I like to think I’m good at self-leadership. And these are things I must be mindful of when I get frustrated, mad, inconvenienced, or simply put out!
Breathe
Don’t assume the worst
Get curious
Be flexible
I also like to remind myself of a concept called: Blessings & Burdens.
Arriving at my destination, I received a text that the time I was to speak the very next day had been moved up. No big deal... except that we had videographers scheduled and prep time planned and now all this had to be shifted - and fast! You can imagine the irritated thoughts that went through my head, because I also had invited guests who now all thought the event started later than the new start time. Ugh. I was frustrated, worried, and immediately wanted to reach out and ask a ton of questions to avoid this happening in the future. I’m glad I didn’t.
With brilliant attitudes, everything went off without a hitch, people were professionally flexible, and guests all arrived with plenty of time to spare. Being flexible and not letting the little things stress us out helped the audience feel the way we wanted them to feel. Inspired, encouraged, and educated. And yes, it could have been a whole lot worse. But it wasn’t. And that’s the part we chose to focus on.
Later, I learned that the person who I initially wanted to blame was not responsible for the change and had to juggle a million balls on her end to make sure everything went to plan. Turns out we were all in the same struggle together and I must give her credit for doing all that she did behind the scenes that we never knew about at the time.
When things go wrong, they can also go right. So much initially was going wrong and yet, what went right was everyone working together, laughing at the craziness of it all, celebrating the success of it together and recognizing the talent we had as a collective to pull it off.
The saying, ‘Blessings and Burdens go hand in hand’ reminds me not to forget the other side of every coin. Blessings and Burdens are a buy one get one kind of deal - always. When you are excited about the blessing, you often forget the burden side.
For example, you get a promotion with more pay (blessing), and now you must manage more people with tight timelines and budgets (burden). You get selected to speak at a cool event (blessing), but you must travel and then the time changes and that stresses you out (burden).
I bring this forward to drive home that every great thing that happens to you has a side that you also must deal with - AND - every bad thing that happens to you can have a valuable lesson to learn that brings you wisdom. Blessing and Burdens. They are always a pair.
Thankfully, the additional blessing from the burden of learning how to get a great event off the ground is that I get to speak again, this time in Salt Lake City on July 19th and it’s a wonderful event - A Women’s Leadership Summit. The sponsoring companies loved the event so much they are taking us on the road! Here’s a short clip of the first event.
When registrations are open, I’ll let you all know, and if you know of anyone in SLC that would like to come - or you are traveling there yourself - let’s meet there!
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