Find your true strength

Over breakfast yesterday, we were watching Kelly Holmes winning her 800m Olympic gold. Even though we have watched it many times before, we were still … silent … spellbound

Why is it that some of us capture that brilliance and potential we are all capable of and some us don't? "How does she do that?" my 12 year old daughter turned to me and asked

Kelly is famous for overcoming heartbreaking injury at the World Championships in Athens to come back and win double Olympic gold in the 800m as well as the 1500m. But did you also know that Kelly was deaf until she was 3 years old and taught herself to speak by lipreading. In the army - despite her own fears of heights or water - Kelly was always first in line when it came to abseiling down sheer cliffs, or rafting fierce rapids. So the simple answer is, how Kelly does that, is she shows up - day after day, defeat after triumph, injury after injury, challenge after challenge

Showing Up is about being able to deal with life’s challenges, to embrace & even enjoy the difficulties we all face, & relish the ambiguity of life…

Putting the best of ourselves forward, bringing hope, hope for our businesses, our communities, our families and our world, just as Kelly did with that 800m. Having the skills and the belief system to Show Up, against the odds, even when we feel we are in hot water, is actually something we are all capable of

Isn’t Eleanor Roosevelt’s quote, “We are all teabags we don’t know how strong we are until we’re immersed in hot water” a great analogy for us to keep front of mind when we are dealing with life’s challenges and embracing the difficulties we all face. Not only is it so visually appealing, it also holds the truth that just like teabags we are made for the hot water of life’s challenges and difficulties. In the hot water we won’t shrink or split, we won’t dissolve or disappear, we will create something magnificent and refined, something to savour

We don't have to have an incredible IQ, we don't have to be a 'typical Alpha’, we don’t have to have extraordinary willpower or amazing self-control - we can all do this

The first step, is to understand the beliefs, behaviours and mind-sets we need to adopt to help us Show Up. These are the things which people who Show Up, think, feel and do to make things happen, even during tough times - when they are immersed in the hot water of life - this is when and where we can know our true strength 

The second step, is to understand the things which are stopping us from Showing Up. Then once we understand these things, the third step, is to note down a simple plan to help us make a step of progress each day towards Showing Up. We do this step, by making small steps of progress, each step a step forwards

Completing these three steps means we have created our own unique navigational system to guide us. It becomes possible for all of us to Show Up even when times are tough

To help people learn how to Show Up and put these three steps into practice for themselves we have created an Upskill, (our name for a course), which can help you Show Up. Showing Up includes online videos, 121 Mentoring, bespoke Journals, private podcasts and purposeful self-reflection exercises designed to help you unlock your ability to Show Up, even when the going gets tough, even when you feel you are in hot water. You can learn more about it here

We share sparky deep insights, simple practical frameworks and handy transformational tools, including tools for purposeful self-reflection, usually only accessible for high performance executives. Making these available for everybody to use in the real world

Showing Up is not easy, but it is worth it. We all have just one life, so let's make sure we Show Up, be brave, and quite literally learn our true strength

Discover more about Showing Up here