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Victory

Kid Speak: Curiosity

The topic I asked a 10 year old in my life to write about was: Curiosity and why it is important. Here is the response…

Why It’s Good To Be Curious In AND About Your Surroundings… by MGT

I think it’s good to be curious about your surroundings, say your house or school/work because curiosity leads to more questions, which could eventually lead to an invention that could help/save lives. With curiosity you can actually experience more. If you were curious you would want to know what an event might be like, or you might discover something important and be known for it. With curiosity you can achieve great things. I’m going to give a few examples of famous (and curious) people.

  1. Grace Hopper: Being a mathematician in the US Navy, Grace was a pioneer in developing computer technology. She helped create the first electronic computer and achieved many other things. That was all due to her thirst for knowledge and her curiosity in life.
  2. Ada Lovelace: This 19th Century Countess was the daughter of famous poet Lord Byron, who she never knew. She’s also considered the first computer programmer. Her boundless curiosity extended from maths to music and foreign languages. The curiosity is what led her to meeting Charles Babbage and they worked together to create the calculator and write many more programs.
  3. Amelia Earhart: One of the world’s most celebrated aviators and explorers, Amelia was an international celebrity in her time as the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic Ocean. She used her fame to encourage women to reject constrictive suitors and to pursue as many opportunities as they could. Earhart’s curiosity made her famous and she also stood up for women who were facing inequality in the world at the time.

From this you can tell, this 10 year old in my life is well read and incredibly curious. So what can we learn from this response to curiosity…

Read widely, learn about people and learn from people. You never know where being curious will take you.

Thanks MGT for your insight.

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Victory

Shaping Leaders: Nelson Mandela

Growing up I was obsessed with Nelson Mandela. To me, he was a hero. I’ve always had a social conscience and never understood how segregation based on colour could happen. Perhaps as a child I was naive, or perhaps I was raised learning what loving thy neighbour really meant.  Either way, I loved reading about how he achieved what he did, how he never let his fervour for change diminish. He always had the greater good in mind. He was in my eyes a great example of what one person can do, with their choices, actions and words to literally change the world. 

Whatever your opinion is of Nelson Mandela, his life, his journey, his sacrifice of ‘ normal’ – we can all learn a thing or two from him. Here are the top five things I’ve learnt from his life: 

1. There is power in forgiveness – Nelson Mandela, didn’t let his imprisonment or how he was dreadfully treated rob him of his joy. He chose forgiveness as it would allow him peace, and allow him to continue to work tirelessly. Be the one to take the first steps towards peace, and forgive. It’s not easy, but worth it.

2. It’s not about me – Look with vision at the next generation and the ones to come after that. At times we can be so consumed with the task at hand, we forget to look at the bigger picture. What will your influence be, your legacy, your capacity to impact for good? 

3. It only takes one – One man stood up, and fought for the rights of those around him, soon he was joined by more and change eventually followed, after oppression, imprisonment etc… Are you the one, to make the change, to have the passion, to have the determination to bring about improvements in your sphere of influence?

4. Influence is precious – use it for good. We may never know who we influence how, but it is our responsibility to try our best to influence those around us for the best. Set the example, make the sacrifice and never underestimate your influence. 

5. No season is ever wasted – being sent to prison for standing up for what is right, for what you believe in is no easy feat for Nelson Mandela. In life, seasons good and bad, come and go use each season to learn and in time, wisdom and experience will be your fuel to get through.

I may not be able to portray the magnitude of impact this one man’s life has had on humanity. What I can do is learn from him and apply it to my sphere of influence. This world leader, has certainly shaped the kind of leader I want to be.

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Blue Print

time

We all have the same amount of time in a day, our choice is how we use it. At times I expect too much from time and try and squeeze too many tasks into a short spaces of time. I also get frustrated when I don’t get everything done, when I want it done. This idiosyncrasy is one thing that really tends to bother my husband, who is laid back, productive in his work, but laid back all the same. For us time, has been an issue, time and time again ( pardon the pun). I absolutely hate being late, he doesn’t mind being late, so we are often late – defined as later than I want to be.. this has been cause of tension, added to as we have three children, with their own perception of time – you get what I mean, leaving in half an hour really means in an hour and a half. You say ‘ were leaving’ and they hear… change your socks to cleaner ones, swap the things in your lunch box with each other and fight about where to sit in the car.

Time management is the process of planning and controlling how much time you spend on a specific activity

On a serious note, time is one thing that needs to be managed in a way that works for every member of your family. My husband and I over time have worked it out, it is still a work in progress but nonetheless, parameters have been put in place to ensure big blow ups don’t occur over time.

Some key skills in time management are as follows:

  • organisation
  • planning
  • prioritisation
  • goal setting
  • delegation
  • stress management

Sound familiar? A friend once asked if the definition of freedom, is having a toilet trained child. How much effort and planning and strategising goes into toilet training. This is just one example of what parents do on a constant (note I didn’t say regular), constant basis. We are all probably better at time management than we give ourselves credit for.

In terms of applying time management skills to family life I came across an excellent list of what to include in creating a time management plan. I have altered it slightly to make it relevant to family life.

1. Pick two or three tasks at a time

2. Review the tasks – what outcome are you trying to achieve?

3. You can’t do it all by yourself

4. Use tools

Use the above list to start mapping out some tasks that you can review and make changes to, to improve your time management and level of busy in your family.

In the next post about time, I will share a few things that have helped our family work on our time management.

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Victory

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You’ll never experience progress without change and challenge

Ken Coleman
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Victory

Finding Strength

I don’t know about you, but I’m feeling like I have some sort of COVID fatigue. Where life is still not how it was, even though I don’t really want it to go back to exactly how it was ( read: too busy) , then at the same time, I am liking this somewhat forced down time. Even if it means less in the finances and more in the time tank.

At the beginning of COVID and our first lockdown our family embarked on a daily afternoon walk. We began to love exploring our neighbourhood one street at a time. On one street close to ours, we found written in chalk on a block wall the words,

Stay Strong…. I whispered to my Wi-Fi.

A friendly neighbour…

We loved this ‘encouragement’ and crack a smile every time we pass it. In perfect positioning, our area has terrible internet and with everyone working from home, by lunch time the internet frequently needed a siesta. So this quote is very apt.

Even though this makes us chuckle every time we pass it, and we wanted to ‘socially distant’ high five the person that cheers us up, we soberly realised that we did need to stay strong… we didn’t know how long it would last and sadly we are at the start of a second wave, where lockdowns are starting to occur again.

Here at Homes of Victory, we want to encourage you to stay strong. Tell us how you are staying strong, through this unprecedented year of change. We would love to share your story with other readers to encourage them.

How are you staying strong during this time?

What type of humor reminds you to make the most of the season, even when in all seriousness it is awful?

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Leadership

Leadership trait: Humility

Every person that you meet knows something you don’t: learn from them.

H. Jackson Brown Jr.

Humility is attractive. Humility is a magnet for integrity, collaboration, appreciation, and acknowledgement.  Humility attracts staff, who will want to work with you, look forward to being around you and motivated by you. They know you will acknowledge their efforts, appreciate their hard work, and offer a human side to leadership.

Likewise, when we are humble in our homes, humble toward our children, we show them reality, the realness of life. Yes, difficulties arise, and challenges are met – not perfectly but to the best of our abilities. Granted it may take humiliation to encourage our humility but if our families witness it firsthand, how much more are they going to value us as parents. How much more are they going to value humility and being humble themselves. In turn they will begin to value integrity, want to receive our appreciation, be acknowledged, and finally behave like this towards others.

Humility is not thinking less of yourself; it’s thinking of yourself less.

C. S. Lewis

Never curse a fall. The ground is where humility lives. 

Yasmin Mogahed
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Victory

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If one is lucky, a solitary fantasy can totally transform one million realities.

Maya Angelou
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Blue Print

measuring success 3

I’ve worked in several workplaces, experienced and facilitated a range of performance appraisals. Apologies, I can hear you sighing already – but stay with me. At one workplace, I copied and pasted my answers to each appraisal question for seven years and no one noticed. In my current workplace, performance appraisals are taken seriously and actually contribute to motivating and encouraging staff. Performance appraisals often use stagnant criteria to measure success without taking into account the person, but rather just their output. I love conducting performance reviews as it allows me to connect with my team members, encourage them on a personal level and get to know their personal and corporate goals.

In your family, how do you measure your success? What kind of appraisal do you give your self? What motivates you? In all honesty, for several years our goals slipped by the way side and if we could bath, feed and get our kids to sleep we were winners. All too often though, we would flop into bed and ask each other if we felt defeated. Not a nice feeling.

One thing that we have started to do, is not only set goals that have easy to use success measures, but have found a way for our kids to appraise our performance as parents without them knowing. We’ve taught them to write cards to us every Christmas, birthday, Mothers and Fathers day. They need to tell us three things they like and why. At times the words out of the mouth of babes, have been a source of encouragement and joy. Its easy to be negative and think about what you could have done better but sometimes you need a little wisdom from the younger generation. Once my daughter wrote at the ending of her card that I was the best cook in the world. Hilarious, my cooking is mediocre at best – but not to her. If she sees the best in me, then maybe I should try to do the same. One time our boy wrote that his favourite time with Dad was at home. Nothing spectacular but it shows how he enjoys the every day. Another note we got was about how funny Dad’s, Dad jokes are. It showed us in the silly and the busy that we are doing okay. Our kids notice the little things and so should we.

Navigating success or the feeling of it where kids are kids, life is busy and no end seems to be in sight, it often feels like an ongoing negotiation where we just need to find a solution. I recently learnt that the reward for navigating one challenge is the next challenge. It doesn’t sound too inspiring does it, but in reality it is. The season of kids when working though what family life looks like with additional people in it, is often hard to measure let alone be seen as a success. I encourage you that as a family, learn from each challenge – look for the small wins.” I folded some washing today”, ” I was thanked for lunch today”. Once you start speaking the good, you’ll think of more good. See the good and it will flow into your feeling of success. This in turn will encourage you to keep on keeping on and setting goals and living the life you want.

Think about how your kids encourage you? What things do they say or do that really gives you an idea of how they see you?

List some things that you have learnt due to facing some challenges in the season of children.

Encourage one another as a family to talk about the good things that have come from the challenges you have faced. See the joy of overcoming challenges.

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Victory

in conversation with Zafer & Erin

You know when you meet someone and you automatically know you’ll be friends for life… well Erin is that person for me. We grew up together, having sleepovers, playing sport, loving life. As we got older, our husbands came on the scene and as it happens in life, it takes you to places in ways you could never imagine. The one thing that has stayed, is our love for each other and deep rooted friendship. We’ve literally been thousands of miles apart for years, we see each other about once every three or so years, but the friendship has remained. Thank heavens for technology where we can talk anytime and be in contact when we want to be. In this conversation, Erin will show you brave in its rawest form, together they will show you love on a deep level, and show you how life doesn’t have to be what society expects. Enjoy.

Due to COVID-19 and Zafers job, he is currently away and has been for months, unable to get home. So Erin has spoken to me, on his behalf also.

Who are the members of your family?

My husband and I have twin girls who are 9 years old.

Are you planners or do you go with the flow?

When he is home we love to plan, it does seem to work out most of the time as his time home is limited so we pack it in to enjoy our time together.  Although we get tired, we have made so many memories this way.

When my husband is not here, I tend to just go with the flow for my girl’s sake and not have every weekend planned, as we have school/sports/extra activities that take a lot of time.  

What does your normal week look like?

When Zafer is home we take turns getting up for school drop-offs. We spend as much time together as possible, but at the same time want to give each other space to see our own friends and have alone time.  Sounds weird?!?! 

Because I’m still learning Turkish and with the cultural inferiority of women (and then Foreign women) I leave the big jobs that need to be done around the house or with the car till when he is home.  This what tends to take up the first few weeks.  

We have many friends and family over on weekends so we can all catch up as they want to see Zafer.  Here, if you are a single parent/ person, you don’t usually get invited or included in other families plans, so when Zafer is home, there is lots of making up for lost time.  

When Zafer is home it takes a huge load off of me parenting, and the kids are happy with this balance, and love showing him how well behaved and responsible they are.

When Zafer is away with work, we all count down the days till he comes home back to us.  It’s hard with no male balance.  In Turkish culture, discipline is nearly nonexistent (no bedtime, sugar whenever the child feels like, Mums cook multiple meals to keep everyone happy, screen time all the time, no basic manners…).  So I do struggle to find a balance between my extremely strict upbringing to the other extreme, of no discipline. I have a very strong support base here of foreigners and Turkish girls who can speak good English.  We support and learn from each other.  

A typical week… school for the girls with basketball training after school 2 days a week.  I attend pottery courses, help out at school, try to see someone from my husbands family (Sister/cousin/aunty) … it’s huge, and they are very lovely warm welcoming people.  I love them.  

Weekends consist of working around basketball training and homework.  We love to go walking in the forest, trying a new breakfast place with friends, ride bikes or rollerblader by the Bosphorus, try to relax… ( but my kids love activity and action…)

Not only does your husband have a job where he is away for months at a time, you also moved to live in his home country, learnt the language and have raised your kids there. How do you ensure your relationship stays in tact?

We worked together in the same environment for three years and together lived with the girls at his workplace for another six years,  I understand the stresses he goes through with his job and I know the people he works with.  Not an easy life to live, but I understand it and he knows that.  We have to share about everything! We share happiness, frustration, stress, joy, big and little things.  This keeps us involved in each other’s lives and we both feel ‘connected’.  

We found at the beginning of him coming that he was VERY  sensitive to stress and negativity, and I was having a hard time moving over and sharing the ‘decision maker/head of the house’ role after him being away for so long.  After the realization that we were not happy when he was home and not happy at all being apart, we then made our action plans to suck it up a bit and move over to make space for the other in a real life setting TOGETHER (not a work environment or trying to tough it out on our own). It has worked!!! We talk about our concerns before he comes home and prepare ourselves so we can each try to control our frustrations.  I have really tried to learn Turkish, and become independent here.  We bought a car and got my drivers license here, so I am fully independent.  I don’t feel restricted in anyway.  I do appreciate that my husband has helped this happen and allows me to live without questioning me at all.  

What is the one thing that is most important to your family, when your Husband / their Dad is away? How do you make it work?

Talking talking talking, also a lot of prayer.We talk almost every day.  We pray for each other that God will protect the heart and eyes from what the devil may try to bring to distract and tempt us.  

The girls are not interested in talking on the phone with their Dad but they do keep a diary (most days) telling him what happened today or how they feel, or just a drawing.  We tell stories about him, reminisce on the times he was home, and what we want to do when we comes home next time.  

If you could give one piece of advice what would it be?

I had no idea THIS was going to be where I would live or how I would live without my husband half the year.  I believe life does not deal you something you are unable to deal with.  You will be pushed and stretched but not broken!! 

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Victory

On the flipside

Here at Homes of Victory we are all about applying leadership and management skills to our home life – to improve it. Simon Sinek – the leadership master flips that on its head by saying 

The closest thing to leadership is parenting. You have to be an infinite student of parenting.

Simon Sinek

Here at Homes of Victory we wholeheartedly agree with this. On a practical level, I know I have used the same tactics I’ve used with my kids with difficult client..  I’ve even got to the point with one extremely difficult customer who continued to yell at me, I simply said, ‘I’m sorry sir, my children behave better than you. When you calm down, I can help you’. He stood in stunned silence in front of me, he took a step back, lowered his voice and replied ‘Really?’ All I could do was nod.

When we stop to think about what our children have taught us and how we have applied those learnings to our family and workplaces, it is amazing how intertwined the learnings are.

One thing, I’ve learnt from my children that I take into the workplace is a really positive attitude to problem solving and the ability to put issues into perspective. After having children, and learning to live life in the fast lane when it comes to scooting out the door for school. The problems I’ve solved in less than 20 seconds, astound even me. I have the ability to pack leftover breakfast, gather my children and get them walking – with shoes on – do I get an amen to that!, to the vague location of the car, while dealing with milk dropped in the fridge without even breaking a sweat. These issues are not life or death – they just require perspective.

Another thing I have learnt from my children is around expectations. I have high expectations of myself and also expect high behaviour levels from my children. I was finding in the workplace I too, placed high expectations of staff – at times – higher than necessary, higher than what was fair. By learning what are fair expectations verses unrealistic ones, I am a better parent and better leader.

What are some things your children have taught you, that you were able to use in the workplace? 

I’ll leave you with one more quote, to stir your thoughts, 

Leadership is not a title, it’s a choice. Leaders take care of those in their care.

Simon Sinek

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Victory

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Freedom starts with honesty.

Judah Smith, author Jesus Is____________________: Find a New Way to Be Human
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Leadership

Leadership trait: Integrity

I cannot and will not cut my conscience to fit this year’s fashions. 

 Lillian Hellman

Being honest and having strong moral principles is what integrity is all about. Having this leadership trait means you are undivided and confident in your dealings and  decisions. Nothing sways you. This trait when applied to the home, will bring a lasting memory for your children and other half, about how over time your integrity goes before you and that is how you will be known. Having integrity is not always easy and often hard decisions need to be made. Stick to your guns and keep your integrity. It will hold you in good stead over the long term. You will never regret having integrity.

Real integrity is doing the right thing, knowing that nobody’s going to know whether you did it or not.

Oprah Winfrey
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Victory

But… I Dreamt Big and Worked Hard

Over the last few months, I’m sure you can agree, that life hasn’t been what we’ve expected. What we planned 2020 to be. What we imagined our business, our home life, our everything to look like. This week, I was talking to a friend who lives on the other side of the world with two children, she told me that although she loves to plan, and dream and plan some more, she hates being disappointed when things don’t turn out the way she expected. This isn’t a control thing, in her case, it’s a ‘ but I dreamt big, worked hard’ and it still didn’t happen. 

Another sobering conversation we had this week with some friends, was the impact COVID was having in their circle of influence, those they have built multiple companies with, those they work with closely. The impacts have ranged from being hit so hard with the unexpected that decisions based on the now are being made like divorce or worse. In comparing the conversations, the whole ‘ I dreamt big, worked hard and it didn’t happen’ feeling of disappointment resounds. It impacts everyone, from Mums and Dads, to corporate highflyers and everyone in between. I believe this season has impacted every person – somehow. How has it impacted you? Your family? Your friends? 

How often during this season, have you felt like, everything you’ve worked for, dreamt of and even at times achieved is simply gone? 

Hold that thought, now I challenge you, to write down all your achievements – go back as many years as you like, then, balance that against your dreams. Are you encouraged by what you’ve achieved? Are you still dreaming? Keep it up – look forward. 

Homes of Victory implores you during this unsettling, full to overflowing time of the unexpected that you take stock of what really matters in your life. Those plans you had, may need to go on hold, or morph into something more spectacular. Remember life is not what we own, wear, or do. We influence those around us, more than we can imagine. Seek assistance when and if you need to. We’ve been finding that although we feel we don’t need professional help at this point, we have been catching up with the encouragers and positive people in our lives, to boost us and to inspire us during this season. 

Who in your network inspires and encourages you? Who do you inspire and encourages? It may be the perfect time to catch up and talk about this season. You’ll gain perspective and hopefully a smile. 

We may feel that our world is crumbling , but one thing remains –  who we are in terms of character and integrity. It may be the time to take a long hard positive look in the mirror. This season will not last forever, this season will change us in ways we didn’t expect, let it change you for the better, learn the lessons of this season, they will not go unused in the future.

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Victory

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Audacious vision never cowers in the darkness.

Steven Furtick, Author or Sun Stand Still; What Happens When you Dare to Ask God for the Impossible.
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Victory

The A team

Wherever you find a great man, you will find a great mother or a great wife standing behind him — or so they used to say. It would be interesting to know how many great women have had great fathers and husbands behind them.

Dorothy L. Sayers, Gaudy Night

We want to hear from you about who inspires you?

Who has had a great influence in your life?