We spend a huge chunk of our lives at work and I believe that we should get the most from it. Because my early working life was dissatisfying and frustrating, ever since then I’ve been on the lookout for what works and what doesn’t.
My working life spans more than 25 years. It’s been a journey with many different roles, with highs and lows, and times of great fulfillment. Most of all it’s been a journey of discovery, both on a personal level and on a wider front.
Even when I found my ‘perfect job’, as trainer in central London, after a couple of years it started to lose its shine. This was not because of the content of the work itself but because of the lack of balance with the rest of my life. When I redressed the balance, work improved.
Later I had a role managing freelance trainers. This was an eye-opener as they were proactive in creating the lifestyle they wanted rather than passively relying on someone else to provide it. The question that formed in my mind became the seed for ‘Inspiration at Work’:
What is within our control to make work better?
Working with large organisations, I particularly enjoyed running graduate programmes because the delegates were enthusiastic, positive, energetic and keen to progress.
Yet meeting the same delegates two or three years later, many of them would be worn down and cynical about work. It seemed tragic and set me wondering what could be done to reverse this process.
I expanded my repertoire – researching learning styles, motivation and communication. I explored psychology and studied neuro-linguistic programming (NLP). By the time I became a qualified coach, there was an over-riding sense of how useful all this learning would have been to me earlier in my career. Now I was able to share it.
As I coached many different people from large and small organisations, I discovered that the key to unlocking human potential is inspiration. Inspiration is the essential spark that ignites action.
When we are inspired, we are fully alive! It is also a great feeling, and we have loads of energy and motivation. We can ‘see’ what is truly important, what really matters. That gives us laser-like focus. And the great news is that we can learn how to inspire ourselves, so we can be inspired whenever we want. By harnessing the power of inspiration, we can transform our working lives.
