The last week has simply whooshed by. On Monday I held a session with 5 young Mums who were looking to get back into the workplace. We talked about self esteem and fear. It was obvious that these women were intelligent individuals who had spent several years dealing with demanding infants and like so many of us Mums, had lost some of their confidence. I remember having Amy (who is now 21 but I’ve got to say it seems like yesterday) and taking her out into the town for the first time. I packed the pram up and stacked it in the boot, put her in her car seat and off we went. It seems hard to believe, but I was terrified of getting the pram out and setting it all up and then pushing my new baby around the town. So much so that I parked well out of the town so that nobody would see me struggling and sweating with all this new responsibility, pram AND baby.

It is like that when we start anything new isn’t it. We feel totally out of our comfort zone and quite often, this is what stops us going forward – the fear of the unknown. But just pushing through that fear is what life is all about, and as soon as we realise that and recognise the feeling of butterflies in our tummies, we can deal with it, step out, achieve and feel great afterwards.

The next day I was working on similar issues of confidence but with a group of unemployed men, most of whom had recently been made redundant. Their self esteem was pretty low, although they were not that comfortable in admitting it, for completely different reasons from my Monday Mums. They were also having to step out of their comfort zones as their comfortable jobs which they knew so well were no longer there. Difficult! But, by the end of the day we were swapping ideas on the best way to secure interviews after applying for jobs and how to handle those interviews when they go that far. It was quite interesting, but none of them had ever considered starting their own business. Too scary! No, I don;t think it had ever come up on their radars.

That same evening I ran a networking session for business women in Ashford. After the girls shared their business successes, we looked at ways we could strive for financial freedom by building asset bases providing passive income.

So, all in all a pretty varied week. I finished off the week by traveling up to Kings Langley near Watford with my business partner Frances and my hubby John, to share in one of our author’s book launches. We have just published ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Get’ with Steve Grayson and he had arranged a get together and a presentation for his friends and colleagues to celebrate the launch. Boy, has he got some stories to tell. For most of his professional life he has been an undercover photojournalist for the News of the World, so you can imagine the tales he recounted to us! If you want to hear about them, buy his book (click here to go to KTP site).

So there we are, a week in the life of JT. How privileged am I to work with such a variety of interesting people.

By the way, if you want to keep up with all that is going on in the Jill Tipping world just add your email at the top of the page and I’ll add you to the list for my newsletters.