It’s been a rough eighteen months as our worlds have turned upside down. Work life has invaded our home life, routines and rituals have been thrown out the window and thoughts we never had time for have started to creep into our minds forcing us to face some pretty big questions.
Well, the good news is all these thoughts, fears and unsustainable routines can be ironed out with a new programme this Autumn aptly named Revive, Renew and Restart 2.
“The pandemic and working from home, I think many people lost all their boundaries that they had. This sense of needing to show that they were doing more than they might need to be doing, it seemed to be a theme – hyper vigilance, and that has created lots of stress,” says Kathleen Fanning owner of Invest in Yourself.
“The person who benefits from this may be the person who is very good at caring for other people but has neglected their own self-care,” explains Niall Heenan, owner of Niall Heenan Training Ltd.
Niall Heenan and Kathleen Fanning met when they were working both lecturing in the Centre of Education and Developing Human Potential in Tipperary Institute in Thurles (now part of LIT Limerick) in the early noughties.
Since then, the pair have gone on to start their own businesses in the career coaching and personal development space.
“I trained as a business and executive career coach and since 2010 I’ve been running my own business in the areas of training, personal effectiveness, resilience, working with managers around having more effective conversations and giving feedback,” says Heenan.
“I have always been invested in people’s development – personal and professional development. Building confidence is a theme in the work that I’ve done – presentation skills, train the trainer, things that involve pushing yourself out past the comfort zone. I’ve had my own business since 2012 and I have grown into the term resilience coach,” says Fanning.
Revive, Renew and Restart 2, as the name suggests is the second coming, based on a programme they created together last year. “It very much dealt with issues around the uncertainty Covid brought for people but it also led people to question, in a good way, is this where I want to be? Is there something else I’m drawn to do?”
“That led us to this different programme, having moved out of lockdown – we are looking to be there for people at a different stage,” explains Fanning.
The new programme begins on the Monday 27th September every week at 2pm for six weeks. Each session lasts two and a half hours and will be broken up with a short break.
The numbers are kept low in order to create a friendly group building trust in one another, and the sessions will cover topics such as personal responsibility, resilience and managing your time.
“We talk about the importance of routine and something that has come up for me with some of my clients is the importance of a morning routine,” says Fanning. “It puts us in the right mindset.”
“We are living now in a hugely distracted world. We have so much vying for our attention, the phones are vibrating, the emails are pinging and with social media we can spend hours on it without realising and it’s getting us nowhere, so we have techniques and tools around that,” adds Heenan.
Another subject they cover on the programme is positive psychology and self-talk.
“We don’t go deeply into limiting beliefs, but we put that out with some tools for people to have a look at. I can have a belief from my childhood which still holds me back – it can be freeing for people,” explains Fanning.
And they will also arm candidates with a resilience tool kit.
“Those tools, which in a stressful time you can just take a moment and practice something like a thinking process or a breathing process to help you refocus,” says Heenan.
The last couple of sessions will take candidates through personal/career vision, creating an action board and setting goals and then moving forward and accountability to make sure you follow through with your actions.
For anyone looking for a supportive and challenging programme to help maintain a positive, future focus at this time, bookings for Revive, Renew and Restart 2 can be made at https://www.eventbrite.ie/e/revive-renew-and-restart-2-tickets-164659800897. There is an early bird offer of €399 available until 30th August.
https://www.invest-in-yourself.ie/
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@kfanningcoach