As some of you may have gathered by now – I quite often find inspiration for improvements in the way I do things from the world around me. If you read my 2010 New Year’s resolution blog (http://www.emmawarren.co.uk/?p=67), you will know that I resolved to make sure that we made a bit more time for family fun this year. I’m pleased to report that we have booked some holidays (yay!!) and that this inspired me to make sure that I created some “me-time” as well. I am very good at creating time to go and do Continuing Professional Development, as I consider this an essential part of what I do - my clients pay for my expertise, so I need to make sure that it is current. I find it refreshing and inspiring to challenge my thinking on a regular basis – but I realised that I wasn’t indulging my little inner self at all – lots of time on business and family was making Emma a two-trick pony!
So, despite the fact that I was convinced I had NO time left in the diary to play with, I have put in some things into the diary that are really starting to pay dividends. The whole office has signed up to do a 20km walk for charity at Just Walk in May (http://www.acrossthedivide.com/index.php/products/events/-/pt-0010/psc-0027/-/0/9/index.html). This meant that walking our dogs turned into a training exercise and it’s been really invigorating, as well as beneficial to the waistline!
Continuing with the pony theme I mentioned earlier, I’ve had a yen to go horse riding again for quite a while – I rode until I was a teenager – Thelwell’s pony had nothing on me! A few weeks ago, I finally got around to booking up a Saturday pony lesson and have managed a few more since then. I asked for a small dobbin-like horse, but ended up with a giant that has a slight tendency to spook at nothing occasionally – which in the beginning was quite daunting and made me think that this wasn’t such a good idea. However, through my leadership network, I recently made the acquaintance of a lady called Pam Billinge at Equest Partnership (http://www.equestpartnership.com/who-we-are/pam-billinge.html) who runs a fabulous course which helps people develop their leadership skills through the medium of exploring non-verbal communication skills by working with horses. I remembered her saying that horses are very tuned to our “inner story” and that you have to be very “in the moment” and presenced in order to get the best from them. So, instead of going along to the lesson and spinning a multitude of things around in my head (multi-tasking as usual!), I decided to concentrate on the horse and my riding – and what a difference it made! I felt more in control and less nervous, and the horse obviously sensed this as she started responding to me much more positively – and hence I enjoyed the lesson more.
The final piece in the story is that as usual, this sparked a thought across to my work life – we often spend our time supposedly listening to people, but quite often, because we’re busy, our ears are listening but our minds are elsewhere - and we’re not truly connecting with the person that we’re engaged with. So I’ve spent the last couple of weeks making sure that I am connecting, rather than superficially listening and believe me it’s made a real difference – try it and see how the quality of the conversations that you are having improve.
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I’ve tried improving my business finances by involvement with horses, but it wasn’t too successful. This is a novel idea though.