Growing and Giving

In 2002, I graduated with a Masters of Urban Planning from UC Irvine, and found myself at a fork in the road in terms of my career. Down one path, I had the opportunity to begin full time at a reputable urban design firm in a job that couldn’t have been less perfectly suited for my new career as an urban designer after my degree; and on the other, I had the possibility of building my own business as a web designer, which I’d been doing before and during grad school to support myself.

The former had the possibility of personal growth and giving back to the community; the latter had the opportunity to have complete control of my income, schedule and destiny.

I chose the second path. I felt like it would be the best compliment to starting a family – allowing my to work and raise kids while making good money and stay in a fast-growing opportunity-filled career path. But it wasn’t without tradeoffs, as I was choosing the career less likely to provide an opportunity to make an impact in the world in a meaningful way, and it put me behind a computer for most of my days, where I wouldn’t be able to collaborate, work with others and grow out of my shell as much.

So, at that time I also made a commitment to myself. I told myself that I would find a way to give back, give to the community, make the world a better place, and grow and challenge myself in new situations in other ways outside of my career.

It’s taken nearly a decade to make good on that promise. It turns out that having three kids in five years can derail even the most simple of good intentions.

But all that has changed now. I’ve done some pro bono work, building websites for nonprofits. I’m on my third year on my childrens’ school PTO board serving two of those years as the president with more than hundreds of hours of time donated to the school and being directly or indirectly involved in fundraising of almost $250,000 over the course of two years. I’m pursuing other ways to give back and impact others as well.

I’m again on a path towards giving back to the community, and challenging myself, and it feels great.

 

The “I’m Kind of a Big Deal” Workshop

The latest risk I’ve taken to grow and challenge myself was a speech workshop I took last month from Anne Marie Sebastiani, called the “I’m Kind of a Big Deal” project.

The “I’m Kind of a Big Deal” project was a series of workshops and homework that gave each of the participants an opportunity to embrace and cultivate our passions through public speaking. This is an area that most of us could use help in… myself included.

While I’ve learned to be comfortable in front of a large amount of people -from my time as PTO President, what I’ve wanted to improve most in my public speaking is being able to speak with influence — to convince those I am speaking to that the matter I am bringing up is so important that they want to do something about it too. There are so many issues I care about, and being able to speak about them convincingly is an important skill if I want to make an impact in the world.

I am happy to report that I feel much more confident and capable about my public speaking after the workshops. I chose to focus my speeches on how we can empower young girls to be the leaders of tomorrow through how we influence them today. I did a speech on this subject twice. The first time I tried to do this by memorizing the speech, but I have to admit that I wasn’t too confident with the memorization of influential lines and transitions.

I felt good about the speech, but did not feel I had the impact I wanted to, due to my need to reference my notes and a choppy delivery. While my audience said my speech was empowering and educational, I also wanted to learn how to be more confident and convincing.

Next was my chance to do a second try on the topic. I practiced the same speech 3 times in the morning (once in my head and twice in front of the bathroom mirror – which was quite helpful). By the time I was driving to the workshop, I was feeling quite bored of the speech… and I didn’t think that would make for much of a passionate delivery.

When I stopped to get coffee, I started thinking about other points on the topic I hadn’t included in my original speech, ones that I was much more excited to share. I wondered, what if I let go of my outline for the speech entirely, and just spoke about the topic, using some new stories & facts, and incorporating some of the existing speech’s points when I felt they fit? This would help me worry less about the content of the speech and focus more on what I felt I could passionately discuss.

See my second speech below:

Big Deal- Kathy from imagination.AM on Vimeo.

password: big deal

It worked! I basically improvised the speech, pulling in some of my old speech, but not all of it, bringing in other points here and there, and speaking from the heart. I felt much better about how I conveyed my points, and didn’t fill up empty voids with “ums” or trying to remember what I was supposed to say next.

As in past workshops like this, I also enjoyed the camaraderie that comes from a group of women coming together to improve and support each other as we discuss and live into our own personal goals and dreams. I hope that we can all take the time to focus on ourselves from time to time – whether it be in workshops, retreats or just supportive talks with friends. It is both empowering and exciting if we think about all we can do!

About imagination.AM

If you don’t know about Anne Marie’s workshops here in Sonoma, I highly recommend you get on her mailing list and keep your eye out for a session that appeals to you. Visit the imagination.AM website at www.imagination.am. Anne Marie is thoughtful, encouraging, and supportive – and she helps us focus on the things that matter most to us in our lives, so that we can truly live our passions.

 

Want to be inspired to grow and give?

I am excited about the upcoming two TedX events in Napa – which I plan to attend. Join me!