So, another busy week on the 30 things for 30 challenge, although I have been a little slack at taking photos. I began the week (my challenge weeks start on Fridays) still at my mums house, helping her choose wedding outfits. This led us to have lunch in the John Lewis Bistro, where I had a simply outstanding stilton and pesto pasta dish – better than any Italian I’ve been too.
We saw a couple of fantastic shows, including the Christmas Spectacular at Thursford – a thoroughly festive occasion with dancing snowmen, beautiful carols and high-kicking chorus lines. Mum invited her friend Nesta, who counts as my interesting person for this week. Nesta is a self-employed fitness instructor and used to teach my mum pilates. She also shared my love of colouring books, much to the bemusement of everyone else in the car who doesn’t seem to get what they are about. This is a good time to mention that I completed another colouring picture – this one was particularly detailed and time-consuming, but I love the end result.
We saw a couple of fantastic shows, including the Christmas Spectacular at Thursford – a thoroughly festive occasion with dancing snowmen, beautiful carols and high-kicking chorus lines. Mum invited her friend Nesta, who counts as my interesting person for this week. Nesta is a self-employed fitness instructor and used to teach my mum pilates. She also shared my love of colouring books, much to the bemusement of everyone else in the car who doesn’t seem to get what they are about. This is a good time to mention that I completed another colouring picture – this one was particularly detailed and time-consuming, but I love the end result.
We also saw the Classic Spectacular at the Royal Albert Hall, an uplifting orchestra show made up of many famous pieces of classical music, with much flag waving and singing of Rule Britannia. The show culminated with the 1812 overture, complete with gunfire, cannons and indoor fireworks! Really quite exhilarating! During the show, I enjoyed a ‘blush cider’ – basically rose cider. After the show, we went for a thai meal at Thai Square One, where I took the opportunity to add another drink to my list – the Mekong Thai Iced Tea (Mekong is described as the Spirit of Thailand.) The best description I could come up with for this drink is that its ‘not unpleasant.’ While there’s nothing exactly wrong with it, it does have a rather peculiar flowery after taste. This brings my restaurant count to 7 and my alcoholic drink count to 8, so progressing well on both those challenge items.
While at the Albert Hall, I did another random act of kindness. The queues for the toilets were huge, and a mother with a young girl (about 8 years old) was trying to coordinate getting her daughter through the toilets, while buying icecreams for the rest of the family. This resulted in her telling her daughter she would leave her in the queue for a bit while she went to find icecream, to which the daughter looked terrified at the thought of being left in a crowd alone. So, instead of catching up on the days important facebook news, I introduced myself to her, reassured the mum she would be safe with me, and we had a good 10 minute chat in the queue. Her name was Olivia, she has just started playing the piano, had never been to the Albert Hall before but was really enjoying it. I delivered her safely back to her mum, after warning her that there were loud cannons in the second half that might make her jump!
On the letter writing front, I send a card to my Grandma (Dad’s Mum) – it was actually her birthday (unlike my Gran who I sent a card to last week) and I wrote a letter inside to updated her on all the news.
On return to Edinburgh, I attended three networking meetings – the first was a one-to-one with Stan from Coachmatch, a company who’s coaching panel I am signed up to. I now Stan fairly well due to being the Coachmatch relationship manager while I was at Lloyds, and Stan also came on my first walking-coaching retreat back in May. It was great to catch up with him and also to hear about some of Coachmatch’s latest initiatives – some of which may hopefully lead to some work for me.
I also attended a CFM Consulting event based around Psychological Models and Types of Coaching. While the actual event was fairly high-brow and not quite the content that had been advertised, it was interesting to mix with a bunch of coaches and corporate people. It made me realise how rusty I have become at networking conversations since being self-employed and I had to make a real effort to talk to people and not hide in the toilets. Definitely a skill to practice, although it did make me consider where I was with the right crowd of people if we didn’t have much to say to each other.
Following the session, I had another networking meeting with Nick Smith, who I was recently contacted by, as he is also an NLP coach who takes people into the outdoors. As well as discussing opportunities of how we might work together, this meeting also turned into a very useful peer-to-peer coaching session – we have agreed to meet regularly to continue supporting each other. He even sent me a facebook photo of a change he had made following our session.
On the letter writing front, I send a card to my Grandma (Dad’s Mum) – it was actually her birthday (unlike my Gran who I sent a card to last week) and I wrote a letter inside to updated her on all the news.
On return to Edinburgh, I attended three networking meetings – the first was a one-to-one with Stan from Coachmatch, a company who’s coaching panel I am signed up to. I now Stan fairly well due to being the Coachmatch relationship manager while I was at Lloyds, and Stan also came on my first walking-coaching retreat back in May. It was great to catch up with him and also to hear about some of Coachmatch’s latest initiatives – some of which may hopefully lead to some work for me.
I also attended a CFM Consulting event based around Psychological Models and Types of Coaching. While the actual event was fairly high-brow and not quite the content that had been advertised, it was interesting to mix with a bunch of coaches and corporate people. It made me realise how rusty I have become at networking conversations since being self-employed and I had to make a real effort to talk to people and not hide in the toilets. Definitely a skill to practice, although it did make me consider where I was with the right crowd of people if we didn’t have much to say to each other.
Following the session, I had another networking meeting with Nick Smith, who I was recently contacted by, as he is also an NLP coach who takes people into the outdoors. As well as discussing opportunities of how we might work together, this meeting also turned into a very useful peer-to-peer coaching session – we have agreed to meet regularly to continue supporting each other. He even sent me a facebook photo of a change he had made following our session.
Towards the end of the week, things got a little more light-hearted as I again stayed overnight with my friend Lindsey and her two boys, Rory and Bram. In addition to an extremely productive working session, where we have finalised the main logistics of a join walking-coaching and yoga retreat, we also managed to fit in a session of disco dancing, including among others: Batman, Cotton-Eye Joe, and Thomas the Tank Engine and Friends and brief session of the Limbo. This counts as another type of exercise for me!
I also jumped at the chance to say yes to another opportunity, when Lindsey offered me the chance to sample her Indian Head Massage skills, ahead of her offering them to clients on our joint retreat. Very relaxing and far more extensive than I thought including the neck and back as well. Highly recommended!
We ended the night with another 2 books, which I read to her son Rory, who is about to be in a nativity as a narrator. He therefore chose two Christmas themed books, the Mr Men Twelve Days of Christmas and A Very Noisy Stable. I’m very grateful to be getting the opportunity to read kids books, as in 4 weeks, I’m still only half way through my first ‘proper’ book, making the chances of me completing 30 in a year very unlikely!
I also jumped at the chance to say yes to another opportunity, when Lindsey offered me the chance to sample her Indian Head Massage skills, ahead of her offering them to clients on our joint retreat. Very relaxing and far more extensive than I thought including the neck and back as well. Highly recommended!
We ended the night with another 2 books, which I read to her son Rory, who is about to be in a nativity as a narrator. He therefore chose two Christmas themed books, the Mr Men Twelve Days of Christmas and A Very Noisy Stable. I’m very grateful to be getting the opportunity to read kids books, as in 4 weeks, I’m still only half way through my first ‘proper’ book, making the chances of me completing 30 in a year very unlikely!
Finally, I can add another exercise to my count, as I attended my swing dance lesson and instead of doing the normal Lindy hop, we learnt the Madison, which seems to be a 1950's version of the Cha-Cha slide, where the man on the record tells you what to do next, including the Double Cross, Cleaveland Box and the Rifleman (you may recognise it from the film/stage show Hairspray.)
So, that completes my week’s activities and here’s my top tips and learnings from the week:
So, that completes my week’s activities and here’s my top tips and learnings from the week:
- Reading books is time-consuming and despite extensive training as a kid to read books every night-time before bed, this is a habit I much regret getting out of and I want to try to rectify this!
- An Indian Head Massage is misleadingly named
- Networking with groups of people you don’t know is scary (more scary than it used to be when I was employed) although its worth considering if it’s the right group of people to be networking with.