Ruby Wax meets Steve Conway (MD at Wades)

I recently had the pleasure of meeting Ruby Wax in person when I was in London at an entrepreneurial conference and was impressed by how genuine she was in real life.  I have met other celebrities over the years and many want to distance themselves from their public.  Ruby was however warm and genuine.  She was at the conference to speak to us about her journey through life and what she has learned along the way!

Her career spans 3 decades and most people will remember her more famous encounters with Madonna, Donald Trump, Pamela Anderson and Sarah Ferguson to name but a few.  Not many people know that she has moved her career into Psychology and Neuroscience!  She is continuing her study in Cognitive Therapy & Neuroscience and is in her last year of her Masters Degree.

In her own words, “To be successful you need to become aware of yourself, your people and the world around you.  We can all talk at each other but rapport means reading under the radar below the words to understand what people really mean and being transparent enough for them to understand you.  It’s your humanness that works as a glue to hold relationships together, not your intellect.”

Ruby told us some of the techniques she uses to manage stress.  How to read the signs and deal with it through a series of self management tools.  Also the importance of some stress to promote optimal performance was explained through the Yerkes-Dodson Curve.  Ruby stressed the importance of being individual and not to try and blend into the crowd as this helps to promote creativity.

All of this was presented to us in Ruby’s engaging humorous style which made it engaging from start to finish.  As she said herself, “Most of you realise how beautiful I am but not many of you realised until today that I am also incredibly intelligent too!”