Weekly Tips To Challenge Ordinary

The third term of the school year ends today. I repeatedly ask, ” How did we get to the 20th of September this quickly?” My son only has one term of primary school left (if everything goes according to plan), which is a crazy thought in itself! Any day now Checkers will start putting up Christmas decorations and email replies reading “Let’s circle back to this next year” will start filling your inbox. From here on in things will only pick up speed and a crucial question is “How will you handle it?”.

I was watching the Piglet movie with my kids the other day. I love the characters and how they are depicted. I want to share a bit about the movie’s start and my thoughts on how it relates to many common themes we hear in teams we work with. Sit back and enjoy!

I never thought I could learn so much from a little girl on a big horse. But here it is my learnings and observations….

It’s the last Friday of winter – Spring kicks off officially on Sunday! It’s been a long and very wet Cape Town winter. We are certainly looking forward to seeing the sun some more.

This past weekend I was reminded about something I heard my dad say a couple of times growing up: “If you don’t drive a BMW by the time you turn 25 you never will.” For a time I accepted this as truth. I mean, if your dad says it, it has to be true right?

Is happiness something that we can embody? Is it the end goal or is it a state of mind? Are there things we can do to be more consistently happy…

The Paris Olympics have come and gone, with numerous memorable performances recorded in our collective memory banks. I tried to watch as much of the action as possible and regained a deep appreciation for how exceptional these people are. Watching cyclists speed around a slanted track at 80km/h on million Rand bikes, within millimeters of each other blew my mind!

Last week I had the wonderful opportunity to travel to facilitate a teambuilding event in Cape Town. Typically planning for team-building events is one of my favourite things to do because it allows me to flex my creativity muscle (one of my biggest and favourite strengths).

What can we learn from Olympic athletes? How not being perfect is what keeps them going.

I met an Olympian the other day. I think she was the first, but I cannot be sure. She looked normal, but that was probably because she was standing in a room dressed in everyday clothes. This is not where she does her best work, since she is a two-time Olympic swimmer. She’s not remotely as famous as Tatjana or Siya – but still, an Olympian!!

We have a dog. He is part of our family. He sleeps on the beds and sits on the couches. Pretty much has a royal life. But he cannot be left alone for long or starts looking for things to destroy. I came home to bite-sized pieces of a laptop bag the other day – you can imagine how impressed I was. Now and again we get to go away with my parents for a weekend and then we need to find someone to pet/house-sit. Usually, when we need to leave him for extended periods we take him to my parents – they spoil him rotten and they love it. But on these occasions, it has to be someone else.

We have officially passed the halfway mark of 2024 – somewhat unbelievably if I’m honest.

I intentionally wanted to create some anxiety with this reminder, but not because I’m trying to be a horrible person…..

Fun fact: The biggest sign of disrespect is rolling your eyes at someone. No wonder it infuriates parents of teenagers around the world.

But it isn’t the only sign of disrespect – Thinking you are the only “non-idiot” can also be super disrespectful. Read more….

As a coach, I often have conversations with people who feel stuck or like nothing is going their way. Recently, I sat with a lady who has had a pretty crappy year. Even from an outsider’s perspective, it feels like she cannot catch a break. She shared with me that she was gifted a holiday by a friend, which felt like the break she had been hoping for. She was excited because she felt that going away and seeing the beach would make all the difference and “fix” everything. This train of thought is quite common: “If I can just get the promotion”, “when the kid’s exams are done”, “when I retire”… There is nothing wrong with hoping for better things. Hope brings life. But the problem with these statements is that they are very often linked to external circumstances that we have little control over. She never got to go on the holiday as she had to say goodbye to a loved one, so it did not “make everything better”. Leaving her even more depleted and on top of that heartbroken.

Although I do the cooking in our household, I’ve never considered myself a foodie. My only real interest in food is making sure it tastes good enough to keep my family alive. They are picky eaters, so I tend to stick with what works. However, over the last week, I’ve been reading Unreasonable Hospitality by Will Guidara, a book about how Will and his team created the best restaurant in the world, Eleven Madison Park in New York City. It is a fantastic book! You would expect that a book about the “World Champion restaurant” would revolve around food, wine, deserts and such, but actually, Will spends about 85-90% of the book talking about people. Business partners, employees, chefs, waiters, reviewers and mostly clients. I did not expect that.

Watching the different political parties trying to put together a working government following the general elections has been interesting. For the most part, the talks seem to have been handled maturely, with many parties realizing that they (we) have one final chance to make things work. Either we work together for the good of the country and its people or we all lose together.