From One Wanderer to Another

We've been talking about Strengths this month on the blog, and I know of no one better to describe the impact of learning about your strengths, than my good friend Meredith (that's her in the photo showing off her adventurous side).  Meredith is a Certified Gallup Strengths Coach, AND an alum of my Wandering and Wayfinding course.  She is so good at helping people understand the value of their strengths and how to put them into action, that I hire her to lead a strengths workshop every time I offer a course or a coaching program.  Every. Time.  She is kind enough here to sing the praises of Wandering and Wayfinding, so let's just say it's a mutual admiration thing, and a Gal-entine's Day perfect match.  

“What will happen if we think about what is right with people, rather than fixating on what is wrong with them?” 

When this question slammed into my life in the summer of 2006, I was convinced that I was the poorest excuse for a graduate student that had ever graced the halls of higher education. A procrastinator and goofball, I was the girl with short, spikey hair and pink Puma tennis shoes in a cohort of business casual bland. My elective course that year was simply entitled “Strengths” and as I think back on it now, I’m amazed at how profoundly my inner compass was fine-tuned by this happenstance. To be told by my professor, a certified Strengths coach, that my procrastinator tendencies, which I was sure would likely lead to my eventual failure in life, were actually the key to unlocking my greatest ability to succeed was like having my life TV upgraded from black and white to vibrant color in an instant. Suddenly I was free to see myself as capable and prepared to face whatever would come my way - all because someone took a moment to point out what was right about me, rather than simply labeling me as wrong for approaching things differently than they would.

That course led to a decade of me teaching college students about their Strengths and in 2016 I finally got myself certified through Gallup as a Strengths coach and began working sporadically on the side with a variety of groups and organizations to do the same. Last year, however, I was in a major life funk, near burnout and generally discontent with life. I was going through the motions in my (unrelated) day job and not really sure what I even wanted for myself next. I just knew I didn’t really want what I had. So I enrolled in Brooke’s first Wandering & Wayfinding course and, providentially, was reminded why no matter what I do for my day job, I will always find joy in Strengths coaching.

You see, once upon a time I had gotten to lead Brooke and her colleagues through a Strengths training and suddenly there she was, using that very experience to help coach me through finding my way again. Throughout the course, I was reminded just how much I come alive when I get to talk about Strengths with people and how having my Strengths embedded in my compass will help me keep making the next right step, even if I don’t actually know the destination. I finished the Wandering & Wayfinding course with the simple resolution to be ready to say “yes” to whatever may come my way.

It just so happened that the next thing to come my way was the chance to guest coach the Strengths session in future W&W courses.

While I’m entirely confident that Brooke can teach the Strengths portion of Wandering & Wayfinding without me, (as proven by her previous two blog posts), I’m incredibly grateful that she created this opportunity for me to say “yes.”  As she once reminded me, every person, from a Fortune 500 CEO to a first year college student, is still just a human who needs to be reminded of what’s right about them from time to time.

And if you still need to be convinced that this opportunity will be worth your time, take it from one of my recent clients who said,

“In the biggest way, this is allowing me to let go of past jobs where I have felt like I was a complete failure and incompetent in life… (and that) my actual strengths were thought of as weaknesses in one particular company I was with. It took years after leaving that place to feel capable of achieving anything positive in the professional world, and now I understand what I would have been battling at that time. I am incredibly grateful for the work you are doing (with Strengths). It is changing my life quite literally.”

So from one wanderer to another, consider this your invitation to say “yes” to Wandering & Wayfinding.

Your future self will thank you.

Meredith Devey, Wanderer & Gallup-Certified Strengths Coach

Adaptability, Maximzer, Belief, Woo, Positivity