Tag: #Canva

Gratitude Turns What We Have into Enough

Image: Canva

Gratitude. My favourite topic! For the last 3 years I have made December my month of gratitude so that I enter the new year with a positive mindset and feeling abundant. I highly recommend it. Not only do you feel good but a few miracles are likely to occur during the month. I receive one or two surprises between the 10th and 20th December. It blows my mind every year 🙂

Today though the topic is 5 things that I am grateful for. So today I am grateful for:

  1. Another year around the sun completed last Friday. My 49th to be exact. It’s been an interesting journey thus far filled with abundance, love and laughter. All made possible by God’s grace.
  2. My son. What an awesome young man he is turning out to be. This year I allowed him to spoil me on my birthday. I usually don’t because I believe the money he receives for Christmas is his to spend on himself. He usually gets offended when I refuse an expensive gift on those grounds. This year I let him spoil me. I am so glad I did. He was so proud of himself. He took me to dinner and bought me a pair of earings. For his efforts, he was rewarded with an extra discount in store. He couldn’t believe his luck. It was so awesome.
My birthday gift from my son ❤️🙏
  1. Our semi-adopted cats. George and Georgina have brought a lot of love and laughter to our home. I have felt like a behavioural scientist of sorts documenting their every move out of sheer curiosity. Today I am extra grateful that their depression has started to lift and they are eating and playing again. They mum has officially abandoned them as they are about 3-4 months old now. They were heartbroken. It was really hard to watch them these past few days as they refused eat and just wanted to be near us. All we could do was give them lots of love but we felt so helpless. So very grateful to see the twinkle in their eyes again. Btw, I say semi-adopted because we are not allowed pets in the complex but there are no rules saying we can’t let a stray cat or two visit every day…
Georgina (L) and George (R)
  1. My home and everything in it. It is my haven and, thanks to covid, my place of work as well now. Not that I mind. As an introvert, working from home suits me perfectly. My son once said to me that he loves our home because there is a lot of love here which makes me believe that God is here and working His magic through me for him. What more could I ask for?
  2. My job. I have worked for the company that I do for over 20 years. I have worked in largely in the same department and that is simply because I love what I do. I also get to see the impact of the products we make on the people that use them which is what really keeps me going. It has also enabled a few trips to different countries. I just have 2 continents left to touch down on, Australia and South America. I also plan on explorating each one of the 5 continents I have already being to a lot more in the coming years. Lastly, it enables everything that I have today and I have a lot. A lot to be grateful for.

This list is in no way exhausitive. I could go on and on but today I have chosen these 5 to write about. I will leave you with words of wisdom about the power of gratitude by Deepak Chopra:

Gratitude opens the door to the power, the wisdom, the creativity of the universe. You open the door through gratitude.

Deepak Chopra

What people assume about me is not my business

People are ALWAYS going to make incorrect assumptions about me. This is a given. The beauty of getting older is that you begin to realise that other people thoughts and assumptions about you are not your business. Here’s why it actually doesn’t matter:

“Care about what other people think and you will always be their prisoner.”

Lao Tzu

They could be judging an older version of me

I don’t know about you but I keep changing and evolving. The person I was as a teen is not the same as the person I was in my 20’s. I became a mum in my 30’s and that definitely changed me. My 40’s have been a revelation! Losing my mum 3 years ago also triggered a huge change in the person I am today. So, unless you have spent time with me over the past few months or maybe a year, whatever assumption you have of me is probably false. I am definitely not the same person I used to be when you knew me. Heck, if you last read one of my posts more that a year ago, you need to catch up. I’ve read more books and met knew people so I have ideas and philosophies. I am definitely not the person I was back then

They are judging my book by it’s cover

Yip. I am often told that I look like a teacher. I always ask myself how do teachers look. They are each individuals who look very different to each other but somehow I look like a teacher, especially when I have my glasses on. I must admit, that has been consistant throughout my adult life. Weird. Apparently I can also look intimidating. To tell the truth, I have lived most of my life scared of my own shadow. So if you are one of the people that think that about me, I am probably more intimidated by you than you realise.

They judge the way I live my life

I cannot tell you the number of times people have assumed that I am so strong because I am the single mum of a newly minted teen with a career and I am a part-time student and I blog and I read…a lot! How do I do it they ask? The same way you do. I get up every morning and put one foot in front of the other and eat my elephant one bite at a time. I have no other choice. It doesn’t make me strong. I cry and fall apart like everyone else. The only difference is that I don’t have someone to do the heavy lifting while I am falling apart so I have to keep those episodes short and sweet so that my son doesn’t even know it happened. I am super afraid of what’s around the corner like most yet because I get up and do what I do, it is assumed I am strong. My most recent request to God is that it is high time He sends me a life partner of note! Being independant has it’s perks but so does having someone to lean on and someone to share life with. So thank you in advance God, I know you are listening.

They judge the way I don’t live my life

Can a girl ever win? lol.

At the end of the day, people will always make assumptions about us. It’s human nature. Our job is to ignore other people’s assumptions and focus on living our lives otherwise, as Lao Tzu says, we risk becoming their prisoners. Why ever would we want to give people so much power over us?

I Have a Dream to be a Supremely Organised Being

Photo by JESHOOTS.com on Pexels.com

Today’s prompt is “What is something you wish you knew how to do?”. I let this one marinate the entire day and, believe it or not, the only thing I could come up with was “be more organised”. My desk is most often full of clutter and so is my inbox and my desktop and my folders. You get the picture. Every day I juggle being a student, a single mum, managing a team and working in a hybrid role so you would think I have this organisational thing down pat by now. But noooo, not me. Every day I am caught by surprise by something I forgot. It’s exhausting. I have tried everything I can think of but the skill of organising stuff well continues to elude me. Here’s a taste of the various ways I have tried to master this skill.

Apps

I cannot believe how many apps there are out there to help you get organised. I have tried a few but none have quite stuck yet. I have tried:

  • Evernote: note bad but things like tables can’t be viewed in full on a screen. I also suspect that I have not investigated it’s full functionality though. I love that I can lock this app with a password.
  • Notion: this is actually not too bad an app. I love that I can organise pages inside pages. I found some of the templates useful as well.
  • Mem: I actually love this one. Talk about organising pages inside pages! You can link so many different types of information in so many ways. It’s pretty cool.
  • Microsoft To-Do: A good every day app to set up reminders if I remember to actually create the tasks🤦‍♀️
  • Any-Do: Not dramatically different from Ms To-Do.
  • Ms OneNote: This one is great on the computer. I am so thrilled that I can “dock to desktop” again. An extremely useful feature that allows you take notes while working.
  • iReminders: same functionality as Any-do and Ms To-do
  • iNote – I probably use this most often to save bits of info that I come across and create the text for an IG post.

I’ll stop there. I know, I know I might have an organisational app hoarding problem. I discover most apps through articles on Medium. I have now learned to scroll past any article that promises the new best app to organise my life. It’s not the apps. It’s me.

Paper and Pen

I love paper and pen. I love writing. I have diaries. I have planners. Heck, I even designed my own planner on Canva to help myself. I write in them about once a month, if I remember. That tells how well that’s working out for me.

Habits/Systems

Soooo…since it’s probably not the tools that I have chosen to try, I decided to try creating a routine that would ensure that I make better use of the tools and thereby become better organised. (Phew, that was a wordy sentence!) Enter James Clear’s Atomic Habits book and course. “If you want better results, then forget about setting goals. Focus on your system instead.” he says. Well I have yet to master putting together a system that works for me.

Maybe being organised is just not part of my identity yet and that is why I have yet to create a system that works for me. Since my word for this year is “Action” and my mantra is “This is who I am now” every time I need adopt a new action to replace an old one (I learned this method of reshaping your identity to change your habits from a David Goggins interview), perhaps this is the year that I finally succeed in being a well-organised person.

Of course I am always open to tips and tricks so please do share what works for you.