Turning Negative Feelings Into Positive Outcomes

Writing this blog live from the other side of the world in California, read or listen on as I talk about using feeling to fuel growth.

Context

Around 5 years ago from now, I began to realise that managing my mental health was becoming a strenuous task. The fact that my mental health was even a task that needed managing was new to me, as I think up until that point I’d spent most of my life on autopilot and didn’t spend too much time thinking about how I felt about things. In these past 5 years, it’s safe to say the turbulence has been real. Many big life changes have occurred, I’ve revisited childhood traumas, picked at the roots of certain behaviours and like most of us, I’ve experienced ups, downs, highs, lows and everything in between.

In one of Dave’s songs ‘Survivors Guilt’ he raps ‘the highest of the highs never last for as long as the lowest of the lows’ and there’s been times over the past 5 years where this has very much been my case. At this moment in time though, whilst I’m not completely free of ill thought, I’ve gotten much quicker at removing myself from a dark state of being and I’ve become really good at using that built up feeling to fuel growth in many aspects of my life.

The Feeling Before the Outcome

In February earlier this year my team at work were getting together for a would you believe – an in-person meeting! It was the first time we’d be coming together in months so we all carved out 2 days to spend in our UK office. My manager asked if anyone wanted to contribute to the meeting and I jumped at the opportunity. Not because I had a business update to share, but because I wanted to bring something different to the table and wanted to trial a creative and mindset workshop with the team.

I’d never done anything like this before let me add. Leading up to our team get together, I had a general idea of the activity I wanted to host but was running out of time to really refine an approach and strategy for the session. It was making me nervous! Because all I knew was I wanted it to be really good.

Anyway fast forward to the week of - a day before the meeting - I found myself having an episode. What is an episode you might ask? I was triggered by a small event which very quickly sent my mind into overdrive. My mental state quickly deteriorated and I was becoming so consumed by my thoughts that it paralysed me. Not literally, but it was basically me, sat in bed, with my thoughts, I didn’t want to move, I didn’t want to speak to anyone, I didn’t want to do anything. I was like this for hours. It was getting later and later, my workshop was the FIRST thing on the agenda for the following morning and I was stressing myself out even more because I didn’t know how I was going to frame the whole thing. I needed a strategy, I needed a formal approach.

And in the midst of it all, all it took was a single moment. A moment for me to stop and to take a deep breath. It was the moment that I remembered who I AM that changed everything. I sat up in bed, looked around me and thought you ARE better than this. Tomorrow, is your chance to show your team who YOU ARE.

So I got up. Washed my face. Stood in the centre of my lounge, pulled out all of the materials I had prepped for the session.

And it just clicked.

I don’t need a strategy, I don’t need a formulaic approach. I just need to be myself.

I just need to tell my story.

And that’s exactly what I proceeded to do. I went in the next morning, briefed the team on the visualisation activity I had planned, and in guiding the process I told them a story, my story, on how in the absence of lots of things I manifested goals in my life through the power of visualisation.

And what was the outcome? They loved it. I delivered something so true and authentic, each team member opened up about themselves and their creations, it got deep! We connected. And like it couldn’t get any better, any better than me making people FEEL something, one of the senior team members was so impressed by the whole thing she said she wanted me to deliver the same in the US. And fast forward 5 months, I’m on the other side of the world in Silicon Valley, having just delivered my second workshop to a global team.

All whilst being my true authentic self. Something satisfying about being 5’2, brown, wearing your jewellery loud and proud in corporate spaces with a lack of diversity!

Know Yourself

I truly transformed such negative, PARALYSING feelings into a HUGELY positive outcome. How? By me knowing myself. Knowing who I AM. Knowing my story. Understanding my strengths. Knowing how my weaknesses FEED into my strengths. OWNING my vulnerability.

Now I want to close by saying me sharing this blog is coming from the LEAST self centered place. It’s not about MY personal achievements, but it’s about zooming out and looking at that journey. At that process, at that transition so it can provide a template for others, hopefully for even some of you. All I ask for anyone reading is to take the time to consistently remind yourself of who YOU are. On all fronts. What are you really good at? What are you not so good at? Where do you drive impact? What are your values, morals, dreams, aspirations? Where do you come from? Where are you going?

“Knowing yourself is the beginning of all wisdom” – Aristotle.