I just had a wonderful coaching conversation where I was coaching a client of mine who is a pioneer. This is someone who is incredibly powerful and has 25 years of experience working in their industry. In our conversation, something showed up that has been recurrent in a lot of my coaching conversations with others. It made me want to come out here and share this message that is around exploring the gifts of being triggered. We live in a world where typically we are out there telling ourselves: “this thing triggered me”. We get annoyed, angry or hurt and we actively take the time to avoid it or get into the place where we just allow the triggering to take place. I have spent my whole life as an outsider and have been able to create a lot of success in leadership, growth, abundance, and joy. Things also trigger me and what I found useful for other pioneers is that when things trigger, rather than being defensive or angry about it, there’s a different stance that I take.
Look for the Gift in Being Triggered
Today I want to talk about the gift of being able to figure out your unique strengths. This thing gives you what I like to call that 100x impact (10 times a result for 10 percent of the effort). As a pioneer a lot of what you’re doing is shooting out, going forth and creating something new for people to explore and experience. You are creating something that others aren’t doing. That exposes who you are, what you know, your credibility and your confidence. It puts you in a place where you are visible and with that, you might experience fear. One of the things I like to do is to speak that fear into existence. The aspect of being triggered allows you to see something about yourself that you may not have even known. Presently I can easily be called on to give a speech at any moment: like “Niiamah there are these people here, give a speech”! I’ll be honest, for the longest time, this would annoy me because I would be like
Why:- Do I need to give a speech
- Can’t you give a speech
- Can’t you do this
- Does it always need to be me
What do others see in you
Do you have something in you which prompts people to keep asking the same things from you? Well for me it was speaking and out of these annoying situations came out my real gift. I realized that I can walk in at any given time, situation or topic and as long as I have a crowd I can just talk. Talking is not all there is, while it is an important part of my gift, there is something more. There is a way my message is received due to my connecting with the audience. I do not need to be afraid of getting in front of people and sharing. I can just give myself the space to really go forth and share a message from a place that is heartfelt, real and open. There’s something about that there that I didn’t realize was actually a unique strength of mine.
Evaluate Yourself
I want to raise your awareness around your triggers and to offer you a different way of looking at them. Rather than being upset because of the various ways you may be triggered, give yourself a chance by asking a different question. That is to look at the situation as someone shining a light onto your special unique gift. I have noticed that it is hard for us to actually see our strengths. The fact that it triggers you says something. It means that it is important because there are a lot of things that happen around you where you just don’t even notice. That is a clue that you are stepping into what is actually a unique strength.
Dealing With the Triggers
Today I want to offer you a way to deal with those triggers. Whenever someone says something that triggers you, slow down and just say these two words: “thank you”. E.g. Thank you that feels good to hear or thank you I didn’t know that about myself. Etc. When people were saying things like: “when you walk into a room you light up the room” my response would be, “thank you, I have no clue what I’m doing. Would you mind telling me more because this seems to be important and I don’t know enough about it so I love to hear about it from your perspective”. This has transformed the way that I’ve shown up for myself and it has allowed me to now know that when I walk into a room I can do it with all the energy that I want. When i step into a room, I know I am providing service this is regardless of how dead quiet the room is. I don’t have to feel bad about it because I know that I am sharing one of my greatest gifts with them. I didn’t know this until someone told me.
A Different Approach
I want to offer this to you: slow down and see the gift in being triggered. As pioneers, we are leaders who may have risen quickly in our careers and at the same time, we may have this hidden feeling of being an outsider. If we don’t take the time to really absorb and receive the gift of what is triggering us, we won’t be able to reach our true potential. We won’t be able to see the true things that make us unique, and we’ll spend our time struggling to fit in. There’s a gift in being triggered and part of that gift can help you figure out what your unique strength is. Go ahead and leave a comment I would love to know any thoughts that you have from this video. Know that your journey is important what you’re doing is important. When people make you feel a certain way in their comments or requests, please pay attention to it. We need you to be more different we need you to be more you. Onto your next frontier…journey on
