Taking a risk in 2022. I’m doing it again…
Almost two years ago, after furlough led to redundancy – I decided to start building a new business in delivering mental health training. It was a difficult time for so many people, yet I remember feeling a strange sense of excitement at the prospect of creating a new business. Looking back now, people often comment on how difficult it must have been; but at the time, it was the perfect excuse to keep me busy and focussed on something which I had to make work for my family. Yes, it was a risk – but I jumped in with both feet and got to work.
Taking a risk in 2022…
I managed to secure my very first booking, two weeks before my redundancy officially kicked in. That felt good if I’m honest… the redundancy had been handled appallingly, so to be trading even before they’d officially gotten rid of me, felt pretty good 🙂
So I had the booking in the diary – An online session for a team of employees from St. James’s Place Wealth Management. They wanted an interactive, awareness session about coping with significant change. So I set to work and started to write my first ever course from scratch. You heard that right… I had the booking in place, the deposit paid, before even starting to write the course. I had taken another risk and it seemed to be working for me so far.
I needed a title. I wanted something short and snappy, which did exactly what it said on the tin.
I played with different titles for ages, never quite happy with the sound of it, or the image it created in my head. That’s when I thought about starting with the image first. I scrolled through Pexels.com for ages, looking for the perfect image which summed up the whole course.
It was about change first and foremost. How we react to change when we feel threatened or afraid. How we respond to such feelings, how we notice them and crucially, what we can do with this information – to help us move forward and maybe not quite flourish just yet, but survive.
And so I found my chameleon. It was perfect, and ‘Adapting to Change‘ was born.
Since then, Adapting to Change has been delivered to dozens of different organisations – from financial consultants to school educational trusts, architects, urban planners and beyond. It’s even travelled around the world and onto different continents. Adapting to Change was a risk worth taking; and just like its name suggests, it now exists in different formats – a webinar for large audiences, a virtual session for smaller teams, a one-to-one coaching version for leaders – and even a face-to-face version too! All thanks to a little chameleon who I’m yet to think of a name for… comment below with your suggestions if you like!
Skip forward to today, and one thing I’ve learned is that change doesn’t have to be huge to make a difference.
Often people are scared of change because it conjures up feelings of being unsafe, out of control and threatened. But actually, we can control change first. We can create moments of small, incremental change (habits); which when applied consistently over time, become a force to be reckoned with.
Often referred to as ‘1% gains’, these changes can build in momentum and because they remain manageable and within our control; we are rewiring our brain to no longer fear change in the same way we once did. It’s neuroplasticity in action.
Taking a risk in 2022…
Warning: Taking risks can become addictive..especially when you start to notice good things happening.
This year saw me embark on a new, additional direction for my business. I’m currently studying with Barefoot Coaching and the University of Chester, to become an ICF accredited Personal and Business Coach. I’m loving every minute of the training and already know it’s going to be a large part of my business going forward into the summer of 2022 and beyond.
I’ve been fortunate enough to gain several clients already – ranging from executive assistants to sponsored athletes. I’m about to head out to Switzerland in the coming weeks, to explore another new direction too. None of this would have been possible if I hadn’t started the year by taking a risk.
I’ve learned so much over the past two years. I still make mistakes and I probably always will, but I’ve definitely become more comfortable with change and no longer view it as a threat, but instead a possibility.
So if you’re thinking about doing something, but you keep putting it off. Or perhaps, you think it’s not quite the right time… I would say to you, the same thing I say to my new coaching clients… what’s the worst that could happen?