A new piece in my jigsaw!!

As my readers know, I had a tough week last week. But, sometimes we have to have tough weeks to grow. This time, I was able to use my feelings of insecurity and disappointment to work out another of the important missing pieces in the question of ‘Who am I?’.

This is how I did it…..

I sat down and really thought about why I was disappointed with last week. What exactly bothered me about the things that seemingly went ‘wrong’ and why was I hard on myself? Well, it was because I really want to help people. I felt that I hadn’t been as helpful as I should have been. Now here in lies my issue…….. I hadn’t been unhelpful, quite the contrary, I just hadn’t been as efficient at it as I hoped. But at the end of the day I still helped!! Another example of me and the glass half full scenario I guess!

The key point here, is one of my core values is to help others. This is actually a really important (and some might say obvious) point for me to discover, because for all the things that stress me out in my job, it brings home, it is all worth it because each and every day I am at work, I am helping others. This proves that although I sometimes think otherwise, I am in exactly the right type of work!!

In fact this is a huge driving force in my life. Why do I spend so much time at the pool coaching kids? People ask me this and sometimes I wonder why I do it too, but actually it is simple, I do it because I love to help them. Not just in the pool but to be a mentor to them, someone they can look up to. I get the best feeling when one of them comes to talk to me about something other than swimming (last week it was Maths) because it means they know I care…… about them as a whole person. I think it is really important adolescents have mentors that are not their parents.

So, from my week of disappointment, comes a week of great reflection and realisation, I AM A HELPER. I spend a great deal of my time helping others and I enjoy it.

I am beginning to realise that understanding yourself and what drives you to do things is absolutely essential in leading a healthy life and minimising stress.

SAA