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.
Saturday, 29 August 2009
Wednesday, 26 August 2009
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?
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?
Friday, 21 August 2009
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.
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, 3 August 2009
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
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
Wednesday, 29 July 2009
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!
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!
Friday, 24 July 2009
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.
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.
Wednesday, 22 July 2009
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?
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?
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