Breaking Habits

My wife and I have realized how difficult it can be to break a habit... not ours, but our daughter's. Vienna is 21 months old and up until a week ago was drinking all her milk from the bottle.

A bottle on rising in the morning, a bottle before lunch, one after her nap in the middle of the afternoon, and one just before bed time.

Our family doctor told us that, for the benefit of her teeth, we shouldn't feed her the bottle anymore. So we stopped.

But to get her to drink milk out of anything else has been impossible... and we've tried. We tried about five different cups, heating the milk, not heating the milk, adding chocolate, pretending to drink it ourselves, or feeding it to her teddy bears. It doesn't matter what we try, she sees right through our tactics. Nothing is as good as milk out of the bottle!

For about a year Vienna has been drinking all sorts of fluids from sippy-cups, normal cups, through a straw, juice boxes, but milk has always been consumed from a bottle. We tried a few months ago to get her to drink milk from a sippy-cup, but to no avail.

As parents, we suddenly realised the error of our ways, and good that we recognized that before our second is born (due in six weeks). Try not to establish habits that you know in the future you will have to break. Rather, try to establish the habit of flexibility and variation. If only we had our daughter drinking milk from more than one container from an early age, phasing out the bottle wouldn't be an issue.

Instead we've abandoned the bottle completely and with it, her milk consumption has dropped by 80%. So now we scramble to add milk or cheese to her diet where possible.

I know this will be a short-term situation, but it's frustrating because we didn't foresee this problem, but looking back we can see how we helped create it.

Change of Direction

This morning I handed in my resignation without any firm plans of where I'll be off to next... except to take a solid six weeks off to spend it with my wife and daughter, my parents who are coming up from Australia in mid-August, and the second child we're due with on September 6th.

One of the suppliers I regularly deal with said it was admirable that I would take off so much time, when people today are so focused on money, money, money. But I told her that in the last 12 years I have taken almost three years off work to travel and experience life.

Balance in life is a bit like communism... it's good on paper, but somehow it doesn't work in the real world. I've tried throughout my whole life to attain a kind of balance, and the best I've managed is three years off in twelve. But what's more important is to attain happiness. If you're happy at work and happy at home then the need for balance takes care of itself. The need for balance arises when we're unhappy and are constantly seeking relief somewhere else.

I always find it sad when people spend months and months looking forward to a week-long holiday. It's one thing to be excited for a holiday, but it's another to wish away the majority of your life for a couple of weeks a year. What about the rest of the time?

When I think of life I think of a dripping tap. It drips and drips a little bit at a time. Each drop could represent a day. Individually a drop is not significant, but collect many drops over time and you have a puddle. It's the same with life. To not enjoy one day in your life is not a big deal, but to not enjoy many of them - that's significant. And at some point the tap will dry up, and we don't know when that will be. What would you do with your last day? Would you spend it the way you're spending today? Today may be your last...

Make sure you enjoy every day, and get excellent value from your time. You never know how much more of it you have.

Who'll Be Next?!

After a gruelling day I came home at around 10:15pm after my Dale Carnegie course, chatted with my wife until about 11pm and then went to bed.

At 1am my wife wakes to see me standing at the corner of the bed in my pyjamas, hands outstretched saying, "Who'll be next?!"

For the first time in my life I'm sleepwalking. As I dreamt I thought I was giving the Dale Carnegie class to a bright room full of eager participants.

"Wake up!" she tells me.

"Huh?" I open my eyes and suddenly my mind starts racing. Why is it dark? Where's the class? Why am I in my bedroom? Why am I in my pyjamas? What time is it?

I was quite confused at this time, but staggered back into bed and went to sleep.

They say "you don't take the Dale Carnegie program, you live it."

I certainly am.

Got it done!

I have never been so nervous in my life. I started getting ulcers in my mouth on Sunday, and a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach. I have done a lot of public speaking in my lifetime and now have few nerves from that, but today I trained my first session of the Dale Carnegie program.

My throat was dry, and no matter how much water I drank the desert in my mouth remained. My tongue was like an old leather belt and my stomach churned.

As 6 o'clock drew near the terror increased, and then I was up... opening the session and getting right into it. Everything went well, considering and I made it through to the end.

As a "Tandem-Trainer" I deliver half of the session and the experienced trainer delivers the other half, while keeping a watchful eye over what I'm doing. It's a very good way of easing into it, given the high expectations.

Now at the other side of it I've grown in confidence and I know next week won't be so bad.

Woohoo!

Taking A Risk (Published Article)

As a thirty-something Generation X’er, I am surrounded with friends who are in the midst of early-life crises. It seemed that for the Baby Boomers this crisis was “mid-life” in the forty to fifty age range. Now it seems to be happening earlier, because of all the opportunities we now have at our disposal.

This early-life crisis that seems to strike between 25 and forty is generally work or career related and the number of people I know personally who have made a complete change of career, gone back to study or taken extended leave to travel the world before 35 is amazing.

I’ve done all three.

What I noticed about my life and about others is how they become energized during and after this change. This energy is what carries you through the upheaval, and the fresh new energy afterwards is a sign that you’re on the right track. That’s enthusiasm for life.

Dale Carnegie said, “Enthusiasm is more than just zest for work. It is for the whole of life and living. If you have it, you have a priceless possession. Cherish it.”

I believe that enthusiasm for life comes when you are living your dream. Deep down we all know what we would do “in an ideal world”. For many of us it takes a personal tragedy or a life-threatening illness to make us change the way we live, to set us on the right track. A friend of mine in his late thirties, quit his high-paying, stressful job to chase his dream after he saw his brother die in a car accident.

If you’re thinking that you don’t feel enthusiastic about your job or your life, I’m sure you can find at least one thing that you’re enthusiastic about. Maybe it’s spending time with grandchildren, walking the dog, golfing, volunteering at church, working in the garden, skiing… it doesn’t matter. Think of that one thing, or the many things that get you excited. That’s the feeling you’re looking for; that feeling of anticipation when you start a new and exciting job, the thrill of a first date, or the excitement of seeing or learning something new.

It’s a great feeling when the path you’re taking in your life is completely in synch with your hopes and dreams. It’s not that difficult to be there. It’s all about making some decisions. Decide what it is you want in your life and what you don’t. One piece at a time, add or remove the respective aspects to your life.

The only catch is you’ll have to take a risk. This is obvious, really, because the risks you have taken so far in life had got you where you are today. To get somewhere else tomorrow, you’ll have to do something different, also known as taking a risk.

In my personal experience of taking risks, and from those I’ve observed, I see that risk-taking is nearly always a positive experience. Win, lose or draw, taking a risk means personal growth and perhaps a new perspective. I can attribute nearly all of the greatest experiences in my life to times when I took a risk. The bigger the risk, it seemed, the bigger the pay-off. Of course if a risk is taken and the result appears to be negative, it’s how we deal with that result that has the greatest effect on our life.

Thomas Edison discovered 10,000 ways not to invent a light bulb, before he found the right way. From Abraham Lincoln to Donald Trump, there are countless examples of hugely successful people who all took risks and failed, but picked themselves up and continued on.

Unfortunately for many of us, it takes only one small setback and we abandon chasing our dreams, relegating them to “unattainable dream” status.

In this respect we can learn a lot from children. Their life is all about experiments, taking risks, doing things they’ve never done before, falling down, getting hurt, but nevertheless, trying again until success presents itself.

Take a leaf out of a child’s book and take a risk! Go for it! Your life will never be the same again!

An Inspiration

On this day, the second day of June 2007, it is my father's 60th birthday. Other than being a great Dad and role model over the last three decades, he has recently made a change in his life which is truly inspirational.

Faced with the prospect of not getting travel insurance to travel to Canada, due to an angioplasty he had done nearly ten years ago. Dad has now become a high-risk traveller and cannot get travel insurance for his heart condition.

This might have been a small nudge for many people, but for Dad it was a massive wake-up call. A little overweight, but quite unfit, Dad started a new regime of eating less, eating better, drinking less alcohol and doing a lot more exercise. Since March 3rd, he has only missed his daily 10km walk once due to bad weather. In three months he has lost nearly 30 pounds and is almost back to his wedding day weight from 1971. His blood-pressure is down, his fitness is up, he's feeling better and more motivated in life now that he has all this extra energy.

After hearing the news in March that he couldn't get insurance they cancelled their trip to Canada to visit us, but the trip is now back on. With their second grandchild due in early September, they will be here for the birth and despite not getting insurance, both Dad's doctor and cardiologist don't see him having any heart risk due to travel.

Who said you can't teach an old dog new tricks?

Facebook Phenomenon

For those of you who haven't become a www.facebook.com member, it's this fairly new free networking/personal web space product that allows you to keep in touch with everyone on it, and find old friends.

Yesterday an old friend from school, whom I literally have not seen or heard from for over ten years found me. (Having a unique name sort of helps that process a little). But it was amazing to re-connect with someone from the past so easily and efficiently.

When I compare these times of technology to 1992 when I spent a year in Germany, a time when there was no Internet, no email and very expensive international phone calls, you rely heavily on the traditional postal service, which we now call "snail mail", but at the time was the quickest method we had.

Every week my parents would write me two letters, one with the news from the family and one with sporting news, which included newspaper clippings for me to read. You can probably guess which parent sent which letter. In return I wrote a letter to my parents every week as well, in addition to letters to all my other friends. I cherished every letter I received and read every page of newspaper clippings. These letters were my connection to home.

Once a month my parents would call me for half an hour.

Now, living away from Australia I am able to email, access Australian news online, speak to my parents for free over the Internet, and reconnect with old friends in Australia and the rest of the world through Facebook.

Many people argue that technology is ruining the world, but if you take it in appropriate doses, it's making the world a better connected place. These days it will be nearly impossible to lose touch with someone.

Positive Feedback

Right now, I'm in the midst of training to become a Dale Carnegie Trainer. Because I'm "fast-tracking" things a bit, it's quite a hectic schedule I'm keeping.

For the past five weeks, and for seven more, I am a Group Leader for a Wednesday night class, that finishes around 10:30pm. Four four weeks (two gone and two to go) I'm in a Monday night study group that finishes at 8pm, and next week I start again as a Group Leader for a Tuesday night class, again finishing around 10:30pm. So for two weeks I will have Dale Carnegie on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday nights.

Did I mention that there's also homework?

On the 17th June I will be in Edmonton for a training course to as the crucial step to becoming a Dale Carnegie Trainer, which is eight days long (Sunday to Sunday), 8am till 8pm.

It's tiring, especially when you add full-time work and a family and all the other commitments we have... but it's worth it.

Over and above the fact that I'm chasing my dreams to become a professional coach and speaker, the tremendous personal growth I'm enjoying and the positive feedback make the lack of sleep all worth it.

Today I received and email from one of the other two people from Calgary who are also training to become a Trainer and his opening words were "You will be an amazing trainer!"

I thought about what a good feeling I get from being around positive people who live the Dale Carnegie principles relating to good human relations. None of it is revolutionary. In fact Dale Carnegie began teaching his program 95 years ago.

Being a positive person, and genuinely caring about others takes as much energy as being negative and selfish, but the feelings you get and the way you make people around you feel is vastly different.

Spiritual peace.

It occurred to me as I was walking around the campus of the George Washington University on our recent trip to DC, that as a species, humans spend a lot of time and energy studying ourselves.

Relating to health, body and mind, there are four and five year courses on physical fitness, medicine, nursing, physiotherapy, dentistry, occupational health, anatomy, biology, immunology, pharmacology, sociology, women's studies and more.

When you look at all of the courses available at the post-secondary level, a striking number are related to the study of ourselves. Why is it then that suicide rates are just as high now as they were in the 1950s? One scary aspect of that is that men are three times more likely to commit suicide than women.

When it comes to depression, more drugs are being prescribed than ever to treat this epidemic and larger volumes of younger people are on anti-depressant medication.

And no-one is surprised that obesity is a huge factor in the health of people in the 21st century. You only have to look at the people walking towards you on the street to see that poor diet and insufficient exercise plague far too great a proportion of the population.

In Canada the obesity rate for children under 18 has tripled (3% to 9%) in the last 30 years and more than doubled for the 25-34 age group and over 75 age group. While Canada's obesity rate is at 24%, it's at 30% in the United States.Officially obesity is calculated as having a BMI (Body Mass Index) over 30. What that means in real terms - An adult male who is 5'10" and weighs 210lbs or an adult woman 5'4" weighing 175lbs are considered obese. The only exception relates to body-builders, who have larger than average muscles.

So with all this study of ourselves, why do we have so many health problems?

Shouldn't we be getting healthier?

Why are they predicting that Generation X'ers will have a shorter life expectancy than their parents?

We study ourselves, but do we even know who we are?

We learn and learn but what do we know?

Theoretically we know so much about how we operate as human beings, but we don't know how to do it. It's one thing to understand intellectually, it's completely another to know and feel something spiritually.

You can read books about golf, but you'll never become a good golfer without swinging a club. Life is about experiencing first hand and learning "on the job". Life is a work in progress.

It seems with all our attention we have lost the focus.

The goal should be pure happiness, spiritual peace, calmness. But it seems our goals are status, achievement, material wealth, knowledge, power and the rest of what Gordon Gekko espouses in the movie 'Wall Street'. Greed is not good if it makes you sad.

Our education system does not encourage learning for the sake of happiness. It encourages learning to "make it in life", to gain employment and to become successful. Unfortunately success is rarely defined as happiness, as serenity.

I never once had a meditation class at school. No one ever told me that I could be happy without everything that money can buys, and in fact that the only things that make you happy are what money can't buy.

Indeed many of the health issues faced by people today are not solely because McDonald's seems to be on every street corner. Free will continues to exist. Obesity, depression, suicide, and other social issues derive themselves from deeper issues related to lack of self-worth and insecurity.

As a race we need to spend less time studying ourselves and more time understanding ourselves, not on an intellectual level, but on a spiritual and holistic level.

We should feel what our body needs. Ask it. Trust that the answer is correct. Know that if we are true to ourselves and trust what our body tells us we need we won't go wrong.

It's only when we choose to believe what someone else thinks about us as the truth, that we run into problems.

We're back!

We're back... but our luggage is still on holidays!

After a week of travelling, wearing down the rubber on our shoes, developing monster blisters (not me, my wife did!), seeing more American history than Abraham Lincoln, and eating more food than we should have eaten in two weeks we're back in Calgary. Unfortunately I can't say the same about our poor bags.

We were scheduled to return from Philadelphia via Chicago into Edmonton at 10:30pm. But as our flight to Chicago was delayed by an hour and we only had an hour layover in Chicago, we would have missed our connecting flight. So we re-routed through Toronto, on a later flight. We arrived at 1am into Edmonton, but 48 hours later, our luggage is still officially somewhere between Chicago and Edmonton... although I have a sneaking suspicion it's sitting in some dark corner of the Edmonton airport.

Luggage issues aside, we had an awesome time. It was great to see the originals of the great US historical documents, like the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution with its amendments. I did learn a lot about north American history, and came to realize something new about the United States.

The country really is a lot poorer than it lets on. When you figure how much the government pays for the various wars it fights, money that could be allocated to looking after it people, you can see visible signs that there really isn't so much prosperity.

It struck me on the first day we were there. Our hotel was near the Lincoln Memorial, which is at one end of the famous Reflecting Pool. We walked along the Reflecting Pool from the Lincoln Memorial past the Washington Monument to the Capitol building. I was staggered that the Reflecting Pool was green with algae and slime. The grass surrounding the Pool was patchy at best, but riddled with weeds and not mown. Actually a very untidy sight that I would expect to see in a poor ex-Soviet republic. Then, rather than having a pretty building where food, drinks and souvenirs were sold, it was literally a tent, and the washrooms were a row of Port-A-Potties. Hardly impressive.

In general many of the buildings were run-down, and poorly maintained. In many ways it did remind me of the many poor European cities I had visited, certainly not the image United States would like to portray to the outside world.

When you go further and look at the health system, frailty of the economy, and the general slide of the nation from the world's primary economic powerhouse, to a diminishing influence, it all bodes poorly for the US.

As a Canadian (I think of myself as one, as it is the place I call home) it is sad for me to see our nearest neighbour in such strife, and hopefully the ill effects will not creep to far across the border.

I'm not holding my breath.