Today, Talia decided to make a movie. A movie in which she was the writer, the director and the only star.
If your life were a movie, what would be the story line? How would the movie end? Would it be an epic story that people remember? Would your movie be an adventure, a love story, or a tale of overcoming the impossible?
Like me, your life isn’t likely to become a movie.
But we are still the writer, director and star of our movie, of our life. As individuals we choose to live a memorable story of adventure, love and triumph.
Or not.
Month: May 2010 (Page 2 of 3)
Our lives are all partial reflections of others.
We all in someway reflect the people and events that have had an impression on us.
In some cases, repulsive and negative things done may be reflected in us. Things we would rather forget and wish they had never happened.
For the most part we reflect the good people in our lives. They may be parents or teachers or colleagues or friends or Jesus, and regardless of how independent we think we are, we are all small reflections of them.
So if my life is a partial reflection of others, how will I ensure that their reflection of me is a blessing, vivid and good?
You may believe that rolling two dice all is chance. That guessing the combined number is luck. And to a certain extent you are right.
However adding two dice to equal 7 is six times more likely than a rolling double 6. (1+6, 2+5, 3+4, 4+3, 5+2, 6+1 compared to 6+6)
You may also believe that being successful is luck. And to a certain extent you are right. However add knowledge to the randomness of life, and you are 6 times more likely to succeed (I just made that up).
The point is this: Just as two dice can appear to the uneducated to be just luck, so also success can appear to be just luck.
“Come around an get your feet under the table,” Jack would say. What my mentor from 20 years ago meant by that was, ‘come around, sit at our table, enjoy Grace’s home cooking, and lets talk or chew the fat together’.
Long meals, great food & drink, laughter, discussion, debate, hospitality, genuineness, caring and love. That’s what getting your feed under the table means.
At our place getting our feet under the table is a priority. Eating my wife’s incredible cooking and discussing everyone’s day connects us, it forces us to ask and teaches us to listen.
It strengthens us, and our kids really enjoy it.
[232|365 Food that connects us – Went in search of story on the way home and found Mizzoni selling woodfired pizza. It looks good, and they do lunch at Maui St on Wed/Thu]
Is this train leaving or arriving?
It’s a question, and there is incredible power in questions. With great questions come amazing answers and stories. Because of questions, problems are solved and ideas are formed.
Yesterday, at a client who uses other companies, I asked, “What do our competitors do really well?” It’s an amazing question because you don’t get some canned answer of what they would like, rather you get a real answer about the service they enjoy. It also gives permission to ask, “What could they do better?”
Questions are the key to listening. They really are!
From time to time you will find people who have a different view to you (shock horror). You can either spend all your time trying to explain your view, OR you can spend all your time trying to understand their view by asking questions.
Talkers do the first. Listeners do the second.
Sometimes asking questions is really hard for both of you. But after you have listened and understood, you are almost always invited to share your opinion, to input into the conversation, to contribute.
AND
You will almost always say something wiser and more relevant.
All because you asked great questions.
Moses once wrote ‘Teach us to number our days so that we may present to you a heart of wisdom’.
It’s almost as if he is saying we need to measure our time. Nowadays we measure almost everything, our bank balance, our speed, our weight, or our kids performance.
Yet we don’t measure our time to see if we are using it well. We rarely look back and make sure we are making the most of time.
At the moment, indirectly through 365, I am measuring time. It has been around 60% of the year since I began the 365 project. That’s 230 days or close to 20 million seconds.
Seeing how fast time is going, seeing pictures from 2 months ago, that feel like yesterday is really scary.
And a good reminder!
People who have grown up with Apple computers think they are intuitive, easy to use and everything makes sense. People who have grown up with Windows computers think the same.
Intuitive is a word that describes learned actions. It is really hard for something that someone has never used to be intuitive.
My Macbook, as a Windows user is counter-intuitive. It does some cool things in really difficult ways, that take all of the fun out of them.
Windows = Alt-Print Screen
Mac OSX = Control-Command-Shift-4
The Windows version is easier to remember. The Mac version is harder to use not intuitive at all, but is way cooler.
A reminder that when we create processes or web or tools, we need to make them both cool and intuitive.
I would not like them here or there,
I would not like them anywhere,
I would not like them cold or hot,
I would not like them from this pot,
I do not like green peas
I do not like them Sam, now let me be
Amongst the friends and conversation and laughter and music we raised over $1500 for our first good.well project.
April 30th at Café Agora was the celebration of my 40th birthday. With all honesty it was really just a great opportunity to raise money and awareness for the Good Trust, and to raised funds to build clean water wells for a communities off shore.
Thanks heaps to everyone who came and donated.
Thanks to the team at Café Agora.
Finally and a huge thanks to Luke and Linden (pictured) and Alice Cunninghame.
It seemed that the sun rose late, and was cloaked behind the fog that had lowered amongst the autumn leaves.
As it lifted later that morning, it unveiled an amazing autumn day.
Sometimes in life, amazing things, beautiful things are cloaked by the murkiness of life.