Hi friends,

 

Today, I had a great training session about leadership and coaching with my colleagues, and I enjoyed it a lot. I learned a lot, and many light bulbs turned on for me.

 

Training days are one of my favorite kinds of days; I find them engaging and thought-provoking and can barely hold my over-enthusiasm from showing up. Like Monica in the show Friends, I keep wanting to raise my hand and say, “I know, I know!” to many of the questions the trainer asks, but I keep reminding myself to calm down and give a chance to others to digest the ideas and benefit from them. In fact, Monica’s reaction was the first sign I had ten years ago that I wanted to do this for a living; by ‘this,’ I mean being a trainer. At the time, I had just been promoted to a team leader, and a small team was assigned to me, so I needed to take a training about team management. I had so much fun in that training but mostly felt jealous of the trainer’s job and wondered what it would take for me to be a professional trainer, too.

 

I took some steps and stayed in contact with the trainer who gave us the session, who, fortunately, saw in me what I saw in myself. I attended one or two Train The Trainer group sessions with his company, but we did not continue due to some commitments their company had. I was disappointed but sure that training was in my future because I will never forget how I lit up when I felt there was a real chance to switch careers entirely to that field and talked to close friends about it.

 

After a couple of years, I asked my boss to take a short time away from my job to be a volunteer trainer in a soft skills program my company ran, which needed to be rolled out to all employees. I vividly remember telling her that I “needed” to do this to feel happier at my job and wanted her blessing, which she kindly gave. The training took a couple of days, and I did it with an experienced in-house trainer, which was a fantastic experience, as I suspected.

 

I also remember, before all that, volunteering one hour weekly with the Injaz Organization to teach soft skills classes to 7th graders in public schools, such as problem-solving and decision-making. I loved that part of my week and looked forward to it. The other day, I found thank-you letters from the girls I taught, which they wrote to me at the end of the semester. 

 

In my current job, I introduced a training program for sales employees to sharpen their sales skills with my knowledge of human behavior, and I borrowed stars from the sales team to help me teach the practical part of sales skills.

 

While I still have a full-time job that I am grateful for, I’ve been giving online and in-person training about my favorite topics since 2021, such as setting goals, building habits, and managing focus for groups and corporates, and I am proud of that. I am also grateful for Arab Woman Today, a non-profit organization that supported me in taking the leap into doing online courses. A dear friend of mine worked there, listened to my podcasts about habits, and asked me to give a series of online sessions to women that year. Committing with AWT created the accountability I needed to develop the training course. In addition, they constantly gave me generous and constructive feedback to improve my training sessions, which was a true gift. That year, 2021, I also launched my first goals program for sale publicly.

 

It’s your turn, my dear friend:

 

As you see, I learned long ago to follow my curiosity and trust my internal voice when it whispers: "I want more of this!". Doing this yesterday led me to live my passion today. I stopped waiting to be “discovered” as a good trainer and started sharing my work and learnings on my blog, podcast, and social media pages consistently so that people sought my expertise.

 

What about you?

 

Do you notice the activities that light you up?

Do you intentionally build them into your life, even if they don’t turn into a source of income?

Are you waiting for someone to notice you and discover your skills? Or is it time you take the reins of your life and pick yourself?

 

A snapshot from my week: we will always remember this historical win for Jordan's National Team.

Here is your weekly dose of The Sunday Spark ⚡️ a newsletter listing 3 sparks that I thought were worth starting your week with*: 

 

1. 🎧 I listened to this encouraging podcast episode by Jon Acuff while doing my weekly decluttering habit, to which I am dedicating 1 hour to 90 minutes every week: 9 Counterintuitive Ways To Enjoy Your 2024 Goals. I hope it inspires you.

 

2. ✏️ The author Todd Henry calls these questions: "The Daily Mental Checklist",  but I found them to be so helpful for those seeking to journal more and don't know where to start. This list of questions also reminded me of the Getting Things Done method from David Allen, which helps us define open loops and set actions to close them. Todd says: 

 

"You cannot allow life to just happen to you. You must live it. However, when work and obligations feel overwhelming, you can feel like you’re just being carried along by a momentum beyond your ability to influence. Here is a series of questions that can help you identify your current state and potential order-bringing next steps.

I know this is a lot to process, but simply keeping this checklist in front of you and reviewing it consistently can help you find an island of calm in the midst of the storm of life and work.

Don’t just move through your life. Manage it."

 

3. 💬 Another way to think about it:

"Self-care is giving the world the best of you instead of what’s left of you.”  ― Katie Reed

 

(Thank you Readwise for helping me find this quote from my readings)

* Note: To the best of my ability, I am trying to share content by authors who have not disappointed me, and they are hard to come by! Please let me know if any author I share about showed disrespect to Palestine.

 

 

 

 

See you next Sunday First name / my dear friend