I'm participating in my telecoaching conference and part of what we are doing is making peer calls to discuss the principles in more intimate, personal ways. For me, participating in the large group is less stressful because, frankly, less is required of me. In the large group, there is always someone willing to speak out, speak up and while I may not verbalize, I am fully present and participating - thinking, taking notes, having "aha" moments.
The first peer call was to be initiated by me - I would call my peer partner. So I did. It was a huge step for me to reach out and call a person I'd never met and talk about some personal stuff. But I did it. I was nervous that I would be lame or the person would think I wasn't "there" or something equally paranoid. The person I spoke with was gregarious, curious, participatory, friendly. It was a perfect match up.
I had my second peer call today. It has been a couple of weeks since the call and I checked my email but no contact from my peer partner - they were the initiator. I looked the person up and realized they didn't have email - but they had my phone number and they had an alternate email where the person would give them a message. I sent off a note, just letting them know I would be game for trying to figure out a time (they are on the east coast). We finally decided to talk today - 8:00am my time - I couldn't bring myself to force the person to wait until the middle of their day.
With the heat of the week, I have not really been as focused on the homework - sort of similar to my journal wrecking - away from home, out of my element, hot and miserable, so I didn't get much accomplished. I did some of the assignments but not all of them. I was worried that my peer would be so far ahead and that I would be letting them down by not having completed everything. When we got on the phone, the first thing the person did was tell me that they had not done the reading and they had not done the homework due to a stressful week. I reassured them that I had not completed all the assignments myself and we talked about what we had done. It was a lovely conversation and the person really seemed to feel comforted by knowing they were not alone. I complimented them on following through with the call, even though they had been worried about it because many people would just cancel instead.
I find it amazing that both weeks, I was paired with exactly the right person for me - comfortable, dealing with similar issues. While I'm not proud that I didn't complete all of the work (I hope to by Tuesday's call), I do think that things happen for a reason.
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