I’ve had many ideas about blog posts I should write, but I seemed to have lost my voice. I had forgotten how to write authentically. With a little work, I am finding my voice…and it feels good.
Over the last 18 months, I’ve been working on understanding who I am and what makes me tick. It started with an opportunity to attend a spiritual gifts workshop at church, as well as taking a personality test based on the four temperaments. That got me interested in diving a little deeper by going through some Life Purpose coaching. The original idea behind this was to feel a lot better about life when turning 50 than I did when I hit 40.
The three assessments I completed were the spiritual gifts assessment, Wired That Way, and Strengths Finder 2.0. I was quite surprised when they all basically said the same thing. There were many a-ha moments in there that made me say aloud “now I get why I do that!”
The secondary reason that I wanted to go through the Life Purpose coaching was to reassess whether or not I should continue to pursue leadership positions in organizations or my community. If that answer was yes, then I wanted to know how could I use my personality and strengths to be the best leader I could be wherever I am. That answer was yes, and I was re-elected to the Minnesota Farm Bureau Board of Directors in November. Woo!
I turned 50 last October, and felt a heck of a lot more confident than when I turned 40, so that was good! There still seemed to be a lot of work to do on myself though, so I sought out leadership books and looked at applying for the next Minnesota Agriculture & Rural Leadership (MARL) class. This is a competitive application, where not everyone who applies gets selected. I made it in! My 18 month MARL journey will start in November, and I’m super excited AND nervous about the whole thing. You will hear more about my experiences once our class begins!
So, all this to say…I have looked at my style of communication from the beginning of this blog, and, I have to admit, a lot of posts sounded a lot like a mom lecture. Uff da! I’ve learned that mothering people is part of my personality…and that I need to tone it down a bit.
Finding my voice and learning how to communicate authentically is a journey…one that won’t end. My hope is to be more authentic, to let the fun side take over, and to let the mom side rest unless needed. There will be more posts about what is happening here farming-wise, some family stuff, as well as the leadership seminars I’ll be attending. I’m looking forward to writing once again…this time, with more exclamation points!
Thanks for hanging in there until the end!
