Category: Personal Development

Eight Christchurch Parks

I headed off from Mum and Dad’s place for my last run of the year. You’d hardly notice it in the car but it’s downhill towards the city from near Burnside High School. Like a gentle back wind you don’t really notice it running either, until you turn around. It was a quite a gloomy day, drizzling and quite cool, especially for late December.

First park was Mona Vale, just past 67 Fendalton Road where I remember helping Dad as a pre-school boy when he was a landscape contractor. Well I’ve always assumed I was helping! Mona Vale is beautiful, with well groomed houses on the other side of the Avon – I’m told the Hadlee residence is there somewhere. The Mona Vale buildings are fenced off, wrecked from earthquakes. The gardens are strangely immaculate and the highlight has to be the Gazebo with its beautiful stained glass windows. Out the back of Mona Vale into Christchurch Girls’ High School, where two of my sisters went, though at the previous Cramner Square site which is now just the site, empty, thanks to earthquake damage. Across into North Hagley Park I was greeted with the sign “Watch for Golf Balls”. Okay, I’ll keep my eyes peeled but I reckon by the time I see one worthy of being cautious about it’ll be over rover. So a large park essentially kept as a golf course near the city. My third park was the adjoining Botanic Gardens, scene of many a Sunday visit after Church where the perils of walking too close to the grass edge were instructed, to preserve the lawn, which Dad with his senior position in the Park’s Dept felt personal responsibility for at all times! Exiting the Gardens by the Peacock Fountain, left past the Canterbury Museum – one of the few old stone buildings functioning – and back up and over to Little Hagley Park.

Into Helmores Lane and it suddenly had a Wuthering Heights feel about it. A gloomy day with more than a few now derelict, boarded up houses wrecked by the quakes. Seems to me living by the river isn’t the best thing to do. I got the feeling that the occupiers behind “Resident’s Cars Only” signs might have wished for “Any Car Welcome, just bring some life to this place!”.  Over to Fendalton Road and a lap of St Barnabas Church where the famous and latterly infamous for his bouts of shoplifting Canon Bob Lowe presided. He’s apparently a relative although having updated the family tree while I’m here in Christchurch, he doesn’t appear in the 35 Lowes in the Tree.  Park number five was Fendalton Park with University of Canterbury qualifying as number six. I had to dice with danger by running a taped off area but I survived. Ray Blank Park in Ilam was next. Who Ray Blank was and why he had a park named after him, I didn’t know but you can find out here! The final park was Westburn Park, its claim to fame being a miniature street system complete with signage and road marking for kids on bikes, scooters etc to practice. Feeling the need to signal my last turn at the tiny Give Way it was right then left and back to Mum and Dad’s. See the map here of my 14.5km, and that’s my running done for 2011.

It hasn’t been the best running year, though a couple of marathons with a minimum of training, but I finish feeling more confident of cranking it up over the holidays again.

It’s the holidays. Do what you feel like. I am!

Stephen

Tolerating Christmas

It’s a special time of the year especially if you’re a child or a grown-up with lovely memories of Christmas. Might be a really big stack of presents around the tree if you had a big family. Might be stories from older siblings about “hearing” noises in the night. New things. Special meal. Visiting Dad’s boss as a ritual. Everyone in a good mood it seemed!

For some, the Christmas lunch with disconnected relatives is a chore to survive. The only time the trust bank gets a chance to be exercised. That’s not everyone’s experience. Some families are filled with trust, companionship and mutual respect built on doing things – making an effort. And tolerating.

Shortly I’m off to sing carols at St Matthew-in-the-City. St Matthew’s who asked us to reflect on Mary’s discovery that she was pregnant. I only go there once a year. I love the carols and I like the tolerance. Seems to me if there is one thing that I can take from a church it’s tolerance. I’ve previously blogged about having no tolerance for intolerance.

When we sit down for Christmas Lunch that might be something worth reflecting on. Practicing tolerance to those less equipped for the rigours of an annual catch-up. While you’re at it try a little presence and make this one of the good old days!

Share your Christmas’ of the past and have a very happy Christmas day!

Stephen

Six archive boxes and some certificates

I loaded them into the car tonight. Almost the end of an era for me. Three years at AUT setting up the Centre for Innovative Leadership, creating programmes with a focus on authenticity and innovation. So many workshops, coaching sessions, client meetings I couldn’t begin to count. Quiet satisfaction of building something. Grief on making the decision to leave what I’d started. That passed.

Now it’s excitement. They’ll be more leadership and other stuff too. Building a business in another context. More growth. More blogs. Can’t wait!

I put up my Christmas Tree tonight, complete with evil guy in the box reading “Christmas for Athiests”. Where he got that from I can’t imagine.

One more workshop in the morning. A great team wanting to finish the year getting their stuff on the table. We’ll do that, kick it around a bit, understand each other better and commit to watering our relationships in 2012. Connect and Commit is what we’ve talked about. Along with Clarity and Direction.

I’m connecting with all sorts of people at the moment. I ran into Barbara Horne yesterday who seemed very concerned that I would continue to blog! Nice to know someone is reading! Thanks. Too many “catch up for a coffees” to do them all but I’ll try. I’m commiting to more blogs – truth is they do lots for me – so why wouldn’t I? Great processing. I’ve got pretty good clarity and direction about what I’m doing in 2012, but it will be ambiguous – new stuff always is and it makes it all the better. Does for me anyhow.

Those certificates will find a new home but the six archive boxes will probably go untouched for a while. You never need most of the stuff. Why is that? No idea. Maybe a security blanket I might need to blog about one day.

Almost time to archive 2011 but before you do, connect and commit to take the great people with you from 2011 forward.

Stephen

Enjoy your life

My friend and colleague Richard Kerr-Bell asked me to write a prologue for his book – Enjoy your Life – coming out on Amazon soon.  Here it is: 

When I clear my mail box at the local superette, if it’s Saturday afternoon there will be a steady stream of punters queuing to buy their lucky lotto ticket and occasionally the proprietor convinces me that I really shouldn’t miss out this week. After all, I could win $10 million!  Who wouldn’t want that?

At the end of four days on a public leadership course we have groups of participants who have a bond so close, a support network so finely tuned to each other, that there are often tears when it’s time to go.  If we can do this in four days, then surely we can do this for ourselves.

Senior leaders who interact with me during my leadership development work present with a range of challenges and opportunities.  In coaching sessions I often hear of the boss who is only consumed by financials, by politics that derail teams and of work structures that just don’t seem right.

I see people striving to get to the top, spurred on by career ambitions from family, colleagues and probably society.  If you’re not going up then you’re not going anywhere, I often hear.

Happiness is a simple concept made very complicated as we confuse the means with the end.  Assumptions that money, position and relationships will give you happiness are just that, assumptions.

All of those things may contribute to your happiness but they will not on their own, or even collectively, give you the happiness that you strive.  If you think that winning a million dollars, or for that matter losing a loved one will have a dramatic long term impact on your happiness, you’re wrong.  Research tells us that most people return to the state of happiness that they existed with prior to such an event, within a year.  One year!

Which should tell us that our state of happiness is more likely to be impacted by our own personal conduct than any external forces.  Put another way, you are responsible for your own happiness.

Being responsible for something means being pro-active, engaged in the process and making changes.  If you’ve read this far then there’s probably a good chance that Enjoy Your Life appealed to you because well, like me, you want to be happy.  But where to start? What to do when it seems life is so complex? 

When Richard asked me to write the prologue for Enjoy your Life I knew that this would be a book rich in stories, quotes and experience. This is why Richard works on our Authentic Leadership programmes.  Because he’s real, has lived and knows a lot more than most people about what it takes to be happy. He knows all those simple things that will make you enjoy your life.

Career and having lots of money might well follow happiness, but the mistake would be to start there.  Start with yourself. After all, no–one can ever have as much interest in your happiness than you. Don’t you owe it to yourself to enjoy your life?

And if you have a niggling doubt that to spend time on your own happiness is selfish, don’t be concerned.  You’ll be pleasantly surprised to find that much of what it takes to be happy is about how you treat others.

In any case, I say you’re allowed to be selfish about your own happiness. In the end if you’re not happy then those around you won’t enjoy your life either. So be selfish and enjoy your life.  What else is there?

Stephen

ps here’s a photograph from Te Wananga o Aotearoa in Hamilton. See here for the meaning of Aroha.