A Pleasant Surprise

Do you ever let situations or people allow you to limit your belief in yourself? Do you use it as an excuse to procrastinate or not follow what you want to do? Do you allow it to prove to you that you are not so good after all? It's like having a set of demons that can hold you back.

I was reminded of this when visiting the Botanic Gardens in Bali this weekend and so have added a picture of an interesting statue to this week's blog; the 3 storey high statue of the demon kumbakarna.

A few months ago, I wrote an article to be published in the Singapore newspaper, The Straits Times.  I sent the article to an internal contact whom a friend had given me and waited in anticipation for the newspaper to tell me when my article would be published.  This was my first foray in writing for a newspaper and I was hoping the newspaper would be excited to receive my article and publish it without delay, noticing me as a budding journalistic star in the making.

As the months ticked by without a word from the newspaper, not even an acknowledgement from the department responsible for publishing articles, I started to doubt my writing abilities.  At first, I convinced myself that the newspaper must be swamped by articles written by hopeful writers like myself and as the silence continued I further questioned my writing abilities.  Maybe I should just give up as obviously they didn't appreciate my article. I was steadily becoming the victim and allowing some limiting beliefs to kick in about my ability to write. I was even using old experiences to justify why I couldn't write - such as the time when I wrote a poem for Blue Peter (a children's TV programme in the UK) - every week I hoped that my name would be mentioned as one of the winners of the poem competition and every week I didn't get a mention.  Eventually as other winners were announced, I hoped that I would at least receive a Blue Peter badge to post acknowledge my efforts. Every morning I was the first to get the post and every morning, I felt I pang of disappointment as there was no badge, surely they couldn't have known that I did cheat a little and ask an adult to help me. Consequently, I wrote off my writing abilities for Blue Peter and never entered one of their competitions ever again.

Was I going to let this newspaper incident limit my beliefs about my writing abilities as the poem situation had done when I was a child? Not this time. This time I chose to understand what the feedback was telling me.  With the feedback I was able to focus on the resources I had to follow through.  My friend followed up with his contact for me and my article was published in the Straits Times.  None of us were informed and luckily another friend of my friend happened to see the article.  What a nice surprise it was to be told my article was published when I wasn't expecting it to happen.

This simple life lesson reminded me to believe in myself and keep on believing in myself, no matter what could put me off track, delay me from moving forward or stop me from doing what I want to do.

"Don't wait until everything is just right. It will never be perfect. There will always be challenges, obstacles and less than perfect conditions. So what. Get started now. With each step you take, you will grow stronger and stronger, more and more skilled, more and more self-confident and more and more successful."
Mark Victor Hansen

Don't let those demons hold you back. 

Janet

I wasn't Expecting That!

The last couple of weeks have been busy. I've been working with CEOs, Department Heads and teams in Hong Kong and Singapore to create Vision, Goals and Action and also coaching several individuals on how to succeed in their personal and professional lives.  I've been 'flying at 60,000 feet' enjoying discussing strategy, facilitating positive outcomes and focussing on what gives me passion and enjoyment:- re-energising organisations and individuals to grow, overcome their limits and achieve what they want. I've haven't been in Bali at all, but Bali has been in touch with me, as if to keep me grounded and to say 'don't forget that life isn't always straight forward and expect the unexpected.' Does this sometimes happen to you? You're making great progress in one direction and at the same time there are some diversions or distractions that call for your attention.

I had it all planned perfectly, my mother-in-law kindly offered to look after our children in Bali, while I was working in Hong Kong and she would fly to Singapore with them so that we could all be together for their school holiday. We briefed my mother-in-law on everything that could possibly happen with customs at Bali airport.  I wrote a set of specific instructions so that nothing could go wrong.  All went well until I received a harassed phone call from my mother-in-law who had been held back with my 3 daughters in a smoke filled immigration office. I tried to explain in broken English, over a crackly telephone line to the immigration official that my daughters' visas were all sorted, but he would have none of it.  My mother-in-law tried the 'I'm British' line, attempted to offer the official a financial incentive (he said he was paid enough thank you) and my 5 year old burst into tears, crying for her Mummy, all to no avail. I had no choice but to try and get in contact with our assistant in Bali who happened to be on leave and flew to a wedding in Java on this particular day.  After some frenzied texting and phoning, I managed to get in contact with her and she spoke to the official in Indonesian.  My eldest daughter re-assured her stressed Grandmother "don't worry, we've been here before with Mummy." This time, however, immigration was in the right and we were in the wrong.  The long and short of the story was that we had to pay a big fine and I was relieved to read the text from our assistant which said 'they have been released Ms Janet', as if they had just got out of jail. I was both relieved and annoyed that my hard earned money was filling the coffers of the complicated Indonesian visa system when we had been misinformed about the visa regulations.
 

While my mother-in-law had been in Bali, she had to deal with a snake with a big frog in its mouth, so big the snake couldn't slip back into it's hole. The house staff promptly killed the snake with a bamboo stick and the frog hopped off with a bit of a wobble and just 3 legs. My mother-in-law was further shocked that the dead snake was thrown over the hedge into the river and the blood was cleared up with a tissue. Then on the very same day, my mother-in-law had to deal with a near drowning situation.  She heard frantic shouting and screaming from the villa next door and discovered the villa staff trying to resuscitate a 3 year old boy who had fallen into the pool.  They were standing him up and rubbing a strange, brownish coloured ointment on his stomach.  Seeing that the boy had swallowed lots of water, she used sign language with the Indonesian staff to lie him in a recovery position. She told them to call 999 for an ambulance and they looked at her blankly of course, a 999 service is a luxury that doesn't exist in Bali.  Instead, our driver took the boy to hospital where they pumped out the water from his lungs. My mother-in-law is now famous in this part of the neighbourhood for having saved a boy's life.

Meanwhile, during all these strange goings on and juggling a hectic workload facilitating key strategic initiatives with multi-nationals, Bali  kept me in touch with the fundamentals of life i.e. garbage. I was trying to understand the complicated matter of why we owed 2 years outstanding garbage collection fees for our villa, when we had been quite happily paying the truck driver on a monthly basis. After many emails (I had to print off the emails in the end to understand the full story), it transpired that the truck driver thought we were giving him a tip (a pretty generous tip!). Putting my justice hat on, I informed our assistant that the driver should be sacked for such an offence. The problem was that there wasn't one driver.  There were several different drivers and amazingly they all thought that we were paying a tip.  If we didn't pay up, the truck owner threatened that he would take this issue to the Head of the Village and make sure that our rubbish wasn't collected. Not happy with this unhelpful response,  I suggested that we use another garbage collection company and was informed that companies outside of our territory were not allowed to do the pick up. Hence I was forced to capitulate and pay a negotiated downwards fee of US$50. I rationalised with myself that at least that wasn't too much money for 2 years garbage collection and there are times when a principled, justice mindset is just my own cultural bias and we have to move on rather than get distracted by these interruptions in our life.

There's an expression that says 'attention goes where energy flows.'  It's good discipline not to get consumed by things that happen to us that we were not expecting.  Instead, find a way to deal with it (in my case I used laughter), move on and direct our energy to things that are worthwhile. Later on in the week, I was pleased and relieved to read in a book called 'Obliquity', by John Kay that 'our objectives are best pursued indirectly.'  Rather than be derailed by interruptions and inconveniences that can happen in our work and life, we can still achieve our goals by continuing to pursue our sense of purpose, values and direction.

As Michael Jordan said:-

"If you run into a wall, don't turn around and give up.
Figure out how to climb it, go through it, or work around it."


Janet