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If something doesn't feel right, look right, sound right, smell right or seem right - it probably isn't. Yet how often do we let ourselves or others convince us that we are manifesting drama, not seeing things clearly or that we are wrong? When I teach conflict resolution in workshops we talk about dealing with issues when you first experience discomfort. And why we often don't choose to act-i-on things right at that first point of niggle. I ask how often was that first feeling wrong when you look back at a scenario that blew up. Answer never. I have coached clients who have been at the extremes of the elements during military service and survived when others have taken their own lives. Their gut instincts kept them alive there yet in the boardroom they don't trust the gut feeling that someone may be manipulating a situation. I bet they are not wrong. I've had that quiet little voice that seems to rise up from somewhere deep inside of me tell me I'm being managed or led up a path that is not of my own making. Yet I've allowed others to talk over it, to tell me I have a problem or that I am the one who needs to toe the line. Only to realise every single time further down the track that the voice was spot on and that I was indeed correct not to waiver. That my instincts were on target, that I could have saved myself a lot of grief, self doubt and mayhem by belief in my self and my ability to judge what is going to serve me well. Our instincts are to keep us safe and to trigger the flight or fight skills primate in all of us. Some like smoke alarms are now hair triggered towards anxiety and we are over conditioned to dumbing down our feelings and responses. Perhaps you body has been screaming for so long for you to listen to it that now it reacts to every threat with caution. Because if you haven't listened in the past I better act up real quick to get you to listen now. If you start listening again to what your instincts are trying to tell you the relief is instant. The faith empowering and the self trust strengthening. Your soul calms down and you don't have to panic any more because you are now aware you will handle it, the universe doesn't bring you anything that you can't handle and we can take care of ourselves. It's the voices in our solar plexus that we need to be quiet enough to hear. For those who are busy telling themselves that they don't have any little voices to listen to it's exactly that voice that I'm talking about. The one that tells you gently that you or someone you are in connection with is acting out of integrity. That what they are saying thinking and doing are not lining up. Just go with it. Buy yourself some time and say thanks but no thanks, or not just now. Take the time to listen and to trust what you are feeling. What's the rush. Try it today. Tune into your instincts next time you have to make a decision. Don't weigh up the logic just go quiet allow yourself to tap into source and ask yourself yes or no? Stay or Go? Block or Flow? Go with that first answer calmly and gently one small step at a time. Let me know how it works for you. Put your gut out there to test the wind.
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Lycra or crampons? Both choices I have managed to avoid today but for some now in both they may be questioning what's around the next corner on this adventure. It's Gods Zone race time and participant kits required extreme climbing gear. Multi sporters are the guru geeks of our town. By day they mascarade as company directors, engineers, real estate agents or work in retail. By weekend they push sleep depraved into the hills, racing, climbing, kyacking and conquoring. - Where? not even they know until they get there - I live in awe. For thousands near the Arrow today is Mototapu time, when Shania Twain opens her land thanks to the OIC rules that surrounded it's purchase for the mean and the keen to trek from Wanaka across the valley by bike and foot. It's become a walk in the park completed so often by some there was head scratching last night wondering why it was they thought a 5th time would be different. Perhaps it's for the carbo load feasting before it... guilt free indulgence. For others it is the first big push out of the comfort zone how hard can riding a bike be?? By now they may be wishing they'd purchased the comfy seat 2000 version of their padded shorts instead of the crib in the Southern Riveria or that Chanel handbag. Or perhaps they are pausing, daring to look behind them to see why that friend the planner is taking it so carefully down the hills when surely that's the easy side of the ride and we are not even half way in. For the fast and furious it's already done and dusted, they'll be lying in the village, eating a Mantra samosa, being felt up by physios and welcoming number after number across the line to local celeb torts and cheers - I wonder if we'll see Chuck's mum? For other friends today is an adventure of another kind. Two souls meeting as one to tie the knot and begin a different kind of story, married, fiesta style. Some friends scattered by distance or carnage are sending love via moonbeams and honoring them in creative ways, planting cherry trees, writing love notes in the sand and adding beats to spotify. Then there are those who are ten years into their married story - wrapped up in their off spring or overseas travel. Living lifes adventure on opposite sides of the world doing it well all the same. There's parties tonight, competitions to win and work to complete. Some Ad-venture-rs are too busy to take "time off" right now but we'll get there... where ever there may be. For me what adventure does the rest of today hold? An experience of being in the flow. I've opted out of the above pursuits ( see my earlier blog on Saying NO being a really a big yes). To focus on my own state of calm and retreat from the roaring crowd. Some me time DO-ing what I love to DO - I woke with my youngest childs arm across my neck, a sleep hug. I hadn't noticed her climbing in to my bed but it was well after I was rounding up the cairn terrier from his rabbit slaughter at 2am, belated thanks to the father in law for the spot light it does work on rabbits, and horses who seemed very surprised at how I look in my nightie at 1000 plus lumens. I've had a late breakfast in bed - an almost luke warm weak cup of tea, barely cooked peanut butter toast with a freshly plucked rose on the plate side. I've been out doing some friend stalking. The chickens and I have had our chat over their La rumbla scraps, the sprinklers are all on as is the dish washer and the washing machine - water consumption is in abundance, the house is clean and silent - the children are all gone, we've raised them well enough they all have friends. The bliss of the solitude to write. There are still those cherry trees to plant, a new wwooffer arrival, mojito hour and that's just in the breaks. The advenutres that await will surely feature in another blog. I don't yet know but I've commited to go with the flow. When you have no idea what's happening next, your excited about the process. I love it when a plan comes together particularily when you have no idea of what the plan is. To enjoy every adventure for what it is, a moment to smile lots and laugh plenty. Life is the journey not the desitination and isn't it the best adventure of all. You've partied long and hard in the Queenstown good bars, schmoozing with hotties, spending your last $ at 5am on that cockadoodle-oink from Fergburger, thinking it would do you the next two meals and it did. Then the perfect winter storm disrupts ALL flights AND road access out of here and you are over that fine line between chaos and disorder. What would you do with zero cash and no way home for a day or two? In HongKong you'd sleep in the airport, but you won't be doing any of that in ZQN - our terminal wisely shuts shop between the last and first flights of the day. We locals need a break from the drama at some point and there is no alternative refuge. No half way house, no warm bus stops. Dollar chewing alternatives are every where you turn. This is an all too common scenario for some of the international revellers that frequent here. A gap between cashflow and serve-us's that seems like a glacial crevasse. Perhaps you are like my friend the wwoofer trading hours of work for bed and food so you can ride extreme bike trails on Skyline. Only to crush your kidney by trying to bungy over your handle bars. You've just found out the long-ride way that our closest base hospital is two bumpy hours south. You know no one in vegas and you didn't have your phone charger tucked into your lycra with which to call your mum. Prior to social networking these people would have been very unhappy campers indeed. Social media can be the collection point for soul-saving-support when life throws you a gap and you have no idea of how you are going to fill it. Messages of... I need a lift or a bed, has anyone seen this shop lifter? Or I have a few bulbs to give away or jokes to tell are building communities faster and in more user friendly ways than a chat to your neighbour over the fence could ever have imagineered. Having a digital presence is making us all into kinder more caring human beings. Each status update or tweet is a call to Act-i-on. Do I like this, how can I be involved, does it make me want to smile and pass it on? It's like learning to play nicely and share your toys all over again. It's a moment by moment challenge to live in integrity. To be certain that what you say, think and DO line up and are the same.There is a lot of crap-chat about fake profiles and watching how you put on your facebook face. Yet I choose to believe that what you do on line makes you so visable that your real world responds to it immediately, dynamically. If what you think you are like and what you are like fail to add up, real people quickly let you know. Those that haven't embraced their digital presence are becoming conspicuous by their absence. What to selfish to share? I love the speed at which solutions are created through digital platforming. A horse float found, a criminal arrested, a million likes to stop someone smoking. If you need an answer just ask Gog. If you need a job link up and hook in. For those who tell you to stop wasting time on line. Think how many hours there are between that airport reopening, or minutes lying flat on your back in hospital with no one to talk to and nothing to read. Care to connect and fill the gaps. Build bridges and get in underneath people, places and projects. Scroll rather than troll through your news feed and connections to make the world a closer and more caring place faster. Build a bridge and get over it. When we give we are all the more richer for being. NZ European?? Not me I'm a New Zealander!! 6th generation, my children are 7th. And every time I fill in a form it irks me. To not be able to acknowledge my country as my own is a bash to my ethics of enculturation. While there is no bad just different I feel unsettled and misplaced. And now at census time we Kiwis have an opprtunity to DO something about it. My ancestors came from Nova Scotia and Mauritius a long long long long long long long time ago - not much European about any of them. They milled Kauri in Whatipu and by the colour of my youngest kiwi chicks skin the cocoa plantation we lost due to no rates payments in Southern Africa just a few generations back has a lineage battle with which unknown iwi may have jumped the engineering whanau fence in Patea and Hawera / Taranaki. You can take the boy from the naki but not the naki from the boy and it shows clearly in my daughters heritage. Yet we still don't know how to fill in our forms.Every time the school sends home a survey I add a thesis. Ethnicity debates aside we are New Zealanders. From Gods Own, Middle Earth. We love our country with a passion. there is not a human who did not migrate here, by waka or ship, by aircraft or mothers womb. They honed out a life from the bush, have contributed as settlers, farmers, politicians,mothers and others. We have never left and we call it home. Our blood is in her soil. Tommorrow there is a chance for our country to embrace us all. New Zealanders. All of us. Not of only our treasured maori or those who are happy to own European decent. Tanga te whenua to me is people of the land but when, where and how does that start or finish? How many generations have to pass of children being created and born here? Of toil and endevour towards the good of our nation until we don't have to pretend we are from somewhere else? Go on I D.A.R.E. you - be brave enough to say where we are from. I owe this to my kids this is their home. Garden art is my current thing.
More truthfully weeding the garden is my current thing and it's hardly a work of art. That's what you get when the engineer in the family decides to put an acre into veges on the 5 acre block but works away solving the nations infrastructure issues most of the week. So aside from writing because to write is to breathe, I'm loving my green fingers, broken finger nails and fluffy inners of my Hunter gummies. I'd love my sustainable paradise to be a work of art but currently with the drought and full summer harvest upon me I really only feel like we've created a shit sandwich. I spend a lot of time irrigating, picking and panicking that everything is doomed, nothing will thrive and I'll fail. I'd like to put a big peg on it to remind me that this is what I value - like a memo note to self. A great work of art takes time, passion and commitment. And sometimes it's the preparation of the site, the collection of your tools and knowing what it is that you want to create that you must first give your focus to before success is achieved. If you've had some of your better ideas hit hurdles or get all caught up in schmoo too ...Congratulate yourself. You don’t have to eat the schmoo bap - However you do have a great example of contrast. You know what it is that you still need to work on, what you don’t like, what stinks and what turns you off. You know what failure feels like and you know you want to avoid anymore of it. Sometimes you have to say NO so that you can create the space to say YES. Saying NO to things, people and projects is the fastest way I have found to bring YES to fruition. A panicked, grieving mother, and her supporters moving heaven and earth to get her to daughter-in-law and young grand-daughter as quickly as possible has captured the bleeding hearts of NZ today. And Jet Star, death star to some... Qantas's poor relation has just created a PR night mare for themselves. Most of you will have heard the disgust by now - that a fare paying passenger scheduled to fly in a week or so was denied the transfer of her booking for an earlier seat on compassionate grounds - the aircraft was not full, she would however have to purchase another ticket at more than $300. This has really hit my customer Serve-US funny bone. The countless missed opportunities in this one, let alone the bad karma is mind boggling. The stories that are flowing on social media are filling my horror album with fodder for my next training workshops, they are facilitator gold. A customer being told that next time they don't have to book Jet star if they don't like their flight being delayed. I'd be careful what you ask for there guys. The opportunity cost here would be fascinating to calculate. How much future business did this airline just surrender? How much damage has it done in $ terms? It brings to the fore the issue that you really can't afford not to care what your customers are saying about you. The world of travel has certainly changed - but when did we sign up for cheaper ways to get from A to B to equate to heartless or arrogant? I know Jetstar were only following their policy. However by disempowering their agents with policy that stops them being able to lead with their hearts, and win over their customers, they have missed the point of volume travel. More customers not less is what the budget model thrives on. It costs nothing to be nice to people and it makes them want to be around you again. I am reminded of a story from my days at Countdown supermarkets as training manager. Our GM was running a little late for a flight - as he ran to the check in counter - no bags, a frequent traveler well known at the counter. The rude attendent not even looking up from her work snapped at him in a nasal tone. FLIGHT IS CLOSED! He paused tried a ...timid... but...... FLIGHT IS CLOSED! was the retort. Now I'm not arguing with the reality I'm debating the manner of the exchange. Compare this to when he side stepped to the next counter where he was greeted by a smiling welcome, a quick explanantion of his urgency the reply was - we have an aircraft about to depart, technically the flight is closed but let me call the airbridge and see if the door is still open sir. While she made the call he handed over his credit card. Multi tasking genius ensured and her only word to him with a smile was run.. sir, run! Which he did. But not until he turned to our employee who had taken him to the airport to say please tell my PA to change our travel contract to these guys. With that one action, of one person focused on how they could Serve-US at that moment a $2 million plus per annum travel contact changed check in desks. I'd suggest even if the outcome was that he had not been allowed on the flight he still would have viewed the exchange more favorably. So is the lesson be careful you never know who you are serving? I think not. The lesson is that the universe has given us all only one lesson to learn and that is the lesson of Serve-US. If you are not getting the lesson the universe just turns up the volume. Today every small frustration, late flight, rude retort, delay and baggage stuff up Jetstar has ever had is in the public arena. Zillions of moments of truth wiped with a snotty tissue. The first rule of the win win balance sheet is to work out what is cheap to give and valuable for the other person to recieve. The no brainer in allowing a passenger who already has a contract to fly with you to take a vacant seat on compassionate grounds is an example of this type of currency exchange. You have just created an opportunity to resell the seat she would have filled in the future for more money. And you have an aircraft using more of its capacity today. You have an opportunity to pay it forward. To share the love and treat her as someone deserving care and attention. Not just her but anyone who is need of compassion when one of lifes hurdles knocks you sideways. Ten minutes on hold to talk to a supervisor. Sit down now and time that. It's an age. Add grief, panic and then disenchantment, it's an insult. Not a great example of how they escalated the call. If what you put out returns to you threefold. Would it change the way you dealt with people? If everything was said to you for a reason would it change the way you heard criticisim? I'm hoping that the volume just got so loud for Jetstar/Qantas that they are able to see the value in this for what it is. A fantastic learning opportunity. Lets hope they take the feedback they are getting from their customers on board. Or there may be less of them climbing on board their planes. A complaining customer is your best friend they are telling you how to make your business better. To the lady who lost her beautiful boy to a shark attack - I trust she is feeling the love and support of the country that is flowing her way. Regardless of shark attack, heart attack or panic attack I hope we all learn that the world could do with a little more compassion towards each and every person in need. Take the time to listen to what people are telling you and see what is cheap for you to give and valuable for them to receive. Often it's as simple as a smile, time spent in true connection with them, the acknowledgement that you've listened and that you've understood how they feel. Pay it forward and Serve_Us the next person who gives you the opportunity. |
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