A Reminder on Enjoying the Moment

Do you ever stop from the 'busyness' of life to enjoy the moment? There's an expression, 'stop and enjoy the smell of the roses'.  How often do you take time to just be present, enjoying the moment and not thinking about anything else?

I had a simple reminder of this on Friday 29th April 2011, with the Royal Wedding of Prince William and Kate Middleton, now the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge.  Alas, no I wasn't invited to attend the wedding, I did, however, manage to stop to enjoy the moment with my 3 daughters in Bali. Initially, when I heard the news of the Royal Wedding, I thought 'well I won't be in the UK at the time and there's no public holiday in Singapore or Bali, so I'll be working.'  Then, my British friend in Bali said "Wouldn't it be nice if we celebrated the Royal Wedding, so our children can remember this significant event?" So I thought 'why not?'  We can stop to enjoy the moment and celebrate wherever we are.

I took the late flight from Singapore, having worked the week there and arrived in Bali at 1am, ready to enjoy the wedding later on that day.  We couldn't find any British flags to fly, so my friend compromised with red, white and blue balloons and we attempted to make red, white and blue cup cakes which turned out pink, white and brown.  This didn't deter our plan to enjoy and celebrate the marriage of Britain's future King and Queen.

Amazingly, all our children aged from six upwards were transfixed watching the whole of the Royal Wedding.  With tears in our eyes to mark such a memorable occasion and champagne to celebrate, we were glad to take time out and watch as it happened live, rather than use the excuse 'we were too busy' or 'we live in Bali' so we couldn't stop to enjoy the moment.

Live in the present,
Launch yourself on every wave,
Find yourself in each moment .....
Henry David Thoreau

How often do you stop to enjoy the present, rather than being somewhere else in your mind? Make the most of every moment you have, rather than ignoring and missing it before it is too late.

Janet

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

A Day Of Silence

Have you ever spent a day of complete silence, rest and relaxation where you don't even watch TV?  In fact you can't use electricity, cook, make a noise and you can't leave your home for a whole 24 hours? In Bali, they call this day 'Nyepi'.  I have to admit that last year, I ran away from it and escaped to urbanisation, thinking I would go stir-crazy if I was forced to keep quiet, have no electricity and not be allowed out of my own home for a whole day and night, having only a candle to light up the darkness in the evening. Even the airport is closed for this day of silence. This year, I decided to give 'Nyepi' a go and had my perceptions trasformed.

Nyepi means silence. The event starts on the day of Bali's lunar New Year. During the run up to Nyepi, the Balinese people spend ages painstakingly making 'Ogoh-Ogoh', which are big, monster looking statues that represent evil spirits. On the eve before Nyepi, these statues are paraded along the streets by the Balinese people who make lots of noise, setting off fireworks to create a huge din. After all the evil spirits lurking in Bali are awoken and many of the 'Ogoh-Ogoh' are burned, there is complete silence the 24 hours - 6am to 6am the following day. The purpose of this day of silence is to fool the evil spirits into thinking that nobody lives on the island, so they will go elsewhere.

So two important life lessons from Nyepi for me:

1. It's really is good to force yourself to slow down, take time out, relax and enjoy silence, even sitting in the darkness as night falls and then seeing a way more incredible array of stars. The sense of silence on the day, was quite palpable, like a blanket over the whole island, no background noises of cars, motocycles, or even airplanes.  It enables and encourags you to slow down, you even start to move quietly and appreciate the peace and silence, being happy with how simple life can be.

2. The second thing is; rather than getting worked up about being 'forced' into a situation, I could choose how I responded.  We all have a choice on how we respond to what happens to us. Recently, my 10 year old daughter asked me why do the local people of Bali look and smile at her. I explained that with her blonde hair and blue eyes she did stand out just a little and that they were being nice and friendly. Her response was that they smiled at her because they were laughing at her.  This was simply her interpretation.  It was only real to her because she made it this way. She had a go at choosing her response and it was far better to think of these people smiling at her in a welcoming, rather than a laughing way. Sometimes it helps to put on different lenses and see a better perspective.

"Everything has its wonders, even darkness and silence, and I learn, whatever state I may be in, therein to be content."
Helen Keller

Take time out for yourself and enjoy a real day of silence.

Janet

Be Who You Want to Be

Last week, I presented with my talented NoLimits colleague, Maureen Koh, to a group of people who were interested in using 'Neuro Linguistic Programming' (NLP) in Business, at the Hard Rock Cafe in Singapore (thank you Lindley, the President of the NLP Association in Singapore, for inviting us to present and for the wonderful venue).
Three bands were performing on the same night and I almost felt like a 'rock star' with all the guitars and musical memorabilia that were hanging from the funky red walls. In such a 'buzzy' environment, I felt the pressure to deliver an exciting presentation, so I kicked off my presentation with a story (one of the best ways to capture attention).
The story was about why it took me so long to set up our training and development company 'NoLimits'.  I didn't really think of the story as that exciting, but it was a personal and genuine account of how I first came across NLP and how NoLimits uses it to add 'spice' to our executive coaching and training workshops, as well as how NLP has helped me through the rough times of global recessions and losing 80% of our business overnight. It wasn't until the next day, when I was coaching a wonderful coachee, who always inspires me (she thinks I inspire her, but she's the one who enthuses me) and she said "why don't you blog that great story you told last night?" My response was that it hadn't even occurred to me to blog this and was it interesting enough?  On reflection, I thought well why not because there is one big life lesson in my story and it's to do with being who you want to be.

It took me 10 year to set up my own training and development company. I dreamed and talked about it for years and years, but I always had something else to do first and then I would be ready. First I had to get more work experience, then I had my children, also I had to study lots of qualifications to gain the credibility to be able to do what I wanted to do.  The list went on and on for at least 10 years, until one day my husband jolted me into action by saying "So when are you going to start this company that you keep on talking about?" I could have slapped him in the face, as I had just had our third daughter which I felt was quite an achievement, but what he said was one of those defining moments for me. Even though, at the time, I found lots of valid excuses to defend myself, I was putting off something that was important to me because I was too 'busy' finding other things to do. The danger with this approach is that the 'one day' may never happen, if we keep finding reasons to delay who we want to be.

Determined to show my husband that I wasn't just talking hot air, I called the company 'NoLimits' because our limits can stop all of us from being and doing what we want to do. My husband liked the company name so much, he gave up his well paid corporate CFO job to join me.  Now we had to make my dream work. I was finally forced to take a step off the starting line and set up our company for real. Was it an easy step?  No.  Was it an overnight success?  No.  Was it challenging?  Yes.  Was it rewarding?  Financially - still working on it.  Enjoyment, playing to my passions and strengths and courage 150%. Was it worth it?  Most definitely.

A few months before we launched NoLimits, I told my husband that I had 'just one more training programme to attend and then I would be ready!'  It was something called 'NLP'.  I didn't have a clue what it was about.  All I knew was that my HR Director had been on a two day NLP workshop, over 10 years ago and subconsciously I remembered the two words she said about it. "It's about the brain. It's fascinating."  10 years later I finally attended a NLP Practitioner programme and was blown away by it, wondering why I hadn't studied it before.  I was there to learn personal development techniques to help others in corporate organisations and soon realised that I was there to help myself. Coincidentally, NLP covers so much about overcoming our limits, my company name suddenly had even more meaning.

As part of the NLP programme, I was introduced to the 'BE + DO = HAVE' concept.  If you be who you want to be, you'll do what you want to do and so you'll have what you want to have.
I had spent over 10 years following a different, limiting concept called 'DO+ HAVE= BE'.  If I do a job in a corporate organisation for so many years, do my qualifications etc, I will have enough qualifications and money to one day 'be' who I want to be.
This new concept of 'Being' was so simple and yet a huge 'aha moment' for me. By changing my thinking and approach I could now be on top of the world, rather than under it and I could BE the person I wanted to BE, so I would DO what I wanted to DO and then HAVE what I wanted to have.

So it was good-bye to just Doing and Having, so that one day I could Be, as 'one day' may never come. Who do you want to be? What can you do to start being who you want to be, doing what you want to do and having what you want to have?

"Whatever you can do, or dream you can, Begin it. Boldness has genius, power and magic in it. Begin it now."
W.H. Murray paraphrasing Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Enjoy being who you want to be.

Janet

To find out more about NLP and turning around your thinking, join our next public programme in Bali from 30 May - 5 June 2011 click here for brochure

Also, connect with the Singapore NLP Association here