3 Things That Helped in the Early Days of Starting A Business

My passion was in creating training curricula, that was research-based and had an impact. I often worked into the night searching for books and insights into best practice for leadership and what led to high performance in individuals and teams and loved trying to digest research papers. So tediously written and tough to read but in each, there was a nugget of gold.

In year 12, I had studied Physics, Chemistry, Biology,  Maths and Art… I liked learning how things worked and had an intense creative streak. Anything with an essay component was not my thing- give me an experiment, a hypothesis, some time to explore and an oral presentation or poster to deliver, and I was alive. And what fascinated me more than anything was people –  I grew up in a small country town and went to boarding school from 12 years old. I loved it –  you got to know that people are hugely diverse, and you really saw people for who they were – authentically.

I found the science of wellbeing, flourishing-  applied positive psychology in 2004 and wrote a program called ‘Activate Happiness’. Our staff at The Body Shop loved it- simple but powerful wisdom that made sense. To me, it was tapping into true human potential. It also aligned with The Body Shop principles of bringing your whole self to work and their core value  ‘Activate Self-Esteem’.

It incorporated values as strengths, a focus on relationships drawing on the work of Christopher Peterson, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi flow theory and Martin Seligman’s new theory on Positive Psychology and finished with some research into the power of Gratitude. I felt like I had found the wisdom of the world and delivering that first session was a profoundly memorable experience.

I had taken my strengths assessment – my top strength was creativity followed by hope, curiosity, love of learning, fairness and leadership. It all made sense.

This was ‘my buzz’ written in 20 words …. as recommended by one of the many business books I looked at. ‘ Building and delivering positive, personally and professionally insightful, visually exciting, interactive and highly contemporary research-based workshops that have an impact.’

This hasn’t changed.