I am getting geared up to take things to the next level.
There are so many dials and knobs and processes and things to check and to check into.
I have been on a journey of discovery for years and years and my learning and growing and stretching and pressing in and on has continued unabated.
I was frightened, shrunken into an isolation that knows physical bounds, and I had lost my confidence fully.
I learnt to speak again, in full sentences, to family and friends.
I learnt to drive again, eventually able to do so without my nerves being on a constant razor edge.
I learnt to focus on one task at a time to completion, again, as I had been able to do before.
I learnt about the value of and ability to make daily progress, no matter how small.
I learnt to lean into the winds that were coming against me and to wait to ride on the currents that appeared.
I found my way back to the Eagles’ places and the company of the lighter minds.
I found my reconnection with what means the world to me and to those with whom I resonate.
I taught and I taught and I taught … over all the years and for all of the decades … and I teach still.
I have never qualified officially as anything at all.
I could perhaps have gone on to gain some fancy degree or several at university, had I been able to find the means and the calmness and the arms underneath me to carry me up that hill … all of the days of my schooling career had been heading me in that direction … and then suddenly I fell … and I so nearly did not make it over the matriculation finish line. That was 1980. This is 2020. Forty years.
It is ridiculous the path that life has had me on, but oh my God have I learnt a lot on the way.
I was terrified at the thought of public speaking two years ago, when I attended a WordCamp event in November 2018 …
Not long ago, remember, I found it hard to string sentences together when speaking with family, friends or strangers …
But I made myself get up onto the stage, shaking, and I spoke from my heart to the audience gathered there.
Afterwards, several people came up to me and thanked me for my sincerity, honesty, and the way that I was helping others through my blog, simply by being real. It seemed foreign to them, to be helping others and using an online site to do so, rather than purely for economic purposes …
The economic side of authoring a blog is something I am yet to conquer. It will come. I am learning it all. Meantime, I fall forward daily as I try to build.
I thank God for making it impossible for me to be anything but authentic.
My speech on that first WordPress public stage, at the Edinburgh WordCamp in 2018, a wholly new occasion for me in my current life, had been impromptu; it had lasted a whole three minutes. I had almost piddled as I stood there, hoping no one was thinking I was a complete fool. The thought that I was being so brave, standing up to speak to strangers after years of being hidden from the world was miraculous, frankly, and a revelation to me, even though I trembled.
A few months later, when the photo with this blogpost was taken, it was my second appearance in front of a public audience at a WordPress gathering. It was my second ever public speaking ‘gig’ or appearance in many, many years. I stood in front of a group of WordPress community members at a MeetUp in Britain looking out at a sea of faces, imploring them to be patient with me.
On that evening, many gathered in the room were WordPress dot org creators, me the token WordPress dot com user. This time, I spoke for half an hour, about my website, and I was The Speaker for the meeting. It had been arranged – my appearance not impromptu this time. I had needed to borrow a laptop for the presentation, as I did not own a laptop of my own at that time. Three months later, I bought one. My first ever laptop, bought with savings, cash, no income to speak of yet.
The group of people at the WordPress MeetUp on the night of my talk, about my journey to that point with “The Holly Tree Tales”, were all incredibly kind … some even noted how far I had come in the three or four months since the first time they had seen me stand up with the mic. Some did not seem to notice that this was not something that I had had to push myself way out of my comfort cage to do. I suppose that could be seen as positive, but it left out a whole part of the value of cracking the nut of fear to do this. It said I already was a ‘pro’… I knew that I was not!
Fast forward about eighteen months from when the photo was taken and I am now working on my Newsletter, which will go out to a select group of people around the world, to share and to update them on what I am doing now.
I am working on the preparation for presenting my first Mastermind class online, which will be about Courage. Who could have guessed this would be the first that I present to the world?
I am preparing the marketing tech to share my product on an online ‘stage’ – a purposed website – with others far more experienced that I am, who will also be promoting their international events on that platform.
I shall be organising and facilitating, collaborating and masterminding in order to bring my audience more information than I could possibly provide myself, on a range of topics through my own events.
Recently I produced a first 12 episodes for my podcast “Talking Hearts”. This has all been done in a very sincere but untidy and ad hoc way – just like when I started my blog in January 2015. To be honest, just as I did not really know what a blog was when I began this journey, nor had I fully grasped the enormity of scope and responsibility that a podcast is, when I decided to take my voice onto the audio stage. The process of building the podcast continues and has a season of content logged there, for listening to while I build the rest of the structure for Talking Hearts. Its future content and delivery can rest awhile.
Here are a few of the episodes:
- This is a collection of four poems, which were read by Holly Maxwell Boydell to a live audience on GreenRoom on Saturday 5 February 2022. […]
- This is a recording of a Live broadcast, the first in this series, which features Holly Maxwell Boydell reading: EPHESIANS 5,6 from the New […]
- Mandela Salim Buluma is the son of a wise Farmer in Africa. Named for Nelson Mandela, the late President of South Africa, Mandela Salim […]
- Isaiah 62 Look, Your Savior Comes! Regarding Zion, I can’t keep my mouth shut, Regarding Jerusalem, I can’t hold my tongue, Until her righteousness […]
- Today we focus on WHY. At times when it is hard to motivate ourselves or to push ourselves through a difficult challenge, digging deep […]
In December 2019 I launched an internet marketing business, HM Event Promotions, where a range of empowering events, products and services, or online learning resources and business tools, are promoted. It functions as an affiliate service, rather than creating its own products and events. All that is offered is designed to help you to live your best life.
I have lost my fear of speaking out and I have lost my fear of communicating on any platform. I am happy to promote what I use in daily life or have used to grow myself, in personal life or business. The fear of assertiveness is there and all the trepidation, as well as all the lack of knowledge about how to properly achieve with success all the things that I am now counting as part of my offer to the world … but I am doing it regardless. Afraid. And brave. Pressing on.
This is called ‘falling forward’ or ‘failing forward’ … either way, we’re making progress and there is no turning back. Quitting is not an option. I am committed to personal growth and bringing value to others, disregarding what frightens me along the way, using the stages and platforms that I have to speak on.
Soon the first of my monthly Newsletters will go out and, once complete, it will probably look as though my editorial round up / offering took no time at all to create. However … It has been a strenuous birthing process in itself, make no mistake.
Everything I know and do has been hard earned and hard won. No free lunches.
For the Newsletter, I shall find the content is already ripe for the picking, amongst my work already published on the blog and elswewhere. I only have to figure out the process and the design and figure out the steps to get it out to those who want it.
My work over many years has meant that I have spades full of experience and I am eager to offer this to the world, wherever it is needed.
In looking back, I see that every year of my life and all of the experiences and all of the things that I’ve overcome have brought me to this moment and now all I have to do is decide what to include and what to leave out.
Earlier this year, I pushed through lonely situations and revelations that were threatening to take me out and I completed the Knowledge Broker Blueprint course on 29 June 2020. I had taken three and a half months to do the course, designed to equip me to manage and facilitate Masterminds and webinars, etc … some people had fantastically managed to knock this whole course over in a weekend! How they could have done this, I have no idea. My journey took 3.5 months … and wow! was the victory sweet when it finally came!!
Another victory, that I was reminded of yesterday, is that a year ago this week I published my first ever ebook, “Ten Poems, Volume One”. It became available to the world on 13 August 2019. The paperback version will, hopefully, birth soon.
This sums up in a very broad way a little of what life has contained, of late and before. I hope this shows the crushing of goals that is going on, as I rush to complete the basic foundation of what is to be my ‘job’ from now and all that is needed to do it well.
Before I go, here is a list of new pages that have been added to The Holly Tree Tales recently:
My Books
Brain Training
Holly Recycles
My YouTube Channel
Talking Hearts Podcast
HM Event Promotions
Holly Maxwell Boydell
Now, it is time to turn off all distractions and to get eagle-eyed focus onto my current goal: my Newsletter #1, scheduled to be published in August 2020. There is no more time to lose.
I hope you are pressing in and pressing on and staying safe.
With love,
Holly x
Holly Maxwell Boydell
Founder: http://www.TheHollyTreeTales.com
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The Holly Tree Tales 