Life & Work in Balance – Still Learning…
When I was in my twenties I was on the fast track to building my dynasty. I was hired to create an international training institute and my bosses were 24 CEO’s & university Presidents who wanted me to support their international employees, customers, students. I was a one-woman show – performing wonderfully exciting entrepreneurial tasks for a team of organizations who would benefit from my work.
During my four-year tenure with my English Language and Multicultural Institute I created the institute from the ground up, did all marketing, hiring of 17 employees, curriculum design for six levels of full-time training, logistics & strategic planning, created the infrastructure for student housing, provided orientation to over 700 students from all over the world, implemented a computer-assisted instruction learning lab, co-created a winning proposal with NCR to provide training to 20 Saudi bankers as they decided to buy NCR computers for the Bank of Riyadh, among many other tasks. I was a busy girl!!
A year after I left ELMI I started my own management consulting and corporate training business which I made successful and enjoyed for over twenty years. I have always been driven to be a top achiever.
Over the years I have noticed a pattern occurring which I am in the process of changing, however. In each of the areas where I have put my career focus I have thrust myself fully into my work. A sensitive type A personality can become a basketcase if she is not careful, and over the years I have seemed to thrive on stress. This is an old pattern and now I am consciously focusing on changing that.
I am no longer in my twenties or thirties and I’ve already built and left several small empires of my own making. The last time I checked, ELMI was still alive & well twenty-five years after I created it – being managed by people I had originally hired. People in many corporations remember me and the impact that I had on their lives and careers at certain times in the past. Now my focus is on being very comfortable in my own life as I help others learn to be more comfortable in their lives.
I am currently on vacation and as I look back on the weeks before I left town I realize that the old patterns are still in me and impacting my peace-of-mind. In the last year I have consciously amped up my business and focused on marketing the “new internet/ social marketing way. This is a good way to get attention and share information, and it can not only be stressful to me, but it can also be a bit bothersome to my loyal followers. From my vacation perspective I can easily delete all of the e-mail spam that I am receiving daily from sincere service providers like me. I don’t need their information sent on such a regular basis. When in my home office it seems so much more important than it seems now. I’ve already contacted my team to say that I want to redirect my focus so that I can offer more quality and less quantity. I want to really be there focused for my coaching clients, and have more time and peace in my own life. I’m stepping off of the hampster wheel and will market in my own ways. This has worked in the past, so why not let it work for me now??
I really enjoy my writing and sharing, so this will be one of the areas where I put my energy. It is much more rewarding to all of us than the e-mails and marketing notices. And, maybe along the way something that I say will provide a key idea to you that will impact your life for the better too!
