Life Club!

I'm running a weekly workshop in Edinburgh called a Life Club. It's a great idea, the brainchild of author and journalist Nina Grunfeld - a relaxed space for yourself where you can take time out each week to take stock. You check in with where you are and where you want to get to, and get a bunch of help and support with that. In addition to that, each week there's a theme for part of the group work. I never fail to get something out of it for myself, so I figure it's worth sharing about what's coming up each week.

Life Clubs are held across the UK. If you'd like to come to the Edinburgh one, it's every Tuesday evening at the Cumberland Bar, Cumberland St, from 6.45pm. There's more info at the official site, including where other Clubs are held if you're not in Edinburgh.

So, this week the theme's how you put yourself across. Not just in interviews and marketing and so on, but in every interaction we have with other people every day. What this immediately brings to my mind is how shy I've realised I can be - I'm a past master of hiding myself away. I've not even noticed how good I am at it, which is probably why I've let myself get away with it for so long.

In putting yourself across, there's three areas to get clear about - who are you, who are you talking with, and what outcome do you want. I could generally do better at all of those, but for me the biggie is who the other person is. All too often, I imagine them to be in some way scary or angry with me, so I clam up. Or maybe I don't talk to them at all. So I'm really looking forward to what comes up for me in this week's exercise, which, suffice it to say, involves role playing situations.

Or perhaps I'm not.

Fortunately, that's usually a sign I'm about to learn something.