take your vitamins

Last Thursday I made a little dream come true.

Less than two months ago I had the privilege of meeting Deena Gornick almost by chance and she really changed me in many ways.

She changed the way I say “thank you” and the way I think about myself when surrounded by people who are looking at me and waiting for me to do or say something.

Strange? Hard to believe?

Well, not at all when you are speaking about an executive coach whose focus is to help you believe in yourself, build your confidence and overcome the impostor phenomenon.

So yes, I made a dream come true: making sure the NOI Ladies met her!

We had an event on Fear and Laughter right in the room where I had met Deena for the 1st time and it was an amazing session.

It really seemed we all got carried away to another dimension and this is really what NOI events are meant to be about: meaningful, interesting, sharing sessions where each of us get something real and useful for their own self and projects.

What did we learn with Deena?

First of all, confidence is a choice. When it comes to fear, we cannot avoid it, it is a natural feeling that grows within us for many reasons and we cannot help but live it and work with it. Confidence is a different thing: we can choose to be confident, we can learn to be confident. It is amazing to see how this “behavior” has very little to do with yourself and a lot to do with how people perceive you. I always thought it would be the other way around.

Deena spoke about confidence and presence by giving us a useful example of the three circles theory by Patsy Rodenburg – the 1st circle is the one we all fit in when we are focusing on ourselves and try to comfort us with closing up, posing as if we were being threatened by someone (my natural way of standing or sitting in a meeting is similar to a contrortionist’s); the 3rd circle is the one where we still focus on ourselves but where we act in a way that makes people feel threatened (we are loud, do not care about others’ reaction, we are aggressive); the 2nd circle instead is a place of real PRESENCE, where we are aware of ourselves as much as we are of others and where we reflect this in the way we behave and present our persona to the world.

We also touched what I consider a vital topic for women’s (and people’s) success and wellbeing: the Impostor Phenomenon or Impostor Syndrome and how it is related to the locus of control, which varies very much between men and women. This conversation led us to learn how important it is to CREATE our destiny instead of HOPING someone will do it for us.

Last part of the session was made of exercised about having presence, being in the 2nd circle (mindfulness does help a lot here!) and…taking our vitamins! Yes, where by vitamins Deena meant daily pills of joy, respect, esteem, gratefulness, praise that we too often reject because we think we are not good enough.

Let’s embrace our greatness and our wonderful achievements and let’s be kind to ourselves in order to be able to be truly kind to others too!