Lead a vivid life that does good
An awesome 40th birthday with my wife and kids.
Up at 5am for the ANZAC day dawn parade. It was a still misty poignant setting and a reminder that “freedom is never free”. Someone must always pay the price for freedom.
In the evening we headed out to Raglan to watch the sun set on the west coast of NZ, and eat fish and chips. A beautiful evening.
A fantastic day. (Even if I am now in my mid life)
A late night at work, with 3 of the team.
Not a good reason for a late night either.
All leaders are readers!
In some way shape or form they are. Even in this information age of podcasts and audiobooks and youtube, leaders are readers.
This is a shot of my work bookshelf. My books are available to borrow. Take them, learn from them, stretch your thinking.
Read.
My signatures are funny things. For instance I have four scribbles I call a signature. I have my initials scribble, my ‘Andrew’ scribble, my general letter scribble and my bank scribble. The picture scribble is none of the above, but they are all different, all unreadable, but all my mark.
The use of signatures date back thousands of years. They are my mark, a thing that identifies me. In the flick of a pen I acknowledge my agreement, my commitment, my obligation.
Today, I was thinking as I signed a new large contract we won recently, how most people sign very few things. Signing letters has been replaced with email, or txt, or verbal. Signing cheques replaced with pin numbers and credit cards.
Personally, when I sign a document, I make sure I am comfortable with my obligations and commitment, because it is ‘in writing’.
Yet my verbal commitment should always be just as strong as my signed commitment. My word should carry the same weight as my mark.
It was 11:30am, and with my entourage in tow, we stepped into a meeting with one of our largest clients only to be told we were expected at 10:00am. I explained that we were on time and I had checked his email the day before. But he was adamant we were late.
So a choice, prove I was right or apologise?
I apologised for being late.
Why? Because the relationship is far more important than being right.
On the way home I saw this cell-tower and I thought about communication. Communication is more than listening and talking. Good communication requires give and take, empathy and forgiveness, honesty and discretion.
When we communicate well, we realise the relationships are our highest priority.
People greeting, food eating.
Parents talking, kids squawking.
Life sharing, friends caring.
Community.
One of the problems with being intellectually inquisitive, is one can tend to over think or even over discuss things that have absolutely no impact on ones life.
Take as an example Countdown, the new brand for Woolworths, Foodtown, the old Countdown and Price Chooper. The first time I saw the new brand with the new logo was in Greenlane in Auckland, where the colours were green and orange. Next was Rototuna (pictured here), where the colours are black, white and green.
So I started trying to work out what they were doing with their brand. Getting rid of multiple brand names seemed to be a great idea, but to two different colour sets? Strange. I discussed it with a number of people and came up a whole myriad of explanations. We wondered if they were trying to make some stores appear more budget, and others more classy, while bringing value back to the core brand. We wondered if they would have different pricing points.
We over wondered and over talked given that it is not our brand (although it was mainly travel time).
A lot of thought about something that has no effect on me.
But then that is the point of inquisitive. By thinking and discussing and even waxing lyrical, one refines thinking for real life situations in the future.
[203 | 365 Took this photo while getting milk. Originally titled it 'Intellectual Curiosity' but then changed curiosity to 'inquisitive' because that is a family value and my girls occasionally read my blog.]
Our house became progressively emptier over the last week. One of the kids headed to the grandparents last Wednesday, then the other two on Friday. On Monday Karina headed over to Tauranga for the night.
As the house emptied, the life of the house left. It was as though I had become a bachelor again. The life of the house is family. A family like most others, with conversation and laughter and arguments and squabbles and noise and homeliness.
As it emptied the home just became a house. A shelter. A place to rest.
Silence.
Late last night, everyone arrived home. Noise, buzz, stories, laughter and love.
Its home again!
[202 | 365 – ‘Bachelor’ – Being the bachelor that I now was, last night I cooked up a storm]
On Sunday we heard first hand about incredible work of Rahab ministries in Thailand, and got to support them through the pink pigs. In Thailand young women, really young women are sold by their families to prostitution, often under false circumstances and with the lure of a better life, but sold nonetheless.
I can’t imagine ever getting so desperate, that I would even remotely consider selling my daughter. It would never happen!
Imagine the outcry, the laws I would break and the news coverage.
It would shock our nation.
I’m reminded that my world is not the world. Every day young women are sold. There is no outcry, no laws broken, no news coverage.
My world, is not the world.
Behind these doors are warmth and shelter
Behind these doors are comfort and empathy
Behind these doors are amusement and joy
Behind these doors is home
Behind these doors is love
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