Self-enhancement Workshop

I was once again invited by Systems Plus College, Angeles City to conduct a self-enhancement workshop for their college freshmen. This year, the topics were Time Management and Self-Awareness. For the sake of marrying both concepts, I gave my workshop the title: From Good Times to the Good Life.

I love giving trainings. As many might not be aware, everything started in grade school. I always felt like it was a privilege to be assigned as a student-teacher to younger grade levels everytime the teachers have to converge for seminars or meetings.

Eventually, my parents would ask me to handle some personality development sessions in their training center for healthcare workers and as well as in their colleagues' centers. I cannot really remember them much but I am sure that the experience helped me overcome my fears of teaching older, more experienced people than I am.

Later on, I joined one of the country's pioneer speech and personality schools as a part-time speech coach. It was a short stint. But it always felt great to have students thanking me for helping them improve their lives or even requesting me to handle their next classes!

I was able to learn much from my boss (who quite resembles Meryll Streep's character in The Devil Wears Prada) who brought me along with her in her corporate trainings. The experience gave me a good back-up when I was later promoted as a sales trainer at a multinational bank. There, I trained direct and tele-sales associates. I was able to build good "mentor-slash-friend" relationships with most of my trainees that I kind of became their "go-to girl" when they were already on the field. (Gahd, I miss them.)

For the past two years, I have received a couple of invitations for various speaking engagements. Some did not materialize out of constraints on schedule. But lately, I have been thinking of doing this regularly -- with or without honoraria, depending on the cause and the audience, just so I can continue my personal advocacy, which is to help empower people.

Last year, I was able to make young men and women come up and speak about their insecurities. According to them, the experience was very liberating. In the process, I felt the same way too, and at the same time, humbled, for I have to do it myself to be able to get my audience do it.

Preparing and giving trainings is a 2-way learning process. While they are mainly opportunities to transfer knowledge, I cannot discount the fact that as a speaker or a trainer, I also learn much from the process.

I am glad to have gotten very good feedback from my audience. But it ends there if I was not successful about inspiring and motivating them to live better lives.

We'll see. I always check with my contacts how well they are faring. My prayers for now.