5 Questions to Ask Yourself Daily in 2017

I was captivated watching a video my brother shared on FB by Prince Ea.  Look him up. You will be inspired.

After watching this, I got to thinking – over the washing up, where all my good thinking happens!

I came up with a handful (literally) of questions to ask myself on a daily basis.  Because time does fly and it can be too easy to get caught up in being ‘busy’. These help me STOP and reflect and ultimately stay on track.

1. WHAT HAVE I ACHIEVED TODAY? This will keep me accountable on the daily goals I set for myself. It will serve as a check in and also as a pat on the back. I have a tendency to wander, move on to the next thing, switch concentration. Think Dory and you’ve got it. I am naturally short term focused so this will help me maintain long term focus.
2. WHAT AM I GRATEFUL FOR? It is good to be grateful so it had to be on the list. There is ALWAYS something to be grateful for, and usually a whole lot more than just one thing!
3. WHAT MADE ME LAUGH? It is too easy to get caught up in crap. Even as a natural optimist, sometimes I forget to remember the little things that tickled my fancy. If I have had what I considered to be a bad day, I now contemplate the saying I saw a short time back ‘was it a bad day or a bad 5 minutes?’  There is always something in my day that made me laugh. It’s good to be mindful of that when reflecting on my day..
4. WHAT MADE ME THINK? Having a deep moment is a blessing.  It is a time of learning: from the positive of inspiration to the realisation of how something could have been done or handled better and everything in between. These are the sections of my day that make me a better person.
5. WHAT DID I DO TODAY THAT MADE ME ‘LIVE’ / BROUGHT ME CLOSER TO MY DREAMS? 2016 flew. Time flies. I figure if I don’t consciously keep this in mind, 2017 will fly and I may not have progressed (enough) towards my dreams, or got so caught up in being ‘busy’ that I didn’t ‘live’.

Time is windows of opportunity occurring every second.

It’s great to have this check list whilst I reflect on my day and consciously think about how it was spent. It makes the days mean more than they already do.

Hello Customer Service? Are You There?

Dare I say that I am old enough, but I can remember twenty years ago when good customer service was a regular occurrence.  Great customer service stood out, which would always prompt me to either mention it at the time or write a letter complimenting the staff member or company on their excellent standard of service. Likewise if service was appalling, I have a tendency to enlighten, shall we say, the business in question.

These days, I honestly don't know how to feel when I receive good customer service.  Am I happy to have received it? Or disappointed that it was noticeable?  And that is just good service, not great!

What is going on in society that customer service has deteriorated to almost nothing? What has happened to the notion of 'the customer is always right?'

Of course the customer isn't always right and so often we would love to tell them so.  The notion behind that saying though is that 'the customer is important enough to our business that they are worth doing the right thing by'.  After all, word of mouth can be a VERY powerful tool.  Isn't it what I am doing now?

Just this week, I (the customer) followed up on an issue that has stretched on for the past two months.  The issue has been addressed entirely on email.  With some of the content, I would have thought that the vendor in this instance would have tripped over themselves trying to work the issue out.  But, a big, fat no!  No-one was willing to take responsibility for resolving the issue.  Instead it got passed from one person to the next until finally yesterday I received an email that said:

"this department is not authorised to make decisions" (on my matter)

I pulled up just short of seeing complete red.  They mean to say I have wasted time liaising with them instead of being referred on to the correct party?  They have got to be kidding me.  The email I returned however highlighting their lack of customer service, customer importance and how appalled I was at their lack of action seemed to ring a bell with someone of note because within the next hour the matter, for the greater part, was resolved.  

Why do things need to escalate to such a level before anything is done?

Customer service is not a hard concept to understand nor is it a difficult skill to execute. It comes down to knowing, and respecting, who at the end of the day pays your wage (if you wish to get that technical) and plain old common decency towards your fellow citizens.

In this day and age of technology where so many transactions are faceless, it is easy to see why customer service levels have dropped. Why should it though? What needs to be remembered is that also in this day and age of technology, many similar companies are popping up and bad customer service will just make the consumer move on. And usually with a few words to others about their experience.  There is always another company willing to take your money and some of those will even treat their customers with respect, ensuring return business.  So whilst companies may not put the focus on customer service these days, they should also remind themselves that they too are disposable.

Where to from here?  Well, I can't change the world in one blog post...or can I?  However you have clearly seen how important it is to me.  Yes, I am a customer service based person to the core.  I can, and am, raising my boys to be respectful of others and will continue to instill in them the importance of extending that respect to their customers, obviously dependant upon their line of work.  They are both 4 at the moment, so we have a way to go!

Customer service should be 'not so secret' and I would dearly love to see a comeback of it. Even as the world advances, it is sometimes the good old fashioned things we miss the most.

What are your thoughts? Do you think it is time customer service made a comeback?




Image credit: forbes.com

Mother's Groups - To Join Or Not To Join? That Is The Question.

When I was pregnant with my first son, I pondered this exact question: should I join a mother's group?  

I thought that if you did the ante-natal classes, the women in those classes became your mother's group.  I am still unsure on this point.  However, being a planned caesar, and therefore believing I wouldn't need to know how to breathe my way through a labour I wouldn't have (yeah right, if you have read my previous posts....!!) I didn't sign up for those classes, just the 'what to do with your newborn' class.

I enquired as to the benefit of joining a mother's group.  My cousin was pregnant with her second at the same time I was pregnant with my first.  So I asked if she had joined a mum's group and what she thought.  I have never forgotten what she said because it rang so true when I did eventually join my own mother's group.

She said:-

It is a group of women who you may not have otherwise met.  Yet you will share the bond of having your first born's roughly at the same time and therefore going through the same things - give or take - so you connect.  To this day, they are a group of women that I would always give the time of day to, even if I have not seen them for months or years, because we share something that I don't share with anyone else.

That sold me.

The idea of a sisterhood at a time I would be embarking on something TOTALLY foreign to me sounded like what I would want and need.  I had a zillion nieces and nephews before I became a mum, but nothing is like having your own child twenty four hours a day, seven days a week!

Within the first week or two of coming home from hospital, the midwife visited our home to check on the baby and I.  We signed up for her mother's groups meetings.  We would meet for 4 consecutive weeks with her (the midwife) and after that, should we choose to still meet, we were on our own.  

On our own!  What?  No guidance?  

We met on our designated day.  I remember looking around the room at all the new mum's and the even newer babies.  There were 11 of us from memory, with a total of 12 bubs. Yes, one woman had twins, just a few weeks old.  Not only did she show up, but she was pretty much there on time, and looked completely comfortable shuffling the two babies around to hold and cradle them.  I am still in awe of this woman.  It was all I could do to get myself dressed in somewhat co-ordination, run a brush through my hair, and three point turn my pram successfully, let alone get the 'morning rush out the door' routine down pat with two kids!!  I decided that some people are just quite literally, incredible.  

On week two one of the girls turned up with morning tea to boot!  Home made.  Oh please!  How come I was the only one who seemed to be thrown for six in finding my new 'normal'?

Fast forward to the end of week four.  It was going to be time for us to be on our own, if we chose to continue our gatherings.  The following week would be Melbourne Cup.  Well, it is just plain un-Australian not to celebrate it in some way, shape or form.  A conveniently located pub that could accommodate space for prams was thrown into the ring as a suggestion.  Okay, so it was the only suggestion.  Why look for others when the first idea made sense?

We continued our weekly catch ups at various venues.  Coffees, lunches, park visits, whatever worked.  There were about 9 of us at this stage (plus bubs).  We would discuss anything and everything.  Nothing was off limits and judgement never entered the equation.  I think that is why the topics were so open.  We could be ourselves - good and bad - and just be accepted and more importantly, supported.

I remember my husband commenting after we had attended one of the kids' 3rd birthday parties just how apparent the bond is between us mum's in the mum's group.  It made me proud and it made me smile.  Because what he said is true.  We look out for each other. And we look out for each other's kids too.

Our catch-ups became less frequent as we all either went back to work, moved, or had second babies.  Lunches turned to dinners.  With alcohol.  And no kids.  

We caught up just last Saturday night.  It was brilliant.  We are all so genuinely excited to be in each other's company.  We share something special.  Even down to stories that will be shared with us and no-one else.  Because we get it and we get each other.  We do share something unique.  We experienced our first borns together.  For most of us, our paths wouldn't have crossed otherwise.  Our babies are our common denominator.  Our babies who are all nearly 5 and heading to school next year!

So if you are pregnant right now and wondering whether or not to join a mother's group, the decision is entirely yours.  But this has been my take on the immeasurable value that my mother's group has meant and still means, to me.

The Right Way To Raise A Child

Being pregnant and then parenting opens up a whole can of controversial worms doesn't it?  
Many who have gone before us in the parenting department feel the need to share their wisdom - asked for or not.  Society throws in their two cents worth placing many women and indeed couples into a situation of undue pressure.  Going out on a limb here I will say that I believe this may be where post natal depression can begin, and the child has not even been born yet.  Such is the pressure to conform.

Drugs in labour, your choice of birth, breast-feeding, the use of dummies, where the child sleeps, circumcision, controlled crying, immunisation, smacking, returning to work - the list literally goes on and on.

Due to health reasons, our whole parental experience was unorthodox from the start. We underwent IVF for our first child, he was born via caesarian section under a general anaesthetic (me, not him), was not breast-fed and had a dummy on day two of his life! Jeepers, he had only made it to day two and we had begun bending the rules.  

We continued to bend the rules with our second child being born only 10 months after our first. Yes, apparently we could fall pregnant ourselves.  Who'd-a thunk it?  I remember one of the nurses (who mustn't have seen me on the first round) commenting that there was a mother on the ward at the moment who also had a 10 month old.  I came clean and told her it was actually me!  Priceless.  I've never had so many people enquire as to my future methods of contraception!  Trust me, we hadn't planned it that way.  How could we plan for something we had no idea was possible?  But after walking the path of perhaps never having children to then having two, we were delighted.

Prior to delivering our first son, I was subjected to a situation reminiscent of the Spanish Inquisition justifying my choice not to breast feed.  That was in a phonecall.  My husband and I then had to meet with the chief lactation consultant "once we had thought about it" to confirm "our" decision. Um, as far as I was aware, my husband wasn't going to be breast-feeding either!  Then fate stepped in.  We were in such a rush to leave for our appointment with her that I got moisturiser in my eyes, rendering them red and watery. I'm sure the lactation consultant thought I'd spent the morning in tears in anticipation of our appointment that she was a lot more supportive of my decision and accordingly noted on my file what my choice was.

I believe that a woman should be supported by whatever her decision is in feeding her child.  The bottom line was, I was still going to feed him!  If a woman chooses to breast-feed then she should be 100% supported. Likewise if she chooses not to.  Likewise again if her choice to breast-feed unfortunately doesn't work out.  She should not be made to feel like she has let her child and her family down. The impact this can have on her is too great.  

As one of my girlfriends so aptly put it, if a criminal is brought before the courts, the judge does not ask "were you breast fed or bottle fed as a youngster?"

I recall offering the dummy to my son on day two of his life whilst waiting for his bottle to arrive.  He took to it like a duck to water.  I could hear the nurse coming and tried to extract it from his mouth knowing she would disapprove, but that little tacker had a stronger suck than I could have anticipated and he won.  Yep, two days old and we had the baby equivalent of an arm wrestle! On the one hand I was so proud that my child displayed such strength, but mortified that I may be judged in my choice. When the nurse walked in, I stood there like I had been caught red-handed stealing something. Thankfully she only half-frowned upon the situation.  It must have been the look on my face.

I'm not intending to call down nurses in this.  It's not that at all.  I praise the roles our nurses do and do with such passion.  The nurses whose care I was under on both occasions with having our children, I could not speak more highly of.  I understand that part of their role is delivering the message of what they have learned is best for our newborns.  I get it.  I just believe that if our choices are different to this, it is not because we don't want what is best for our child.  Absolutely we do.

The pressure to do everything right, whatever, however and from whom ever that may be, is just immense. We, as mothers, put a lot of this pressure on ourselves.  There isn't room for anymore.

Whether it be dummies, toilet-training, allowing your child to sleep in your room, or even your bed, does it really matter?  My husband and I figure if it works for us, it's right.  The fact of the matter is, time is fleeting.  Everything is a phase.  They won't be doing it when they're 18 so why stress?  Gosh, there'll be new issues to worry about by then!

We have structure in our home.  The children need it and we need it.  We also go with the flow as they grow and change, and alter the nature of our structure accordingly.  They are still alive, they are healthy, they are polite, active, fun-filled learning sponges.  Most importantly, they are loved.  

What I have learned in being a parent is that there are many right ways to raising your child.  You keep trying different ways until you find what works for you.  It may be different to how others are doing things but who cares?  If it's working - for your child, for you, for your family - then it's right.

Ironman and childbirth - the same thing?

Let me precede this by acknowledging the fact I do not have a competitive bone in my body.  The likelihood of me ever even wanting to do an Ironman event is pretty much zilch.  Not even pretty much, it is just none.

Let me also say that I have the utmost respect for those men and women who do choose to undertake an Ironman event.  All of the training followed by the event itself just blow my mind.  My non-competitive self cannot fathom the desire to swim 3.8kms, ride a bike for 180km and run a marathon (42km), when there are perfectly good functioning cars and boats available to take you these distances in a fraction of the time!  

My husband is currently in training for this years Cairns Ironman in June.  I always try to relate to what people are going through, however as mentioned in the preceding paragraphs, I'm unable to fully empathise with what he is undertaking....or can I? 

It occurred to me that my version of an Ironman - in which case I have completed two - is pregnancy and childbirth. 

No, no, seriously, let's think about this for a second.  A triathlete trains for months beforehand swimming, running and riding in preparation for 'race' day.  Whilst mothers grow a child for months beforehand in preparation for 'delivery' day, our training also consists of three legs: reading books, ante-natal classes and pregnancy yoga!  We do this, only to realise the only real training of any benefit was the yoga because no book or class prepares you for the truth of parenthood adequately enough!  

Nutrition is of the utmost importance in both camps.  Both triathletes and mothers are mindful of what we put into our bodies because of the job at hand: we are preparing bodies - the triathletes their own, the mothers their childs.  I do admit, whilst the triathlete may consume protein smoothies, my equivalent was the chocolate milkshake! Gaining a good amount of sleep and having 'rest' days are on the agenda as well.  A triathletes sleep is shortened by the early training sessions, a mothers by her growing (and perpetually moving) bump and seemingly smaller bladder. 

Then comes race day.

Labour can last just as long, if not longer, than the duration of an Ironman event.  Both triathletes and mothers allow their bodies to be tested like never before, pushing ourselves beyond normal everyday limits.  We convince ourselves to keep going even when we want to give up (a harder prospect for the mother of course), swearing we will never do it again (and then we do), to finally cross that longed for finish line.  

We are both congratulated at the end with our prize: the Ironman medal or baby (don't confuse your event and take the wrong one home!)  We kept our eye on the prize the whole time we undertook the event and it was knowing we would accomplish that prize that kept us going.  That, and remembering our why.  The 'why' for completing an Ironman is different for everyone.  Suffice to say though that for many, it is something on their bucket list.  Many women long to become mothers, though the why surrounding this is often questioned during the process of labour and on occasion in the years following!

I do confess that both of my births were by caesarian section.  I did however endure labour with my first child for a period of time.  I take my hat off to women who 'do' labour, and especially mothers who I then see doing an actual Ironman event.  Wow!  I cannot contemplate their threshold for pain.  My only pacifying thought is that they have the benchmark of childbirth and figure they can get through anything!  

As for my husband and his lead up to Cairns, I get it.  I've done two Ironman events.  My prizes talk to me everyday.  I love it.  They have been worth everything that you give up and sacrifice in order to say "I did it" come race day!