Thursday, January 31, 2008
A Recent Enjoyable Experience
Having two hours of quality quiet chat time - face to face - with my 35 year old son during our recent holiday in Perth. He lives four hours flying time away so we only see each other a couple of times a year. We discussed all those things that add so much to father and son bonding. It was lovely spending time with his family (wife Cathy and two beautiful grandchildren) but there is something very special about long father/son chats in person.
A Working Holiday
A working holiday is something of an oxymoron - particularly when said by a lifestyle consultant! Yeah I feel a bit guilty in admitting that I accepted a request to conduct a lifestyle management workshop for a CEO and his senior management team while I was on holidays in Perth. Well done! you might say - earning money to pay for the holiday or being able to put some of the holiday costs down as a business tax deduction. Hard to disagree with any of that.
Much as I often joke that I am like the landscape gardener who's got the worst garden in the street, I still feel it is not a good message to send to my clients and readers. So why am I making such a point of it here??
One, it helps you understand that, while I enjoy and passionately believe in all the words I write and things I say about work life harmony, I do live in the real world and experience all the pressures and temptations that you do. When asked if I am always a happy smiling laughing chap, I respond that we have to experience sadness and tragedy to truly appreciate the benefits of enjoyment. I am no different to anyone else in that regard.
Second, everything in life is a learning experience and this was a great one for me. The client's needs opened up fascinating new opportunities for me to better understand the minds of senior managers when it comes to lifestyle management issues - for them personally and for the staff they manage. Being outside of my home city of Adelaide added to the experience.
Third, it was in the city of my son - whom I only see a couple of times a year and who has seen little of the way his father has turned 30 years of professional recreation planning and development experience into a lifestyle management consultancy. This was indeed a wonderful way of maintaining and strengthening the father/son bonding when we live four hours flying time apart.
So yes, I look back with a large degree of satisfaction on my decision to make it a working holiday (well, just half a day out of a week). It demonstrated that work life harmony goes well beyond simply ensuring you break up your working life with enjoyable personal interests. This experience gave me another way of understanding how "getting the mix right" can add huge value to my personal growth and family relationships.
Much as I often joke that I am like the landscape gardener who's got the worst garden in the street, I still feel it is not a good message to send to my clients and readers. So why am I making such a point of it here??
One, it helps you understand that, while I enjoy and passionately believe in all the words I write and things I say about work life harmony, I do live in the real world and experience all the pressures and temptations that you do. When asked if I am always a happy smiling laughing chap, I respond that we have to experience sadness and tragedy to truly appreciate the benefits of enjoyment. I am no different to anyone else in that regard.
Second, everything in life is a learning experience and this was a great one for me. The client's needs opened up fascinating new opportunities for me to better understand the minds of senior managers when it comes to lifestyle management issues - for them personally and for the staff they manage. Being outside of my home city of Adelaide added to the experience.
Third, it was in the city of my son - whom I only see a couple of times a year and who has seen little of the way his father has turned 30 years of professional recreation planning and development experience into a lifestyle management consultancy. This was indeed a wonderful way of maintaining and strengthening the father/son bonding when we live four hours flying time apart.
So yes, I look back with a large degree of satisfaction on my decision to make it a working holiday (well, just half a day out of a week). It demonstrated that work life harmony goes well beyond simply ensuring you break up your working life with enjoyable personal interests. This experience gave me another way of understanding how "getting the mix right" can add huge value to my personal growth and family relationships.
Success
People want success. The public perception of success tends to be very narrow - financial success, winning, doing better than the opposition, having lots of material things. They are all focused on how we can look successful in the eyes of other people. But success is very personal and relates first and foremost to how we each see our own personal progress in life. This is the sort of success we want to be able to look back on in our later years - and keep pursuing til the day we die.
This sort of success is about understanding and expressing the person we really are and have been all our lives. Its about discovering, maximising and enjoying the skills, talents and abilities with which we were born. The public perceptions of success tend to make us want to be the sort of person we think others expect us to be, rather than to be the person we really are.
We have to overcome some self-generated constraints. In an age of speed and stress, we need to be prepared to stop and reflect more, identify our passions, what experiences really bring us alive, what interests we put aside in past years so we could focus on being the person we think other people expect us to be.
Enjoy being the person you really are. That sort of success isn't measured in money, status or ego. Achieving true success in life might well be apparent to no-one but you. When you achieve that sort of success, however, you can be very sure that others will notice and applaud you.
This sort of success is about understanding and expressing the person we really are and have been all our lives. Its about discovering, maximising and enjoying the skills, talents and abilities with which we were born. The public perceptions of success tend to make us want to be the sort of person we think others expect us to be, rather than to be the person we really are.
We have to overcome some self-generated constraints. In an age of speed and stress, we need to be prepared to stop and reflect more, identify our passions, what experiences really bring us alive, what interests we put aside in past years so we could focus on being the person we think other people expect us to be.
Enjoy being the person you really are. That sort of success isn't measured in money, status or ego. Achieving true success in life might well be apparent to no-one but you. When you achieve that sort of success, however, you can be very sure that others will notice and applaud you.
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