Changing The World :-) One Smile At A Time

When I was growing up, one of my mother's favourite sayings was 'honey catches more flies than vinegar.' To which either my brother or I would inevitably reply 'who wants to catch flies.' Yet despite our childish derision, her words and their true intent remain with me still today.

In an age where service seems to be more often an idea rather than a reality it is all too easy to become justifiably frustrated with the people in our lives whose role we perceive as being to serve us. At least I know I'm guilty of this and I'm sure I'm not alone. Yet how often does expressing frustration result in a better service and how often does it just result in more frustration, along with a hefty rise in blood pressure?

I'm not saying that we shouldn't expect the best. Of course we should. But we should also offer the best of ourselves to those around us. So I'm having a bad day, or even a bad week or month or year, I'm not going to make it any better by sharing my misery around. And I've learnt by trial and error, many times over, that getting upset with someone over bad service, no matter what they do to fix it, never results in me feeling better about myself.

The other day at the supermarket I decided to try a different approach. I watched as the checkout assistant became more and more frustrated by the customers in front of me and line behind me grew longer and long. When I got to the front of line, instead of complaining about the wait, I thanked the checkout assistant for being so patient with the other customers. You should have seen the size of the smile I got back. Even thinking about it now still makes a big grin sweep across my face. Suddenly she felt acknowledged, recognized, valued ... all the things that we so sorely need but so rarely receive. Did I get any better service from her than the people in front of me? Who knows. Did I feel a whole heap better about my interaction with her? You better believe I did!!!

At the heart of this is our primal need to matter. The need that, in the time we walk this mortal path, we lay down lasting tracks that say to future generations 'I was here and I made a difference.' We are all aware how important inclusion is. How being the wallflower at a dance, or the person in the corner at a party or the last one picked for a team can destroy our self esteem. But recently I heard of a study that showed even acknowledgement by strangers can change for the better how we feel about our lives.

Now I am making it my mission to change the world one smile at a time. It doesn't take much, just smiling at random strangers I pass in the street. Saying hello to someone I pass on my morning walk. Smiling and thanking the person looking after the desk at the gym. Wishing the lady at the school crossing a great day. Thanking the bus driver as I jump off the bus. It takes so little effort, but it gives so much back to me. I feel good because I'm appreciating everything around me and the smiles and kind words that I get back every so often are an unexpected bonus.

So here is my challenge to you - join me in changing the world one smile at a time. Smile at a stranger, thank someone who is just doing their job and be amazed at how the world starts to feel like a better place.

And to get you started - here is your first random smile from me to you :-)

Old Dogs ... New Tricks

No one I know actually remembers learning to walk, it's just something that we do. Though our parents and other indulgent relatives may shout out heaps of encouragement, by and large we figure it out for ourselves. No one gives us instructions, one day we're crawling, the next we are standing and soon after we take our first steps. It's all as natural as breathing ... or so it seems.

A couple of years ago when I was in London with my nephew, he noticed my habit of catching my feet and stumbling on perfectly flat sufaces The joke of the trip became that I needed walking lessons and he offered to do the honours. Yet despite his best attempts, my feet kept going as they chose and I kept stumbling at the most random (and sometimes hilarious) of moments. ?It was just the way I walked, something I'd lived with all my life, something I couldn't change ... or so I thought.

When we embarked on our training for Coastrek, all sorts of aches and pains surfaced the further we walked. Some were old and some were new and we had a choice, live with them and maybe give up on our goal or find a way to do things differently. At the physio, Neil discovered that he had one leg shorter than the other and the longer leg had an extra bone in the ankle. All good reasons for HIS pain, and curable by new orthotics that worked properly. But for me the journey was far more circuitous. The great roller blade accident of '97 had taken it's toll and my back ached when I stood too long and sitting was painful. Walking was fine, I just was crippled when I stopped.

The physio did all the usual stuff with out much improvement. After a month or two he started to study my walk. Using the word 'ataxia' in what sounded like a very derogatory sense, he started to change the whole way I walked. Literally one step at a time until I reached the point a week ago where I completed our 50km walk. I was still full of energy at the end of the trek and when I woke up the next day all I wanted to do was go for a run. It was off to the gym on Monday and life is pretty awesome. Sure a few muscles need a bit of work but I still in awe of the fact that I could relearn to walk and the difference it has made.

They say you can't teach an old dog new tricks but I'm living proof that you are never too old to learn, never too old to change and that help can come from the unlikeliest paths. Now I look at life a bit differently and I wake up every day wondering who I might become rather than simply accepting who I am. It's an exciting adventure and one well worth a try.

Remembrance

I grew up buying poppies and wearing a sprig of rosemary each November Eleventh in remembrance of the soldiers that had fallen in wartime service. As a kid I didn't have a really good idea what war was. Sure I'd had a great uncle who had been an ANZAC and another great uncle who never made it back from the killing fields of Flanders. My grandfather lied about his age (being only 15) just so he could follow his brothers into the Great War, which many believed at the time would be 'the war to end all wars'.

Yet all too soon another world war came and my father, though living in a neutral country, risked his life sweeping for mines in the waters around Sweden and after that war was over had the horrific experience of entering places like Auschwitz to help clean up a tragedy that should never have occurred.

My mother too did not come out of the second world war unscathed. Her closest cousin, was shot down in Papua New Guinea. But the horror that I remember from that story was not her cousin dying, but how my ANZAC great uncle's workmates treated him after his son went missing in action. The next week they told him he wasn't wanted to be a part of their weekly lottery ticket syndicate as having lost a son made him unlucky. And doubly unlucky he was, for it was that week that his workmates won the lottery, and not a penny of it did they give to him.

During the first dozen years or so of my life, my brother dragged me along to more war movies than I think any of my peers (at least the female ones) have seen in their entire lives.I knew how to shoot my brother's air gun (and wasn't too bad at hitting the target) and I'd watched my father strip down and restore classic guns to their former glory.

Our favourite game in the backyard was playing wars and, together with the neighbours kids we dug trenches and tunnels, wore real helmets and tossed rocks at each other pretending they were hand-grenades. How we lived to tell the story, I'll never know, yet we survived all our battles with barely a scratch or scrape.

When I hit my teens I began to see another side of war. I saw young guys, not that much older than myself, marching not wanting to go and fight a war they didn't believe in, and I saw old blokes trashing them. Though at the time I was probably only 11 or 12 all I could think was how wrong this war must be. I remember celebrating in 1972 when Gough Whitlam was elected, for Australia, at least, this war was going to be over. And that led to another November 11 when in 1975, the prime minister who brought us peace, was sacked by the Queen of England's representative.

During my university years I became an ardent pacifist and republican, yet as the years have wrought their toll I have found the edges of my passion becoming greyed. Edmund Burke once said, 'All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.' Over the years this much quoted phrase has been used to justify both action and inaction and for me the debate is still out.

Yet I still, cannot image a point where I could raise a gun and shoot to save my own life. The only time in my life I have ever had a gun pointed at me was by a Koori late one night in Redfern, who, after we chatted, ended up just wanting a light and decided I was cool. Maybe the situation was never dangerous, or may be my inability to respond negatively to the danger made it a positive experience ... I'll never know, but at least I lived to tell the tale.

We now live in a world where one country's freedom fighter is another's terrorist. Where inequity is massive. We get caught up in chasing dollars, fame and fortune, but as I was reminded so well by Deepak Chopra this morning, what really matters at the deepest level is peace, harmony, laugher and love.

So  peace, harmony, laugher and love are what I am focussing on this Remembrance Day and hope that if enough people around the world join with me then together we can make this dream a reality.

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Monday Mornings

Despite the song, I really do like Mondays. For me they represent the promise of a new exciting adventure.

Monday mornings are kind of like the sunrise of the week, you want to roll over and make the weekend last a moment of two longer but you know that if you get up and greet the week you're going to feel so much better for it. And of course it helps a little if it's been the hottest night of the year as peeling back the bedclothes is not such a daunting task.

It's funny, everyone always says they want longer weekends, more holidays, less work, but you only have to look around to see that's not how we really think deep down. Like how kids by the end of the summer holidays are missing their friends. They say they don't want the summer to end, but with every other breath they are talking about who they are looking forward to seeing when they get back to school, what classes they are going to be in, when their sport is starting up again and all the good stuff that makes growing up so great.

And how many times have you found yourself at the end of a trip saying words like '... it's been fantastic but it'll be good to get home ...' While we are on the road it's easy to get caught up in the endlessness of the moment and more than once in my life I've thought it would be great to just pack my bags and head off for an endless winter or an endless summer, chasing the snow or the surf as the wind blows.

I remember vividly at the end of year 12 planning with my best friend Sandra to pack our guitars and head to Perth. We knew no one there and had no idea what we were going to do when we arrived, but at the time it seemed like the best idea in the world, full of excitement and a million miles from home. That plan almost gave my father a heart attack and my mother didn't hold back in telling us what she thought of it. Having started school early, we were both only 17 and I guess far too young for our parents to let go. Yet even now, almost 35 years later, there are times when I wonder who I might have become had we just packed our bags and headed west.

I wouldn't have gone to Uni, at least not that year. Maybe I would have stayed west forever. Or maybe I would have kept on travelling and seen the world several times over. Or maybe I would have come home, a little wiser and wearier for the experience. But I'll never know because I chose the path I chose and for that I am now who I am.

So to Monday morning, which is fast becoming afternoon, no matter how perfect the sunset was yesterday, or the moonrise last night, it is impossible to look at the sunrise and not contemplate what is to come. And therein lies the choice, do we stay in bed trying to relive what has been or get up and discover all that is possible in what lies ahead?

The Proclaimers

I would walk 500 miles and I would walk 500 more...

I remember watching Forrest Gump many years ago who, on a whim, ran for over three years coast to coast across America. He ran  not because he should, but simply because he could.

Like running, walking has a way of taking you over so that as one foot follows the other over and over again in a zen-like trance you cover further and further distances often without even noticing.

More and more we as tread the pavement, it is in the journey that we are finding the true joy. The sound of early morning bird-calls, the feeling of the day starting on a note that can only go from good to great. The feeling of the muscles firming, the feet strengthening. The simple pleasure of being outside, at one with the elements, whatever they may be.

Even more satisfying are the friends and family who who join us along the way. Like Cathy and Geoff who were just going for a short stroll across a bridge or two  and ended up still with us 20km later. Or Milo determined to come across all the bridges with us next year. And Joel boasting to his fb friends about our walk and the big one yet to come.

Like Forrest, I am beginning to believe that life is really like a box of chocolates ... you may never know what you are going to get. Luckily for me I like all types of chocolate ;-).

And scarily, as we wander further and further afield, I begin to wonder if the day will come when my feet take me clear across the continent and beyond, all on a magical journey that has no starting point and no defined end.

Bulletproof

Have you ever had one of those days when something happens that is so perfect, nothing can touch you? The sort of day where the end of the world could occur and somehow you would be able to deal with it. Sometimes this feeling comes as a result of having done something amazing, like running a marathon, paddling 100km or acing an exam. The event is so huge that everyone can at least understand why you're feeling great, even if they don't quite get how indestructible you really are.

It's easy with the big events to feel the big emotions. I had an email the other week that made me feel absolutely bulletproof. In that moment, as I read it, there was nothing I couldn't do, no mountain I couldn't conquer, no sea I couldn't swim. I was utterly undauntable.

I didn't want to lose that feeling, I wanted to keep being that person who could do anything. The problem of course, everyday life creeps in and brings us back to reality with a thud, making us remember who we were rather than who we are and who we could be.

But it doesn't have to be that way.

I decided that having finally won my bulletproof vest I was going to keep it, but not by just constantly seeking the next big buzz. Instead, my vest has been buffered and filled by the small things, like when a stranger smiles at me in the street or my husband delivers a unexpected cup of coffee to my desk.  Like discovering the mulberry tree down the road is full of fruit or my fluffy cat deciding that sitting next to my computer while I work is the purrfect way to spend her day. It's finding a smile creeping across my face as I look at my freshly mown lawn or my clean and tidy kitchen benchtop.

And I have to say that my bulletproof vest is feeling pretty damn fine. It's not to say that bad stuff can't dent it, but rather there is an awful lot of good stuff surrounding all of us everyday and that to me is pretty awesome.

So here's to all of us developing bulletproof vests and learning that there is nothing we cannot do if we just believe in ourselves and what life has to offer us.

How We Measure Our Days

On one of our favourite walks we pass through the Memorial Gardens next to Chatswood Station. Several years ago when the station was being renovated some bureaucrat had the bright idea to 'relocate' the garden so that the land could be used for 'better' purposes. Luckily the voices of reason and heritage won out, and although the garden lost a metre or two to the railway expansion the rest was preserved for our continued pleasure.

Each year the garden passes through many seasons. Only a month or so ago the rose bushes were just wooden silhouettes cut back literally to within an inch of their lives. But as the days have warmed, the leaves have sprouted and the flowers have started to blossom. A week ago we had our first big sniff of a budding red rose and yet by today the garden has already become a veritable banquet of smells. From the classic big red, through to the yellow Texas rose and the mauve 'fizzy' one that we just love, Neil and I leapt from one delight to the next each of us trying to find the best smelling rose of the day. Sure we probably looked like lunatics to those commuters who strode through the garden on their way to another busy day, but hey their loss not ours.

Our other great pleasure on our walks is the wildlife we meet along the way. Occasionally, particularly in the bush we encounter the odd and the exotic like the blue tongue lizard or the wild peacock, but everyday in our good old local suburban streets we look out for old friends and new. Here we know many of the local cats, dogs and even rabbits by name, and to those whose 'official' name is a mystery we have allocated nicknames to which surprisingly they often respond.

Because cats are mercurial creatures with an excellent understanding of the principle of 'random habits' they cannot be relied upon to be out on show and so each day we count ourselves lucky if during the hour we come across two old friends or new. A three cat morning is considered very lucky and a four cat one cause for extreme celebration, particularly if it includes new friends as well as old.

By such measures then today has been a day of extraordinary excellence, this morning we met not one nor two nor three cats on our walk but five!! And in this count were two new friends one of whom paid us the rare honour of allowing us to stroke his fine black coat. And then to top things off as we arrived back home feeling very delighted, who should be up on the balcony outside my office door, but our own black cat regally surveying the neighbourhood from his elevated second storey position.

It's the small things in life that really matter, take time to smell the roses, pat a furry friend or just smile because you can. :-).

Developing Random Habits

Some say it takes twenty-one days to develop a habit though I suspect this refers to good habits only, as I know that over the course of my lifetime I have managed to develop plenty of bad habits in way less than that time (which fits in well with St Augustine's observation that habit, if not resisted soon becomes necessity). Yet while living life like a free flowing electron in a nuclear reactor has certain many attractions, I can also see the value in developing 'necessary' habits that provide anchor points along life's random path. 


Lao-tzu famously  said that A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step. So far in the last week since committing to our big walk I have calculated that we have already taken well over 100,000 steps and the journey is feeling great. [And no I'm not going to wax lyrical here about one small step for man one giant step for mankind ;-)]


Last night we sat with Peri and Joel, who have committed to come on this adventure with us, and started planning for our first big team walk. On Sunday 30 October we are planning walking on the 7 bridges walk from Rozelle, to Hunters Hill, to Lane Cove, to Wollstonecraft, to Milsons Point to the Rocks to Pymont and back to Rozelle. 


What was great about our planning was the excitement that started to build between us all as we talked about not just this walk but the big one looming in the not too distant future. Instead of being daunted by going 100km in one hit we became pumped and the commitment to the goal grew. None of us have ever walked that far and though we have all stayed awake for a day or two at times walking through the night is going to be a new experience for all of us.


And what was even more fantastic was that we all had the same view about the journey. Part of the adventure for us is not just following the Coast Trek text book. The training has to be fun if it's going to become a habit. And by way of contradiction it also has keep being fresh and surprising. Doing the same thing over and over every day is just not something any of us are good at. We want to have random adventures with unseen events that challenge us to become more that who we are.


So here's to the next 100,000 steps who knows where they are going to lead us!

Everyday Heroes

All too often people spend their lives searching for the perfect answer, the perfect teacher, the perfect solution to make their life a little bit more perfect. Yet few of us realize that we don't need to pay hundreds or thousands of dollars to find that inspiration to change who we are and to become who we want to be.

I am constantly inspired by my friends and family and the more I think about it the more I realize that everyone in my life has something to offer me on this journey if only I look a bit harder and listen a bit longer. As I blog along I hope to mention everyone I know at some point on the way, but today I would like to pay particular homage to Adrienne Jerram and Michael Stelzer who have inspired me to aim for a goal that at the moment seems totally impossible, but through their experience I know will somehow be achieveable.

I'm sure if a year ago I had told Adrienne that she would run in a half marathon or Michael that he would row in the Hawkesbury Canoe Classic they would have laughed at me. Yet during the last year I have seen in both of them the difference a goal can make. Adrienne has already completed the City to Surf, the Sydney Half Marathon and now has her eyes set on the New York Marathon (though maybe not this year) and Michael is currently gearing up for his big race in a couple of weeks. 

What I have learnt from them is that the very act of setting a goal changes who you are and how you think about yourself and your life. As I have started to focus on the 100km Coast Trek that we have committed to do on March next year, I have discovered an amazing clarity of purpose that spills over beyond the challenge into other aspects of my life. 

After several days back on our usual walk to Chatswood and back, albeit at a slightly speedier pace, Neil and I set off yesterday (Sunday) for the first 'big' walk in our training schedule. We'd marked out roughly a 15km course and were hoping to do it in under 4 hours given that about half of it was trekking up and down in the bush. Along the way an amazing feeling took over. We knew we could do the distance but just having the 'big' goal in the background  made us more committed to plough on and actually do almost 20km. 

We got home and we felt great. Sure the feet were a bit worn, but we were pumped.  The energy that we got from the walk and the lovely sights we saw along the Middle Cove foreshores motivated us to do a bit of gardening and other chores that somehow had kept getting put to one side.

And this morning I woke up with the feeling of victory, having already achieved something more than what I set out to do. Day by day, week by week as we build up to our 100km walk I am in awe of how our lives may change and excited for who we are already becoming.

Thank you so much Adrienne and Michael for being such an inspiration!!