Get injured. It enhances your business skills.
29 Aug 2014
Get injured. It enhances your business skills.
Lying face down on a treatment table with pins sticking precariously out of my feet I had a ‘Light’s on!’ moment. I am not sure if it was the removal of my Chi blockage or something less profound? But I had this sudden realisation that my Achilles injury has helped to foster our Find Your Feet business venture in Hobart.
Graham and I are currently in the deep end of a scary process - establishing a retail store in Hobart as part of an expansion of Find Your Feet’s services. Our mission is to provide education, apparel, and fast & light equipment to the Australian community so we can all venture further afield… leaving the elephant at home.
Right at this point I feel like I am the elephant… opening a zoo. Orders, staff, insurance, banks, finance, revenues, leases, outgoings… they look like friendly’ish words but they can have big feet and sharp teeth! However, navigating my through this is my friend the Achilles injury. Why? It is teaching me to ask for help and hand over control to the experts.
Naturally, the healing process started with stubbornness. My teachers once called this trait ‘highly independent’. Family and friends may lean more towards elephantheadedness (after all, friends are those who tell you when you have spinach stuck between your teeth… right?!). But over time I have been propelled onto more treatment tables than I have pairs of running shoes. I have uttered the terrifying words, ‘I need some help’ more times than I have said, ‘I’m hungry’. I am resigned to the fact that it will be the experts not Dr Internet who will help me get better.
In healing my Achilles I have exposed myself to new ways and treatments. Whilst I have still utilised massage and traditional physiotherapy methods, I have:
Yes. I have had, felt, spent and asked for more help & humiliation than any stubborn 28 year old should ever dream of. And I am a better business women because of it.
Not only have I had more time and energy in the day to work on Find Your Feet (thanks to a reduction in training volumes), but I have also become more open to asking for assistance. I am no longer wasting time playing Dr Karl on the internet, but rather I am going directly to the experts and asking, ‘How…?’ I am enjoying exposing myself to new methodologies and challenging myself in newfangled ways. My business and my coaching skills are all the better for it… I have learnt to ask for help.
So next time I get a niggle (hopefully never but that’s wishful thinking!), I will try to brush away the immediate panic and let’s fix it thoughts. I will shut the lid of my laptop and look to the amazing community around me instead. Less black and white in my thinking, I refuse to be an elephant standing in the same pool of mud. For underlying all of this, I now know that the benefits will be far greater than physical. My injury could help the entire Find Your Feet community too!
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