By Daria Simion, HR Consultant, Managing Partner

To offer inspiration to somebody means to tell your story.

Everybody has a story to tell. From the moment you are born you start to gain experiences, from walking, to talking, to going to school, making friends, your first job interview, starting a family, everything you do, it means you have a story.

My story seemed quite simple to me, I thought I did not have a lot to tell people about myself. Maybe this is why I chose at first to work as a recruiter. It is a job that helped me learn to listen and I loved hearing stories. As a recruiter, I was also telling other people's stories: the story of the hiring manager, the story of the company I worked at and so on.

As a person who had a small amount of self-esteem for a better part of my life, I always thought that other people are more important, that they have way more interesting stories to tell and that others deserve a much bigger spotlight than me. But time has passed and something changed. People started to come to me, I started to be recommended, my co-workers checked their activities with me, started to ask my opinions and so on. And I started wondering: "What changed?"

The change appeared when I started sharing parts of my story during the discussions that I had with the people around me, even during the interviews that I was holding. The stories that other people were telling me had some similarities with my own story. And I started to communicate and show that I relate to them and that I understand them. That was the moment when I started to hear myself and realize that everyone on the planet has good moments, weak moments, challenges and wins, just like me, no matter their social status.

Soon I started to gain more and more different experiences in my life and met more people. I realized in time that I actually have a lot to tell. The key was to stop looking 100% at other people's stories and to start looking at least 30% at mine while communicating. But this process of starting to see myself took a lot of work.

I started to be engaged in a lot of communication and soft skills-related activities during my professional experience. Besides recruitment, I started organizing trainings, created a lot of content on social media and advanced to career counselling activities and became a trainer myself.

One of the most important activities that helped me see myself is the theatre classes that I decided to take, because you will always use your personal views on life and your own life experiences to build a character in a play.

My advice to you - take a look at your life up until this point. Look hard and make a mental list of your achievements (personal or professional) and then see WHAT HELPED YOU GET THERE?

Until you are ready to see the list, try to see that you are surrounded by people that consider you important - your best friend, your family, your colleagues. You are the creator of your own story, and your story attracted the people that are by your side today.

So tell me, what is your story?