My current goal

It’s only recently that I realise how I’ve been limting myself in creating a goal which is very dear to my heart.  I spend a fair bit of time in Italy, in an Umbrian hill village about an hour’s drive from Rome.  To buy a place there was a dream come true (or in business speak, a goal realised!), and one of the most magical times of my life was celebrating my 50th birthday there with friends and family, as the midsummer sun set over the Tiber valley below.

Although I worked in Italy in the eighties as a teacher trainer for the British Council I  haven’t as yet trained and coached using Italian.  I’ve thought that I’m not good enough to do that.

I was speaking about this to Briggy Kiddle, an extraordinary trainer and someone who works in English and in her mother-tongue German. She patiently heard me as I talked about my need to develop my Italian, and that frankly I didn’t see that I was ever going to be good enough for the task in hand.  “Well, I think you’ll be able to do it sooner than you think.  You see the thing is your Italian clients will respond to you differently and will speak in a way that enables you to hear them deeply.   I’ve seen that happen with mother-tongue English speakers when they train with me in Germany.”

This was a revelation to me.  It’s quite automatic for me to think that I’m all alone in going for my goals, so one more time I woke up to the fact that the part that other people play is always as significant.  In fact I would never have my place in Italy right now if it weren’t for a roll call of people who supported me. So to  Brendan Griggs, Ken Griffiths, Lisa Finerty, Pat Smith and Giangi Poli – thank you, thank you, thank you.

Now I’m consciously doing away with that belief about being “not good enough” that has put the brakes on me going for something I really want.  And, at the same time,  I have signed up for some advanced Italian classes at City Lit!