How’s the World looking from up there?

How’s the World looking from up there?.

How’s the World looking from up there?

 

Perspective is a wonderful thing, is it not?

Hindsight it is said is perfect, but if you took more perspective on things would hindsight be a factor?

Meta position or perceptual positions – looking at a situation from the other guys point of view. You do know by now that it really does depend on the point of view don’t you? 

By and large, we are only concerned on how things affect us; after all it is happening to us, this thing how dare anyone else have an opinion contrary to ours? 

Then we get the hindsight…

Oops! 

Well if for a second we consider the other guys point of view and look at yourself through his eyes at you having your small but not inconsiderable paddy about the question at hand, what do you think that would look, feel and sound like?

Do you like how you look to this guy, is that what you wanted to project to him? Did he see your point or just a very upset and angry person with no ears to hear him and no eyes to see him?

Now, let’s get a bit adventurous. Find your inner Eagle, and soar above the two positions to the Meta (Greek word meaning above or outside of) position. Take yourself right out of the loop. Get high enough up there to disconnect completely from the situation. Then think to yourself, what am I seeing, what am I feeling, what can I say to these two people that will change this stalemate? Take that back with you and apply it.

And you know it’s amazing the things that happen when you get a different perspective on things!

 

 

 

Feelgood Factor

At this time of year we are all thinking of what we want, and what we want to give. We are dealing with the good vibrations of the season to be ‘jolly’. We are totally focused on the holiday, whether we celebrate it or not, we have to focus upon it because there really is nothing else getting through the subliminal white noise that is the machinery of Christmas.

This focus, this mindset is quite a substantial animal, it feeds on dreams and nostalgia, which in turn is cranked up by the tastes and smells and overheard conversations, not to mention the TV cookery shows that are more than abundant. One cannot flick a channel without hitting a programme telling you how it should be done, this gluttony and suspense of disbelief.

It is not just food gluttony I speak of, it is the glut of smaltz, of guilt ridden ads supposed to tug at your heartstrings, everything is timed and targeted to the exact nano second. The gluttony of the dream sell.

There is no shame and nothing is spared the frosted icing of advertisers selling their wares.

What does this mean though? What does it do for us if anything?

Well of course there is the feelgood factor, that little glow of loveliness and joyful almost childlike imagining that the whole thing is going to be the most wonderful and magical experience.

For some it will be….

For others it will not and whether it is one or the other…it has to come to an end and then – then we all come crashing down with a big credit card bill and payday a long and distant future maybe.

When we have the opportunity to wallow in the feelgood factor of this particular holiday and all it portends, why is it that we do not embrace it, yes, but then also take the feeling we wish to have and bring it to what we do throughout the year?

In the spirit of good business practice, how would it be if we focussed half so much on making not just our dreams come true but those of others around us?

I wonder what kind of productivity there would be if we all gave as much attention to the details and enjoyed the time spent in anticipation of good things.

Is it not possible to imagine this?

It is very possible, but also we must want to make it so.

Would it not be wonderful to work in a focussed, fun and magical environment, even Santa has a workshop and the elves seem to be very happy in their chosen fields.

I wonder what the mission statement there is…?

Well did you ever…?

Well did you ever…?.

Journaling has been the backbone of many great literary and indeed political figures over the years.

it makes me wonder how we forget to allow our children to just doodle their thoughts on a scrap of paper and then get upset when they decide to crayon all over the freshly painted walls.

Well did you ever…?

 

The other day I took the opportunity to explore something that I thought I already knew and wonder of wonders found out I knew nought
about it at all!

A very good and wise friend of mine had been on at me for a while now to try journaling.

What is that other than another name for a diary?

That was my thought and it stayed just that, a thought for quite some considerable time.

As it turns out I am now in possession of the facts and I can tell you that a diary is a recording of events –a list of facts that may or may
not include some feelings or indeed ponderings but not to any great extent.

A journal on the other hand, now that is a stream of consciousness that is a dream weaving, problem solving, chaos coalescing little miracle!

Who would have thought that just by taking one thing, that’s right just one thing, like a word or a phrase that someone said in passing that
struck you just right on your curiosity bone. That little bone that sings out and if we listen to it oh my, what wonders we can learn about all manner of things most importantly about how those things affect us and we don’t even realise it.

It doesn’t even have to be a word it can be a picture or a sound or a feeling that we have – an emotional response that we recognise as
not congruent with the situation it came up within.

It happens every day, all day, and we choose to ignore it.

At our peril!

This is something I discovered in a small room of 9 strangers, all there because they were curious and all of us had a pleasant
surprise.

Diaries at one point may be read by others, a journal on the other hand most likely will never be seen by another person and if they did it
would make very little sense without context.

It is a most cathartic and stress relieving occupation. It can be done anywhere and at any time, by anyone.

Do try it, look it up, read a little about it then start one just for fun see how you go along with it.

Once you get the hang of it you may well be amazed at how useful it can be in getting your work life balance to actually be balanced.
Finding out that you can see patterns arising and deal with them before they become erratic outbursts of distress in certain situations.

All in private, all in a very little time, and in any way you choose…be it in pen or pencil or on a computer screen (with a password) in
colour or black and white in picture form or abstract.

Amaze yourself for next to nothing, just your time and a little effort.

Let me know how you get on.

 

 

Losing Work

So it is after 2am and I have just finished writing a thing for someone and it took me all of 3 hours to complete.

I am very tired.

I am also using a laptop that is strange to me.

It has new and different settings.

I have just tried to send off my writing to the person who requested it and, oh dear (and you canput in the expletive deletive of your choice here) it was gone!

So sure I had saved it in a brand new and shiny folder just specifically for that piece. A niche of its own in which to nestle and wait dormant for me to browse in the attachment box of my email and click and find and upload just like that; or not as it turned out to be.

I wonder if you can imagine my feeling at this point in time. The sinking feeling that all of that work and effort was all for nought, as I searched again and again in different files wondering where on earth or at least the void that is the virtual world, it could possibly be.

It was so utterly bad, for all of 2 minutes as my brain processed the idea that I may just have to write it all again.

Can you hear the violins?

Do you see how this would perhaps ruin the rest of my night as my bed calls to me?

So I took the emotion out of the equation, the fear was banished to a far corner of my consciousness and told to sit and be still as I looked again with questing gaze.

And lo and behold a miracle of technology, there is was just in the wrong place. It was mis-placed this piece of work this would be tool of communication.

So I very carefully re-placed it in the specific folder for just that job and all went like clockwork after that.

It would not have worked anywhere else, for no-one – not even myself would have looked for it again it would have been overlooked and ignored and left to just be forgotten, not working or communicating or being what it was created for.

What a waste that would have been.

The Business of Metaphor

Just a minute ago I saved a document that I spent a little while on that discussed the idea of a company being like a body.

I was exploring the metaphor and admit that my previous occupation (Vet Nurse) took me on an extensive journey anatomically and physiologically speaking.

So to shorten it by quite a bit I invite you to have a think on that one yourself.

Now I’d like you to take it way out there, think of it as a galaxy within a universe.

Dizzy yet?

It is a great concept really to illustrate the effect of decisions on the immediate and not so immediate environment.

If you are having difficulty with it look at it this way – how do you see yourself and the decisions that you make concerning the health and wellbeing of your body?

Let’s not be precious about this – it is just you and I – well actually it is just you reading this and having an imaginary but hopefully illuminating journey.

You can always choose to try it out on others round the water fountain at work to see how everyone else views the world if you like, or not…

So the extra doughnut that you had with that cup of tea this afternoon, interesting decision yes?

Does the thought process equate to the inevitable result?

Now just when did that become a decision that had to be consciously taken?

Sometime along the way choices were made and the decisions that came from those choices moulded how we progressed. We also at one very important stage in our being decided what and who we were to become and then forged a way toward that goal; in the wake of all that we left behind the possibilities and maybe’s to become puddles of dreams on the tracks of our lives, evaporating away in the light of day.

The thing that we tend not to notice, because it becomes such a habit, is the outside influences on our decision making.

For me there was a lot of concern over my future when it looked like I was going for a different career to that of my siblings. My Mother was particularly zealous about my career choices and how she believed I should be making them. There was a lot of guilt tripping and conversations about security and duty and what an acceptable career was and what wasn’t. Oh my good grief it went on and on.

There were teacher’s conferences in which I took no part; it was not for me to decide after all, I was a dreamer and had some airy fairy idea about working with animals, when of course I should be a secretary, or if I must use the drawing thing be a medical illustrator.

Eventually there was an uneasy truce and mainly due to my teacher’s decision that I was less than genius material, (dyslexia was not an option in those days) I got to go work with animals, and there I also was complicit in deciding that was all I could ever do.

Eventually and after some considerable time I had to leave that career, a career that had become me. I identified so much with it that I would introduce myself by job title first and given name second.

The shock of having to leave it so completely behind was mind numbing. I had no idea what to do. Who was I if I was not…

It felt to me as if the world had ended. I had no choice. Panic and stress and depression followed until I realised that I had already the means to forge a new career and to be who I really was. I had faced change and won before this was just a step farther, just another step forward and that is always a good direction

We have the resources and the capability to change – how else would we survive in this world?

It is the ecology of the change that can be a barrier to our ‘leap of faith’. It can be almost impossible to extricate duty, security and familial expectations. When you see yourself as one person and the family sees you that way too; finding out that there is another side to you can be a bit of a shock and it requires that others examine their own identities too so there is a lot to take into consideration in this equation of
change.

So if the time to change is nigh and transition seems like a sheer cliff face, then perhaps we can help.

It is not often that company policy will embrace these concerns; we do offer a way to bridge the abyss between the parties involved which also covers relocation challenges, which we will talk about next.

www.facebook.com/JTSolutions

Would you mind if I asked you a question…?

I was wondering earlier today about my little tag line on this blog, and when I get to wondering it is amazing sometimes what will come of it.

So I ask you now, how many doorways do you think you have gone through in your life so far?

I was thinking about this because of the doorway I now stand before, waiting to just turn the handle and in doing so
allow the thought of what might be beyond it.

There are many kinds of doorway; there are the physical everyday ones that we pass through on a daily basis that
we hardly think twice about. It is a routine thing to do and most of the time their presence makes no impact on what or who we are, or at least we have
stopped noticing once the novelty has gone.

Can you perhaps remember standing outside the door of the Headmaster’s office? What did that feel like?

Going through that door often would make an impression (sometimes a bit too much of an impression) on us.

The long wait outside as we got the chance to ponder on the circumstances, the choices made that brought us to this threshold, all queuing up and waiting like spectators at a game, milling around and increasing the sense of unease as our collars would tighten and our mouthsget dry with the anticipation of what lay on the other side of the door.

In my school years this was an experience that would also change the demeanour of the door of my own house,
making it less than welcoming as I dragged my feet up the path toward it knowing I would have to tell my parents I had been called to the Headmaster’s
office.

Since those times and before it there have been so many doorways some I have been ushered through almost perfunctorily
and their importance was not known at the time. It would only be apparent in hind sight, when they had closed behind me that I would realise the
significance of crossing a particular threshold.

Many of these doors are not physical, they are made of decisions and choices and lead into spaces and places that it
might have been more prudent to have taken some more time to think about what might be through the door, or at least take a moment on the threshold, not in, not out but in between the then and there, right now.

Some look and feel just like the Headmaster’s office but the most interesting thing about doorways…

While the door is ajar one has infinite perspective…I wonder how in noticing that,  it changes the space inside…