Out of My Control

Do you ever have times when things seem out of your control? I'm sure you have experienced these situations, like me. Although we like to feel in control, some things happen that we weren't expecting and are out of our control.  What's the best thing to do in these situations? Focus on what we can do which is within our control. Rather than dwell on what can't happen, focus on what can.  We can't control everything, but we can control one fundamental tool that we all have readily at our disposal. We can control our response to whatever comes our way.

Take last week, after a few days of working in Singapore, I was ready to be with my family in Bali. I planned the day of my return perfectly.  Work meetings in the morning, followed by meeting up with a friend at the airport for a sticky bun and coffee, before smoothly checking in for Bali.  As my friend and I said our farewells, he commented "Hope your flight isn't cancelled because of the volcano." I laughed. I checked in my luggage, walked through immigration and went to the departure lounge early to call a friend.

While chatting, waiting to board, I overheard a message, "Due to the volcano, this flight will now be cancelled." Why didn't they tell us earlier?  My first reaction was total denial.  What about my family?  They are in Bali and I have no way of reaching them.

I attempted to look on the bright side while observing the whole lounge full of tired, pasty looking people who had travelled from Europe to escape the cold winter and see some Bali sun. The bright side didn't last long as I selfishly thought: they had their families with them, if this volcano lasted as long as the Icelandic one, it could have been a while before I saw mine.

Lucky for me, my friend invited me out with her that evening, so rather than go back to the office and feel sorry for myself, I changed my response and used the opportunity to catch up with a good friend.

Ironically, I suggested to my husband who had gone on an earlier flight to swop suitcases as I had the heavier weight allowance. Now I was stuck in Singapore with his suitcase and he was on his way to Bali with my underwear, clothes and all my computer and mobile phone wires. I phoned the airline help number that had been given to me.  It was Friday evening, the help line answer phone said 'this office is closed until Monday'. How helpful. I phoned the airline office in Europe and was told that they booked me on an alternative flight for the next day, departing at 4.30pm. Later that evening I received a text from my husband "Customs were surprised to find tights in my luggage! Do you work in Bali? the inspector asked" Oops!

The next day I decided to make the best of being alone in Singapore and went to the gym (at the weekend so quite a feat).  My successful workout on the treadmill made me feel virtuous, so I planned a healthy lunch and took some fish out of the freezer.  I checked the status of my flight by calling the same number as the evening before and received an unhelpful response that I was making a call outside of European working hours.  Eventually I found an alternative number and managed to speak to a human being. He confirmed my 4.30pm flight. I calculated that I had enough time for a leisurely lunch and could make my way to the airport within plenty of time. By pure fluke, I checked the airline's internet site to see the status of the flight. My eyes nearly popped out of my head, when I saw that my flight had been brought forward by 2 hours and I should have already been at the airport.  I chucked the still frozen fish back in the freezer, grabbed my passport, ticket and bags and made a frenzied run for the taxi. The taxi driver sensed my urgency and we drove a fast and furious pace to the airport. En route, I realised that there was no information about which terminal to go to.  I decided to take pot luck. Pot luck was against me and I was in the wrong terminal.


I ran to the other terminal to find a huge queue and with only 2 check in desks open. I meekly joined the end of the queue and attempted to look cool, calm and collected.  A husband and wife couple behind me had luggage tags for the same cancelled flight as me. I gathered we would be ok. It turned out they were ok but I wasn't.  When I reached the check in desk, the assistant told me that there wasn't a booking for me. I froze in panic.  The assistant pointed me in the direction of another queue. I dragged my heavy luggage behind me and tried my best to make eye contact with the clearly harassed check-in assistant who already had a queue of irate people in front of him. The poor, young guy was running all over the place, picking up his phone, standing up and down, leaving us all in the queue and returning looking even more harassed.  When it was my turn to talk to him he told me that there was no booking. I politely, with gritted teeth, told him, that I had already discovered this with the other check-in assisant and told him to do something about it, as my airline had definitely confirmed I was on that flight.

He put me on stand-by. As the clock ticked by, I became more tense and wanted to scream. Finally, with 15 minutes to spare, he received a phone call and confirmed a seat for me. With the countdown ticking, I sped though passport control, saw a sign which said 14 minutes to get to my gate. At a frantic run, the journey to the gate seemed like the longest ever, as the travelators stretched into the horizon. The sign at the gate flashed 'Gate Closing'. Made it. The couple who were behind me at check-in cheered when they saw me on the plane. I collapsed in my seat, the sweat pouring off my forehead and my heart palpitating as if it were going to explode. As the plane started moving, I smugly smiled to myself thinking 'What a great adrenalin rush"!

For the first time in ages, I landed in Bali in the daylight. With its green rice terraced fields, undulating hills and mountains covered in a green carpet of tropical trees, Bali looked beautiful. I was excited to be back. By the time I got home, I was the last to turn up for a dinner party I had organised with friends and their response was 'only in Bali'!

So another life lesson. Things happen that are out of our control. We can't control everything. There are external forces that can sometimes prevent us from having what we want. This philosophy has been around for years:-

"It's not what happens to you, but how you react to it that matters." Epictetus 50-120


As the song goes by Jack Johnson, which played on my IPOD when I was on my own at the gym, sometimes you have to staple it together, call it bad weather and move on.


Janet

You Get What You Give

After a month in urbanised Singapore, I've returned to country living in Bali for 3 days, before going back again to run a week of workshops and coaching in Singapore.

I did have reservations about returning to Bali after my highly comfortable month in the city with all its modern trappings, conveniences and my familiar old haunts. Once I'd got through the airport to the car, I remembered I'd always chuckled at the sign that welcomes you to Bali. As the cars, motorbikes and other vehicles queue up to pay the airport car park exit fees, the sign welcomes you to Bali as paradise, a sentiment I am not always aligned with. This time, for some reason, I noticed that the sign actually said 'Your gateway to paradise'. Had they changed the sign? I joked with my husband, no wonder it doesn't feel like paradise at times, it's only the gateway!

This sign left me wondering where paradise could be and I concluded that paradise is a feeling that can only exist within us. You get what you give. If I believe that Bali is paradise, then this is what I'll get. If I believe otherwise, then I'll get that too. Like a boomerang, it will come back to you. It's all to do with the power of our minds and how we perceive things. A friend of mine told me that 2011 was going to be a tough year. "It will be tough if you think it will be" I responded.

While mulling over the words 'paradise', I did recognise that Bali has certain temptations that lure me back, a bit like a boyfriend or girlfriend that you know isn't quite right for you, but you still can't resist. I'm pleased to say that I was pleasantly surprised at how good it felt to be back in Bali. I'm now familiar with the sights, sounds and potholes. The beauty of Bali's landscape has never ceased to amaze me and what I truly like is the feeling of open skies and spaces.  Bali has a rule that does not allow buildings to be built higher than a palm tree (15 metres apparently) and for a change I find myself agreeing with one of the rules that the Balinese government has set.

I had been already reminded of the importance of 'you get what you give' last week while working in Singapore. In our training we refer to this as 'communication is the response you get.' I used to think that if somebody didn't understand me, it was their problem and my response was that they were:-

A. Not interested.
B. Had a different (wrong) opinion.
C. Plain stupid.

The old me usually settled for option C. Now after years of personal and professional development (and making a fool of myself on quite a number of occasions) I realise that I was the one with the problem and not the person whom I was attempting to communicate to. 

Over the last week, I've experienced quite a number of situations where 'you get what you give.' As I waited for a taxi to take me to my training location, I found myself thinking "I feel awful that the poor taxi driver who picks me up has to take me such a short distance." I changed my thoughts to "I have all this video and training equipment so the taxi driver will have to lump it." I then consciously refined my thoughts to receive a better response and changed my words to "I'm sure the taxi driver will be happy to help."

Sure enough the taxi driver treated me in the same way as if he were taking me on a long airport run. He quickly helped me with the suitcase and equipment bags and didn't complain at all when I asked him to take me a couple blocks across the city. I was so impressed with his response at the end of our short journey, I apologised for the small fare, gave him the feedback how impressed I was with his response to my request and thanked him for being so helpful. He told me that it wasn't a problem at all.

Another situation was when I was waiting at the American Club in Singapore for a coachee to join me. I was quietly minding my own business when a member of staff approached me.  "Excuse me, are you waiting for anybody?" he asked. I'm not sure whether his communication style influenced my reaction but I immediately felt as though I shouldn't be there, as I wasn't a member. I explained that I was waiting for somebody and to my surprise he offered me a cup of coffee. His offer was so unexpected that I automatically declined. Then he asked me if I would prefer tea!  I declined again as I had just had breakfast. It was cold sitting directly under the air conditioning, so based on his kind communication, I asked for a cup of hot water instead. His simple, kind gesture enabled me to respond favourably and made me feel good for the rest of the day.

Over the years, I've learned to adapt my communication so I do get the response I'm looking for and this has worked to my advantage on numerous occasions. On Sunday night, for example, when I was kept awake until 2am by the local temple ceremony, the gamelan (an orchestra of gongs, xylophones and rows of tuned metal bars that are struck with a mallet) and the priest were going for it hammer and tongs over their exceptionally loud, loudspeaker. The din reverberated like a Hindu version of a night club.
In moderation I enjoy the sound of the Balinese gamelan that chime across the fields, like a local version of the familiar sound to me of church bells in the British countryside. As I tossed and turned my head on my pillow, it felt like a mallet was striking my head. I tried desperately to find the quietest side, hoping to be deaf in one ear and ended up with the pillow over my head. I very often ask my coachees "what is the feedback telling you?" and decided, on this occasion, to listen to my own advice and quickly change my response, otherwise I was going to have a bad night. I reminded myself that 'you get what you give' and resolved to enjoy the sounds resonating across my bedroom, rather than be annoyed by them, and was soon successfully lulled to sleep.

A word of warning. Be careful not to let down your guard and go back to your old habits. It's so easy to use expressions that we've picked up over the years. At the weekend when my family and I popped over for delicious tea and cake at our friend's house, they enquired whether I had any more snake troubles. I explained that a snake hadn't been spotted at our villa for over a month, the exact time since I had been away. I joked "knowing my luck one will turn up now I'm back". Needless to say that evening a baby cobra decided to make its presence known at our home! You get what you give.

While coaching last week, I came across the following framed verse that was in the ladies toilet of the office I was in and I want to share with you all of you, lady or not:-

Live like today is your last day,
Love like you've never been hurt,
Dance like no-one is watching.
-Ron Hall

Learn from life's lessons and remember that you get what you give.

Janet

What Can Possibly Happen Next?

Have you ever wondered to yourself 'What next?' After a succession of events, you wonder what else could possibly happen? This is certainly how I felt when we had a succession of snakes arrive at our villa.  The more we focused on them lurking around in our territory, the more they arrived en masse, which is inevitable when I was almost stalking them. There's a saying that attention goes where energy flows.  No wonder I couldn't help but think to myself 'whatever next?'! Surely this was the ultimatum and nothing worse could happen?  There's no chance of the Bali tiger popping in as it is now extinct (apparently it wasn't people but the snakes who made them extinct.  The snakes frightened the baby tigers so much that the mothers stopped having babies). I was hoping that now I can live alongside snakes (at a distance and as long as I don't find one in my bedroom, like the time I found vermin droppings and urine stains in my bed while I had been away for a few days), this would be the end to all shocks, worries and surprises in Bali.

More recently while staying in Singapore, my temporary escape to city life made me feel protected by hiding in my ivory office tower which is 10 floors above any wild life that lurks around at ground level, so I didn't need to worry about what was happening in Bali. I could simply shrug off all responsibility and if a snake or any other strange creature of the tropics appeared at our Bali home, in my absence, it wasn't my problem. Well I was wrong. Another problem or for want of a better word 'challenge' emerged in Bali, one which I wasn't expecting and I couldn't shrug off all responsibility, simply because I wasn't there . So another life lesson for me. My Bali life could still catch up with me in Singapore.

I expect you're wondering what this challenge was? It all started with a frantic email sent by our team assistant in Bali.  It was marked as urgent and said 'Cream missing'. Cream is our Bali dog. We adopted her as a puppy and she has been with us since the start of our new adventure in Bali. While we were enjoying the New Year's celebrations in Singapore, Cream had gone missing. We have two Bali dogs and they were both afraid of the New Year's Eve fireworks that noisily cracked and exploded in the neigbourhood. It transpired that on this same evening, two cows had gone missing in the neighbouring field and some stray Bali dogs that usually 'hung around' the local neighbourhood had also disappeared.

It felt like an Indonesian version of Cruella De Vil had kidnapped our dog, two cows and some other local, street roaming Bali dogs. I thought of our well-fed, fat, posh Bali dog mixing with the male 'tramp' dogs or ruffians as my Mum used to refer to and years later, I can now understand her concerns about who I mixed with! My mind wandered all over the place about what could have happened to her. I read between the lines and interpreted our assistant's message as it was all over.  This is Indonesia, someone had stolen our dog and she wasn't coming back. We had to prepare ourselves for the worst. My mind wandered further. Knowing that dog is eaten in Bali and our Cream was as fat as a pot-bellied pig, she would make a wonderful meal. I couldn't take it any longer and decided that we couldn't sit back and accept her destiny, like a jury's verdict that hadn't listened to a fair hearing.  We had ways, means and resources to do something about it. I asked our assistant to talk to everybody in the neigbourhood, to contact our local Banjar (they are like the local mafia, they have eyes and ears open everywhere, have a strong say about their village / neighbourhood and will help protect you, provided you pay into their fund), the dog rescue centres, the vets and to display posters with a reward.

As the days went by and my angst increased, I started to assume the worst. My 10 year old daughter quite rightly told me not to be 'negative' and that she would turn up. This simple and straightforward comment reframed my thinking and quickly put me in a positive state of mind. Sometimes being an adult can get in the way of us remaining positive. Young children have a wonderful innocence and lack of preconceptions, that can get in the way of adults thinking the best. On the fifth day, my 10 year old daughter informed us that she had dreamt Cream had returned and I thought to myself 'I wish it could be that easy.' At precisely 6pm that day, after I had dropped off my daughters for a sleep-over with some good friends and jumped in a taxi, I noticed a text from Bali on my phone. Our assistant was pleased to inform me that Cream had returned all on her own. She was dirty but healthy. I happily shared the good news with my taxi driver, who reciprocated my happiness with a furrowed brow as if he were a little perplexed why I was so ecstatic about a dog. I called my friend and could hear my children leaping with joy at the good news. I phoned and sent texts to all the people I had told about my misfortune which was quite a few people. What a relief!  As they say, all is well that ends well.

The next day after months of abstinence from the gym and with no children around in the morning, I decided to attempt my walk/jog on the treadmill. As I listened to my IPOD, all the songs reminded me of my early morning walk/jogs in Bali with our two dogs. It just wouldn't have been the same going out with our one dog. It would have been like having lost a leg. There would have been no verbal obscenities as I attempted to get our wildly excited and bouncing dogs under control on their leads. There would have been no tangling up of leads and bodies, as if we were playing a game of 'twister' on the narrow rice paddy lanes. There would have been no two dogs crossing over and causing total mayhem as something sparked their interest on the other side and no tripping me up in the process as I dodged the pot holes.  How dull that would have been!

I couldn't stop smiling on the treadmill and it reminded me how good it is to get out, do some exercise and get active, rather than let things spiral down into a dark, lethargic 'thinking the worst state'. The life lessons I learned were to stay positive, keep moving forward and think the best outcome, rather than let our adult experiences and preconceptions influence us to think the worst. There's an English proverb that says:-

"Worrying is like sitting in a rocking chair. It gives you something to do but it doesn't get you anywhere."

I spent far too many days sitting on that rocking chair, worrying about the fate of our dog. Luckily, I had a happy ending to get me off it. Even if the prospects don't look good or the ending isn't what you wanted, get off that rocking chair, think positive and enjoy the now, rather than worry about what next.

On this blog, I've included the song that played on my IPOD that made me smile on the morning when I returned to the treadmill. The words 'The best in life is free' resonated with me.  Enjoy your special moments, memories and remember to think the best about what could possibly happen next.

Janet

Ace of Base, Beautiful Morning:

Let Knowledge Be the Food of Love

As I look out over the stunning city view of Boat Quay and the Singapore river, the Fullerton Hotel and the latest developments of the Marina Bay Sands Integrated Resorts Hotel from my office in Singapore, it's hard to believe that I have the other tropical, jungle like 'Green Life' in Bali. During my month long stay in urbanisation, I breathe a sigh of relief while residing on the 10th floor of a hermetically sealed, air conditioned office which is bug, reptile and vermin free. I don't have to deal with snakes, rats, mice, frogs, termites, pre-historic looking insects whose trajectory just happens to coincide with mine, nor the latest outbreak of moths come to devour our clothes. Fed up with the sight of all my daughters wearing grungy tee-shirts with holes like emmental cheese, I've swapped them for brand new tee-shirts that for now will stay fresh looking in Singapore and yet will eventually take on a grey, off-white appearance when they return to their rural existence in Bali.

I'm loving this sense of urbanised security where I know that we'll all scrub up clean, I won't be surprised by  unfamiliar tropical creatures, power cuts or intermittent internet where the signal comes and goes as if it's dependent on the wind (which it most probably is).  When I have moments of comfort and pleasure like this, I wonder what possessed us to move to Bali in the first place, and yet I know it has been one of the best learning experiences we have ever had. After 9 years of living in in Singapore, I became very comfortable with my lifestyle, so much so that I took its efficiency for granted. The antithesis of Singapore, Bali has given me the new found expereince of taking nothing for granted, dealing with the unexpected and being flexible when things don't go according to plan. Bali has taught me that you never stop learning. We are all still 'green' and there is always new knowledge and wisdom to discover. It's often when things go wrong or not as you had planned, when you learn the most.

Continuing the theme of new knowledge, our Indonesian team assistant gave me a wonderful Christmas gift. She gave me a wooden sculpture, hand made by the gifted, local Balinese craftsmen. The sculpture was of Saraswati, the Goddess of Knowledge and Arts. What a perfect gift.  My assistant knows my voracious appetite for reading topics on personal development, knowledge and wisdom. She puts up with my moaning, sighing and somewhat impatient incredulity when peculiar things happen such as the vanishing snake catcher, who six weeks after the first sighting of a snake has still not turned up at our home, versus a 10 minute wait for 6 men in a van when a 12 inch, harmless snake was first spotted in our garden in Singapore!  Perhaps the snake catcher has had an unfortunate accident in the course of his work. There's also the peculiar situation where our internet provider can not understand why for the last couple of months our connection comes and goes and we have to go slow for 20 or 30 minutes in our working day, while we wait for the connection to come back to us again. Will we ever get to the bottom of this?  I do not know. Maybe a miracle will happen. Our assistant stays remarkably calm and it's as if she knows that I will eventually learn from all these happenings.

Saraswati has four hands representing four aspects of human personality in learning:-

• Mind
• Intellect
• Alertness
• Ego

Saraswati holds sacred scriptures in one hand, a lotus the symbol of true knowledge in the other and with her two other hands she plays the music of love and life on a string instrument called the veena. I'm beginning to wonder whether my helpful and knowing assistant is Saraswati herself!

Adding to Shakespeare's words 'Let music [and knowledge] be the food of love'. We are never too old to stop learning. No matter what happens to you, whether good or not so good, accept the flow of wisdom and knowledge you gain and continue to grow as a person.

As my eldest daughter's (currently clean) tee shirt says:-
"Don't let today's disappointments cast a shadow on tomorrow's dreams."

Merry Christmas and have a NoLimits 2011!

Janet

The Snakes and Ladders of Life

Life can sometimes feel like a game of snakes and ladders.  One moment, life is looking good and it feels like you are making progress up the ladder. The next moment, it can feel like you’ve come hurtling down a slippery snake and gone back quite a few paces. Just when I was thinking that the Bali wildlife of rats, mice, lizards, beetles, cockroaches, ants and pesky mosquitoes didn’t faze me anymore, snakes of different shapes, sizes and colours have turned up at our home. Over the last couple of weeks, there have been eight sightings of different snakes, from babies to adults and poisonous to non-poisonous varieties. I was most alarmed when my five year old daughter told me that she saw a baby snake reading one of her books in her bedroom and that she and our Balinese helper killed a long, green poisonous snake in our garden as if it were merely an everyday occurrence!

We've also witnessed a death in the family - Buddy Bird, a baby, who was rescued from drowning himself in the pond. Instead he gently passed away in a make do nest built by my daughters out of a cardboard box and a bed out of cotton wool. We looked up on the internet how to feed him and made some bird food out of egg and bread which he seemed to enjoy very much. We left him in the capable hands of our eldest daughter and her friend, while we braced the Bali traffic and did some errands at the weekend. By the time we got back he was pronounced dead. He died of severe haemorrhaging and we think our Bali cat, Mango, may have had something to do with his ailing condition. When I asked my daughter and her friend if they had buried Buddy, their response was 'no'.  They had thrown him in the river and if he hasn't been eaten by a snake or some other wild Bali resident, his corpse will be floating in the sea by now. He had exceptionally long legs, so must have been some type of wading bird and being thrown in the water was most probably the best way to go. Our girls bemoaned the fact that he only had a short life, although they understood he was now out of pain and they learned the life lesson, how precious life is.

Apart from the customary power cut and internet failure, I discovered that even though I have plans A, B, C, D and E and 6 staff in Bali who work at our villa and for our company NoLimits, I have no staff to cover me next week when it is both a Muslim and Hindu holiday in Bali and I have a workshop to run in Singapore where there are no public holidays during this time. I was told that maybe I need a Christian house staff member so that I'm covered for all eventualities! The joys of running a company in Singapore and living in Bali. My patience was finally tested when my 3 girls were sent home from school with hand, foot and mouth disease. Because next week is a long holiday, they will be off for 9 days before going back to school!  Oh the joys of being Mum and juggling work responsibilities! As leadership guru John Maxwell says:-

“You don’t overcome challenges by making them smaller. You overcome them by making yourself bigger.”

Even though we have experienced quite a few snakes recently, there have been ladders too. My daughters and I had a wonderful sleepover with a friend and her 3 daughters in Ubud - we had a memorable girls’ weekend and our children learned how to do Batik painting. My friend is a fellow Brit, she recently moved from Singapore to Bali with her husband and family, and we can joke about all our ‘snakes and ladders’ in the usual British self-deprecating manner. We happily talked non-stop until 2am Friday night / Saturday morning! I've learned that in spite of my attempt for order, structure, and contingency planning, things don't always go according to plan. Sometimes it's a case of simply finding an alternative ‘ladder’ to reach our outcomes.

Another 'ladder' has been watching the TED Video on the Green School by visionary founder John Hardy. I'm proud that our girls are experiencing the Green School, a once in a life time opportunity for them and a wonderful, creative way to learn. We've met some fascinating people who have broken the traditional corporate ‘ladder’ approach and are travelling through Bali on their world trips, have taken time out for their children to experience the Green School or have innovatively set up their own businesses either in or outside Bali. I was fortunate enough to be working with a young group of ‘techies’ in Singapore this week, who seemed to think I was 'cool' by living in Bali and running a business in Singapore. A great compliment for a middle aged woman who is old enough to be their Mum!

I have learned from the sad demise of Buddy Bird, life is too short to get stressed about snakes, no internet, not having enough staff to cover public holidays. As perfect timing to my 'what could go wrong next?' thoughts, I came across a quote that inspired me:-

"Make each day your masterpiece."
John Wooden, American Basketball Coach

Make something a masterpiece in each of your days and you’ll easily overcome challenes by being bigger than those snakes.

Janet

Click on the following link to hear John Hardy talk about the Green School:-
john_hardy_my_green_school_dream