Celebrating 2023: A month of gratitude- Day 11

I have quite a few firsts this year. I actually felt like I had started living. Perhaps that’s because this was the first year that I can remember that I felt like I was being true to myself. It’s being liberating.

I really want thank my friend, Megan, for giving me the courage to just be myself and open myself to new experiences. She has been amazing!

These are just some the experiences I had this year that I thoroughly enjoyed:

  • I visited Durban’s Roma Revolving Restaurant. It is an iconic venue from which you have amazing views of the harbour and the city while enjoying authentic Italian food.
  • I attended my first leadership conference. I thought I was going to suffer from imposter syndrome throughout the 3 days but I kept reminding myself that God puts me in spaces where I belong. I enjoyed it learned a lot. I also got to meet Robin Banks who runs John Kehoe’s Mind Power course internationally. That was definitely the highlight of conference for me. It was also the first time I had been to the lower Drakensburg Mountains. It was so beautiful and peaceful.
  • I attended the first Ted X Durban which not what we expected it to be. We watched videos of Ted talks recently held in Canada so it was not like the videos you see on Youtube. Interesting topics though. We didn’t stay to the end. It was held at an exclusive Gentleman’s Club, The Pencil Club, in Umhlanga, Durban. Very intimate venue. Two of the talks that I enjoyed was “5 Steps to Fix Any Problem at Work” by Anne Morris. and “Why Change is Scary-and How to Unlock It’s Potential” by Maya Shankar
  • Believe it or not I had never attended a wine tasting session before! This year I did. I am not much of a wine drinker but I absolutely enjoyed tasting the different notes in each wine. It was an awesome experience enjoyed with friends.
  • During my visit to Nigeria we attended a company party at a hotel. I have been to Nigeria twice before but each time I just stayed in my room in the evenings. It was wonderful experience! The venue was beautiful. The vibe was amazing. The food was outstanding! I do not eat prawns and most seafood but the food was so good at the Asian Fusion Restaurant at the Marriott in Lagos that I could not help myself! I discovered that Nigerian people throw money at friends when dancing. As I understand it, it brings good luck to the person being showered. (If you are Nigerian and reading this, please correct me if I have gotten this wrong.)
  • I love books and for the first time, I actually attended a book signing event. It was very intimate and I met such amazing people. The author, Beryl Botman, has an amazing story to share about the loss of her husband and her experiences as a grieving widow in the first few years that followed. She took us on her journey to becoming an author and shared the highs and lows of self-publishing and getting your work out there. It was an extremely informative afternoon. The icing on the cake was the host, Richard, who is from the UK and owns a very homely B&B in Ballito, north of Durban. Richard shared his life story with my friend and I while we had tea. What an interesting life! I hope writes a book as well one day.
  • We missed the Springbok’s Victory Tour 4 years ago when they won the World Cup so there was no way my son and I were going to miss it again! It was fleeting moment in time but the vibe was amazing. South Africa has so many problems but for this one moment in time, we were united in our celebration of the Bokke! My son had never experienced that sense of unity in the country before and he was blown away. For this reason along, getting sunburnt while waiting for the bus to arrive so well worth it.
  • Lastly, I am so thrilled that my orchid bloomed for the first time. It was given to me for my birthday in Jan. I believe that it was given with so much good energy that flourishing was inevitable.

It’s being a wonderful year! I have had great learning experiences and just all round fun experiences! I can’t wait for next year as I get to go on my first cruise with my son. It’s going to be awesome!

Roma Revolving Restaurant
Durban
Durban Harbour
The City of Durban
My son and I
The Beautiful Drakensburg Mountains
Meeting Robin Banks
The Asian Fusion Restaurant at the Marriott in Lagos
Having fun in Nigeria
Face art 🙂
Dr Beryl Botman’s Book Signing
Meeting the Springboks
Meeting the Springboks
Isn’t she beautiful!! 😍

Celebrating 2023: A month of gratitude – Day 10

Join me as I recount my laid-back day and reflect on my accomplishments of the past year, including professional development, academic completion, and personal growth.

Today was a lazy day. I was also a day of reflection of the year that was and all that I had accomplished.

I cannot tell you when last I slept so much through the course of a day. I put old episodes of Law & Order on and snoozed ever so often while watching. I love Law & Order and am thrilled to see that there is a new season. I love listening to that New York accent and guessing who did the crime. It also helped that it was a cool wet day as well. Perfect for reading, watching TV and napping.

I have also enjoyed long calls and quality time with great friends. This has been a soul restoring weekend. Just what the doctor ordered.

In addition, I spent the time reviewing what I had wanted to achieve this year as well as planning my goals for 2024. Below is a list of some the goals I had set and how I performed against them.

  1. Becoming disciplined: I set myself the goal of creating a system that would lay the foundations of becoming more disciplined. I also started reading ‘The Daily Stoic’ and ‘Discipline is Destiny’, both by Ryan Holiday. I didn’t finish either book so that tells you how close I came to achieving that goal! Lol! I did finish ‘Building a Second Brain’ by Tiago Forte though and that did help me create a system that allows me to store information better. I still have work to do on it though. The Universe also sent two highly disciplined new members to join my team at work. I think It saw that I was a bit of a lost cause so I got disciplined people instead :).
  2. Read more: I set myself the goal of reading 45 books this year and am sitting on 23 which is two more than I read last year. I will end the year on about 25 or 26. I may not have achieved the 45 but I did read more than last year so it’s a win in my books.
  3. Complete my Honours Degree: I also knew that I had to complete the last two subjects required for my honours degree this year. I am so thrilled that I have achieved this!
  4. Present more often: At work I came out of my shell and presented more often. It absolutely terrified me but I am still standing so I guess it wasn’t that bad. I presented at least once a month to a forum in which our Africa leadership team was present, led 2 training sessions for the same forum and joined our wellness team and ran a training session through this team as well. Considering I probably presented once or twice in the same forum last year, I would say that I outdid myself this year! Oh wait, the icing on the cake was the training sessions I ran as part of a workshop in Nigeria this year. I was so nervous as our Marketing VP joined my session first but, once again, I survived and in fact, I felt like I thrived! Whoop whoop!
  5. Develop an abundance mindset: I worked hard to change my mindset from that of scarcity to abundance. I have definitely made progress but I still have work to do. Here I have focused on asking myself “How can I afford it?” vs “I can’t afford it” as an example.
  6. Exceed expectations: I won 2 awards at work recognising my contribution to a squad I was apart of. That blew my mind. I did not expect it.
  7. Be More Visible at Work: Lastly, and very importantly, this year I felt seen and appreciated by the right people in the right places at work. I am very grateful that I was able to achieve this while dealing with a grieving son and completing my studies amongst other things.

Three commitments that I made to myself this enabled at least 90% of these accomplishments. I committed to:

  • feel the fear and do it anyway
  • be authentic in everything I do
  • Trust that God opened the door/put me in the room for a reason. My job was to do the work and always put my best foot forward. He would take care of the outcome.

This has been a very good year in so many ways. It’s definitely been a year worth celebrating! I am very grateful to have experienced it. I look forward to experiencing all the good things that 2024 brings and it will be an even better year!

A month of gratitude 2023 – Day 9 – Closed doors

In this post I reflect on the importance of accepting change and its consequences. Every situation presents important life lessons. Accepting these lessons inspires growth and reveals new opportunities.

This morning I woke up to a new reality. I had a door close gently in my face yesterday. I had instigated the change though in my own way so it wasn’t a complete surprise. It was a reminder that if there is one thing that is constant in life, it’s change. We always have 2 choices: resist or accept the change. As always, each choice has consequences.

Accept the Consequences

In Year of Yes, Shonda Rhimes writes: “Difficult conversations are something of a gamble and you have to be willing to be okay with the outcome. And you have to know, going in, where you draw the line. You have to know when in the conversation you are going to say no. You have to know when you are going to say, “That doesn’t work for me.” You have to know when to say, “I’m done.” You have to know when to say, “This isn’t worth it.” “You aren’t worth it.”.

Five years ago I lashed out at someone out of sheer frustration. It was a knee jerk reaction more than a difficult conversation as such and I wasn’t prepared for the consequences so I resisted the change. I was broken and spent many months trying to undo what I perceived as “the damage” at the time. I felt terribly guilty until I read “Year of Yes” and realised that all that happened was that I wasn’t prepared for the consequences in that moment. I had made the decision internally but I wasn’t ready to act on it yet. Do you know what I mean?

Yesterday I lashed out, out of frustration again and once again it caused a door to close. This time I was ready. This time I can walk away in peace. While I probably could have handled the situation better, I was prepared mentally for the possible fallout making it easier to accept. Once you accept anything you tend to have peace and new paths become visible. It’s easier to move on. It is also easier to deal with any pain or disappoint that might form part of the consequence.

Image: Canva

Experiences Always Come with Lessons

So, today I am grateful for closed doors and the opportunities and possibilities that they represent. Every situation and relationship also presents lessons. One of the lessons that was reinforced for me was that people will always let you know what they are available for upfront. Sometimes they can be a vague but ignore it at your own peril. In this case, I wasn’t surprised by the way the person showed up eventually, I was more frustrated with myself because I saw the red flag when they raised it but, being the psychology student that I am, I was curious so I continued down the garden path and ended up at the dead-end that I knew was coming.

“Hope is the thing inside us that insists, despite all the evidence to the contrary, that something better awaits us if we have the courage to reach for it and to work for it and to fight for it.”

Barack Obama

So despite all the red flags, all that evidence to the contrary, I lived in hope but alas, it was not to be. It was a beautiful garden path though and I am grateful I got to see the sights and have the experience.

It’s Called a Blindspot for a Reason

Another lesson I learned is that blindspots are called that for a reason. Sometimes people just can’t see how they get in their own way. I have of course done this for 99% of my life and probably still do far too often. Sometimes people are just nestled so deeply in their comfort zones that they are not prepared to make themselves uncomfortable again in order to achieve a higher goal. They see it, they want it but not just bad enough to do what it takes to get it. They have loads of excuses and keep pushing the goal out to a date in the future. This was the first time I consciously watched this play out. It was fascinating.

What I also learned was that it is far easier to accept that they will not achieve their goal if you remain an observer and don’t get involved. You can plant seeds but you have to accept that most will fall on rocky ground. Advice is free and it does come from the advisor’s point of view so it’s not really surprising that most people tend to ignore someone else’s advice or insight. Speaking for myself, I do find though that there is always at least something to contemplate when someone shares their thoughts with me. I believe that God is always guiding and directing us through others so I always try to pay attention to the guidance I receive. Sadly, I will never get to find out if any of the seeds I planted landed on fertile soil as this person is in a completely different social circle. I have faith that they will figure things out when they are ready to though.

Well that’s it from me today. How often do you look for the lessons when something comes to an end? Does it change how you show up in anyway? I invite you to let me know in the comments