Guest Appearances

This year is starting out at full speed.  Things are coming along with my race/benefit season, I have a cool new logo, and my site with the Special Olympics should be up by the end of this week (I'll post that here as soon as it happens).  But I have had some other cool things happen, as well.

One of the first posts I blogged told about a photo shoot I did for the internal magazine of the largest retail company in the world.  Well, January's issue of that magazine came out last week, complete with my picture and a brief article about me.  As I walked into work there yesterday, my manager cornered me and told me I had to be on a regional conference call.  I was surprised, but even more surprised when I found out the reason:  the Regional Manager had requested my presence as a guest speaker, and wanted me to talk about my exercise/training/racing experiences.  Needless to say, I was quite nervous, but I tried to hide that well. I had the opportunity to share my story as well as my goals.  I made sure to tell everyone on there that I was racing this year to benefit Special Olympics Utah, and I shared my blog address.  I had fun with it.

And then I got another surprise.  One of my client's dad's contacted me and asked me to be a guest speaker at a group he is a part of.  The group is made up of highly financially successful men who, as far as I was able to tell, talk about ways to take care of their investments.  I was invited to talk on the investment of health.  Again, I shared my story, as well as a little bit about Linda and Tina. As I started out, I was a little nervous again, but as I went on, I really got going.  It was again a lot of fun, and I think it went pretty well, too.

With these two guest speaking opportunities, I have learned a couple things.  First of all, when I present on this topic, I like to talk about myself.  Not because I am self-centered or like the recognition.  I feel like I have had and am continuing my own success story, and I am just a normal person... nothing super-extra special about me.  So if I can have this success, I know that anybody can. And I love to help share that inspiration.

The second thing I have learned is that I am actually pretty good speaking in front of a group without a word-for-word script.  I learned to write decently well in a number of college courses (hopefully that comes through on my blog posts).  I also think I am pretty decent presenting something that is laid out in front of me.  However, I have never been extremely comfortable just talking about something in front of a group unless I have it written out word-for-word so that I can simply present it. For these two guest speaking appearances, I did not write out my presentation.  I kind of knew what I wanted to present, and just went from there.  And I feel really good about both of these opportunities.  Again, not to brag, but I just wanted to share that sense of accomplishment, and remind everyone that if I can do this, anyone can do whatever they put their mind, heart, and muscle (hard work) to!