Revise

This time last year I was preparing to reduce my hours at work and set up my own business. One year on feels like a good time to reflect a little. There has been a lot of learning, not to mention the small matter of a global pandemic. Whatever line of work you are in the impact of COVID-19 on how we live and work has been significant. I’ve chosen five words to prompt my reflections and I invite you to consider these also. Today I start with ‘revise’.

Revise

Relearn

Realign

Reinvent

Re-imagine

Revise ~ reconsider and amend something

If you ask children what work means you will usually get replies that include the following words; boring, hard, not fun, what you have to do. I have, for the most part, enjoyed the work I have done over the years. However, it has pretty much always felt like hard work and has taken plenty of blood, sweat and tears.

Part of the motivation for establishing Sarah Philp Coaching was to be able to focus on doing what I am good at, being able to say no to things that I don’t enjoy and let’s face it, I just don’t want to do. Setting up a business has been completely new to me and I have had to revise my benchmarks for success. In fact I have had to completely redefine what success means to me.

Having worked in local authority and more recently within an educational training company I was also given measures of success. These measures were determined by external forces and while I had scope within that to shape and refine them it was always limited. In revising what success means to me I have also had to reconsider what work means too. It no longer means 7 - 7pm at my laptop or driving around the country.

Success is about working and living in a way that is aligned to my values.

It is about working in a way that feels energising. It is about feeling that life giving fear when I do things that require me to step out of my comfort zone. It is about actively leaning more into my hopes and aspirations than my fears. It is about working with the people who challenge me to be better than I am and who stretch my thinking. It is about being less busy and yet having more impact.

Defining what success means will be ongoing I think. It will keep changing as I learn and grow.

What might you need to revise in your life or work?