When You Do The things From Your Soul, You Feel A River Moving In You, A JOY! ~ Rumi

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Kate, our training manager reminded me this morning that I must get a blog out. Not much of blogger, (I don’t think I even know what it looks like). Anyway – I have been figuring out what to write or blog about – and while browsing “Ponsonby Community Magazine”, I found this quote "When You Do The things From Your Soul, You Feel A River Moving In You, A JOY!" Jelaluddin Rumi, the 13th century mystic poet, was truly one of the most passionate poets in history. Yes, so far it has been Read more [...]

What’s your nagging passion?

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Motivational coach Dawn Gluskin recently wrote an article challenging her readers to identify their “nagging” passion… the thing that you’ve always wanted to learn more about, master, be better at and use throughout other facets of your life. She admits that while the majority of us “know” what that passion is, the real challenge lies in stepping up amidst the fear of change, rejection and failure our brains tend to caution us with when faced with learning and experiencing the unknown. This Read more [...]

Educate. Inspire. Entertain.

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Having a self-confessed geek interest around the world of social media I have recently taken more ownership of Bright*Star’s social media platforms. One of the perks of working for a training company is that there are multiple opportunities to up-skill yourself in new areas and so it was with much excitement (and a little worry that we would be required to communicate in 140 characters all day) that I attended our Social Media and Online Strategies course last week. Hayden had designed the Read more [...]

Small-Talk: Networking or idle chit-chat?

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I recently read some great articles: One from one of my favourite sites The Glass Hammer which delved into the heady (and sometimes perceived as sleazy) world of small-talk at business related events and another from IDEALOG entitled “Business Cards: Don’t Leave Home without them”.  For many of us reading the mere words “Networking Drinks Hour” on an agenda can trigger the fear of standing alone at the buffet table or worse yet, being backed into a veritable corner while another person Read more [...]

Forward or delete that interesting resource…? Why not SCOOP IT?

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I think we have all been guilty at one time or another of feeling time-poor.  After all the normal twenty four hour allocation hasn’t increased alongside evolving pressures from multi-tasking, information overload and more mobile technologies. Benefit: With these more developed technologies comes access to more exciting and rewarding information no matter what your area of interest. Con: If you took the time to read all the websites/blogs/Tweets and Facebook posts you would be happily informed Read more [...]

The Eagle Has Landed

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All great accomplishments are followed by a sense of Euphoria, a sense of satisfaction or just sheer relief that the task you set out to achieve has been completed! In my case it was all of that, amazed it all came together in time, relieved that we had actually made it, and lived to see another day. As we arrived back in New Zealand from the UK following our return to live there for 18 months, one of the most poignant moments for my family and I had to be at passport control, the clerk confidently Read more [...]

A Spoonful of Sugar

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Often during my research an article around a sparkly new trend will catch my eye and in the true spirit of Bright*Star’s New Skills. New Thinking motto, it would almost be rude NOT to read it… Of recent interest in the L & D area was a study published in 2012 by the Pew Internet & American Life Project on the idea of “Gamification” i.e. interactive online designs that draw out competitive instinct while incorporating the use of action driven rewards. The research was inspired Read more [...]

Where’s the manual to do just about everything?

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Ever wished that you had a life manual that guides you through how to do just about everything that you will ever encounter? Relationships, parenthood… management... learning & development?! So many of us nowadays are given roles and responsibilities under the generic heading of  ‘development’ and that the role we have will ‘evolve’… in other words… with no real guidelines or parameters in place. As human beings we have an incredible ability to adapt to situations (some more Read more [...]

Navigating the e-learning curve

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Although not a ‘digital native’ I pride myself on being fairly online savvy and presumed e-facilitation would be just a natural extension of my interest in training. Oh how wrong one can be! Recently I was part of an e-learning course examining the skills needed by e-leaders in facilitation. Read below for my newly formed e-commandments: Thou shalt march to the beat of the same e-drum Feeling like a cocky university graduate with access to a dictionary, I left our first task of defining Read more [...]

Be S.M.A.R.T about your professional development…

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Don’t sweat the small stuff (make them part of the bigger picture!) Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, the author of the popular book The Little Prince once said “A goal without a plan is just a wish”. Most people I encounter (both in personal and professional realms) have life-related goals about where they want to be five, ten even twenty years from now and many of those goals involve their career paths. However in the context of Saint-Exupéry, it amazes me just how many of those goals Read more [...]