This is the first in a series of online coaching support for people who are exploring new ways of Being Extraordinary. You might just be starting out on the journey and would like some support in answering the questions in the book, or maybe going through a change in your life which is making it harder than ever to Be Extraordinary.
If you’d like to take part please contact us at the bottom of this page, sharing something about yourself and what you would like support in.
Our first series of conversations is between Anni Townend and Lucy Kidd.
Anni Townend is a leadership consultant, coach, facilitator and author. She works with leaders in organisations helping them to lead organisational change through people. She helps people get clear on what they are leading for, to build bigger relationships and to develop and deliver with and through others. Anni believes in the power of people to change and to create relationships in which they can be open, honest and trusting of each other – relationships in which people are affirmed, valued and respected for who they are and for what they do.
Lucy Kidd is an Executive Coach and Leadership Consultant who has recently moved with her family to Dubai. Although she didn’t know it at the time, she has been consciously practicing Being Extraordinary for the past 13 years since choosing to tackle some old childhood issues that were getting in the way of how she wanted to be. This taught her a lot about how to choose her way of being rather than surrender to experience and set her on the way to specialising in limiting beliefs in her work.
Here she reaches out to her friend and colleague Anni to help her to stay Extraordinary in a new and challenging situation.
Dear Anni,
I’d really like your help to find new ways to Be Extraordinary as I embark on creating a new life in Dubai.
Although it’s something I have wanted for a long time, I’m finding it surprisingly difficult to set up home in a new country.
We arrived three weeks ago and I keep waiting to feel that reassuring sense of satisfaction you get when you know you have absolutely done the right thing. Instead I have a constant nagging feeling that something is missing.
I know all the logical reasons as to why this is a great idea for our family, but I’d really like my emotions to catch up.
As you know, Dubai is already a home from home for us as both my husband and I grew up here and we have had family out here for years. We even met out here so I really expected more of a sense of coming home. The trouble is that in the intervening 10 years we have set up a lovely home in England and made some fabulous friends along the way who were hard to leave behind.
Although I know that we will have a great lifestyle here with our two boys getting a better education, having more quality family time together and me not having to work (not to mention the sunshine), I’m struggling to truly embrace the change.
As a coach, I’m lucky to have the toolkit to ‘switch myself on’ and get more positive, but I would really like it to come naturally! This is an extraordinary move for our family with the promise of big opportunities for us all so why am I finding it so hard to bring my own extraordinary qualities to the party?!
Please help!
Lucy
Hi Lucy,
Great to hear from you and your creating your new life in Dubai, a life which I know you have looked forward to for a long time as a family, and a place which as you say is a home from home – and yet isn’t feeling quite like home – yet.
I can imagine that it is really different being in Dubai now, to how it was ten years ago when you were there – not least because in the intervening time you have become a family with your husband and have two lovely sons.
I can really understand that whilst it is an extraordinary move for you all that it is also hard to bring all your extraordinary qualities to the party and that you really want to!
Your wanting to is a great place to get in touch with your being extraordinary. You have to want to bring your extraordinary qualities to be able to do so…. and sometimes it really helps – usually I have found – to take time each day to acknowledge just how extraordinary you are, and all that you have already done in just making the move.
And to consciously think about these things – and to talk about them – simply to stop and think, and to talk with your husband and your boys about just how extraordinary it is that you are all together in Dubai. And that you have made the move, and are together doing all kinds of new and different things and that sometimes it is difficult. This in and of itself is extraordinary! And can sometimes get lost in the busyness of doing all the things that I can imagine you are doing, that are new and exciting…. and perhaps sometimes a bit odd, because they are so different.
It’s Mother’s Day over here in the UK this weekend, and I think as a MUM you have done an extraordinary job of packing up the house, travelling over to Dubai with the boys, and holding the space and settling you all in and supporting your husband in all of you Being Extraordinary every day.
Hope this helps
Anni