“What am I going to wear”
A health and nutrition coach’s struggle with her outfit to a corporate gig.
Several months ago, I was given the opportunity to speak to a firm of Solicitors about health and wellbeing. This is something I dabbled with before Covid, giving talks to SME, a Law Firm in Worcester, the teachers at Upton-Upon-Severn Primary School and the West Malvern WI. Lockdown made it tricky to continue, and having expanded my business in other directions during this time - outdoor group fitness & personal training sessions on The Malverns, mobility and strength classes on Zoom and 1:1 nutrition and lifestyle programmes in person or remotely - I’d put it on the back-burner.
I was really excited to be pushed in this direction again however, as I love talking to people about health and wellbeing and explaining the science behind them. Both my parents were teachers, and I think I’ve inherited their love of, and hopefully skill at teaching, although I definitely don’t have the patience to teach teenagers!
In typical Sarah fashion (read on to see the irony of this!), I grabbed the opportunity with both hands, jumped in with both feet, and before I knew it, had 4 dates in the diary to provide 4 wellbeing talks based around stress, sleep, nutrition, and exercise together with all the other small things you can add into (or take out of) your day to improve your physical and mental wellbeing, reduce your risk of developing a chronic illness, and hopefully helping you to live longer in good health.
I pulled up my previous talks and expanded on them, updating the information based on more recent science and prepared slides. Everything was going great (well, except I really am last minute, so all this was being done in the week running up to the first talk!) until I thought “What am I going to wear?”!
So I’m now in full panic mode - totally out of my comfort zone - and all those feelings of not being good enough, not fitting into the corporate world, not knowing anything about health and wellbeing came bubbling up, just over a pair of shoes!
I spend my life in sports or walking kit - thermal leggings, beanies, waterproof jackets and trousers with woolly socks and hiking boots in the winter, shorts, vests and trainers in the summer. I have been known to put on a posh frock and heels for a wedding or ball, but anything in between these two extremes, unless it’s jeans and boots with a shirt or jumper, and generally I panic! It’s not long since I just didn’t go to a meal at the local Golf Club because I had a complete meltdown over what to put on! What on earth was I going to wear to impress these Solicitors?
It took me quite a while to pull myself together! I really was in full-scale panic mode, which if you haven’t experienced imposter syndrome you may not understand, but which can be really paralysing and could easily have had me calling the company to tell them I couldn’t come! But I did pull myself together, with the help of one or two really good friends, and of course it really was irrelevant what I wore!
Amanda, the MD of the firm of solicitors had asked me to talk to her staff because she had worked with me 1:1 and had some amazing results, reducing her anxiety, improving sleep and energy levels and balancing her hormones, as well as losing some weight, something I always tell people will come if they get their body back into health. So what was important was the information I would share with her staff, how I put that information across and the small actionable things they could do, to give them some of the improvements to their health which Amanda had experienced.
So, I wore my jeans and some trainers. It’s who I am - “a trainer in trainers!” as it says on LinkedIn - and how I feel comfortable. And I hope it made the people in that room feel comfortable too and to see me as approachable and not scary. I’ve been told on several occasions that I am quite scary! One PT client, on arriving at the gym I was working at at the time, came wearing her heart rate monitor and her heart rate went up from 80 to 120BPM as soon as she saw me! I hoped not to have the same effect on the lawyers I was going to be talking to!
The feedback from the first workshop was great, and of course nobody cared a jot about what I was wearing, so when I returned a month later to talk to them about nutrition and it was a hot and sunny day, damn it if I didn’t wear shorts with my trainers! Go me! (Although I did have a skirt hung up in the back of the car in case I had a last minute change of heart!). I’m hopeful that this ridiculousness (is that even a word?) has been dealt with and won’t rear it’s ugly head again when I head up to St Helen’s at the end of September for Frodsham’s final talk in the series.
If you work for or own/run a SMB and would like to know more about what I can offer, please do get in touch. You can do so by clicking on the contact page of my website or through LinkedIn where again I’m trying to push down the thoughts that I don’t belong and expand my presence! And if I do work with you and your staff, be assured that I’ll be wearing my trainers!
#onehealth.