Resolution for 2010

Like most people, I have a couple of NYRs in mind at the end of the year….and am hell fired inspired to put these into being at the beginning of each New Year. I also have to confess that the only NYR that I have ever kept was to give up smoking – 14 or 15 years down the road I am still off the fags.

That was my NYR crowning glory. So this year, I have pushed the thoughts of dieting, more exercise, paint the skirting boards, etc etc to the back of my mind – not that I am not going to do these things …. But if I focus on my one NYR this year, really devote myself to it…then hopefully, achieving all this other stuff should follow.

My resolution for 2010 (and forever) is to practice “being mindful”.

Not always as easy as one thinks…..I was reminded of “mindfulness” a little while ago when someone asked of me “where do you go to when you are with people?” I know how damn irritated I feel when I think someone is not giving me their undivided attention - but you guessed it, little old me is just as guilty of drifting off with my own thoughts.

There are many aspects to Mindfulness and I think that this is a really nice topic for Happiness Soup to touch on… being mindful reaps its own rewards and I am quite sure improves happiness levels.

My first Mindful assignment is to be more In The Present: Focus on what is happening right now, give the proper attention to what is happening around me, what is being said to me, enjoy being in the moment and enjoy the time with people around me. I am going to try not to think of what funny/enlightening/profound thing I am going to say next or what I am going to have for dinner…..

My second Mindful assignment is: Develop a Very Healthy Relationship with Food. I want food to be my friend. This means I will enjoy each and every mouthful of food, plan my meals and take my time eating. There is no need to gobble down food..….I will make each mouthful count, savour each and every moment and mouthful (especially because I really am going on The Diet of all Diets on the 4^th January). I am told that one eats less this way so I think it’s worth giving it a Really Good Try.

These are the 2 assignments I will concentrate on for a bit…… After all, Rome wasn’t built in a day ….. but I will be adding to the Mindful list as the year progresses and share these with you.

Wishing you Love and Happiness for the New Year. Hope it’s a good one.

Christmas musings

Christmas is really for children:

Hell no….. If this was so, why on earth do we angst over the ham, turkey and producing the perfectly cooked Brussel Sprout; Christmas pudding so soaked in brandy that even I cough, Christmas cake and mince pies that bring on an attack of heartburn even thinking about them. No…. if Christmas was for the kids we would have hotdogs with bright pink tomato sauce and mello yello mustard out of squeezey bottles, pizza and hamburgers and chips. We would have ice cream in cones to save on washing up and paper tablecloths instead of white linen and glitzy little table decorations, 5 wine glasses per person and kids sitting at the kiddy table. Be honest, Christmas really is for all of us…. I love getting pressies, I love seeing friends and family and so enjoy all the kisses, hugs and feeling of goodwill. I am convinced we all secretly enjoy Christmas but feel we have to moan and groan and be all grown up about it…. I love doing the “whole Christmas” thing because we have always done it, our parents did it and it is a nice bit of tradition and a really good way to wind down the year.

Hint: It is time to come out the Christmas closet and just give yourself over to this really nice time of the year.

The Turkey is dry:

Ditto the above – hell no….. I am astounded at how many people trot out “turkey is dry” and how much they hate it at the mere mention of the T word. Well, a well cooked turkey is really delicious. And besides: have you ever wondered why the supermarkets are chock-a-block stocked with turkeys at Christmastime? It’s because people buy them and eat them and if they were all that bad, people wouldn’t but them…would they?

Hint: Get yourself good directions on how to roast a turkey.

Leftover Day (it used to be called Boxing Day):

My sister-in-law was planning her menu for Christmas day lunch when my brother commented that this seemed like a helluva lot of food. Bren said, “Yes, but we need leftovers to take to Lorna’s Leftover Day on Saturday”. hahahaha.

Hint: Just do it – cook for lots of leftover days.

The Gammon:

Until the other day I had never cooked a gammon and the reason is that I was damn terrified. When we were still going up to Zim for Christmases, my mother was the family member designated to cook the gammon or ham. The process started (with a touch of drama) months prior to December with the ordering and then came the cooking – also with a touch of drama. My Mum had this enormous pot and it seemed like the gammon or ham was boiled for days on end and then on Christmas Eve the pot was wrapped up in what looked like an old grey dog blanket and put on the floor in the pantry – and there it simmered and festered over night and the next day we feasted on this truly delicious and succulent ham/gammon (and turkey) ….. I am positive the deliciousness had something to do with the dog blanket. A hard act to follow but I managed this year sans the dog blanket and days of cooking.

Hint: Never be intimidated by things your mother does/did….

Presents:

Make sure that if you make the rule that presents are for "kids only" that you stick to this. Please don’t give me “just a little something” especially when I have stuck to the rule. But one thing I do go with is drawing up a wish list (and you can use it for your birthday).

Hint: Whilst my list still has the miniature horse, white duck and alpaca on it, it is nice to give your nearest and dearest an idea of what you would really like.

Family fights and feuds:

This is a funny one – but if you really can’t stand someone then don’t invite them to your house and don’t go to theirs - avoid them at all costs. Leave the country, go on holiday…….

Hint: As much as you might like to, this is not the time to try to score brownie points. It’s not the time to “put Susie in her place”, “lord it over” your cousin who has just lost his job, show your “brother whose boss”. As the saying goes…just chill and enjoy yourself.

My Christmas Present:

Lisa gave me some stuff called Crazy Clay – it's for persons 4 years and older* and I can honestly say that like youth, this stuff is wasted on the young. I made this little Christmas critter after our pud and got a bit miffy when others wanted to play with my clay….. but my critter was the best.

*You can find Crazy Clay in any good toy shop

Random bits and pieces (ramblings)

Initially I thought I would write a year-end blog about my 2009 and after spending a few hours pounding away on the keyboard I decided that it was getting very, very heavy; and whilst I thought my musings very, very profound you might not have the same feelings ..so I have filed it in a safe place.

Rather, I thought I would say this instead:

Thank you:
The first Happiness Soup Blog went out on the 11th January 2009 and I have written 79 blogs this year....Yes, that is more than one a week! A really big thank you to everyone who has written to me about a particular blog, to those who have challenged me on certain points - I have thoroughly enjoyed our interactions and to all of you who read my blogs.... and say you enjoy them. Thank you.

What did we do before?:
Facebook: I have been on FaceBook for 6 months or so now.... I love it, I am not the most active person at posting stuff but I love reading the various posts from family and friends. And I just love the way you can find and be found by old friends.
Satellite Tracking: Whilst Lisa was racing in Abu Dhabi the other day I was able to follow the race via their satellite tracking system. I can now yell instructions to her like: "turn right, right", "left, left", "why are you going that way?"..... and so on *grin*. But it is so nice to firstly: know that she is moving (= she is OK) and secondly: I can be a spectator albeit from 2 miles up. The blue line (trace) in this picture shows her route in the desert...Her team is No. 033 and you can see where they heading for!

My kind of Rubic Cube:











Despair:
I am filled with the most profound despair and distress at mans cruelty to animals. I am filled with horror when I read a headline - I cant read the story - about people using live dogs and puppies as sharkbait, at abandoned and mistreated aminals and so on - I cant go on with the list.....




Clouds in the sky:
When my daughter was quite small she looked up at feathery clouds in the sky and asked me if "this was the hair of the wind". So today when I saw feathery clouds in the sky I took this photo.


Couragous people:
A number of family and friends, (Gus, Lisa, Chris, Michael, Ros, Jeannie & David) did some amazing things with their careers this year despite the gloom and doom of the recession and predictions of all sorts of unmentionable things happening or that it wouldn't work or wasn't the right time.
My very dear sister-in-law Brenda who handled her breast cancer with great dignity and bravery.
And a couple of very dear elderly gentlemen who have had to also deal with cancer this year and can still make funny jokes.

Photography:
Lisa has let me have unlimited access to one of her cameras (= she hasn't quite given it to me yet) and I have had great fun reviving my love of photography. Digital is just the best - hundreds/thousands of photos without worrying about the cost of film, developing and printing! This camera has great zooooom functions and the lens can flip 90 degrees which means that when taking pictures of my cat I dont have to necessarily lie on my tummy to get the cat level photo.
In fact I have taken so many photos of her, my cat that is, that I decided to open Bracken (my cat) her own facebook page and post the photos there. Apart from the photos she has quite a large and growing collection of friends and fans.



Chloe Sparkle:
Lisa's young cousin and my neice by marriage - it was wonderful to meet Chloe again - we last saw her when she was 3 and she is now 13. She calls herself Chloe Sparkle because she says you just dont know how people manage to mangle de Speville... I do Chloe, I do. But I think her choice of name is so apt....she really does sparkle, is so funny and so bright and intelligent and such a delight to be with. Chloe introduced me to The Twilight series - I have read all 4 books and seen the 2 movies..... and I have become really fond of vampires. In fact I am about to make Twilight Cupcakes for a Christmas market on Saturday.


Family and friends:
Blessings on me. I have lovely, amazing friends and family. Thank you. In August we celebrated Grand-mere's 80th birthday and family from all over came to SA. This is the first time Lisa and her cousins have all been together. This photo shows (L to R) Chloe who lives in London, Karine who lives in Paris, Marc who lives in Madagascar and Lisa.




Happiness Thrives:
Happiness thrives in all sorts of places - I took this photo of the carry bag I bought from my local Fruit & Veg City this morning.








Politics:

I have made a firm resolution - I will not talk or even think about politics any more. It is not good for me. Instead I will make some more of these felt sandwiches - they are non-fattening and keep my mind occupied.





In conclusion:
If I think of anything else I promise I will blog about it!
In the meantime, lots of love and happiness to you all, have a wonderful festive season, if you are travelling then travel safely.

Liz xxxx

Work the problem

The other day I popped into the pet food shop to say hello to the lady who works there. I like her because she takes such an interest in her customers pets; I swear she probably knows them all by name, and she knows her stuff and has been able to recommend food that has, albeit for the shortest space of time, satisfied my “picky eater” cat.

She is a tiny sparrow like person and as I hadn’t seen her around for a while I asked her where she had been. She told me that she had been off sick; had a lung removed because of cancer. This is her 2nd occurrence of cancer and she had previously had a breast removed. But, she told me, despite all that she was just fine and getting back into the swing of things.

She then went on to tell me about the recurring response she has had when telling people about the lung cancer. The first thing they ask is “do you smoke” - in quite an accusing way. Like it is all her fault…even when she says she used to smoke but gave up about 25 years ago, she says there is that hint of “well what did you expect”. As she says, she is not looking for sympathy, she just replies to enquires about her health – but her problem at the moment is the cancer; not whether or not she smokes/smoked. She does not want to have to defend herself or try to convince people that this probably wasn’t caused by smoking, that it is a secondary cancer, and just because she did smoke – 25 years ago - she really doesn’t think she deserves it.

Her story reminded me of the quote by Tom Peters: "The problem is rarely/never the problem. The response to the problem invariably ends up being the real problem."

So true. How we respond to someone’s problem is really important. A suggestion I have is to just “work the problem”….. Recriminations can maybe happen afterwards – or maybe you should just keep quiet because the person is probably feeling really bad as it is.

Happiness Necklaces

My friend Ros made me this Happiness Necklace and when I wore it for the first time the other day, a number of people stopped me to ask about it – their comments: “Yes, it is a happy necklace”. Ros is exceptionally talented and makes unusual and eye-catching jewelry.


In this photo, unfortunately the colours are not quite true. The whitish buttons are actually acid green and provide a startling contrast to the purples and orange. And yes, the entire necklace is made out of buttons. One of the buttons, co-incidentally, has Liz & Co stamped on it *grin*

Ros is very happy to make many more Happiness Necklaces –she has a barrel full of buttons so each necklace will be quite different in colour and layout.

If you would like one, please email me with your address. The cost of the necklace (including postage) is R72.50 - (I will send you banking details etc.) For people outside of SA please add on a bit more for postage.

For the guys…..well, if you want to get in touch with your feminine side, I guess you could always wear it under your shirt. I will however ask Ros to look at something a bit more masculine!

Enjoy! The necklace is really beautiful.

Give yourself a little treat

My Dad adored opera. When listening to the music he would go into a sort of trace and hum along, badly out of tune. He introduced me to this music when I was quite young and we had this little joke that we thought was so clever; if Giuseppe Verdi was English his name would be Joe Green…hahaha. And my Dad had heaps of those thick 78’s (for the younger readers – very old vinyl records, played at a fast speed). Included in this collection were recordings by Caruso and Gigli about which I still have nightmares; I am sure we used them for clay pigeon shooting or melted them into ashtrays...horrors.

Moving on: Treat yourself.
At least one a month there is an opera movie at Nu Metro Cinema Nouveau. They come from the New York Met and are the most incredible productions. They are new ie. I saw Tosca the other week and it was filmed earlier this year. The singers, orchestra, set, costumes…..everything, are just out of this world. The voices are so spectacular I get all dizzy and have to remind myself to breath. The singers are amongst the best in the world. I can assure you that if you haven’t listened to an opera before, watching one of these productions will change the way you feel. During the intervals you get to go backstage and meet the stars and you also get to see how they change the really enormous sets. It is fabulous. And you don’t even have to know the story…. There are English sub-titles which are actually very funny – and incredibly corny - to read. But it really doesn’t sound so corny sung in Italian.

Aida is being shown on Friday night (27th Nov) in Jhb – I have seen the trailer and the set alone is enough to keep you spell bound! Enjoy.

Thanksgiving

The Americans are about to celebrate Thanksgiving. This is a really important holiday for them; more so I think than Christmas. I don’t know a heck of a lot about the tradition – but I do know that they eat pumpkin pie and turkey. And every time I think of turkey these days I am reminded of Nassim Taleb’s turkey graph from his book The Black Swan (*see below).

I do however know, that Thanksgiving is a time to give thanks. This part of the tradition is very appealing. Isn’t it nice to have a special day when we can all give thanks for the people in our lives, the things we have, the things we have done and will have the means to still do.? I think it is wonderful that this is an opportunity to also say thank you to the people around us who make our lives easier, who love us (warts and all), make us laugh, who are always there for us.

But, we don’t have to wait for “a thanksgiving day” to say thank you. There is a lot of research around at the moment that says that you will be much, much happier if you practice gratitude, understand being grateful and express your appreciation.

Thanksgiving in the US is celebrated on the 4th Thursday in November. – which is the 26th November this year. Co-incidentally – we are having our Poker Club Christmas dinner that night – a nice time to be thankful for good friends, lots of laughs and some very bad poker that has been played.

*The Turkey Graph : paraphrased by me

Taleb says: imagine a turkey that is kept in a special pen and it gets fed every day a certain time and receives a certain type and amount of food. This happens every day for 1000 days. And on the 1001st day some guy comes into the pen, grabs the turkey and chops its head off. Moral of the story: you can’t predict the future from past known behaviors/activities. Liz’s moral:- don’t get stuck with what has happened in the past and past experiences, move on, enjoy the present and make your future great.

Stamina

In his book The Outliers, Malcolm Gladwell talks about why little Chinese kids are so much better at maths and science than their Western counterparts. One of his theories is that it is much easier to do “sums” and count in Chinese. But his major theory is that the Chinese kids spend much more time per year at school than our little darlings. They have a much longer day and much shorter holidays. And they have homework as well and none of them seem to have died from overwork. There is also a school in new York City that runs along these lines and is churning out well rounded, well educated scholars who are also getting phenomenal results in the maths and science arena.

My school teacher friends will remain friends because I am not advocating longer school hours; I am using this as an example that if people (children in this case) are trained to work longer hours then they will be just fine. They wont be tired, pooped out, exhausted, fit to drop….

They are like athletes…. You cant expect to run a marathon unless you work at it, put in the time and effort and train for it. You have to build up the stamina. You may feel a bit worn out at first but you will get used to it.

And I also believe this is why we “give up” too soon. You have to develop the stamina for a new task. Lets face it, the first time you sit in front of a PC for the entire day, you’ll feel like hell – sore eyes, arms, back, knees….in fact everything will ache. The weekend gardener will suffer from planting seedlings.

It takes a bit of time to build the skills, the muscles and stamina to do the new job. You need to get working fit, studying fit. You need to get past the discomfort zone.

Little Snippets

Every now and again, I get all sorts of little snippets and quotes from other blogs, papers, friends etc that just seem to hit the spot. I sometimes copy and paste the snippet into a word document and file it under a title like “nice quote”…. And then promptly forget about them.

This last week I got these ones and I am passing them on immediately this time – I think they are great.

About Fear:

“What gets in the way of wisdom? Fear is the biggest culprit....Fear can get in the way of compassion, gratitude, and seeing the goodness in other people, which in turn can make our relationships more difficult. Fear makes us cling to a picture of how we think things should be, making acceptance of what is almost impossible....In short, fear makes us go through life with our guard up, wasting energy that could be put to better use. In contrast, both serenity and courage are based on living with trust.” From: The Wisdom to Know the Difference by Eileen Flangan

About Listening

“Listen naively. But don't just "listen," also "hear." ... The listening part is relatively easy. It's about hanging out, dropping in, leaving your office door open (or, better yet, not having one). Hearing is about empathy.” Tom Peters

About Problems

"The problem is rarely/never the problem. The response to the problem invariably ends up being the real problem." Tom Peters

Seeking a life unplugged

by Lisa de Speville

Creative thinker Dion Chang (although he is often associated with fashion, he isn't a designer - just a trend analyst) was on the radio last week, talking about his new book '2010 Flux Trend Review'.

The one item in the radio interview that caught my attention was 'The unplugged revolution'. I recently addressed the whole adventure/expedition issue in a post and how these brave adventurers are answering a natural calling to explore and make their own tracks across the globe.

From Dion's perspective, we start our day with gadgets and clutter (alarm clock, radio, electric toothbrush, processed food, traffic, telephones, computers, printers, paper everywhere, emails...). We're always 'on' and although these tools have been created to make our lives easier, they weigh us down instead.

This topic has actually been in my mind for the better part of two weeks. We send emails getting answers with a day. In years long gone we would have written a letter, which takes time to get a response. And while speed is good for productivity, it has created a rush-rush-rush lifestyle. We probably do more in a quarter than our grandparents (or parents) did in a year. Dion quite rightly says, of the information that bombards us daily (news, emails, advertising), "the quantity of messages has long superceded the quality".

So this is where Dion's 'Unplugged Revolution' comes in - 'people going back to nature, exploring spirituality and embracing traditional practices like craft and gardening'.

I think this also explains the success of multiday sporting events (get away from it all association) and, I suspect, a greater number of explorers.

This busy pace of life also ties in with something else I've been thinking about - 'time to think'. For the past few years I've been chasing my tail, non-stop. Races, training, work, organising, admin, club, email... it just doesn't end. It was only when I left my day job in June and got a bit of free time in early October that I was able to think about some things.

Also, being in a fairly creative industry (PR, media, communications), time to think is important. When you're chasing your tail and rushing from one client to the next, you cannot possibly have time to come up with creative solutions and fun ideas - they're only half there. This is what it was like at the agency I worked for - no time to just think.

From experience, good intentions are often just that - but I am trying to make sure that I keep some open time in my life specifically for thinking (running is good thinking time too).

Philosopher, Winnie the Pooh, has this to say on the topic...

"Here is Edward Bear now coming downstairs on his head bump bump bump behind Christopher Robin. It is as far as he knows the only way of coming down though he feels there really ought to be a better way if only he could stop bumping for a moment and think about it." – A A Milne, Winnie the Pooh

Have you got time to think?




If you had time to think you could have come up with this too...

(and yes, I did sing through all the options too)

Didgeridoos, cellos, hangs and nose flutes

On Sunday we did a family get-together day at my cousins’ house. I had been warned June that there would be some people I hadn’t seen for while and I was looking forward to this surprise as well as seeing Derek and June. We live in the same city but at opposite ends and add to that the normal demands on our time; we never get to see that much of each other.

The surprise was my cousin Barbara and her partner Bruce. I hadn’t seen Barbara since we were at a family wedding about 4 years and I hadn’t met Bruce before. Barbara and Bruce live in the Cape and had been here for business.

There were about a dozen of us for lunch and as usual June produced a feast – but the thing I am always amazed with is how she managed to make salads into little impressionist masterpieces – almost too beautiful to mess up. So we sat around and ate, drank wine and laughed and told funny stories.

After lunch, June started moving the furniture around and out came Barbara with her cello and Bruce with a didgeridoo. You have no idea how complementary these two instruments are…really stunning. After the first little piece things hotted up and we listened to some music by pop group Hotwater – in one number Barbara provides some very beautiful cello backing….. pop and cello also goes together beautifully. And then Bruce brought out an instrument called a Hang (pronounced Hung). This thing looks like a weber braai! But the sounds that come out of it are magical…. From flute sounds to soft strings and mellow steel drum sounds. In the meantime June and Brenda couldn’t keep still and were dancing up a storm. Kevin leapt up every now and again, stomped his feet and let out a whoop or two. We were all laughing, clapping hands cheering on the dancers and musicians and joining in a chorus or two.

Would you believe it: Bruce brought out another couple of instruments – a bit of pvc piping tuned to C that he makes sing. And then he gave us nose flutes to practice on and after a bit Lisa managed to play along really well. I had a cold – you really can’t play a nose flute with a cold… but mostly everyone got the hang of it and was playing little ditties.

What a fantastic day. And what made it so special? We were with good friends and family; we had good wine and food. We had great conversation, amazing music, dancing and lots and lots of good laughs. Happiness is all of this.

How to be Extremely Happy

Hahahahaha - Words of advice from John Cleese

http://laughlines.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/10/28/john-cleese-how-to-be-extremely-happy/

Thanks to my cousin Kel Sheppey for this - he posted it on Facebook.

Enjoy

Frugal Emotions

This extract is from : The Reason of Things, Living with Philosophy by A C Grayling

“… if one is frugal with one’s emotions – limiting love in order to avoid its pains, stifling appetites and desires in order to escape the price of their fulfillment – one lives a stunted, muffled, bland life only. It is practically tantamount to a partial death in order to minimize the electric character of existence – its pleasures, its ecstasies, its richness and colour, matched by its agonies, its wretchedness, its disasters and grief. To take life in armfuls, to embrace and accept it, to leap into it with energy and relish, is of course to invite trouble of all familiar kinds. But the cost of avoiding trouble is a terrible one: it is the cost of having trodden the planet for humanity’s brief allotment of less than a thousand months, without really having lived”

Thanks to Barbara for sending it to me.

MFJS

Yesterday, Seth Godin’s daily blog covered a type of person he refers to as a Troll. I, far less delicately, refer to these people as Mother-F*****ing Joy Suckers (MFJS). I couldn’t have written about this as beautifully as Seth so I am copying his blog about Trolls, in its entirety, and also the blog he sent out today called Begrudging – which I believe he should have called MFJS 2......

http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2009/10/trolls.html

Trolls

Lots of things about work are hard. Dealing with trolls is one of them. Trolls are critics who gain perverse pleasure in relentlessly tearing you and your ideas down. Here's the thing(s):

1. trolls will always be trolling
2. critics rarely create
3. they live in a tiny echo chamber, ignored by everyone except the trolled and the other trolls
4. professionals (that's you) get paid to ignore them. It's part of your job.

"Can't please everyone," isn't just an aphorism, it's the secret of being remarkable.

http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2009/10/begrudging.html

Begrudging

I don't know if this happens to you, but I'm noticing it more and more. Someone offers you a refund, or agrees to sell you something or even hires you to do a project, but then spend a lot of time explaining that it's a one time thing, or that it's against policy or it's not even something they like to do.

What's the point of agreeing to anything begrudgingly? Does it get your partner to do his best work? Does it increase the chances that you'll get to win next time?

If you're going to do something, do it. Go all in. Doing it half in makes no sense at all to me. It's a like a store that has so many rules and regulations about sales and exchanges that you wonder if they really want to be bothered to sell you anything at all.

The Pink Pig of Happiness

If you haven’t read the book, you can now watch the movie…… This little book, all about the PPoH, has been animated and you can check it out on uTube. It is only 4.36 minutes long and well worth watching – VeRy InsPirAtiOnaL and good for a great big chuckle.

Click on this link….. Enjoy... and good for the kids to watch..... Hahahahahaha

http://www.youtube.com/edwardmonktontv#p/u

Happy Scones

Every now and again people send me Happiness type recipes. I have tried a couple of them but mostly have filed them in a safe place with vague thoughts for a Happiness Cookbook at some stage. When I received this one the other day I was charmed.... and had to send it on to you straight away. I haven't tried it but just look at the list of ingredients.

Happy Scones

230 grams of self-raising flour
75 grams of butter
50 grams of sugar
1 egg of a happy chicken
2 tbsps of milk or buttermilk
2 tsps of mixed spice (cinnamon, cloves etc)
dried cranberries
pinch of salt

This is how you make the Happy Scones:

Preheat the oven at 220° C.
Put the flour and pinch of salt in a bowl, together with the mixed spices and rub the butter into the mixture until you have a breadcrumb consistency. Add the sugar. Beat the egg with the milk and add this to the dry mixture together with the cranberries and bring together until the moisture is absorbed. Make into dough with your hands. If the dough is a bit dry, add a little bit more milk. Roll out the dough into a circle. It should be approx. 2.5 cm thick. Cut out the scones with a cookie cutter or a glass. Place on a baking tray and brush with a little milk and bake in the oven for 10-15 minutes. They have to be well risen and light brown. Leave them to cool on a wire rack. Serve with thick cream, butter and homemade cranberries and port jam.

Expedition racing and bloody noses

I think that just about everyone who knows me also knows that my daughter Lisa is an expedition racer. And you might very well say “A what?”. Well, briefly, expedition racing is a multi day, many kilometres (can be up to 800km), multi discipline (running, paddling, mountain bilking etc), sometimes self sufficient (you carry all your gear and food) and can be either a team or solo event.

And you might very well also say “OMG she must be very fit” and what you don’t say is a little mad as well *grin*.

But now here’s the thing…. Fitness isn’t the thing that gets you through the race. Preparation, your feet and your mind are the things that get you to the finish line. So sometimes – most times - it is not the most obvious skill or attribute that’s needed. Sometimes you just have to get out there and "just do it".

And here’s a really important thing – you need to expect a little bloody nose: I lifted this wonderful quote from Lisa’s blog today. It is from an episode of Star Trek and was said by the character Q:

"If you can't take a little bloody nose, maybe you oughtta go back home and crawl under your bed. It's not safe out here. It's wondrous, with treasures to satiate desires both subtle and gross; but it's not for the timid."

And then Lisa goes on to say: “Sometimes you have to risk that bloody nose for all the other rewards that life offers.”

Questions and Answers

Penelope Trunk (of the Brazencareerist.com) made a couple of great one liners about questions which I jotted down because they really struck a cord. (Unfortunately I can’t give you the exact references because I only copied the statement!) These notes have been sitting in my “future blog” file for some time and my observation over the last couple of weeks has prompted me to now write about “questions”

The question that generates an answer you can’t cope with: The answer is usually just the thing we want to avoid – So, we avoid asking the question OR we rephrase the question in the hopes that we will get a “softer” answer. But ultimately, we know the answer but don’t want to hear it.
Hint: Make sure you want to hear the answer if you do ask the question.

You ask me a question when five people have given you an answer you don't like: Don’t you just hate this? It happens so often – especially in business. And the person asking the question is just hoping like mad that some poor sucker will give him the “right/wrong” answer, and he bandies that poor guys name all over the place…. “but Joe said I could have 75% discount….” and the pooh really hits fan especially for poor Joe.
Hint: Just don’t do this – it is so annoying and you wont win any friends.

Not every good question leads to a great relationship: Sometimes those great questions you have lined up will reveal that the other person actually doesn’t have a clue.
Hint: This can be disappointing – but ask anyway. You can't always wear rose coloured specs.

Learn to take criticism well by choosing your critics well: This is my particular favourite. Don’t you just love it when people criticise something you have done (written, painted, sculpted, photographed) and they don’t know what the heck they are talking about?
Hint: Don’t get too upset about unqualified and unsolicited criticism – worry about the other sought after qualified stuff and take it on the chin.

My Observations about questions

It is not just politicians who don’t give straight answers to questions. Many people just don’t answer the question – at all. It doesn’t matter what the question is they will say something like “Well hmmmm……” and then launch into something they want to tell you. And you are left a bit bemused wondering where that came from, repeat you question and they say “Well hmmm.….” And then go off on another tangent, different to the previous one and you are left even more bemused and wondering what this has to do with what you asked. And when the question is asked a third time and you want to say something like “just answer the damn question” they have a little hissy fit and feel very miffed and misunderstood ….. Go figure.
Hint: Just answer the question - if you don't understand the question, paraphrase it back to the person doing the asking and then answer it - don’t say something you think the person might like to hear instead. If you don’t want to answer the question – say so.

Happines Flow Chart

I found this great little Happiness flow chart on "twitpic by jackidanicki - Sept 09". If you would like it as a fridge magnet, send me an email with your postal address.

Soul-mates and Amazing Friends

Yesterday on 702 radio Dr Helgo Schomer (my favorite psychologist) was talking about Soul-mates. The gist of the talk was on what makes a soul-mate.

Dr Schomer listed these qualities that make a soul-mate, an amazing friend and a really good partner for that matter:

The ability to keep confidences, loyalty, warmth and affection,
supportiveness, frankness, humour, willingness to set time aside for you. Soul-mates have a high degree of compatibility in all these things.

You look out for each other, you are happy to see each other, you feel special in the other persons company. You happily and willingly invest time and make room in your lives for each other.

Self disclosure is essential to a close relationship – you share your wishes and fears. You receive affirmation and acceptance. You trust each other.

Soul-mates have greater tolerance and accept us for who we are.

We become best friends with people who boost our identity.

Dr Schomer goes on to talk about nourishing the relationship – and that basically boils down to good old face-to-face contact time; in fact he says it is essential. Electronic messages just don’t cut it. You need to spend time together - you need to make the investment and make the time to nourish the relationship and be friends.

He made this comment about loving friends: We love our friends because of the way in which they support who we are.... when people affirm who we are a friendship becomes a strong possibility. He also says that when you have too many opinions about a friend the friendship won’t last.

Interestingly, a soul-mate may not be a soul-mate for ever. We move on and out-grow stages of our lives. University friends for example marry, have children and then the single friend is replaced by these other priorities. Another point he raised was that Social research has typically found that the marriage partner is often not the soul-mate.

Dr Schomer says that men generally bond with each other through some sort of activity eg. sport, fishing. And women bond on another level altogether. They share information and emotions. Gosh, and we wonder why there is sometimes this great divide *grin*

A Sense of Humour

Happiness gurus around the world say that having a sense of humour helps… an awful lot. Seeing the funny side of things breaks all sorts of tensions and angst and sends your happiness barometer up, up and up.

I know that my sense of humour is tickled by really silly things and clever things. In fact, the sillier the thing is, the more I laugh......

I have to share this with you because firstly, I think it is really very funny (clever and silly) and secondly, hats off to this IT Company in PMB for having an incredible sense of fun (and great PR person) and doing a really funny follow through to a story that might have just died a quick death.

Do you remember the IT company who raced the pigeon Winston to prove that "pigeon mail" was faster than the Telkom ADSL speed? Well, I found this little gem in the Sunday Times this morning:

“Winging IT: Winston the famous homing pigeon has been given his own mascot. He recently earned celebrity status after successfully flying 40gb of data over a distance of 80km in about 2 hours, beating Telkom’s ADSL speed. Durban IT professional Mark Smith, who dons a pigeon outfit resembling Winston, has been making appearances at a number of public events. Agiza Hlongwane”

Face Book

The other day at lunch we got talking about Face Book. Out of the 8 people there only two of us were on Face Book. The conversation turned to FB and I sat back and listened to the comments flying around the table, all bad. Even the only other person on FB began to waiver and started saying things like “well, it’s a waste of time”, “not sure what I am supposed to do”, and if you could hear what the rest were saying you would think joining FB was akin to joining a coven.

I was totally outvoted in my support of FB - albeit none of them had the first idea of how it worked – and as my lone voice was not going to be given a chance to be heard, I decided to blog about it instead.

I am fairly new to FB – about 3 or 4 months now. I don’t have all that many friends (yet). I have been quite slow about finding my way around but now, the first thing I do every morning is check FB. I love it…. There are some regulars like Avril who posts her photo’s and her amazing paintings. Trudy and Ingrid post messages that are so inspiring and make you feel good. Then there is the occasional message to say something like “At long last Tony is out of hospital” - yippee, Gwen is a goldsmith and puts photos of her work in her gallery, Nicholas has posted a whole lot of photos of himself in his 17th century armour (I was his squire at a sword fighting tournament). And then there are the youngsters (teenagers) who invited me to be their friend…. I love reading their comments – mostly in sort of SMS speak which takes a bit of deciphering…but lovely none the less.

And then all of a sudden you find someone from the past…… or someone finds you. What joy! Big Happiness when this happens…. Some people I haven’t heard of for so many years and it is wonderful to catch up with what is happening in their lives.

In fact, I love it when my regulars are there chirping away and a when there is a message from someone who only ‘FaceBooks’ occasionally…. I feel a certain contentment that all is well…….

You don’t have to post your deepest darkest secrets. You don’t have to post something every day. You can post something as simple as “great weather”. Only your FB friends can read your comments and you can send private message that no-one but the recipient can see.

In our busy lives (dare I say that!) it is a great way to keep in touch – on a fairly superficial level I agree, but you will be keeping in touch on a level that you probably didn’t do anyway. Sign up – it’s free.

Monday Happiness Song

My friend Tina from Ilithuba (she runs the organization that made my Happiness Soup skirt – http://happinesssoup.blogspot.com/2009/06/corporate-gear.html) sent me this link to this happy little song.

Check it out; it is sure to brighten up your Monday:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cxfkg3RaRjs&feature=related

The Supreme Happiness

How’s this quote for something that is so amazingly true? "The supreme happiness of life is the conviction that we are loved." - Victor Hugo

One of the other things that popped up in my whip around with friends about relationship breakers was this: I often feel my partner doesn’t love me. (See previous blog about Menticide)

So what the heck do you do when your partner doesn’t love you anymore or love you as much as you love them anymore?

I guess one of the first reactions is to try harder and beat yourself up over all the things you think you have done wrong; do all the things (ie. change yourself) you think will make the person love you – again/more?

And whilst you are doing all these things you will probably become more and more miserable/broken and the person you love will probably just carry on the same old way and may even move out despite all your hard work.

Unrequited love hurts a lot. If you feel rejected it is because you have been rejected.

If the person you love doesn’t love you, there is not much you can do about it. So you make a plan; you need to move on…..

Get a new life with someone who will love you how you deserve to be loved.

Relationship Breakers

Do you have one thing that was the relationship breaker?

I asked a few of my friends what their “breakers” were and I was surprised with how similar their answers were. And nor was it just one thing; but the defining relationship breaker which built up over a period of time was something called menticide. Yes, there is such a word and it means: The systematic undermining of a person's beliefs, attitudes, and values.

The entomology of the word menticide is from Latin ment- (mind) + -cide (killing)*. Mind-killing - scary isn’t it?

Co-incidentally, I did not confine my question to just romantic relationships… the question implied all relationships: romantic, business, family, friends.

*Source: Wordsmith.org

Is it hard work?

In a couple blogs I have said that I believe you have to work quite hard at being happy; that happiness doesn’t just happen and you have to keep at aiming for happiness. I also believe that it is far easier and less work to be miserable than it is to be happy.

So when I received Seth Godin’s blog last night on Positive Thinking I couldn’t help but make the link to being happy or being miserable. Seth is an amazing guy – he has published heaps of books, he is a marketing guru, he blogs every day and just about every blog has an impact. And something else…if you email him he replies, in person.

I was particularly taken with his comment “Negative thinking protects us and lowers expectations”. The same thing applies to being miserable – you are protected, you dont have to commit to anything and there are much lower expectations of you.

This is Seth’s blog; (http://sethgodin.typepad.com/)

The problem with positive thinking

All the evidence I've seen shows that positive thinking and confidence improves performance. In anything.

Give someone an easy math problem, watch them get it right and then they'll do better on the ensuing standardized test than someone who just failed a difficult practice test.

No, positive thinking doesn't allow you to do anything, but it's been shown over and over again that it improves performance over negative thinking.

Key question then: why do smart people engage in negative thinking? Are they actually stupid?
The reason, I think, is that negative thinking feels good. In its own way, we believe that negative thinking works. Negative thinking feels realistic, or soothes our pain, or eases our embarrassment. Negative thinking protects us and lowers expectations.

In many ways, negative thinking is a lot more fun than positive thinking. So we do it.
If positive thinking was easy, we'd do it all the time. Compounding this difficulty is our belief that the easy thing (negative thinking) is actually appropriate, it actually works for us. The data is irrelevant. We're the exception, so we say.

Positive thinking is hard. Worth it, though.

Quality Time

I sometimes think I will never live down the blog on “being busy”. When I wrote about being busy way back in March (http://happinesssoup.blogspot.com/2009/03/on-being-busy.html) I didn’t think I would still be the recipient of so much leg pulling and comments like “whoops, better not say I’ve been busy” or “you just wouldn’t understand – I really have been busy” ……. Hmmm, but at least these comments are delivered with a large grin and I have always wanted long legs......

Anyway, I was thinking the other day about being busy and having to squeeze things (friends, family…) into ones schedule; and thought back to when (70’s, 80’s?) the expression “quality time” became a popular mantra; how we should make every precious minute we spent with children, spouse, parents, friends count.

I think this quote from Henry David Thoreau (the book, Walden) a nice reminder of what “quality time” should be:

“We meet at very short intervals, not having had time to acquire any new value for each other. We meet at meals three times a day, and give each other a new taste of that old musty cheese that we are. We have had to agree on a certain set of rules, called etiquette and politeness, to make this frequent meeting tolerable and that we need not come to open war.”

A little while ago I wrote about Building Connections, about family mission statements – go to the following link if you want to re-read it:
http://happinesssoup.blogspot.com/2009/07/building-connections.html

Falling off the Tai Chi Wagon

Some of the world’s greatest bloggists say you must never bog about your pets or you kids. So flying in the face of conventional wisdom I have to use my cat Bracken to tell this story….

She (the cat) waits for me when I go out – not during the day but at night. It breaks my heart to see this little thing charging down the drive way like a startled bambi in snow, sleet and rain (and good weather). The idea of this charge is to jump into the opened car door and have a little drive to the garage. But very often, especially in good weather, Bracken is easily distracted and stops to roll in a nice bit of sand, sniffs an interesting leaf or rubs her face on the open door… quite forgetting why she has stayed up all night (well, part of it) and forgetting that I am getting a tad impatient whilst she does cat things. I often end up getting out and scooping her up, pop her in the car and off we go….. so why am I telling you this?

Because I have been distracted and not focusing on something that is really important to me, makes me very happy, something I really enjoy and something that is so good for my health. Tai Chi. I have been bunking classes, finding some very lame excuses to miss class and accepting invitations that I could so easily push out by a half hour so I can still do Tai Chi and the invitation. I have been distracted…. Like Bracken… forgetting why I do Tai Chi. Since I had a hip replacement* nearly 4 years ago I can do full flat footed squats which I could never do before – even when I was young and trim. My back doesn’t ache, I feel energized and generally great and at peace with the world. I don’t have to swallow anti-inflammatories like smarties, I love seeing my Tai Chi friends…… and one class a week doesn’t do it. I will, next week, climb back on the Tai Chi wagon ….. and fight my way back to the front row of the class.

The lesson here…. It is so easy to fall off the wagon. Getting back onto it (wagons are quite high)is not so easy – so be determined, get back into the habit. You’ve done it before - like giving up smoking, gym, running, no boozing, dieting, eating well, writing every day etc etc…. OK, she tell herself.... enough already. Just climb back on!

*In case you are wondering why I had the hip-replacement. I got arthritis due to trauma. I believe the trauma occurred some years ago when I fell off an elephant - we had been out riding for a couple of hours and I dozed off (lost focus????) sitting on top of this whopping great beast and wham.

The Happiness Soup Project Group

About a month or so ago I started a Happiness Project group ie. People sitting in my living room talking about Happiness with Activity 1 of Grechen Rubin’s start up manual…… and we are going to have Activity 2 soon so watch this space! I also started a Facebook group for the Happiness Soup project (which is affiliated to Grechen’s Happiness Project and her group/s on Facebook….. lots of threads to Happiness all over the world.

I want to keep things fairly informal – I don’t believe we should sit down and be all serious about the subject; but one thing I get out of talking and writing about Happiness stuff is how much people really love talking/debating/arguing/writing about it…. And there are no right or wrong answers…. It is fascinating and I just love hearing other people’s views on Happiness/Life etc.

The following link is to the Happiness Soup group on Facebook…. Sign up – I am hoping for some lively debate soon………

http://www.facebook.com/home.php?ref=home#/group.php?gid=125411324792&ref=ts

And, this is a link to Grechen Rubin’s Happiness blog of 24th August……. If you don’t want to read all of it just scroll down till you see the Happiness Soup Tin…. Yeah!

http://www.happiness-project.com/happiness_project/
What Image Suggests Happiness to You?

Relationships

I haven’t been away. I’ve been having the time of my life being entertained by young nieces and nephews, in-laws and in-laws of in-laws who have been in SA from at least 3 corners of the earth to celebrate Grandmere’s 80th birthday. It has been great fun and when great uncle Pierre returns to France on Saturday night we will be back to normal, I think! And in between all this my PC contracted a massive virus, went to the repair shop, then back again and again, operating systems were uninstalled, re-installed, uninstalled and so on; I am hoping everything is now ok…. fingers crossed.

So with all the family stuff happening, seeing old faces and meeting new ones, renewing friendships, I thought this blog should be about relationships and how they affect our lives, how we age, our happiness, our friendships, our business lives……

Relationships

For 70 + years an incredible program designed to study mental and physical well being has been conducted by Harvard University. The study was designed to find out what made people happy and has examined a group of 268 Harvard students over their entire lives.

Professor George Vaillant has directed the study for the past 40 years and this is what he says about general well-being and aging well:

"That the only thing that really matters in life are your relationships to other people."

And

"It is social aptitude not intellectual brilliance or parental social class, that leads to successful aging."

Tom Peters has this to say about relationships:

Basics #1. "It's always 'the people.' " It may be glib, but in this instance I don't care. Network, keep your promises, behave decently. Your are as good as your relationships. Period. Short term. Long term. Good times. Tough times. This is the time (though all times are, in fact, the time) to "over" invest in relationship building and maintenance.

Monday Morning List

Gretchen Rubin’s blog this morning directs readers to a blog called 1000 Awesome Things – and yes, this guy really has listed and written about his 1000 awesome things. I only glanced at about 200 things and just about everything hit the spot. If you want to read the full thing then go to: http://1000awesomethings.com/the-top-1000/ .

These are a few things that made me smile or just say ahhhh.

#777 Reading the nutritional label and eating it anyway
#778 When someone unjams the photocopier for you
#774 Discovering those little tabs on the side of the aluminium foil box
#740 Drinking those little ice crystals floating in your freezing cold glass of Coke
#718 When you sneeze and a stranger says bless you..... and......
#753 When your sneeze stalls for a second and then comes booming out
#758 Celebrating your pet’s birthday even though they have no idea what’s going on
#936 Perfect parallel-parking on the first try
#990 Picking up a q and a u at the same time in Scrabble
#737 Catching somebody singing in their car and sharing a laugh with them

And the absolute best:

#710 When little babies let out adult-sized burps

Building Connections

A few weeks ago I read a blog in the online Mail & Guardian titled Creating Successful Families (www.thoughtleader.co.za/robinbooth). It was incredibly insightful and really made me sit up and re-look at how I connect with my nearest and dearest. Robin Booth, the author of this article, spoke about how he and his siblings are scattered around the country and they only get together on special occasions which are becoming too few. This resonated with me as my family is also all over the country, the world, and even if they are in Johannesburg, they are sometimes more than an hour drive away. (I have put quotes from Robin Booth are in italics.)

In our, and I do dare say this, busy lives it is very easy to let connecting with family and friends slip. Which is totally crazy in this day and age when we have so many tools at our disposal – not staying connected or being too busy is a bit lame. We have FaceBook, email, snail mail, phones, blogs, websites….. And sure, I agree that some of these things are a bit superficial – but it is an easy way to keep in touch.

But connecting and interacting with F&F is not providing a laundry list of things you have done, seen, bought or sold. Being connected is a lot more than that – our lives are sometimes filled with “unimportant priorities” and things and it is these that we so often share with others.

We need to make sure our interactions have substance, have meaning, are important; we need to have face-to-face interactions; we need to see the person we are talking to, and we need to give them a physical pat on the back if need be. We need to build a safe and supportive environment where we can share our feelings, dreams, achievements and disappointments. We need to walk away from an interaction feeling that we have a deeper understanding of what is going on in someone’s life.

Robin says: “It was from this context that I shared with my siblings that I would like to consciously create some way for us to nurture and celebrate our relationships. And it was through this process with them that it become really clear that the success of most family relationships in the world are mainly left up to chance and luck. Successful businesses have huge human resource departments that work on developing the relationships within the business. Yet in our most valued and cherished organisation (that of our family) we kind of meander along unguided and often unskilled in effective communication and relationship-building.”

He sat down with his siblings and put this family mission statement together:

“Through friendship, support and sharing adventures and experiences we strengthen our connectedness. Through conversation, reflection and sharing we inspire each other to grow and learn. Through understanding, acceptance, commitment and love we create stability and belonging.”

In one sentence, this sums it up:

“Dynamic Loving Relationships through Connectedness, Growth and Belonging”

And then they went on to put in place the plans (just like a business strategy) on how they could bring the about.

Putting a mission statement together is not as easy as it looks… it requires getting everyone in the same room (or the same facebook page!) and really talking about what is important, what the common values are, what the family desires. This in itself is a really fabulous exercise and even if you don’t get the perfect statement down on paper you will have opened up a new level of communication. And I am quite sure Robin Booth won’t mind if you use his mission statement as a starting point!

The Birthday List

Today is my birthday and I pulled out my birthday list (filed away in my brain somewhere) as I do each year and did a little review.

I started this list donkeys years ago to amuse my daughter who always wanted to know what I wanted for my birthday. The list has remained almost the same year after year and in amongst the “big ticket” items I included things like false toe-nails, ruby glitter nail polish and matching lipstick, purple stripped stockings – thank goodness I didn’t get any of this stuff *grin*

But the things that remain on the list are: a miniature horse, an alpaca, a white duck with a yellow bill and I have now added half a dozen nguni cattle of different design, 3 months, during summer, in Florence and a handbag dog that I can dress up.

This is my dream birthday list. I would love to see what’s on your dream birthday list.

Re-enforcing life’s little lessons

Today I attended a course on Sculpting in Concrete at the Fine Arts Department of the University of Johannesburg.

The ages of the students varied from about 20ish to a really nice elderly gentleman (a full time sculptor) who told me he was 71 and always like learning new things.

We started the lesson with a video of past PPC cement exhibitions and competitions for concrete sculpture and I was, to put it bluntly, totally intimidated and thought it might be a good idea to leave after tea. The work, and bearing in mind each piece has to contain no less that 70% concrete, was mind blowing. Beautiful delicate more than life size figures to large installations; wall mountings with exquisite detail, fantastic hanging pieces and exquisite object that I would just love to have in my house or garden. The winner of each year’s competition takes home about R50000 so it is quite a serious prize.

We then got to grips with mix ratios and other concrete type terminology. And then were off to the large outside studio (bit freezing cold) where we were allowed to experiment for ourselves. We were given a large cube of “foam” concrete and an even larger rectangle of polystyrene to sculpt. After finishing each piece we covered them with a quick drying concrete mix which we were allowed to mix ourselves and added pigments if we felt like it.

My pieces were OK…...nothing special. Some of the others were quite stunning. I usually sculpt in clay and found it quite difficult to remove material rather than build up a piece from nothing – I found it quite difficult to “see” the finished product in a lump of concrete or polystyrene. Carving the polystyrene set my teeth on edge and my jaw was quite stiff after this….but OMG, you should have seen this place – it is no wonder we worked outside. It looked like a snow storm had hit us. Imagine 30 people working away on polystyrene, cutting and sawing it to pieces! The wind was blowing and we were all covered in little white balls that just stuck to our fleece tops, shoes, hair in fact everywhere. My hands and arms up to my elbows were white. And then we got stuck into the concrete blocks with rasps, knives and other implements and this produced a fine grey power, heaps and heaps of it all mixed up with the little white balls.

My first lesson of the day: This was just too messy for me – I can’t handle the debris, the dust and I know I will never do this in my studio – perhaps a friend’s *grin*

The second lesson and I knew this anyway, but we tend to forget these things sometimes and need to be reminded: You can’t just start hacking away at a nice cube of concrete or polystyrene. You have to have a plan in mind; you have to know what you want to do and you have to know what the end result will look like. This takes a bit of planning, mapping out where you want to start, what the next step will be and so on….. My friend Chris is a wood-turner and as he says, if you don’t know what you want to make once that lathe starts turning you are stuffed and so is the nice piece of wood. You will have a better chance at success if you have a plan. This applies to anything, to any project we tackle, a holiday, a new business, a change in business….need I go on?

Welcome to my World

Thanks to Lisa for this contribution

Lisa's Blog http://adventurelisa.blogspot.com/

Welcome to my World
Posted: 19 Jul 2009 04:49 AM PDT

On Wednesday I attended an Urban Soul Poetry Session in Sandton. It's not poetry like that staid stuff read out calmly to people sitting on chairs in deathly silence. Nope, it is performance poetry - also known as Def Poetry or Slam Poetry or Spoken Word. I've been wanting to get involved in this for some time - I often watch spoken word artists on YouTube (I have doted on Rives for years!). It took me about 6-months to track down people involved in the Joburg scene and what a thoroughly enjoyable evening it was.

After the performances I was speaking to Lindile, one of the performers. Great on-stage charm and personality. He's a graphic designer and so we got chatting about the relationship between agencies and their clients. I told him about my Apples and Oranges theory and how people should have appreciation for the work that someone does for them and that because one party trades money for the skills and time of another, it doesn't make the one with the money the 'owner' or 'boss'. Money is just the commodity they trade for a service - of equal value -that they are unable to do themselves (through lack of skill, expertise or time). In my relationship with Pick 'n Pay I trade my money for the products they supply.

Sure, I realise that cold, hard cash is valued above all else; but in reality it is just one product that is traded for another. We all need money to trade others for their services - landlords for a place to stay, Eskom for electricity, grocery stores for food... Your employer trades this versatile product, money, for your time and skills.

One thing I have recently learned is how badly people at agencies are treated by the agency's clients, who wield power over the agency because the agency allows them to have this power - just as a child in a supermarket throwing a tantrum wields power over the parent who gives in to its demands.

Lindile understands this dynamic. He leans back as I talk and says, laughing, "What kind of World you living in?".

I am living in MY WORLD. It is a World where people are considerate of one another. It is a World where time, a valuable commodity, is respected. It is a World where money is but fair trade for a service. It is a World where people appreciate the skills shared by another in order to accomplish a task for their benefit.

And I have chosen to live in this World, which I have the ability to guide and mold through my actions and in the relationships that I build with my clients.

Am I delusional? Perhaps, but it is little concern to me because I'd rather be delusional with an over-inflated optimism in people than to be in that other World where people are devalued and the skills they have gained with time and hard-work are placed below paper product printed with colours and numbers.

Is happiness a stroke of luck

From Elizabeth Gilbert’s book: Eat, Pray, Love

She* says that people universally tend to think that happiness is a stroke of luck, something that will maybe descend upon you like fine weather if you are fortunate enough.

But that’s not how happiness works. Happiness is the consequence of personal effort. You fight for it, strive for it, insist upon it and sometimes even travel around the world looking for it. You have to participate relentlessly in the manifestations of your own blessings. And once you have achieved a state of happiness, you must never become lax about maintaining it, you must make a mighty effort to swimming upward into that happiness forever, to stay afloat on top of it. If you don’t, you will leak away your innate contentment.

*Elizabeth Gilbert’s Guru

It can happen to the best of us…..

This is a true story I am going to tell you about 2 people who are very dear to my heart, 2 people I think are just the greatest and 2 people whose combined brain power I am totally in awe of, it is mind blowing, gob smacking kind of brain power.

But here’s the story: In between our lives revolving around Tour de France at the moment the other highlight of this weekend is Michael’s visit to Johannesburg; he is up here from Cape Town and the purpose of his visit is not just about seeing us, he also wanted to take part in a marathon this morning (Saturday) and he didn’t have to do too much to convince Lisa that she should do it with him.

They set off for Sasolburg before the crack of dawn to be there for the 6:30 start. I got a phone call from Lisa around about 6:50 asking me to please log onto a running website so that I could give her the address….. they couldn’t find the race. So I logged on and phoned Lisa back once I found the info and calmly asked her where she was….Needless to say, Lisa wasn't really in the mood for idle chit chat and said, just give us the address…. So I said, well the race is in Mpumalanga – in Secunda…. At the Sasol Recreation centre, in Secuda, Mpumalanga and I started to laugh….. Total and utter disbelief pulsed through the phone…. I passed over the phone number of the guy organizing the race and giggled a cheery goodbye.

About 10 minutes later Lisa phoned back and we started to laugh – we could hardly get the words out, she trying to tell me latest plans through peals of laughter from me, her laughter and Michael howling in the back ground…. We laughed wonderfully….. Eventually we managed to hold back the laughter so that she could tell me where they were (in Sasolburg) and what they were going to do, again guffaws and through this I heard with Michael gasping in the back ground that he wouldn’t take me to lunch if I didn’t stop laughing, which brought on more laughter, what fun, what a way to start the day…..

So now I am waiting for them to finish their run around the suburbs….

Ubuntu

I have just finished reading a fascinating and haunting book called Holding Up The Sky, written by Sandy Blackburn-Wright; about the nearly 20 years she spent in South Africa. She lived and worked in the townships pre and post 1994, was married to a black man, adopted a small black girl and had her own child. She is intelligent, honest and has written an amazing book about her young life in South Africa – she was only 23 when she arrived here in 1988.

But, this is not intended to be a book review. I was so intrigued by her description of the township and rural communities, the way of life and how the people help and support the township communities. This is how she describes it: “In the townships no one had an interest in what you did for a living, only in who you are in relationship to others. There is a word often used in South Africa that describes this: Ubuntu. It means that we are only human through other human beings and can only express our humanity through our relationships and dealings with others. In isolation we cannot be truly human.”

This got me thinking about where we are in our communities, our little space within family and friends, how we interact with others. What defines us, the person, who we are deep down, what makes us tick, what makes us happy?

And how do we define and validate our lives in the bigger picture that is our community and space on this earth?

I drew up this list of items that I believe don’t validate or define us (please add to it – I would love to get your input to add to this list):

An expensive car
Designer clothes and how much you spend on them
Where you live and the size of your house
Your career – past or present
The places you have traveled to
The people you know or allude to knowing
Your partner – especially when the relationship isn’t working and you just hang on anyway because of perceived status
How much money you have
What others may say about you
All the people you put on pedestals and seek approval from – or just seek approval for most things

And this is how I would define / validate an person with ubuntu: (please add to it - I would love to have your input to add to the list)

Your satisfaction and comfort with yourself and the people around you and your environment
How you rate yourself on honesty, loyalty, compassion
How successful your family and other relationships are
Do you contribute
If you are consistently loving, kind, generous, giving
If you willingly help people…. Just because you can

Do you really need to answer some things?

I have been having on-going email discussions around the questions in the Happiness Quiz. These discussions are very insightful and I am learning more and more to add to my Happiness thoughts and expanding my understanding of Happiness. So thank you to everyone who is sending me their ideas and thoughts.

In one of the discussions I said that being happy, even trying to be happy, is hard work and you have to work at it each and every day. This led to a comment on the “entitlement” factor. This is when people expect to be happy just because they happen to take up some space on this great planet of ours.

“They” are the ones who say things and ask those impossible questions that make you want to run away like a crazy thing when they raise their issues:

If only he/she did xyz or, if it wasn’t for him/her I would be famous/rich/successful.
Why does this always happen to me?
Why aren’t I clever/rich/famous/beautiful?
Why do others always have all the luck/chances?
And so on……

Do you need to spend time answering these questions – or even think about the questions for that matter? Absolutely not….. Do you really think you can answer these questions? Absolutely not ….. Do you really think the answers will change anything? Absolutely not. It is a waste of your time and theirs… and you should tell them that. That person needs to work at their happiness, work at their life and start creating instead of blaming.

Apropos the Happiness Quiz

The other day my friend Barbara popped around after work for a cup of tea. She apologised for not sending her completed quiz back to me but had a couple of queries about it. And this is when my mouth goes dry because Barbara can ask some very probing questions. And I guess this is the right time to make a true confession: “drum roll and trumpets now please” – I don’t have Happiness packaged, in a box, neatly labeled and stored in my psyche - I am working on it though! But let me tell you about our discussion.

Barbs: Isn’t the word Happiness a bit misleading…. What does Happiness actually mean?
Me: Well we can look it up if you like….. but seriously, I think it means many things.
Barbs: Like what? (she was not going to let me off the hook lightly)
Me: Well, I don’t think it means one should run around laughing or smiling all the time – people will get the wrong idea and think you drunk or smoking something. I believe it is a state of wellbeing” or an attitude and many other things beside.
Barbs: My thoughts entirely – if you look at the Happiness Quiz questions they point to things like contentment, being positive, being interested in most things, having understanding, awareness, doing things for others…..
Me: Absolutely. I agree with all you are saying. But I also want to say that being happy is hellava hard work – much more so than being miserable and unhappy with things around you.
Barbs: I have never thought about that before –.
Me: Think about it…. if I want to do something I wont get anywhere if I don’t have positive feeling about it – if I am negative it just wont happen. If I moan about the amount of work etc then it won't happen; If I am not committed to it, it won’t happen; If I want friends to join me for
a party or an outing and don’t put in the effort or send out a good message, the party/outing wont happen….. If I moan about all the work that goes into something they won’t join me either because they won’t want to add to my “burdens”. If don’t create an environment that allows people to relax, be themselves, then I have not made a happy place to be in….. If I had a little shop and moan and bitch at the customers they wont come back and I wont have to work in my
shop anymore. Need I go on…..
Barbs: (laughing) I get the picture…..
Me: And if you are miserable then you don’t have to get involved in stuff… you don’t have to do anything or commit to anything but you can moan like crazy about it.....…. and you don’t have to join in things, probably because by now no one wants you on their side *grin*
Barbs: Hahahaha – yeah, God forbid you should have to do anything…..
Me: And let me tell you something else…. Every since I began to seriously study Happiness
(for 18 months now) I can feel a huge change in how I view the world. I feel incredibly good about things….”stuff”. I could go on about it for ages…. But I wont!

And now, just for Barbara, here is a word cloud with Happiness words.

In case you think I have been sitting here all day doing this, then think again – go to http://www.wordle.net/ and you too can make a own word cloud. Have fun.

Allow yourself……

Last Thursday we went to the 2nd Pecha-Kucha in Johannesburg. The theme was “Creativity in Johannesburg – dead or alive” and by the time the presentations finished I don’t think there was anyone in that auditorium who could say was Creativity dead in this amazing city – it’s very much alive and kicking! The presentations were creative, formative and showed the funny, quirky side of Johannesburg that we sometimes take for granted or miss completely.

But now, here’s the thing. When we went into the auditorium, there was lively chatter, laughter and waving to friends and colleagues. Then everything became quiet and sort of serious. And once the speakers began their presentations you could have heard a pin drop… The first presenters showed us some amazing concrete projects in Johannesburg parks and street corners that are multi purpose for sitting on, leaning against, just looking at, chilling out –they are really interesting and the guys were also showing some really funny photo’s of these bits of sculpture and no-one laughed until they were well into their show….... then someone let out a deep chuckle and that set the ball rolling.

By the time the next guy came on we had all warmed up our chuckle and laughter boxes and we let out some belly laughs, sounds of appreciation, sounds of enjoyment, sounds that the talks were resonating with us. One of the guys rapped-talked through his presentation – it was pure poetry and when the cadence of his words spread to each of us you could see the heads moving gently and bodies begin to sway in the seats. It was magic and we all mumbled the chorus lines with him – wow, were we all connected at that moment.

And so now what, you might ask, is the point I want to make?

The point is that we all too often don’t allow ourselves to let go, lighten up and just get out a good old belly laugh, a chuckle, hell – even a quiet chuckle. We don’t show our enjoyment. Do we think that if we show our enjoyment of something we may be judged by someone who has a different opinion about what is going on? Well so what. Enjoyment is infectious and spreads - like Happiness. Do you really care what some old misery, or even worse, some supposed expert, thinks? Don’t hold back – show your enjoyment.

Allow yourself to enjoy the movie, the concert, the comedian, the painting, the music…… and remember we don’t all have to like the same thing. It doesn’t mean you or them are wrong.

Befriend thy neighbour

From: Lisa's Blog - Wednesday, July 01, 2009 (http://adventurelisa.blogspot.com/)

Befriend thy neighbour

Last night my house people (they're in the house; I'm in the cottage) were hijacked and kidnapped in our driveway. I was in my cottage, with their dog, and neither of us heard a thing. I thought I'd seen Louise's headlights but then didn't hear her; and when there was a knock on my door a few minutes later I assumed it would be her or Stephan checking to see if the dog was with me. Instead it was a tall policeman who asked if I knew anything about 'the blonde lady who was dragged into the bakkie'.

This story fortunately ended happily. The hijacking happened just after 19h00. Louise and Stephan had come home separately; she drives into the garage first, he parks his Toyota Fortuna behind her Beetle. He drove in, switched off the ignition and was jumped by 3 armed men. One of them grabbed Louise and threw her into the vehicle and then they drove off.

A boy crossing the road on his way to visit his friend saw Louise being thrown into the car, the armed assailant's hand across her mouth as she disappeared feet last. He ran for his friend's house - 200m from us. The parents called the police who were here within minutes. And that's when I got the knock on my door.

Louise and Stephan were thrown into the back with sacks drawn over their heads and they were driven around for ages. They were dropped at a mine dump in the South of Joburg. They walked to the Cleveland Police Station and we were then contacted. They returned home near midnight shaken but unharmed.

Back home we learned some valuable lessons...

When the policeman arrived I immediately phoned a neighbour up the road. He is a good friend of Stephan and Louise. The police needed to know the car make and registration so they could put out an alert. Alternatively they needed an ID number so they could get the registration etc. None of us knew anything other than that it was a metallic gold/bronze Toyota Fortuna (took a while to get to this point!). The neighbour had a number for a relative - we were trying to get any kind of documentation on the vehicle. Neighbours came out to offer their support.

While these calls were being made we started phoning the tracking companies to see whether they had Louise or Stephan on their lists. They were all very helpful but no luck with the names we could think of.

To cut a long story short, a parental visit during the day led to us being able to get hold of house keys - we got in and started raiding files for paperwork on the vehicle. Louise is very organised and this worked in our favour. We found vehicle registration papers and tracking company contract. By now at least 90 minutes had passed.

The vehicle's last position was tracked to Kenilworth - the tracking company went out there and found nothing. Stephan said the guys had searched the vehicle and pulled out the device. The bad guys also took their credit cards and others and asked them for PIN numbers etc. The bank confirmed today that no cash had been withdrawn and the cards hadn't been used - lucky.

If something like this happens to you, you're screwed if your neighbours have no information on you. You could live on your own or your partner may be hijacked with you. They may know what car you drive (or maybe not) but they're unlikely to know the registration number. And unless they're a friend who knows your family (and has a number for a family member) and/or your other friends, there is no way they can get information on you without breaking into your house - that is assuming that you've got some kind of filing system for your important papers.

Last night we met a number of our neighbours and we all realise the value in building our relationships with each other. Family and close friends are often a drive away; neighbours live next to and around us and they are first on the scene to assist.

Take some cake to your neighbours and start building those relationships this weekend. Befriend those you like and can trust and provide them with a piece of paper giving your vehicle make, model, colour and tracking company emergency number; telephone numbers for 3 family members or friends (that don't live with you); your ID number; and the numbers for other neighbours on your street or in your complex - a local network. Give a nearby friend or relative or neighbour a set of your house keys. The police's hands are tied without being able to put an alert out for the vehicle.

The car is gone and fortunately Louise and Stephan are not.

My thanks to Inspector Tenant (Cleveland) and his team for getting here so quickly and being on hand; Murphy '007'; our network of neighbours - Brendan, Neville, Deville, Elizabeth, Roja, Charm and the others who offered their support; and Louise & Stephan's friends and family who came through to the house.

Posted by adventurelisa at 17:30 0 comments Links to this post