by our guest, Barbara Victoria
My friend invited me to a Productive Lab Group Coaching at the beginning of the year. At first I thought it was just a good opportunity to interact with people and learn from their challenges. I am a coordinator/project manager and to be honest my feeling was: “I don’t need a coach to train me, I am already very organized and dynamic working by myself”. Nevertheless, I decided to give it a chance because I was in a vulnerable moment: finding a new job took me six months when, in other opportunities, only took me one. I was stressed and feeling like a victim, applying for jobs constantly, and having a hard time at enjoying the temporary ones that I had to survive.
During the first meeting, the coach, Marina, gave me a red flag related with a personal side project I was postponing, MY FIRST BOOK.
“That book you were working on for almost two years has to be finished, once you are done with it, your job will come”.
It felt like Yoda talking to me from a remote galaxy, but instead, the voice came from the human that was just in front of me.
So I jumped onto that boat, and from my first experience working with a group coaching I learnt that:
- Working with a group of people can be productive instead of distractive. As the social butterfly that I am, I used to believe that writing + group of people was a contradiction because I would lose focus. In this context I was wrong: working with others motivated me, and helped me feel much more supported, letting my courage bloom.
- I also learnt that confidence is a state of mind. It is a mental construction, and is usually the reflect of our actions. For example: our coach told me to connect with the type of job I was looking for by attending to activities, volunteering, and producing. That decision of “being active” helped me recover the self esteem that I had abandoned under a coat of dust, and a that actitud helped me improve my performance at interviews.
- Finally, I learnt that I am a writer. Yoda was right! And balance is going to be the key to stay focus with my writer side, along with all the other sides of my life.
The vision of the book, that was losing perspective because of my lack of confidence, turned into a commitment with the spirit of a marathonist: it became a compromise I decided to have with myself and also with the Productive Lab’s group. Suddenly, I had a team, and what used to be a red flag of insecurities, turned into a green light for my career.
