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Category: People Matter (Page 7 of 9)

183 | 365 Halfway Number 2

27 March 2010 /

Day183.jpgYou may have heard that it takes 40 days to make a habit, or 28 days or some other iterative. Wrong, wrong and wrong again.
 
Between yesterday and today I am halfway through 365. I missed one day in 183 days, which for me is amazing. The only other things I have done for 183 days straight in my life, is get up, eat and breathe.
 
For me after about 50 days, remembering to take the photo became a habitual, but actually taking the photo requires another step up in discipline again. For example, it was a mission to make it to 100, and today’s photo is because I remembered, not because I had a flash of creativity.
 
I am learning about habits and discipline. Disciplines like going to the gym, running, reading, studying or quiet times. For me it takes about 30 – 50 days for the thought process to become habitual, to become ingrained as a priority in my life.
 
But every time, every single time, I still need to choose to take action, to step out and run, or do my quiet time, or take a photo.
 
If you think I have the habit thing sorted out, I don’t. It’s like today’s shot on my drive to Tauranga. The glare from driving into the sun, the dirty window, makes my view lack clarity. Same for my knowledge of just about everything.

[183 | 365 ‘Halfway #2’ – Down the Kaimai’s driving into the sun, behind a slow truck]

182 | 365 Halfway Number 1

25 March 2010 /

Day182.jpgSomewhere between today and tomorrow I am halfway through project 365, which is taking a picture each day for 365 days.
 
Looking back and ahead, I think I would like to take more people shots because they show more of life than objects, or candles, or coffee drops. If I do this, it will take another level of discipline again because I will need to go looking for interesting people shots.
 
Speaking of interesting people, today I was online on Skype waiting for a call that never came, but then my friend Steve gave me a call.
 
The first thing Steve did was encourage me, it just rolls off his tongue honestly and naturally. He has this incredible ability to build people up and I am often reminded by Steve’s actions how important that is.
 
I’m reminded today that life is about people.
 
[182 | 365 – ‘Halfway #1’ – Steve the encourager and a reminder how much I love technology]

170 | 365 Glocal

13 March 2010 /

Day170.jpgMy ONE shirt was used as a map on a couple of occasions last night at Agora Goes Live. This is a shot of Octaves Ibounga and a couple of the team from Jerk Freaks (a jerk dance team), pointing towards their home countries of Congo and Egypt. The Jerk Freaks are part of our Glocal community.
 
Glocal is a term I read recently. It’s a term that came about in 1989 and describes the changing convergence of people and cultures. Glocal describes a culture that combines both local and global. A culture where we can locally affect global, and global can connect directly back to local.
 
New Zealand is becoming more and more a glocal community. Global people from varying cultures, birthplaces and history converging locally.
 
Very exciting.

169 | 365 Candle in the Dark

12 March 2010 /

Day169.jpgAs a teenager lighting and sound were my thing and I can remember attending a course with a renowned lighting designer for the performing arts, whose name alludes me.
 
At one point during the course we had to create mood for a tent scene on the stage using lighting effects and one single candle.
 
Having that one candle on the stage made the design difficult to say the least. In a pitch black theatre, where you literally can’t see your hand if it is an inch from your face, a candle is exceptionally bright. The light it generates can’t easily be softened or turned down. People sitting in close proximity of the candle were illuminated by its presence alone.
 
20 plus years on, I can still remember a lot that I learnt on that course, about how the eye works, about how we see black and white in the moonlight, about creative license, and about how bright a single candle can be.
 
Every now and then you meet people who are like candles in the dark. Every now and then I meet someone whose flame burns so brightly in the dark patches of this world that it lights up everyone around them.
 
If one small flame can make a difference, maybe I can as well.
 
 

161 | 365 Orange Goggles

4 March 2010 /

Day161.jpgYou’ve heard of beer goggles right. The experience of allowing alcohol to somewhat taint a persons normal scale of attractiveness for the opposite sex.
 
Well maybe we don’t actually need alcohol to taint our view of people.
 
Maybe we allow our picture, our framing story of a person’s life to form an inaccurate view of a person we barely know. A wrong view no less.
 
Last night we had dinner with some friends and in the course of the meal we were chatting about one of our friend’s parents. I was really surprised to learn some cool and funky things about the dad. I have known that person from a far and never would have pictured him in the context I was told about. I was pleasantly surprised.
 
I think I do that more often than I care to admit.
 
It was as though I was looking through an orange bottle at a person. My framing story was wrong. My view was tainted.
 
 
 
161 | 365 Yesterday I forgot to take my camera with me, so this is a shot from my phone.
 
 

158 | 365 – Creative Cake

1 March 2010 /

Day158.jpgI’ve been thinking lately about how we are all creative. Every single one of us, in some way enjoys creating. Its as if we were created to create. And yet we are all creative in very different ways.
 
Some people create through art and paintings. Some people create through music and dance. And then other people create through welding or building or software or written words or stories or laughter or process or clothing or teaching or parenting. Why you can even have creative accountants.
 
And then once we have created. We look at what we created and say “it is good”, and our creation helps create us.
 
Today’s photo is a part of the Birthday cake, Karina, my very creative wife made for Kyla’s tenth birthday. It is the zero of the ten, and is a banana cake with icing edges and a slightly hollowed centre with blue jelly on top.
 
Very creative.

151 | 365 – Ubuntu

22 February 2010 /

Day151.jpg  “Ubuntu is a concept that we have in our Bantu languages at home. Ubuntu is the essence of being a person. It means that we are people through other people. We cannot be fully human alone. We are made for interdependence, we are made for family. When you have ubuntu, you embrace others. You are generous, compassionate. If the world had more ubuntu, we would not have war. We would not have this huge gap between the rich and the poor. You are rich so that you can make up what is lacking for others. You are powerful so that you can help the weak, just as a mother or father helps their children. This is God's dream.” - Desmond Tutu

This is a photo of Cheree at CBC. Her and hubby own the VW van. We were talking about how I felt I owned a bit of their van. He talked about community, and I took this pic and it reminded me of Ubuntu.

Why YOU don’t change.

6 November 2009 /

It was a moment of sheer intelligential brilliance. “Immovable Deadlines”, I pondered.

When an immovable deadline exists, it is easy to deliver. When I have to speak on Sunday, or deliver a presentation to a big client. The deadline is immovable, and I always meet the deadline. Always.

I have known this about myself for years of course, but now I have a term to define it. To be more successful, all I have to do is figure out a way to make movable deadlines, things I put off, IMMOVABLE.

Brilliant!

Dazzling, even if I do say so myself.

I can’t believe I didn’t think of it sooner. My life is going to be so much better. I will be a better leader, husband, friend. I am sorted!

Then, by chance I read some notes I made from 2 years ago. Written across the note are these words “IMMOVABLE DEADLINES”

I cuss slightly in my head and am reminded again how hard change is.

Change takes thought.

Reflection.

Time.

Resolve.

Discipline.

Then it takes all of those things all over and over again. And again. And again.

Its hard work!

And that’s why YOU don’t change. And YOU need to sort it out. Work harder. Hold the goal before YOU. Don’t YOU give up.

I say YOU, because clearly I haven’t learnt.

Those poor happy people…

13 August 2009 /

I was talking to an ex-colleague the other day who fulfilled her dream and went to Costa-Rica. She said that she stayed with a really poor family by some beech for 2 weeks, and they were the so incredibly happy.

Poor happy people!

Then I found a recent article that states a full 27 Million Americans are now on anti-depressants. 10% of their entire population.

Rich unhappy people!

Maybe poor people don’t take anti-depressants because they can’t afford them. I am sure there are plenty of sad poor people around. OR maybe if we, (Western culture ‘we’), weren’t so worried about climbing the socioeconomic ladder, we wouldn’t be so sad.

Maybe then, we would focus on doing things that bring true happiness and not focus on buying things that brings happiness.

Maybe…

 

Attack that author and you attack me!

9 February 2008 /

I’m reading a book at the moment by an Author that I respect and who’s books I have enjoyed a lot in the past.

In this current book he takes about one paragraph to have a go at authors (generally) who promote routine feeding of babies and wraps it some psycho stuff about a baby needing love not enforced routine.

I immediately start to write off the author. I start to think, “what would he know”, “psychological rubbish”. I stop reading.

Stop hearing his message.

I don’t take it in.

All because of one paragraph in a book of 300 pages.

As I considered this tonight on slow drive home from Auckland Airport I realised this: I am writing him off because by attacking these authors, he is actually attacking me.

I stop listening because he has said something is wrong with something I have done.

Something that has worked for me.

Something I believe in.

Just 1 paragraph which is not the theme of the book, just his option, and he is written off (well almost).

Interestingly, I am sure I do this to people all the time in conversation. Have a dig at a world view that a someone they respect has communicated and by attacking the world view, I attack the person I am talking to.

I attack their belief.

They stop listening.

…

I am not sure I can stop having an opinion but it is worth thinking about.

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