My daily epiphany

I have epiphanies frequently. Which I think is good because it demonstrates that even though I'm getting older, I'm still learning every day and perhaps correcting my path if I'm not going in the right direction.

Here's my epiphany for today: I have been a complete hippocrate!

One of my greatest passions in life is facilitating learning - I love to be in front of a class, I don't care what the subject is as long as it involves people being engaged and becoming excited about the topic. I will spend every last ounce of energy I have to make sure that my participants are enjoying their time and truly getting something out of the class experience.

Next week I will be facilitating a completely virtual learning session. Needless to say, my goal is to have all of the participants engaged. I'm also working on curriculum for another pretty intense virtual class and I've been spending a lot of time thinking about that curriculum and how to keep it interesting. Think about it. It's hard enough not to multi-task or drift off when you're in a meeting or on the phone. It's even worse when you're actually already on the computer to take the class. It's so easy to check your email or update your blog!

So here I am tonight, sitting on my ethics class, as a participant, and WHAM! An epiphany! I'm a hippocrate. Throughout most of the class I've multi-tasked, dreaded the class, checked out, etc. Not to mention, I haven't done a great job of keeping up with the assignments. And my poor instructor. It's his first time leading a virtual learning session and although it's evident he has sound business knowledge, facilitation skills are a bit lacking. I should have seen this as a huge opportunity. I'm a facilitator, a business person, and out-going as anything and yet I've stayed silent, not participated, and been pretty much absent from the class.

The bad news is that the class is 2/3 over, however, it's never too late. So tonight I participated and jumped in when I could. I thanked my instructor and really stayed attentive.

Probably most people wouldn't classify this as an epiphany, but I do! When you have an opportunity to engage with other people, help someone else out, you do it! No falling into "victim" mode or mentality. It's about always thinking AND acting as a compassionate leader!