Episode 4 – What Hummingbirds Teach Us About Our Brilliance

Hi, and welcome to the Daring to Leap podcast. I'm your host, Loree Philip. I'm so excited to dive into this week's episode with you. So, in this week's episode, we're going to be talking about hummingbirds. 

Yes, hummingbirds. By the end of this episode, you will be inspired by Hummingbirds to leverage your unique brilliance to really stand out in your career. So let's get started. So, I was thinking about hummingbirds and was inspired to record this episode a couple of weeks ago on my walk. 

And I do this daily walk where I have a three-mile path around my neighborhood. And every day that I go, I see anywhere from zero hummingbirds to six. But most of the time, it's about one to three. And I've been just fascinated by them and have this connection with hummingbirds. 

And I was thinking about, what do they have to teach us? Why am I so fascinated with this tiny bird? And so I wanted to share with you what came to mind on my walk that day and what we can really learn from them. 

There's so much we can learn from all parts of our lives, including nature, and so I just wanted to use them as an example for you. So what do hummingbirds have to teach us about brilliance and ourselves? 

You see, hummingbirds are a very unique bird. They are the smallest of all the bird species. They fly differently than all the other birds. They fly forward, backward, and can even hover for a period of time. 

They are super fast. Can beat their wings over 50 times per second, and can fly anywhere from 35 to 60 mph, depending on if they're in flight or diving down. So you think about this unique bird that can do all these amazing things. 

Can you imagine if a hummingbird tried to be like all the other birds? There are over 10,000 plus species of birds that all fly differently than a hummingbird. They have graceful, slowing flapping of their wings, they can glide, they roam around in flocks.

If hummingbirds tried to be like all the other birds, they would be terrible at it. It just wouldn't work. But in embracing what they do naturally, what they're great at, they can do things that all the other birds cannot do. 

And this is really interesting because even though the hummingbird would make a terrible regular bird, they're so amazing at what they can do. And when thinking about in the workplace, how do we relate this information to the workplace in our careers? 

Sometimes our tendency is to try to conform, to fit into the culture and do things, see things and approach things like everyone else. And to some extent, it's beneficial to fit into our culture at work, to kind of see what's working, what's not working, try it out. 

But taking this approach, it is unlikely you will shine and stand out. You would just be one of the crowd doing everything like everybody else is doing. And probably not that well, if it's not your natural inclination to do it that way. 

So not only would your career benefit from you bringing your unique talents forward into your work, your employer and your team would benefit from it too. There's been a lot of discussion around diversity and how important it is in the workplace. 

Bringing that diversity of thought, experience, diversity of talents and perspectives into the conversation, into problem solving, into creativity, does make a big positive difference in the workplace.

There are so many benefits for it. But we have to be willing to bring that uniqueness forward and not hide it, but embrace it. And I know this can be hard because I've been in meetings and conversations that you don't want to kind of stick out or say something that's completely different than what everybody else is saying.

But when you start to have that confidence, to start bringing these ideas, these different perspectives forward, everybody wins. So I'd like to consider for yourself what are your strengths? What do you do effortlessly that's is more difficult for others? 

What are you passionate about? You pull all these things together and you focus your efforts on them. Your brilliance will come out. And just like the hummingbird can make hovering look effortless, you will find that as you embrace your unique strengths and brilliance,

you too will do some amazing things and make it look effortless. So give it some thought. And if you're not sure about what your strengths are, if you haven't really considered this before, you can start to pay attention to you, your work, your tasks, how things are going, what you're doing and what's going well. 

Also notice what you hesitate on putting out there and holding back. What are you holding back? Another good exercise for you to explore this a bit more would be to ask some trusted colleagues who can give you some feedback what are your strengths.

What do you do really, really well? Get their perspective. I actually went through an exercise recommended by a coach to do this, and I got some really good feedback. Some things I hadn't considered for myself. 

But once they said it, it made it a little easier for me to embrace it. Because sometimes we hold back on saying we're great at something or we're better at this than other people. But when you get that validation from trusted colleagues and mentors, it can really help. 

And as you start to bring this into your work, you will start to see your brilliance shining through. And those strengths, those differences, is what is going to make you stand out. It will be easier to be your brilliant self than to try to be like everybody else. 

And it will make a difference. Thank you so much for listening to this episode. If you've enjoyed it, I would love for you to subscribe, leave a review and share it with a friend. Until next week.