I started driving when I was 16. Learning how to drive at that age is empowering. It’s a different kind of feeling to be behind the steering wheel, to be in control of something, in the midst of everything else in the world being overwhelming and uncontrollable.
Last week, @kimilulifecoach and I held an “Organize Your Feelings” talk through Instagram Live that ran for a little over an hour. Kimi and I shared so much laughter (and selfie poses!) in this talk, while also introducing and sharing with our viewers our very own practices and love for essential oils.
Before the talk ended, Kimi sponsored a giveaway that asked viewers to simply share in their IG stories their takeaway from our talk.
The moment we said goodbye to our viewers, the IG stories started to come in.
You can’t learn how to drive if you don’t know how to focus. This is one of the most important things I kept in mind as I learned how to drive.
When a driver loses his focus, he endangers not only his own life and his own passengers, but also other people on the road. So whenever I am on the driver’s seat and I hold the steering wheel, I automatically drop whatever bothers my mind and focus on the task at hand.
After the IG Live I did with Kimi, I realized that holding the steering wheel is pretty much like speaking in a conference or facilitating a talk on Instagram Live. You get to control what happens in the time you are allotted to speak. You focus – or else, you just go in circles, and you waste everybody’s time.
In all my talks, I make sure to focus on the three steps that we at Neat Obsessions have been practicing for more than two years now. I am just so blessed that in this particular talk on IG Live with Kimi, I felt like my Sorting-Decluttering-Rehoming steps took in another flavour as Kimi integrated her practices in each step, helping us come up with a one-of-a-kind talk/workshop.
One of the things I really appreciate about our participants is that they dropped everything to listen to us. We may have been used to sharing these practices in our talks, whether face-to-face or virtual, but through the IG stories that served as feedback, they told us that they still picked up a thing or two from what we shared.
Learning only takes place where there is listening. They learned because they listened.
Learning does not occur in an environment where people speak at the same time. It’s like being on the road, following the traffic lights. If all drivers go at the same time, they all get stuck. Worse, they might even meet an accident. The opposite is also true: if all drivers stop at the same time, nobody moves. They get stuck and will not go anywhere. What really works is the proper flow of stop and go.
As a homemaker whose advocacy is to share the system that works for me so that homemakers eventually find a system that works for them, I am very humbled to see the impact that one hour had to many homemakers, and this was only possible because they allowed us to “go” – to make us part of their day by allotting time to listen to us.
And when the time came that we had to stop, they went through their feedback. With it, one learning cycle was completed.
I have always been grateful to be part of a community where members are not holding back information from one another. It’s just a generous flow of learning, a systematic stop and go.
Just when our viewers thought they were the only ones who learned from the IG live, this is my takeaway: listening is an important part of learning both for the teacher and the student, the speaker and the audience, the driver and the passenger.
I will never have learned how to drive if I hadn’t listened at some point. Back when I was 16, learning how to drive was not just empowering; it was also the “it” and “cool.” When I got married, I learned how driving is such an important life skill, most especially in emergency situations.
When we listen, we’re more than just it and cool. We take in wisdom that will lead us to take control.
I am always ready to listen to your everyday challenges in homemaking, so in turn, I can empower you to take the steering wheel and become a homemaker who’s in control of your home and your life.
NEAT OBSESSIONS 