you don’t really get a comfort zone that is sustainable. So, I think, in many ways, being out of my comfort zone is my comfort zone.”
At Kim 20 she was working a spring ski season at Big White (a ski hill in British Columbia). “As the season was ending there were a lot of us who were looking for our next ‘adventures’. On one particularly enthusiastic night out – with perhaps a few too many Jägermeister shots, if I’m honest – a couple of the guys said they were going to northern Saskatchewan to go tree planting. To this day I can’t tell you why I decided to say, “That sounds interesting… I’ll do that too!:
The patronising look they gave me said it all… and then they said it out loud: ‘girls can’t do that!’ Well, this girl was going to show them. “Oh, yes, we can!”
I knew then that Kim and I had a lot in common!
Kim actually ticked a lot of ‘no’ boxes on doing this work “I hated camping. I’d never held a shovel in my life. I don’t do cold. And it was all those things… and more.
“But I did. I sucked it up and I did it and, in many ways, it was the making of me. Actually, after tree planting I went even further north and ended up emergency forest firefighting in the Yukon Territories!”
“Never in my wildest dreams did I ever see myself doing that, but it was pivotal to me as a human being, and to finding the fierce female component that has, from that point on, been integral to who I am.
“Once I’d done that, when I’d really taken myself completely, not only out of my comfort zone, but almost out of my own understanding of myself, it made me. Because I knew that if I could do that, I could do anything.
“It was, in so many ways, one of the most intensely uncomfortable – in fact, I call it my ‘In Tents Summer’ – and incredibly joyous times in my life.”
Choosing from many further examples of stepping out of her comfort zone, Kim chose her ‘latest incarnation’.
“A few years later I found myself founding and running a theatre company in London and from there moving to Amsterdam, where I was an editor and writer for national and international magazines and newspapers. I got to interview people like Madeleine Albright, Tom Wolfe and John Irving, who were all, in one way or another, huge influences on me and people I’d looked up to for many years. It was a great life!
“And then I met an amazing Australian man and, with no hesitation I can tell you that I fell in love with him at first sight. When we decided to get married, we made the decision to move to Sydney, where he grew up. It was an exciting time but also daunting.
“I had an amazing career and a phenomenal cohort of female friends. We empowered each other; we commiserated and celebrated together and when you find a group of fabulous women who all support one another it is extremely difficult to give up. That group of friends will always be priceless to me.”
Kim spoke to me about how hard it was to start again in a foreign country. With no children in tow, there were no playground or school gate meetings where she could make new friends. Also career wise Kim knew that, already in her forties, it was unlikely she’d be able to walk into a commensurate media career – she needed to rethink and retool.
“I had to figure out what to do.
“My husband and I co-founded a high-tech startup company together- which was wonderful – but, at that point, it was not an industry, I was completely au fait with.
“Once again, I was out of my comfort zone so, I had to figure out a way to find my place and my position in a way that was true to myself but also was useful to the company. So, I began to learn; I learned about the industry’s past and present, but more importantly I explored the future of the industry – and I began to write about it.
I started a blog and reached out to people that I felt were very influential in their industries. “Given my previous career, interviewing people and writing about them was definitely in my comfort zone. However, I was talking with and listening to people who were experts in areas that, at the time, I knew nothing about. In doing so I learned a huge amount and became a vastly better CEO.”
Kim’s advice for people considering stepping out of their comfort zone is: “I think people don’t realise how powerful and how plentiful generosity is around them. Too often we have been told that asking is a sign of weakness. It’s not. Know this: regardless of what comfort zone you’re stepping out of, be it personal or professional, there are more people willing to help than you know. They’re there to help you to take steps forward, to support you along the way and to celebrate with you when you’ve reached your goal.
“This is a journey. There’s no end point where you think: okay, I’m done. The adventure of life isn’t like that; every day is an opportunity to stretch and learn a little bit more. Who knows you may even plant a few trees along the way.”
Bio of Kim Chandler McDonald:
Kim is the Co-Founder and CEO of FlatWorld Integration, an Australian high-tech software firm, which is transforming the world of data. She is a globally respected thought leader on disruptive approaches – particularly those involving innovation and the global Digital/Data Economies. Kim is the award-winning author of Innovation: How Innovators Think, Act and Change Our World (2013) and Flat World Navigation: Collaboration and Networking in the Global Digital Economy (2015) as well as co-author of, ‘Entrepreneurial Renaissance: Cities Striving Towards an Era of Renaissance and Revival’ (2017). She is currently in the midst of a new book project, all profits of which will be donated to Lou’s Place – the only daytime drop-in refuge for female victims of domestic violence in Sydney. Currently Kim sits on a number of boards both locally and internationally and is a proud member of the inaugural cohort of SheEO (Australia), a global community of radically generous women transforming the way we finance, support and celebrate female entrepreneurs who are creating a better world. Formerly, while living in the Netherlands, Kim was a writer/editor for national and international English-language newspapers and magazines and host/producer of an award winning radio program.
My coaching Vlog #6
Finding space for your own business
Words by Fiona (me) based on an interview with Cindy.
Cindy was my first international story sharer and I am grateful she gave up time in her evening to talk to me. She was also my first example of starting your own business!
After working for a Canadian bank for 15 years, Cindy took a year’s leave of absence. She initially took a few months to spend time with her children, then when they went back to school “I now had to figure out what my sense of purpose was, without having a job to get up and go to every day. I hadn’t realized how much my sense of identity came from my work.
“Going into my leave, I did have an idea that I might be able to start a business focused on providing financial advice and consulting to business owners and so I planned to spend some time talking to business owners through the fall. But I was still quite nervous about the idea of going out on my own. I set a structure for myself where I’d work for an hour and a half on my business plan, then take a half hour break. Early on, I found that every five minutes I’d check to see how long I’d worked for and if I earned my break yet. I was just so panicked at that time having thoughts like “What am I doing? Can I actually do this? Can I make a go of this?”
Cindy is has decided that she can make a go of this and has recently resigned from her job and incorporated her company, Lightbulb Finance Inc.
If you are like me, you love to know what motivates people to make such big changes. In Cindy’s case:
“I had a few situations at work that had all happened at once and were all challenging to deal with. I thought, ‘I’ve done this for long enough that I know I can get through this. I just don’t know that I actually want to keep pushing like this’. I learned from every challenging situation I dealt with but I was not really sure that I needed to keep going through those sorts of things.”
Cindy has four clients already which is fantastic.
Cindy’s main changes have been about her identity and even just changing the schedules around how the household runs.
But also “there are so many times filled with joy and happiness. I love this. I love having the flexibility. I love being able to walking down the street at 10am on a Tuesday and not be tied to an office schedule.
“So there were there were definitely joyful times mixed in there with the panic and the nervousness or the ‘what comes next’ feeling as I tried to figure everything out”
Working on her own is different to being part of a team, having to deliver on her own. It can also be a bit isolating, but Cindy went gliding mid-week a few months ago to compensate!
Cindy talked to me about the benefits of stepping out of your comfort zone (something she does do regularly!) “It’s a chance to learn more about yourself, learn more about the world out there. I mean, I’m fascinated by this, within the first month of taking my leave of absence, I met this whole new group of people, mostly entrepreneurs. I think learning more about yourself, learning more about the world, and then what kind of possibilities can you fulfil in the world”
As always, Cindy gets the last word of advice about stepping out of your comfort zone:
“I think first of all, knowing yourself and knowing how you deal with change and with new things.
“Then you’re preparing yourself as much as possible. That might be planning and figuring out what structure you need as you go through a change, and then figuring out who’s going to support you, and who’s going to be there when you’re having challenges and celebrate your successes as you succeed.
“I just encourage people to do it in a way that’s that works for them. And that is comfortable for them. And for some people, it might be trying new food, for some people it might be making a big life change but I just encourage people to, to try it and see what else is out there for them.”
Coaching Journey Vlog #5
Good morning, it’s Friday again. And you may have noticed that I’m in a different location today. I am about to start day two of my coaching training at Telstra. So yesterday was lots of learning and a bit of practice, today will be lots of practice. So we’ve learned about Johari windows, about the grow model, about various other coaching techniques such as open ended questions. That’s one of the things I struggle with the most, I think. So it’s been a really good day yesterday, I’m looking forward to today, as a follow up. The last week, I have started coaching the team, and I think I’ve added some value. I will see in the long term I guess, if I actually have, and
it’s been a very fun week.
I think in my I’ve, yeah, I’ve had to really process where I’m at, the nerves of taking on my team. The confidence, you know, am I actually adding value. It was good to get into it, I do feel like, you know, maybe in a small way, I’ve added some value this week. And hopefully over the coming weeks, I’ll be able to add more. We’ve done a team charter, which has been interesting, because not all the team was able to attend the meetings. So we’ve done the team charter in two sessions so far. The first one being the brainstorming session for the various sections of the team charter, the second one, and then we kept that open for a week. The second one was the voting for which of those ideas they wanted to put through to the actual team charter. And again, because of people not able to attend the meeting, we’ve left that open for a week. And the idea being that next Wednesday, we will actually finalize the team charter and get everyone to agree to it. So I’ve actually now moved the time of that meeting so that hopefully more people will be able to attend it. That it’s been interesting. I’ve not done a team charter in three sessions before, but it seems to be working and the people who didn’t attend, were quite happy to have the opportunity and also to do that offline. So that worked out well for us, I think.
Other than that, I am ready for the weekend. But I’m also looking forward to a day of lots of practice of coaching. Where I get to be a coach, a coachee and an observer in apparently three rounds of three, so nine, nine coaching sessions, where I’ll be playing one of those roles. So that should be a fun day. And I should learn a lot and get lots of practice.
I’m also considering doing a formal coaching certification. So I’m not sure what that looks like yet, but I’m going to talk to a couple of people in the team who have done that to find out what my options are. So coaching is really resonating with me. So that’s a good thing. Talk to you next week. Thanks
Gaining Something New
Words by me (Fiona) based on an interview with Elisa
Elisa shared a different perspective with me – she carefully considered and attempted something specifically to get herself out of her comfort zone!
“I actually regularly get out of my comfort zone when I’m at my work. If there’s something new and shiny to try – count me in! Nobody else would like to tackle a complex problem – I’m there! You want an early adopter or an exemplar to be used as guinea pig – Yes please.
At the beginning of this year I realised that trying out new things at work is no longer “getting out of my comfort zone”. I needed something else to challenge me. I came up with these choices:
1. Publish a book (this will take time and still scares me so much. Brene Brown didn’t manage to dare me for this yet)
2. Jump from a plane over 10k feet and sky dive (I’m very scared of heights and I heard that sky diving will fix that. The only thing stopping me from doing this is well my anxiety attack. I tend to feel faint if I go higher than 4th floor of a building)
3. Learn something physical, which I haven’t done before – either dance, music, martial arts
Luckily both my daughters are karate students and since I’m already spending half our Saturdays at the dojo I might as well learn like them! So, I’m now into my fourth month of karate. So far, so good I haven’t received any real combos, but I do get bruised sheens from all the kicking.”
Elisa had other good reasons for choosing karate “I chose karate out of all the challenging things I can do because right now it’s the most realistic challenge that I can sustain for more than 2 tries. I also wanted to see how I learn using my body, coordination, fitness (or lack thereof) and focus. I noticed that I love learning, but most of my learning have only been applied using my head and my mouth for talking a lot about it. This time I would like to learn differently.”
I asked Elisa about her emotional journey, and she described it well “Before my first class, I was a ball of nerves. My oldest daughter is a brown belt and I’ve watched enough of her classes for the last 3 years to know how physically intimidating and exhausting learning karate can be. I worried about the fact that I don’t know how to do push-ups properly, I am not the sportiest person and don’t have stamina, and if [I would] able to follow the karate combos they will teach my class.
The Saturday class is a “mixed belt” class which means I’m learning with the higher belts too! My first class was brutal! I had to be slammed (dropped) a few times during my class. I think I did more push ups and sit ups in a span of 20 minutes than all the push ups/sits ups I’ve done in the 42 years I’ve been on this planet. I struggled, felt like my heart would be ripped off my chest at some point. I was wiping sweat off my face every second wondering where the waterfall down my forehead was coming from. The higher belts kept telling me I was going well for a first-timer, which I guessed encouraged me to not leave the mats in the middle of the class and throw up.
After my first ever class finished, I sorely walked to the change room. I felt totally wasted. But by the time I reached the car I wanted to go back in and do it again! I didn’t realise how fun and exhilarating it would be to get slammed.
I’m now coming into my 4th month of learning. I have my eye on that yellow belt. I’ll take this one belt at a time. I’ve also noticed a confidence I’ve only seen in bad-ass heroines before. Wow, do I have my shoulders more upright and my head higher. And damn can I push up!
Regarding stepping out of her comfort zone again, Elisa was clear “Yes. I’ll be working towards going up that list of challenges. I do somehow someday would like to deal with my fear of heights. And also publish a book. The interesting thing is seeing which will come first?’’
Elisa’s last words are: “Leaving a comfort zone for me means learning something new. It may be about something, about ourselves. If we frame it this way I feel more people would be bolder and take more risk. Because it’s not about losing our comfort, it’s about gaining something to improve ourselves, to feel fuller and well, new-er?
“Thanks for letting me share my karate story! Happy to share how my grading will go in 4 months’ time.”
Thank you Elisa!
Coaching Vlog #3 – assigned to a team!
This week I was assigned to a team.
Also features my cat (sorry!)
Transcript of the video below:
Good morning, and welcome to my third video blog about coaching. It’s been a couple of weeks. And yes, it has been two weeks, not the one that I promised. So apologies for that. The first thing that happened was that I got my second coaching badge, which I’m really pleased about. But more importantly, I ran a SWOT session to get it.
Apologies for the cat bombs.
The SWOT session (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats) that I ran for my fellow coaches went really well. And the best part for me was that I got feedback afterwards that a couple of the coaches, at least, really got something out of it and really enjoyed the session. So that felt brilliant, to be honest, that I actually ran a session that people got real value from.
After that, the…
I might leave that in there, I might do that. Let’s see what happens the cat just knocked the camera.
Anyway, what happened a couple of days ago, I had the expectation that I would begin my coaching in a real team around the first of August, and that’s been accelerated. Now, when something happens like that, my initial reaction is nearly always ‘well no, I’m not ready, I had another four weeks, I had another six weeks’. But as I thought about it more, I got more excited. My initial reaction was definitely panic. But as of yesterday, I started shadowing a coach who’s leaving the team at the end of June. And I’ll be taking over, she’s moving to a new team. So she’s not leaving the company, just the team. So after my initial terror, I became more excited about the opportunity, because the best way to learn is to do and also, I think I am mostly ready to do it. There’s still a lot I’m going to learn in the next few weeks before I take over the team. But I I feel like I understand the basics. And I’ve got so much support around me, as I mentioned in previous blogs, that I think that with that support, I’ll be able to really help this team to move through their agile journey. They’re very new. They just started this week, their second sprint. So they’re very new, they have got some people in the team who are familiar with agile, which will help me as well as them. And I’ll be given a really good hand over. So, I will talk to you again probably next week when I’ve got my through my handover, if not at the end of my handover before I start my new journey as the actual coach with this team. So very exciting times.
Again, apologies for the cat bombing. Thank you
Using capital to create the world we want to live in
Words by Fiona (me) based on a story shared by Lisa
The title of this blog is something that really resonated with me when I chatted with Lisa. She talked about the fact that what we invest in is what grows, and we need a diversity of people making those decisions.
Lisa “had a pretty traditional comfort zone to start with, I mean, I went live on the Gold Coast, went to school on the Gold Coast, went to university, studied Business and Commerce, and started my career at Deloitte as an accountant. And, you know, had a fairly exciting career in my 20s, I went around the world, and I got to meet lots of interesting people and do lots of interesting work”.
Then things changed when she had her first child “things kind of shifted for me in a way that I probably didn’t necessarily expect. I quickly realized that working around the world for six to eight weeks at a time wasn’t going to work anymore. And that jobs that are extremely intense, like [a] 60 or 80 hour week [became] very, very difficult to maintain.
“So I got really passionate about what does this mean for women, and the gender investment gap, and the gender gap in general?”
“Whilst I was building my career, I’ve also been really interested in investment from a young age. So I brought shares at 15 or 16, I bought my first investment property in 19. And then I brought five more investment properties through my 20s.
“When I first had my children, and I started to realize work is not going to be defined the same for me. First, I tried to make it exactly the same. And that didn’t work. And then I realized, I need leverage for my time, because that’s what I’m short of. So I started to get really passionate about investment, and looking at alternatives and investment, and in particular, looking at investing in businesses.
“And I started to realize that there was a real language gap. They talk about gender, pay gap, gender, investment gap, those sorts of things, but I felt that there was a really big gender language gap as well. I’d gone into rooms with men that were talking about investing in businesses. And I feel like I’ve had a fairly good background. I’ve studied, I’ve worked in those environments, I should be able to understand.
“But that wasn’t always the case. So I felt that it was really important to kind of turn up in those environments and participate.”
Lisa felt that stepping into these environments was out of her comfort zone, but also realised that women being involved in business investment should be very normal!
Lisa not only stepped out of her comfort zone to participate and learn, she then encouraged other women to join her. There is a “cultural kind of norm around numbers and money not being a woman’s forte.”
This bothered Lisa, as confusing language aside, investing in business is relatively simple “Do you have something that people want to buy, do more people want to buy it?” is her wonderful summary of the basics.
And are women great investors? “You start to realize that actually, when it comes to sharing, networking, connecting, they’re all very, very, strong skills that most women have, regardless of their educational background.”
Lisa was initially daunted by the challenge of being a business investor in a very masculine world, but continued regardless. She found it hard at times to admit to strangers that she didn’t know things. But she loves learning and research so 18 months later is feeling much more comfortable… so she commenced her next challenge of involving more women!
Lisa’s why was a real ‘aha’ moment for me: “I feel quite strongly that in the next 10 to 20 years, with the way that we’ve got technology changing, and the way the world’s changing, that we are going to have massive shifts and wealth. And the way that the world will be is going to be a product of who invests. So I do feel like it’s really, really important that it’s a diverse group of people that stand up to be investors, that it’s women, that it’s people of colour, that it’s people from all different backgrounds, and beliefs, so that we actually see capital kind of create the world that majority of people want to live in.”
Lisa has a pattern of stepping out of her comfort zone, and then making it comfortable by inviting others to join her, and then stepping out again. I must admit after talking to Lisa I want to join her in whatever direction she heads next!
Lisa did have a fabulous last piece of advice: “We don’t have wait until we are at the top of the mountain, we can have cocktails on the way.” Celebrating the little wins is an important part of making progress.
Thank you Lisa
About Lisa:
Lisa Brincat is a senior Strategy and Change consultant with over 15 years of experience. Lisa has Big4 experience from Deloitte, is a qualified Chartered Accountant, a CAPM Project Manager and a Certified Exponential Organisations Coach.
Her experience spans over Mining, Oil and Gas, Government and FMCG industries. Lisa has worked predominantly with top 500 multinational clients including South32, Rio Tinto, Anglogold Ashanti, BHP Billiton and Johnson and Johnson.
Lisa works with and supports CXO’s and General Managers to design and implement business improvement initiatives.
Facing your Fears
Words by me (Fiona) based on Taniya’s story
Taniya shared with me a story about facing a fear again and again!
Taniya’s tale starts about 5 years ago “I went snorkelling with a few friends in Exmouth and I got caught in a rip. I didn’t know what to do. Another friend of mine was swimming with me but he was far ahead. I screamed out, tried to swim again it – no one heard me, I was absolutely exhausted and I thought that was it! My friend finally realised that I wasn’t there and he swam over to save me and help me back to shore.”
You won’t be surprised to know that this caused Taniya to fear swimming anywhere her feet were not firmly on the ground. “I tried a year later to face the fear but I absolutely could not, I kept panicking and my body”
This situation continued until 2018. At this stage Taniya would only go out in water that was waist deep. And then: “My partner picked up a new hobby – kite boarding. I would sit out on the beach and watch him and the rest of our friends kite board out in the ocean, they would come back in at the end of their session and be loving life.”
Taniya decided that enough was enough! It was time for her to give kite boarding a go. “It wasn’t easy, not for me and I definitely didn’t make it easy for my partner. Kite boarding was literally taking the kite and going into the deep water, if you lose your board you need to drag yourself in the water with your kite, if you lose the kite then somehow you need to remain calm and relaunch it as you get carried out into sea, sometimes things can go wrong and you need to self rescue yourself and use the kite as a sail as you physically hang onto it the water to get back to shore and god forbid, if your kite blows up in the mid-air, you’ve got nothing there to save you!”
I must admit that sounds pretty full on even without a fear of swimming in deep water! Taniya persisted “I was a very slow learner, at first I would only go to beaches which had a long stretch of shallow water. This was an easier way for me to step out of my comfort zone but not jump into it all together. And now one year later, I can say that I’m a pretty confident kiter. I can go into deep water however I still can’t do a down winder yet (kite from one suburb to another in the ocean). That is my next chapter to conquer.”
And it is easier after a year of kite boarding?
“It’s not a happy ending story, every time I go out it’s an internal battle for me, do I go out into the deep? Do I just stay where it’s comfortable and glide along in the shallows? And sometimes I don’t get out of my comfort zone, I just stay in parts which are shallow, but I’m still proud of how far I’ve come and I’ve got a long way to go but I’m working on it!
I’m proud of Taniya too!
And Taniya’s last words: “I hope you enjoyed the story, not only did my experience teach me about resilience in my personal life but I’ve definitely learnt to implement that in work too.”
About Taniya:
I’m a HR consultant in the IT industry
I’m passionate about the outdoors, traveling and animals
If you don’t find me at work or the beach you’ll definitely find me at a restaurant
I also love hearing about inspiring stories from people so if you have one I’d love to hear about it