A Meaningful Life

Quite often you look at business, goal achieving, sport and the like you see bravery and professionalism present as important ingredients of success. Yesterday I had a good example of this in action at a personal level. My son Caleb got a splinter about 2 cm long in his toe, from one side to the other. It was jammed in and every time we pulled at it with the tweezers the tip of it would just break of.

For a three year old I was amazed how brave he was when it came to dealing with it. He was upset and teary but nothing like what I expected when he saw the splinter. It was huge, scary and he knew it was going to have to come out. Our initial thought was, “this is going to be a nightmare”.

Fortunately his reaction was very good, lots of tears but not a panic attack. We were at a birthday and luckily Jeanette a friend of ours, whose a nurse, helped get it out in a very professional manner.

It makes you realise skill and expertise is vital in dealing with a problem well. It also reminded me of that old saying “leave it to the professional”.

Quite often in business and at home I’ll hang on to tasks because I believe I can do them better. The reality is I can’t. The “Professional” has education, training and experience in the specific task at hand. Hard to match.

Saw a great tip on a show called Neat last night. It was called R.A.F.T.

1. Read
2. Action
3. File
4. Toss

The gist was that any bit of paperwork (or email in after thought) fits into one of these categories. You simply sort your stuff and if you’re like me you will probably end up working on the big pile, “Action”. I think it might have a use in transaction and task handling in Saasu

Yep, still addicted but I have cut back to an average of 3 cups per day. In the first week when I started my “conscience effort to eliminate” my tally was 1,3,2,2,5,3,3. Then I stopped counting. I took the Falkayn’s advice and tried some healthy snacks. I am definitely drinking more water and eating more fruit. It does help. Yesterday I only had one coffee and that was because my day was broken up so I believe this points to changing routine a little can help disrupt the habit. I will work on this over coming weeks.

What I have found in recent weeks is when I take action in apsects of my life that I have been putting of I get rewarded with more happiness than I expected on completion than I had anticipated at the start. I think I have been tricking myself into thinking that the effort exceeds the reward but on almost every outcome this is not the case. As an example, Emma and I were very keen to get our pool finished by Xmas so the kids and other family/friends would have use of it over the holidays. It was a mad rush and a painful exercise doing it but the reward definitely exceeded the effort. I think the takeaway is that living means doing your dreams and goals not putting them off for an easier existence that may lead to a fairly average life. If your not up for a big full life then what’s it all for? Do you just exist until you die? p.s. Landmark Education has been coaching me in playing the game of life.

Emma and I were at Taronga Zoo last week on Australia day with the kids. Amazingly it looked like the zoo moved to the harbour with all the monkey business going on the water and in the air. Those animals have got the best view in Sydney and they never paid a cent.