A day off work…hooray! Sort of.
Spent today at a a seminar up in Edinburgh, put on by the IMS Scotland, by a motivational speaker called Ed Foreman. It was all about having a positive attitude and how this can improve your life.
This was booked for me by my previous boss last January…no consultation or ‘development’ planning, just an email telling me date and time. So now, with a new boss and 2 new team colleagues, there was a little surprise at this…the question was why? So a good reflection on my current team dynamics!
Got there 2 minutes before the start time – BA flight delays – to find around 150 people from all types of Scottish business, sitting in a large, stuffy room, on hard chairs and no daylight. Did not bode well for me to keep awake for the day after a 5am wakeup.
The first challenge was understanding the speaker – a New Mexican/Texan accent combined with a rapid rate of delivery made it necessary to concentrate very hard for about the first hour until the accent started to make sense.
The day was a combination of lectures, anecdotes, ‘life plans’, sound bites and standing up and chanting motovational statements in unison. There was nothing new, most of the principles I’ve covered before, in other team building days, yoga clases and other means of study. They can be summarised in 2 key points:
– choose your attitude every day
– think positive, act positive, be positive
But the guy was a good speaker, knew enough stories and funnies to keep everyone focused and laughinh and had enough practical tips to be meaningful – guess that’s why he makes a living out of this. The ‘mind-controlling relaxation’ was great; I definitely fell asleep at this bit but was a lot more awake a the end of it.
Will it make a differenc – not sure. Need to think positively about it….
We did get one freebie though. Usually he gives out bags with Terrfic printed on them; however the last time he was in Scotland, he got taking to someone who thought that Scots were too dour to ever use the word Terrific, but instead may, if they were feeling really good, just about stretch to a different phrase – so that is what we got on the bag.
