Sitting on my chair, home, wearing a turquoise blue winter dress, with the air conditioner on as well as the five full spectrum headlights. It was 7.40pm, an unusual Saturday night. Me, waving hands and saying ‘bye’ to my 40+ audiences via Zoom. I made it, my first public webinar as an organiser and facilitator. I took a deep breath. Somehow, it was unreal. I just couldn’t believe it finished. 1.5 hours seemed like a blink of an eye.
Gently, I turned off my laptop, but not the lights, nor the air conditioner. I just wanted this warm and peaceful energy to stay with me a bit longer. Playing Canon, one of my favourite songs as the white noise, I started to reflect and lost in my own thoughts.
It has been a very memorable month. I spent most of my free time on this webinar, Reimagine Your Career (Click here for the video). Even though it was just a voluntary project, I put all my heart and soul. I did learn a lot, so here we go. 10 life lessons that I hope they will inspire you in some ways too.
1. Have a clear purpose
You may have already heard of this too often, but how many of you actually do it? I didn’t. Until I was requested to write a proposal, my first task for this webinar. A big part of me was reluctant to do that. Why? Boring and time-consuming. As human beings, we tend to pick easy tasks.
However, when I started to research background information, I got excited. Wow, we could cover a lot in this webinar: The future of entrepreneurship, how to start your own business, how to find your career path, career challenges faced by women, the challenges and opportunities of the future work, and so much more. Therefore, when I showed my proposal to my team, I was expecting some praise. But no (some of you might have already guessed that), I was told my proposal was not clear. Unfortunately, I had to rewrite it.
But how?
“Just think of one thing that you want attendees to take away from this webinar.”
I followed it and understood the benefit later on. With a clearer purpose in mind, I was able to guide speakers to work out which content they could share accordingly.
This lesson made me think of my own life. From now on, before starting to do anything, I should always ask myself: what is my intention? The clearer, the better. If I am unsure, I can ask friends to help to clarify by asking me questions. Furthermore, there are two questions I believe even more critical for us to ponder:
· What is our purpose in life?
· What kind of people do we want to become?
These will help us when we need to make big decisions in life. The last situation I think we would like to see ourselves fall into is we find out we are not on the right track after hours or years of hard work.
2. Ask yourself WHY when you want to quit
To be honest, I didn’t expect there was so much work involved in this webinar. When H told me she spent 6 weeks on her April webinar, I was a bit surprised, thinking, I should be able to manage mine for around 4 weeks.
I was wrong. At one point, I was overwhelmed by the workload. Remember, I have a full-time job aside and other projects. I was so stressed that I wanted to withdraw. But it was not my style, I hated breaking my promises. So I asked myself:
“Let’s back to the origin. Why did you want to do this at the start?”
After a while, two words appeared, passion and impact.
One of my dreams is to work in the media industry. I love interviewing different people, getting to know their stories and learning from them. Therefore, this was an excellent chance for me to develop my skills.
Also, this topic was close to my heart. I went through all of these. From not knowing my dream career path to realise it and start to chase after. I could really feel completely different energy before and after. So I did hope others could discover their own dream career path and have the courage to follow it too. Life is short. Why not make some small positive impact for others?
Well, these two reasons were convincing enough for me to stay in this game. But how did I manage in the end?
3. Plan and prioritise
As a creative person, I always thought, life would lose so much fun and excitement if I plan everything beforehand, because I like uncertainty. I didn’t see the point of priority-setting either. So I was very grateful that my mind has finally shifted because of this webinar.
When I was writing the proposal, I didn't know the purpose part was the priority. Therefore, after spending hours researching the background information, I had to rewrite.
Back to our previous topic, this short of time forced me to think of trying a different strategy. How so? Well, I thought if I kept doing the same thing, nothing would change. Then I started to think and google: what activities I had to stop doing and how I could be more efficient?
So I did two things, very practical yet simple.
Firstly, I needed to know how I spent my time, so I wrote down all my activities. Then I circled my monthly priorities, so I could see the rest. Was there anything I should reduce to a minimum and anything I could move to next month? I then made some decisions accordingly. For example, I shortened my screen time, leaving my phone in another room and checking it only a few times a day. In terms of the movie time and catch-ups with friends, sadly, I had to postpone some of them to June.
Coincidently, one podcast episode I listened to recently stressed this principle also. It was called How to Win at Life. The method is:
Make a to-do list and circle 3 things that you have to do today. Then write these 3 most important things on a cue card and put it in your pocket to remind you to prioritise. If you achieve them, you win, even one of them. Because our lives are made up of days. So,
what are the three things that you have to do today?
Another thing I learned is when we plan, we need to add a rough time frame for each task, how much time I need to complete this task. I didn’t do that for my webinar, so I stressed out.
To sum up, part of me was so regretful, why didn’t I do this before? However, the other part of me was so happy. Better late than never. Now I couldn’t wait to see how much more I could achieve when I started to plan and prioritise.
4. Less is more
Do you ever have this moment? Your mind is just not at peace. There are so many things on your plate, and you don’t know what to do.
I did, especially when I was preparing my questions for speakers. I became indecisive and lost: “Oh my gosh. So many good questions I want to ask, but which one can help audiences the most?” Then this principle popped into my head.
I started to ask myself,
“If I only have one question to ask, which would it be? What if I only have two? And three? ”
Then I numbered them. By doing this, my anxiety level dropped, and my mind became peaceful again.
Don’t you think we can apply this to our lives too? When we are unsure, ask ourselves:
· If we can only achieve one thing in our life, what would it be?
· If we can only complete one task today, what would it be?
5. Communication
I learned something new about communication this time too.
First, it’s essential to find out the most effective communication mode for you and your team.
It really depends on individuals and information. Normally we texted each other via WeChat. However, when I asked my team for their opinions about my question list, I didn’t get much response. But when I asked the same question during our team meeting, it got resolved so fast. This taught me: always be open to try and adjust your communication ways.
In terms of my preferred communication mode, it's face to face due to its efficiency. Therefore, I love Zoom. This webinar helped me discover another benefit of Zoom compared to email. Through one on one Zoom chats with speakers beforehand, I got to know them much better and even their speaking patterns. Therefore, during the webinar, I felt much more relaxed interacting with them. It ended up becoming a casual chat rather than a formal talk.
This reminded me of the importance of building a rapport with people first. It makes your life easier and happier no matter it’s your study or work.
When communicating with people, we need to remember: never assume. I was so glad that I checked some potential questions with them beforehand. Some areas I thought would be perfect for them to answer, but I found out I was wrong.
This is a great reminder for our lives too especially here in Australia. Given it’s so multi-cultural, we tend to stereotype people. What we should always remember: every individual is different.
What’s next? Stay in tune for my next blog post update by the end of June if you want to know the rest of my life lessons.
For now, tell me the most important life lesson you’ve learned so far?
