- Woodrow Wilson
I'm pretty confident that I have discussed change with you before, and the importance of being open to demolishing old structures that no longer serve us in a positive way, and to deny those rhythms that no longer give us the forward momentum to succeed.
Recently, I have been given the opportunity to become a band-aid in my work life, providing cover and stability to several meetings that have been without their regular leader.
Excited at the prospect of a bit of extra work, I welcomed the challenge, and embraced the added hours and opportunity to earn a little bit of spending money as we head toward the Christmas holidays.
I have to admit though, I have had to reassess just how tough a cookie I am during this last few weeks, adding pressure on my existing back injury, with more and more stock transferal between venues and cupboards, along with the set up and pack down of venue furniture.
These weeks of substitute leading additional meetings have been a slight haze of paracetamol, codeine and the soothing heat of my wheat bag.
Generally I love being the fill in leader, I get to break away from normal routine and share the story of my 57 kilos lost, and help motivate my "audience" by answering their many enthusiastic and inquiring questions. I get such a high from being able to inspire members to head in to their next week of their personal journey with such vigor and lust for success.
Through a lot of hard work and plenty of often embarrassing self disclosure over the last year and a half, I feel I've gained the respect and trust of my many "home meeting" members, and in many cases it's like inviting a bunch of my best friends over each week to catch up.
Like many people, it would seem that I also get overly confident in daily routines and rituals, and often take things outside of these acts for granted, assuming that the way I want things done is how everyone wants them done.
Stuck in my own bubble and routine of how I like my meetings to operate, I proceeded into my temporary meetings with the same passion and feisty drive I do with my own, I have had no hesitation with keeping some firm ideals in place.
Much to the members disgust.
It wasn't until this afternoon that it was really put in to perspective when I figuratively and quite reluctantly slipped on the shoes of one such disgusted member, we were equally frustrated with each other. Both holding a firm set of expectations as to when and what should be occurring throughout the course of the morning.
Stubborn in my resolve to have my meetings run to the time frames I am required to run them, I flew open my meeting doors, on time, eager and ready for a bright and vibrant response........ disappointingly I was not greeted by my warm and loving regulars; instead being met with a curiously terse woman who had an entirely different focus from my own. And that definitely was not hanging around waiting for some stranger to open the doors asking her to wait for a tic while her card was fished out of the member record box.
For the better part of the day I have taken my liaison with this joyous person in quite the negative way, she was rude, and obnoxious, and crippled my sunny outlook momentarily by sharing her ugly opinion of me in a loud and inflated way. For most of the day I felt quite the victim, until I discussed this with a friend and work colleague who was witness.
Mostly, I consider the glass half full, every opportunity in the meeting room, whether it be perceived as a negative or positive can drive us forward into amazing success. And as my friend recited to me the incident and reflected back to me all that I had been thinking during the day about it, my mind set altered, I suddenly felt compelled to defend the rude behaviour. Citing legitimate reasons for our mismatched expectations of the occasion.
Regardless of the routines we self impose, they are generally there to lend structure, and stability to our perceived successful outcomes.
I recall a meeting earlier this year, where I was not able to use the regular set of scales, one of the members that day noticed this change in the lay out of her meeting room, and left, saying she had worked too hard that week for a different set of scales to tell her otherwise. (All of our scales are serviced by Wedderburn and are calibrated often, they all read the same!) I understood though, I have my own weigh in rituals too, right down to shaving my legs, and not wetting my hair before weigh in. Sportsmen have their own things before a big match, it's really no different, when it comes to our determination and desire to be successful at what we set out to achieve! We practice every day to get a desired result, and it's amazing how overpowering our mind can be, when it tells us we can not possibly be successful if one of these things is mismatched.
And today, for Ms Cranky-Britches, I was the mismatch.
To be fair, the moment wasn't big enough for me to change my resolve and my structure in the meeting room. I have very large numbers of people in my meetings and those people are incredibly successful, and I know that an element of that success is driven by mutual respect and communicating our expectations effectively. There is also an element of flexibility and forgiveness when things don't go quite the way we expect them to.
Change is inevitable, whether it is desired or not, life can change inexplicably in the blink of an eye, how we cope with that change is entirely in our own control.
I'm quite reminded of a line in the serenity prayer.
"God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, Courage to change the things I can"
On that note, it's time the deep reflection for the day to end, a small acknowledgement of the absence of a blog entry is noted, life is busy, pain has been frequent, and this has just been one more thing...today though, I'm reminded that "this one more thing" is important for my own bit of Ali time, and that reflection can be quite therapeutic and that time is more than worthwhile.
See you again soon.
Ali xo
