KEEP CALM and CARRY ON

Have you ever been in one of those situations where your brain goes into a complete panic, your body into a freaky spasm and your inner talk shouts at you 'what shall I do now?' Well I don't know about you, but over the years I seem to have successfully trained my brain to raise all the alarms in these sorts of situations and afterwards when I have time to reflect, it usually amazes me at how quickly I have come to the most irrational conclusion. Then I think to myself 'how on earth did I get there!'

A simple example was when my poor driver (it's a regular feature to have a driver in Indonesia where the traffic is so bad and he is so much calmer than me) had come down with some horrid looking allergy - his head was swollen and his face had erupted into enormous watery looking welts - in a strange sort of way his head seemed to turn into one of those globes of the earth that has a 3 D effect to the map and his body became the thin stand that held it.  When he picked up my three daughters and myself after school, my girls were already sitting in the back of the car with the seats in a 'back incline' position by the time I turned around, which made a complete change from the fight they usually over who is going to sit in the front of the car. When I looked over at my driver, my pity quickly turned into thinking 'I hope it's not contagious' and when I returned home, I found myself running to the bathroom to search for the hand-sanitizer  - it's a good job we have no internet at home otherwise I would have searched the internet and panicked myself even more!

I told my driver not to come to work until he was better, so it was over to me to do the driving.  I'm ok with driving in Bali, in fact I quite like the fun of not knowing who or what will suddenly pull out in front of me. I'm also aware of all the stories I hear that if you're in an accident in Indonesia and they see you are a foreigner, you are always to blame - apparently, you can end up paying the whole family, even if only one person is involved in the accident!  So I was on full alert while driving, being extra vigilant with the early morning traffic rush while the literally hundreds of motorbikes headed for me like torpedoes and swerved around my car as if we were on a racing track.

Luckily, I successfully and safely arrived at my intended destination the 'ATM'. The only challenge was after having reminded my husband on several occasions to transfer some money, there was none in the account..  In the space of reading the message 'sorry not enough funds' to retrieving my card, my thoughts had already taken me down the route of having no cash in Indonesia and suddenly I was picturing my family starving.  I promptly phoned my husband who was in Singapore to find out what was going on and there was no answer.  My thougtht pattern had now jumped to 'what if he's lying on the floor dead' (he went to the gym a few days before for the first time in 6 years).  Whether he was dead or not, it was inconvenient and my motherly instinct immediately took me to the conclusion of survival. It's amazing where our thought patterns can lead to in an instant. Fortunately, my panic was over when my husband called me back two minutes later and explained that actually the banks aren't open at 7am and it was just too early for the money to have been transferred.

Closely following this little incident, another panic happened to me when I took my 13 year old daughter to the dentist to have a brace fitted.  After years of continuing to suck her thumb, she had no alternative and the dentist re-assured me that she would definitely stop sucking her thumb when she had a brace. When the dentist quoted me the fee, I thought he said the reasonable price of Rp 1.2million (US$120).  I went to the ATM and took out Rp2million (US$200), just in case some extra was needed. When I carefully counted out 1.2 million in 100,000 notes the receptionist shook her head. I looked at the amount she had written and I read it as '2.1million' - not a problem I thought to myself - I must have turned around the numbers in my head so I painstakingly started again and counted out Rp 2.1 million in 100,000 notes. This time she shook her head tutting and blurting out something Indonesian to her colleague.  I now panicked and looked at my daughter, who equally didn't have a clue what was going on.  The receptionist looked at me as though I was thick and slowly shouted, "21 million" (US$2100). "21 million?" I exclaimed to my daughter, "but I can't even count to 21 million, let alone have the cash to pay for it!"

I didn't have a credit card with me, so had no alternative but to walk to the closest ATM and withdraw the cash. I already knew what a pain this would be as many ATMs will only let you have a certain amount at a time and then you have to key in your personal number all over again and agan and again, until eventually you get the amount you want. After having taken over the ATM booth for a good 20 minutes, while a long queue of people patiently waited outside down the street, and over 20 transactions later, I had amassed 21 million rupiah in 100,000 notes.  Fortunately, I had my big bag with me which bulged to the seams with cash and made me feel as conspicuous as a bank-robber .

My daughter who is much taller and bigger than me accompanied me like a security guard and together we paced down the street in Denpasar, the capital of Bali, highly wary (bag snatchings from motorbikes frequently happen) and trying to look as though we were going for a casual stroll which is a very odd sight as usually you don't get ex-patriates nor holiday makers taking a stroll along the streets of this part of Denpasar.

We made it back to the dentist unscathed, but the shock of paying 21 million for my daughter's brace affected both my husband and I for the rest of the week (it still affects me when I think about it!), particulalry as my daughter still continues to suck her thumb with a brace on!!

What have these life lessons taught me? As the British government's poster campaign in 1939 said, 'KEEP CALM and CARRY ON.' A good question to ask when we find ourselves in this sheer panic situations is, 'will this matter in a few days, in a month, in a year or the next few years?' Although I may still be grumbling about the amount in a few years, regaining this perspective does help soften the blow at the time.

I'm still training my brain to panic less and be calm.  It takes some concerted effort on my behalf and I'm getting better.

For this life lesson, I admire this quote and it will be useful for those of you, who like me, tend to characteristically panic:-

"Power is so characteristically calm, that calmness in itself has the aspect of strength."
Edward G. Bulwer-Lytton, English Politician, 1803-1873

Enjoy the power of being calm and carrying on.

Janet

Setback to Setforward

Demon in Bali Botanic Gardens - it's like this!

The other day, I was reminded by a close friend how we can sometimes bump into setbacks.  She said to me, "we are going to have setbacks I know," which had the tone of a negative inevitability. The challenge with the word ‘setback’ is that we tend to interpret it so that it holds us back. The word ‘back’ implies we have to go backwards and ‘set’ makes it sound even more limiting, as if it is fixed. I prefer the word ‘set-forward’ to help me resourcefully work out how what is required.

So here are a few ‘set-forward’ life lessons that I’ve come across recently. 

The first was when I took my 3 girls back to Singapore for part of their school holidays.  My ‘on its last legs’ washing machine seemed to have lost all its legs.  When I put in a small number of clothes (at this stage of its life it could only handle midget size loads), they came out of the washing machine smellier than what went in. My emotions erupted like a volcano, culminating into threatening my husband, “it’s either me or the washing machine that goes”.  Fortunately, he chose the latter and we now have a state of the art, digitally operated washing machine which is such a pleasure to use, my children and husband have to hide their clothes to prevent them from being whisked up and put in the washing machine – they are finding this quite a culture shock after having got used to leaving their clothes hanging around until all the dirt and sweat practically made them stand up on their own! 

The second situation that set me back was when I was reminded of one major hurdle in my life that I thought I had brought under control. Since having children in my early thirties, I was diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis (RA), described by medical specialists as a ‘chronic, lifelong disease’. It’s an auto-immune ‘disease’ that attacks every joint in the body and can affect young children to adults. Not liking the words ‘chronic, lifelong and disease’, I’ve done a lot of mind work on myself over the years to set forward this ‘setback’. 

The RA has enabled me to understand first-hand the benefits of keeping fit and eating healthy foods, but a ten day stay in Singapore led me into the temptation of eating the more unhealthy, wheat and sugar laden fast foods which was exacerbated by no exercise. My joints became inflamed and my initial reaction was to view the constantly, throbbing pain as a depressing setback.  As soon as I was alerted to the feeling of a ‘setback’, my thoughts immediately took me back to the days when I was severely incapacitated by the arthritis which automatically led me down the negative spiral of un-resourceful thinking. 

How we can be

Knowing the painful consequences of such limited thinking, I asked myself what was required.

The set-forward was to eat more healthy food and exercise again, so I returned to my aerobics class full of enthusiasm and was welcomed back with open arms by my Indonesian instructor who exclaimed, ‘what happened?’ as he pointed to my abdominal area that I attempted to hold in but nothing happened! This third situation could have set me back even further, but there’s nothing like some brutal honesty to kick start me into action. To add to my abdominal challenge, I had totally lost my rhythm to the moves (not that I had much co-ordination in the first place) and my instructor fell to the floor laughing, so I laughed too which made me feel much better.

Yay!

The good news is that since these ‘setbacks’ and a few more to add to the collection, I’ve experienced some notable ‘set-forwards’, including my RA starting to feel under control again; my daughters complimenting my level of fitness to their friend when we climbed to a waterfall in the mountains, boasting that the reason I was ahead was that I ran 5km every day (this is not exactly the case and I was more interested in returning for lunch, but a good aspiration to have especially as there was a stage in my life where I could hardly walk, let alone run); and my aerobics instructor telling me that he liked to see me laughing at his classes as it made him happy, when really he makes me happy!

As Eckhart Tolle says in his book ‘The Power of Now’:-

“Action arising out of insight into what is required is more effective than action arising out of negativity.”

When those ‘setbacks’ in life occur re-assure yourself that you can set them forward by asking yourself what is required.

Enjoy your ‘set-forward’ way of thinking.

Janet

No Stopping Me!

You haven't seen a blog posted on this site recently because of an intense training schedule for the last three weeks.  So what life lessons have I learned during this time? Well the biggest one is that there can be 'no stopping me' if I re-assure myself ’it will be ok' and just go for it. What have you done recently to tell yourself to go for it and see what happens?  It can be quite enlightening when you prove to yourself that it can be done and if you keep the momentum going, it becomes self-fulfilling until there really is 'no stopping you'.

What have I been doing to feel like there's 'no stopping me'? I respond well to motivation, cajoling and flattery or however you might refer to it, by my Indonesian aerobics instructor who says "ah you so beautiful ..... I make you young and slim like before".  The fact that he never knew me before is beside the point - I have a wonderful imagination. So I keep returning to his classes like a child going back for more candy. He even persuaded me to attend his new Saturday class - I wasn't sure at first as I don't go the gym at the weekends - it was my self-made rule, sacrosanct. It was hard enough to force myself to go during the week, let alone the weekend. 

Not wanting to let down my instructor, I turned up on the first Saturday to discover that it was just him; a super fit young Indonesian woman, and me. I had no-one to hide behind and was beckoned to take the first row.  Reluctantly, I moved forward towards the full length mirror, feeling totally exposed, like a rabbit caught in headlights.  This feeling rapidly intensified when five young Indonesian men who had muscles like 'Rambo' joined the class and stood behind me. Briefly, I wondered whether the 'you've been framed' cameras would move in. Then the familiar, fast paced aerobics music started up and I moved into action like a clock work toy that had been set to go. I can tell you that I have never worked out so hard before in my life! Luckily I survived and I have proved to myself that I can go to the gym on a Saturday.

This 'no stopping me' feeling gained momentum in the following week, when a too heavily loaded lorry leaned over too far while turning a sharp corner and crashed onto its side, blocking all traffic from both directions. In Bali this sort of predicament can take hours or days to resolve and I had to not only to get my children to school but more importantly, I simply had to make it to my aerobics class! I decided to take a gamble and show my driver a short cut.  This short cut can only be described as a severely pot-holed, single track that is mainly used for motorbikes or four wheel vehicles like our 45 year old Toyota Landcruiser.  My sensible self-talk tried to persuade me that we should stay put and wait in the long queue.  

Although generally an optimist, I couldn't help picturing us getting stuck in a pot hole, half way up a hill. Our driver doesn't usually drive fast enough to get into fifth gear, let alone rev the engine for some speed. To add to my dilemma, it was violently pouring with rain and I had already experienced a couple of times getting stuck in the mud in the rain Bali. My 'stay in the queue' thoughts were overturned by my compelling, 'no stopping me' desire to get to my class. Luckily my three daughters and I knew the Indonesian word for fast, 'cepat' (pronounced chapat). We egged on our driver, encouraging him to drive 'cepat' while we all held our breath. We were overcome by an extreme feeling of relief, excitement and a sense of invincibility when we finally made it.

The week after the overturned lorry incident, I was training a group of Finance professionals in presenting skills at a Finance conference for 250 people in Phuket, Thailand. I was asked to take part in an Amazing Race. Although quite tempted just to relax on my own for an afternoon at our beautiful resort, rather than network, I decided to ‘go for it’, not knowing what I was signing myself up to do, apart from a work colleague asking me if I had ever seen this programme on TV and that the participants had to do some awful things! 

The night before the Race, the Head of Finance advised me to wear my shorts and tee-shirt to the first morning of my presenting programme as there would be no time to change before we left for our Amazing Race. Usually I turn up all ‘suited and booted’ in my corporate wear, especially for our presenting training as the person who presents is the message.  I noticed at breakfast that many people were dressed in smart casual and certainly not in their gym gear like me.  Wondering whether I should quickly run back to my room on the way to the training room and change, I read the following message on the back of a young woman’s tee-shirt ‘THERE’S NO GOING BACK NOW!’ As if being warned by somebody above, I looked at my watch and knew I had no time to change.  I had to keep going and turn up as I was, in spite of the non-corporate first impression I was going to create to my audience. To my surprise, my audience quite happily accepted me as I was and I now wish I could run every one of my training programmes in my trainers – no aching feet for me at the end of the day.

Although I didn’t know anyone in my Amazing Race team, I soon got to know them and we had such a hoot driving around Phuket Island in an old, open bus with a driver who looked as wrinkled as a prune and as though his retirement date had expired. As we hunted for clues along the roads, at the temples, parks and supermarkets and took part in several challenges including eating fried insects, I was so glad to take the plunge and have such fun. Our ‘old’ bus driver turned out to be the fastest and on the way back he further surprised us with his loud and lively disco music – his bus was equipped with 6 speakers and 4 subwoofers! Even more surprising was that our team came second out of seventeen teams!!

What are you going to do so there’s no stopping in you?  As the song by McFadden and Whitehead goes:-

“Ain’t no stoppin’ us now, we’re on the move,

Ain’t no stoppin’ us now, we’ve got the groove”

Enjoy being ‘on the move’ and ‘getting in the groove’ because there’ll be no stopping in you.

Janet

New Year, New You - Battle of Wills?

At the beginning of a New Year, how many times do you come across the 'New Year, New You' mantra? How often do you think about it and hope that the new year will be a better one?  You may kick off to a great start and as the year progresses, the old battle of wills creep in again.

Sometimes we think to ourselves, 'why bother?' or 'I told you so', you tried a different approach in previous years and it didn't work then so why should it work now? Those old thoughts return like a boomerang, either smacking us in the face or creeping up quietly on us like a cat about to leap on its prey.

It was only mid January and my 'New Year, New You' optimism had already waned.  It all started after having set up a temporary home in our office in Singapore for four weeks over the Christmas period because we needed to renew our passports before returning to Bali. Initially, it was quite a novelty being right in the heart of Singapore's Chinatown.  It felt good to be a part of the Asian community.   That was until the two quiet lacquer ware and Chinese artefact shops on the ground floor transformed into gruesome, ghetto blasting Chinese New Year shops, flogging paper decorations, that screamed bright red, accompanied by booming Chinese music and an annoying man on a loud speaker talking different Chinese dialects to entice customers to his shop.

At first, I was quite excited to be in the thick of it all. All the noise and colour is used to ward off evil spirits, but as the music seemed to get louder and last from morning until midnight, the noise started to grate on me. My battle of wills were in a tug of war, the one fast becoming an evil spirit and wanting to put my hands around the Chinese man's neck and the other reminding me 'while in Rome do what the romans do' and to fully embrace this wonderful experience. The battle went on in my head until my family and I escaped to Bali.

I was so looking forward to a peaceful night's sleep when I returned but this was not to be.  With the run up to Galungan which also symbolises the victory of virtue upon evil, I was welcomed back with a noisy din of music late into the night which hit my head like a hang over. Yet another test of wills and whichever one I decided to focus on would win, so I choose to be positive by acknowledging that it was much better than the Chinese music.

My first week back in Bali felt like another test of wills, ranging from my girls suffering fevers so they couldn't go to school after a 5 week break, my laptop dying on me, wondering why I ever bothered to exercise when it was so hard going back, enduring seven long power cuts in just over a week, and most devastating of all, my fun Indonesian aerobics instructor's classes were replaced by some serious, high impact SAS training routine. I was annoyed, negative and felt like everything was going wrong and at the same time there was my other will reminding me to be positively optimistic that things would definitely get better.

And so they did. My girls returned to school, my husband retrieved all my work from my broken down laptop, replaced by a nice new one and  after a mini women's revolution, spearheaded by a French female version of Napoleon, our wonderfully popular aerobics instructor was duly returned! The power cuts continue........ My staff quite rightly informed me, "it's too windy because of the rainy season and lots of trees are falling down." 

New year, new you?  Remember to let the right will be the stronger force:-

"Strength does not come from physical capacity.  It comes from an indomitable will."
Mahatma Ghandi

Make it a will and not a wish.

"Great souls have wills; feeble ones have only wishes."
Chinese Proverb

Let your best will win.


Janet

Shake Off Those Demons

Have you ever thought to yourself, 'is there something or someone out there trying to get me?' Like a demon, it's an unexplained force that persistently torments you. Have you noticed how you are more easily alerted to, or remember the things that go wrong for you, or something you don't like rather than all the good things that happen to you? Apparently this is a perfectly natural phenomenon. It's due to the ancient reptilian and early mammalian structure of our brain that kicks in when exposed to negative events. Our brain does this instinctively to protect us. This skill was useful in the days when we roamed around with other wild animals and to this day, in moderation, can be useful to make us cautious and be prepared when appropriate. The difficulty lies when we let our negative thoughts spiral out of control.

To add to this challenge, our brains pick up on negatives almost instantly, whereas it takes around 30 seconds to register something positive which means more effort. If we don't train our brains to focus on the positives, our minds can run away to form conclusions based on our fears.

I confess to letting my mind run away with itself and even coming to the illogical conclusion (that seems most logical at the time), that there is something tormenting me.

Take the simple example of when I had travelled back to the UK from Asia to celebrate my Mum's 70th birthday. I was so glad to have made the effort of travelling door to door for 30 hours with my 6 year old daughter to celebrate with my Mum, Dad, family and friends. It was well worth the jet lag and having my daughter wake me up at 3am saying she was wide awake and hungry, the body shock when experiencing a sudden temperature drop from 30 degrees centigrade to below minus, the general disruption of my routine and making time, in spite of my already 'hectic' schedule, especially with the run up to Christmas.

When my daughter and I flew back to Singapore, the heat and humidity hit me like an unavoidable, industrial sized hairdryer. It didn't help that when I returned to my office and living quarters in China Town, the power went out.  As I sat in the dark, thinking how in the ten years I had lived and worked in Singapore, I had never experienced a power cut and why did it have to happen now when I least needed it?  What was going on? I absolutely needed air conditioning or a fan to cool me down. Power cuts only happened to me in Bali and they usually lasted five to six hours. What if this power cut lasted as long?  How on earth could I attempt to sleep when it was still the day time in the UK so I didn't really want to sleep and I would gradually get hotter and hotter until I overheated? My mind jumped to the conclusion that I was being tormented. The power cut only lasted for about two minutes and yet in this short space of time I had experienced a huge trail of random, nonsensical thoughts that were leading me down a negative path.

Following this little episode I continued to gather more 'evidence' of things going wrong. The most notable was when I over-enthusiastically stuffed our newly acquired second-hand washing machine with dirty clothes.  My husband was out at a meeting, our staff were on Christmas leave and my three daughters were quietly occupying themselves in the front of the office, so that was my chance to run through the place like a tornado, whisking up all the dust, dirt and clothes that had accumulated in my absence while in the UK. I felt the need to make everything clean to the extent of sanitisation and didn't read the instructions or see the picture on the washing powder packet that clearly demonstrated only half or at most one scoopful of washing powder was required.  By now, I had become accustomed to the noticeable weaker washing powder in Bali (my friend who runs a market research consultancy says that the washing powder in Indonesia is not as strong as the washing powder in Singapore). My over-zealousness led me to fill up the washing machine's tray to the brim.


All was going well until the washing machine attempted its first spin.  It suddenly turned into a bucking bronco, heavily leaping and banging against the kitchen floor and oozing out streams of white, bubbly liquid.  My biggest concern was that a surly looking Chinese man on the floor below (who happens to run a massage shop) had complained when water started seeping through to his floor during a tropical rainstorm and we hadn't closed our shutters. How would he react to all this noise and a sea of white bubbles leaking through the floor boards onto his customers, who were there for a nice, relaxing, soothing massage? My reptilian / mammalian brain kicked into action and I instantly threw my body and arms over the washing machine, embracing it in a big hug, but it continued to bang like a pneumatic drill that was about to break through the ceiling.  Frantically searching for something dry to mop up the floor, I flung the remaining masses of dirty laundry waiting to be washed over the frothing spillage which made it even dirtier as it picked up rust from the washing machine and years of grease from the grubby tiled floor.  I sent an anxious text to my husband, "how long do you think you'll be?  Washing machine jumping around and water leaking - worried about flooding and Chinese man below....."

In complete panic and exhaustion, I did the only thing I could think of and switched off the machine at the socket.  Finally there was peace, but the water and masses of bubbles were still seeping out of the bottom of the machine, so I had to mop up the excess water every couple of minutes. Two hours later, my husband happily walked through the door, blissfully unaware of what state I was in.  He hadn't read my text. Hot, dishevelled and worried, I emotionally relayed the story to him and he calmly replied "Oh yes I forgot to tell you about the washing machine - you can only put small loads in." I was worried whether I would ever get my washing back from a machine that was forced to stop mid-cycle.  My husband reassuringly demonstrated the solution to me.  He switched on the washing machine and sat on it! We then took it in turns to sit on the washing machine every time it was due for a spin on the extra-long heavily soiled cycle that I had selected, until I was finally able to retrieve my washing that literally stood up on its own because it was so thickly caked in washing powder!

Although harassed by this situation, it could have been far worse.  It was so lucky that the washing machine and I didn't end up on the floor below! At times like this, it's good to add some humour and be resourceful. Whilst forced to sit on the washing machine, I was able to check and respond to my emails on my laptop. Later on in the week, it amused my thirteen year old daughter when the machine made its familiar banging noise and I ran from one end of the office to the kitchen telling my alarmed team, "Oh that's the washing machine, I'm going to sit on it." We can learn from these negative experiences when we bring our thoughts into control.

So shake off those demons and don't let them torment you.  The good news is that now you know a little bit more about how our brain works, you can recognise when to control your runaway thoughts. Add humour, consider all the positives that are happening in your life, be grateful for what you have (even if it is a second-hand, leaking washing machine - far better than doing everything by hand) and remember it takes longer to register positives, so make some more concentrated effort to consider what's going well.

In line with the demon theme, I like this quote:-

"It's a man's own mind, not his enemy or foe, that lures him to evil ways."
Buddha

Enjoy shaking off those demons.

Janet