New challenges for a new year..

To challenge myself, I've taken on a couple of personal ongoing projects which will help me in my career as well as my life in general. The first challenge is to participate in a mentoring program at work, where I undertake one on one mentoring workshops with some senior managers in order to build up my own mentoring skills to help out other co-workers or anyone else really. I've overcome many many personal challenges in my 26 years, and although I've only had a handful of years in the professional world, I've had the chance to work in a variety of roles, in a variety of companies and with a great mix of people. I'm supposed to draw on these experiences to counsel and mentor others... Mentoring isn't about showing someone how to do something, or telling someone how to do something. I don't even really have to have done that thing before. It's more about having a wide range of ideas and suggestions and the ability to foresee possible consequences and provide an unbiased and objective view. Talk about a challenge... what if someone screws up because of my advice.... hmmmmmm....

My second challenge involves public speaking which I know 9 out of 10 of us are petrified of. I've joined Toastmasters, which is a national club based on building leadership and public speaking skills. I've been to all of one meeting so far and it was pretty scary!! I'm not afraid of prepared speeches... but impromptu speaking in front of a crowd is a different ball game all together (and you get penalised on the number of umm's and ahh's you do). I'm far more nervous about Toastmasters than I am about mentoring, it's more of a challenge, but that's what's driving me to get involved at the moment.

So along with my personal fitness challenge, these are two more things I want to achieve. Speaking of my personal fitness challenge, I did a pump class on Tuesday night and it brought back floods of memories from uni when I used to do pump every other day. It was awesome fun.. but I'm still walking like I have a stick up my butt !!