Yesterday, March 8 2016, was International Women’s Day.  A very good (male) friend put up a Facebook post today saying that International Women’s Day was supposed to be yesterday but seeing as how it took the women so long to get ready it was now on today instead. He obviously likes to live dangerously! He has a wife and 3 daughters – I’ll miss that man!!

Joking aside, on one hand it is unfortunate that we live in a world where havingto have a day to celebrate women is still necessary. On the other why not have a day to celebrate women? Aren’t we worth it?

Here at Hummingbird Learning Centre, one obstacle that I keep coming up against is my clients feeling that they are not worthy. In their eyes anything that they can do is just ordinary; if they can do it then it’s nothing special. Their attention is constantly being brought to things that they aren’t good at yet and everything that they have mastered is disregarded.

So who decided what people should & should not be good at?  Isn’t there a place for everyone? Doesn’t attempting something, even if one fails in that attempt, trump doing nothing? What about everything that one has already learned, doesn’t that count?

Learning is a constant state. We are all learning.  Every day we grapple with new technology and then it becomes common place and then overnight it can become obsolete and we have to learn something new all over again.

I learned something new yesterday.  I learned that when you put a group of people in a room together, magic can happen. There were men & women in the room – it might have been International Women’s Day but the theme of the seminar was #SuccessIsSimple, which is universal.

Yesterday it was primarily a business focused event, yet we danced, drank juices and walked on glass!!! It was my first time to be a speaker at an event such as this and I got to share the stage with incredible and inspiring people but one thing that each of us had in common was that we are ordinary people, the same as everyone else.

One of the speakers talked about the customer experience verses customer service and explained that how a customer is made to feel will always win out over the service that is given. When applied to learning, how a person feels about their abilities will always come first for them. You can show someone how to do something but if they don’t believe that they can, then you must deal with that before starting anything else.

I did my first Glass Walk yesterday.  I might sound a bit blasé about it but it really wasn’t a big deal in the end. In fact most people who were at the seminar yesterday did it and why? Because after such an amazing day, we all believed in ourselves and wanted to do it. It was easy!

So, my take aways from the #SuccessIsSimple seminar on International Women’s Day are this: Believe in Yourself, Be Nice to Yourself, Celebrate Each and Every Success!!!

Elaine Sparling is the CEO of the award winning Hummingbird Learning Centre®. Based in Adare, Co Limerick and Tralee, Co Kerry, she works with clients on a one to one basis and can be contacted on 087-2996054 or through their website www.hummingbirdlearning.com. The online version of their popular workshop The Secrets to Successful Spelling™ is available through their website and Facebook page. They are about to start their new Successful Studying Course for second & third level students and are currently developing a week long Irish Course for summer 2016.