Tag: homes of victory

Categories
Victory

Who are your people?

Over the years I have written about us needing connection and community with others. At times we’ve probably all felt we would like it, not sure how to get it and question if we actually really do need it.

I’ve been prompted to write this after a few conversations lately that have just shown me, the spectrum of response people have to the question of if we need connection with others.

My short answer is yes. I firmly believe we are hardwired as people to live in community and connection with others. What I also believe is, we as people often ignore this and hope for the best in how we live, with others around us, but not really knowing anyone or having anyone know us. Why? Because it actually takes effort.

I’ve been reading a book called “Find your People: Building Deep Connections in a lonely world” by Jeannie Allen. She talks about in order to find our people, and they could be those few people in our inner circle, those we bump into incidentally ( our village) and then acquaintances, we need to be humble, available and vulnerable.

Can I simply ask, how hard is it to be vulnerable? How hard is it to be available? How hard can it be to be humble? When I first read this my mind ticked over, well I am available after school one day a week and I could maybe find time between sport on a Saturday and oh boy, why would some one want me to be vulnerable with them – life gets messy… In summary, building connections with others and community takes effort. Effort we may not have the energy for….

After spending some time processing these thoughts, I realized we all have messy lives and we all need to get over that and love people in their mess and importantly allow people to love us in our mess. I need to confess my hypocritical behavior here.. When I go to some one’s home I never judge the cleanliness of it. I get the mess of life, the busy, the muddy dog prints, the washing the everything. I often ask if I can help out if them seem a bit overwhelmed. But, when people come to my place I try my hardest to have it all clean. I judge myself before I judge others… Any one with me?

Last weekend, when I literally ran out of time to mop the floors before we had visitors (coming to our house for the first time), because it had rained and my dog ran her muddy paws through the house, I apologized to our friends at the front door. Their immediate response was – don’t worry, we get it. End of story, not mentioned again, we had a great meal together. It was the first time, I felt that I could just let that go.

In hindsight, it was a way of being humble and vulnerable. I had done it. Yes, it felt hard, yes it felt awkward and not normal – but none the less it happened. What I loved the most was, sharing the meal was about the people, not how clean or unclean my house was.

My challenge for you is, who are you being humble, available and vulnerable with in your sphere of influence? I’m not saying open your life up to everyone, but who can you think of, that would benefit from you loving them in the mess of life and you allowing yourself to be loved in the mess of life.

Building community takes effort we may not have the energy for.. but building community brings energy as we are all in it together.

Homes of Victory
Categories
Blue Print

blueprint foundations

The outcome of this set of activities is to piece together the top five things you value under six categories that combine to make up family life. The six categories are broad enough to make this activity work for your situation. The commitment for this activity to be of most use is a regular, respectful, truthful and open minded conversation. Set a regular time to stop, relax and chat. Approaching this positively will enable the best outcome of creating a blueprint foundation, but also bring clarity and closeness to your relationship. Be prepared to talk about everything and be open about your feelings. The more transparent you are now, the more relevant and beneficial the final blueprint will be for your family.

How the activity works:
1. Take a notebook and label a page with each relevant category.

2. Write down seperately 5 or more things that are of most value to you under that topic.

3. Reveal your answers to eachother.

4. If some of your responses are the same that’s awesome! They will form the final list of 5 values.

5. Spend some time talking about the other answers that don’t match. Share why and how much you value each point.

6. The aim of the conversation is to have a final list of 5 points that you both agree on to be your priority for now.

To note: Other items on the list that don’t make it to the top 5 or cannot be agreed upon, need to first and foremost respected and then kept in mind. These values will become a piece of the blue print later on. The top five priorities listed here for each theme will feed into an operational plan that looks at the short term ( 1 – 3 years). It is important at this stage to limit the list as only so much can be achieved successfully in a short space of time.

One last thing to note is, some topics may be easier that others to discuss. If the need arises dont’ be afraid to stop the conversation and start again another time, this will make the conversation more worth while and fruitful. You may be surprised by what you find easy or hard to discuss – either way it will be worth it. Stay focused on the outcome and the reasons why you started this activity.

So lets go…

Category One is:

Family Values – What are the core things you value? What do you want your family to be like behaviour wise?  

Categories
Blue Print

Creating a family blueprint

Homes of Victory is a platform for families using leadership and management tools to create a family blueprint going forward. It is designed to support and enable you to create the home life you want, while living with a victorious mindset in the middle of the wildest season of life; kids.

Each week we will post an activity for you and your loved one / ones to complete. The activities are aimed at the adults in your home, but children of all ages can contribute. All of the activities will combine to create a family blueprint – perfect for your family. If you miss a week, simply select the ‘blueprint tag’ for all of the family blueprint activities.

Categories
Victory

One step of courage

All things are difficult before they are easy.

Thomas Fuller

I need to admit, that the mid year slump is a real thing for me this year. Although I still feel great, I have energy, I have motivation, I have even reviewed my goals and set new ones…. What I think I’m losing as the year is flying by is patience. We have a lovely, wonderful 5 year old, who is giving us a run for our money. I feel like every form of leading, guiding and parenting I’ve learnt in the years gone by is not even closely relevant to how I need to parent at the moment.

One thing I am learning from this and want to encourage you in, is no matter what we do, we need to start somewhere and simply give it a go. It may feel like a looming mountain in the distance, it may look like a deep lake of the unknown, but what remains is, things change when we simply start. As we step through the unknown, it becomes known, as we walk the road of difficult perspective is gained, and aspects become easier than they previously were.

I feel I am relearning to parent again, I feel like I am referring to parenting blogs for ideas, reading up on what I could do, implementing changes into my home, doing something to make the ‘difficult’ easier. What I am finding as I do this, is that I am gaining perspective, I am gaining an broader and deeper understanding of what I am experiencing. We as a family are growing and working it out together as we go. It’s never going to be perfect

Please know that you are not alone as you find things difficult. Please know that you as you find yourself in the middle of easy, that what was difficult is no longer. Be encouraged, it won’t stay difficult for long, it will take time, but you will be able to look back and see the journey to easy that you started by simply taking a step of courage.

Categories
Victory

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Do your little bit of good where you are; it’s those little bits of good put together that overwhelm the world.

Desmond Tutu
Categories
Blue Print communication

The Whiteboard

Some times as a leader ahem parent, leading multiple people whether they are three years old or thirty three it can be a difficult task. Different opinions, different values, conflicting behavior standards the list goes on. At times we need to stop and as a leader take our team back to the drawing board so to speak and nut out the issues.

In our home, we now have a whiteboard, as we needed to introduce something subtle that would stop the lack of listening and the lack of -not-admitting emotions. ” I’m not tired!”, ” I’m NOT angry!”. You know how it goes, with tired and emotional children… and at times parents.

So how is a whiteboard helping the family with listening to each other? It actually isn’t. What it does do is, it stops us from speaking ( read repeating questions multiple times) and allows us to communicate through the board. It is an additional communication tool, one that has taken away our frustrations and enabled the kids to vent theirs by allowing their creativity to flow. No longer is it the kids trying to articulate words about how they feel, they know they can draw, write or talk to us in the moment of cranky, tired, hangry the list goes on.

When we installed the board we all sat and talked about how it will be used and why we felt we needed it as a family. Needless to say the two older kids love it and use it for its purpose – most of the time, the five year old has now finally lost interest in drawing all over it. Although we have enjoyed looking at the attempts made to draw multiple minions…

We have drawn icons for who is doing what task- an easy visual reminder of allocated chores, we have a table for feelings – happy, sad and tired. We can all tick off how we feel at the end of the day and chat about it at dinner time. One day I even wrote on the board, ” stop fighting” – aimed at the kids. They ran over to see what I had written and within minutes were writing funny responses and the tension had dissipated. We use respectful language on the board, we write quotes that inspire us, we write ” to do” lists and we leave love notes for each other. It has been a welcome addition to our kitchen and the family response has been amazing.

This may or may not work in your family life, but this brain wave from my husband has certainly made an incredibly positive difference in our home.

Take some time this week, to think about how you could adjust or add something small to your family home, that you believe will make a positive difference to your family life.

Categories
Victory

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The key to successful leadership is influence, not authority.

 Ken Blanchard
Categories
Leadership

#homesofvictory

Never let the odds keep you from doing what you know in your heart you were meant to do.

H. Jackson Brown
Categories
Victory

#homesofvictory

Always be a first-rate version of yourself, instead of a second-rate version of somebody else.

Judy Garland
Categories
Victory

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There are far better things ahead than any we leave behind.

C.S. Lewis
Categories
Victory

Consistency is in the doing

In our last post we talked about how consistency is powerful when it came to our behaviour and choices we make as we navigate an unprecedented time of disappointments and seemingly lack of control in most areas of our life.

Another aspect to consistency is how we deal with stress and what feels like blow after blow of COVID related frustrations and disappointments. When we went through an incredibly stressful time in our lives about 4 years ago, my Dad made a comment that I’ve never forgotten. He simply said “beware the of the layers”. After that comment we talked about how stress and external pressures sometimes are a bit onion like layers upon layers.

What I am hearing more and more in this COVID season, is mental health across our nation is in sharp decline and in all honesty I am not surprised. When we start to talk to anyone around us, it seems the layers of worry, stress and anxiety comes out in both words and facial expressions.

I was listening to a pod cast yesterday where the speaker said, the 18 months to 2 years of COVID gives us what scientists call pandemic brain. The amount of decisions and stress our brains have dealt with over this time period is equivalent to 10 years – no wonder we feel tired. (Podcast: Miracle in the Mismatch)

So, how do we stay consistent in the middle of this unprecedented time?

Talk

  • Talk about what measures you can take as an individual and family to bring the stress and anxiety down. This may also be a conversation to have in the workplace also. Think about the stressors in your life, write them down – acknowledge them – then talk about how it could be changed from a stressor to neutral or even better from a stress to a source of strength and motivation. Talking is not easy – but it will get you thinking out loud, you’ll be processing it with some one else and brainstorming together.
  • Talk to someone who can help you make sense of your stress – whether it is a friend, family member or professional – just start talking – get support and the help you need. Their is no shame in dealing with stress, pressures and anxieties.
  • Talk about bringing back the fun. COVID has dampened many plans and exciting things we thought we might be able to do but can’t. At the moment I am lamenting travelling but as a family we brought back the fun and started listing places we could go based on our names. Sounds kind of not fun and a bit silly, but we enjoyed looking up places, dreaming about what some places would be like etc… It is a list we could never afford to fulfill but it gave us some fun and allowed us to dream.

Do

Now that you’ve talked about the serious stuff and everything in between – it is time to take action. Make a list of actions – plan your actions – motivate yourself to fulfil your actions. To give you an idea – as a family we talked about how we are talking to each other could be improved. Our action was to learn about left and right brain and how we flick sides in the use of our brain when we are angry for example. We learnt ways to flick back to calm ( at least calm-ish) and have been practicing that. It has reduced a layer of stress in our home. It was just one way we could remove a stress from the stress column in our minds and move it to neutral.

Keep Going

You’ve got this. None of us were prepared back in 2019 for what 2020 to now would bring – to ourselves, our families, our city, our nation and world. All of us have been touched some how, impacted some how by COVID.

Once you have talked and started to do – keep going. Keep finding ways to bring back the fun, to turn stressors into neutral. Give yourself some grace, allow your self to be sad, be tired, be hurting – but remember to pick yourself up and keep going. One step in front of the other is all it takes. Just take one step at a time. You’ve got this.

What are some ways you are trying to keep yourself even keeled? How are you working towards being consistent?

Categories
Leadership

#homesofvictory

Setting an example is not the main means of influencing another, it is the only means. 

 Albert Einstein
Categories
Leadership Victory

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Winning doesn’t always mean being first. Winning means you’re doing better than you’ve done before.

Bonnie Blair
Categories
Blue Print

measuring success 2

Following on from the previous post – measuring success, here are some things we’ve learnt as we have started to put a criteria together to measure our success as a family. If you haven’t read the previous post, now would be a good time, to give the following context.

  1. The W factor

“Who” or ” What” is telling us the measure of success? The world external to us or internal contributions like ourselves and our family? I am not the car I drive, the job I work in, the home I live in, nor am I the social media account. I am simply me. Yes, we have goals, but they should be mine and set by me – not anyone else. The internal contributors should be the defining measure of success. All too often it is the external voices that influence us the most. The fine line here of comparison becomes clearer. If I have a better car, if my kids have a private education, if my home is a bigger – the list goes on. The scary thing about comparison is, it doesn’t stop. Putting the brakes on comparison and asking what are the contributing factors that make you happy, is an interesting question. One that may take a while to absorb and think through. The world is full of marketing and promotions that tell you to be the best you must have the best, until the next thing comes along. What voices are you listening to, and what images are you looking at – to feed your measure of success? It may not be easy to turn off the external factors, but the internal voice of yourself and your family needs to speak loud and clear as you take the time to listen. You need to determine your own measure of success, don’t let the collective culture of social media, advertising etc determine that.

What external factors do you allow to influence your measure of success?

How can you make your internal influences louder when you measure the success of your family?

2. Comparison will rob your joy

If you feel like you are on the bandwagon of comparison it can be a hard thing to jump off, but you need to find a way. Even for a day, week or month. When you compare yourself to others including strangers, your family, your children, your home, your have and have nots – it literally steals your joy. All you see is the could, should, would haves. Not what you do have. I become profoundly thankful for toilets after I watched a Netflix episode of ‘ inside Bills brain’. It was about a sanitization project The Bill and Melinda Gates foundation is working on. It made me realise just how much I take simple luxuries for granted, such as running water, garbage collection, electricity, solar power etc… By stopping and being thankful and noticing just how much I do have in my daily life, it has enabled me to stop thinking about the next buy, the next gadget, the next item of clothing and step back and look at our long-term more strategic goals and how I can achieve them. Jumping off the comparison bandwagon was hard for me, it was a conscious thing I needed to do over a period of weeks to change my thinking. All I can say is, it’s been worth it. Don’t let comparison steal your joy.

Think of ways that you compare yourself or your family to others? How can you counter act that comparison?  

Determine a time frame for which you and your family will jump off the comparison bandwagon – a day, week, month, year. Add the end date to your calendar and reassess how you view comparison.

3. F… is it really a fail?

Finally, how do you perceive failure? As an adult I have struggled with a out of proportion fear of failure. I’ve worked through it… slowly. In our family, as a team we’ve decided that how the world perceives failure is not how we are going to perceive it. If we aim for something and we don’t achieve it, we are going to still look for the good and the lessons learnt during the process. We may not feel like celebrating a failure like some companies now do, but we will absolutely see it as a positive and use it to inspire us to be a little more creative, to step up a little more and to dig a bit deeper to reach the goals we set. With that said, we know we need to set reasonable goals to start with.

How do you and your family percieve failure?

What do you think you could do to make it a more positve experience?

4. A renewed sense of time

When telling a friend about our plan to not buy new in 2020, her first response was ” What about the Boxing day sales, you love them”. This is true, but I was able to respond with a smile saying, ” We went to the beach instead”. From this I realised, without even thinking, I chose quality family time over spending money on things I don’t need. You know how the saying goes:

We buy things we don’t need, with money we don’t have to impress people we don’t like.

Dave Ramsey – The total money makeover: A proven plan for financial fitness

The time we would have spent wrangling kids at a busy shopping centre on the weekend, for no real reason, has been transformed into meaningful family time. Our measure of success is no longer the bargain we snagged, but rather asking ourselves at the end of the day, ” Are the kids worn out from a day of fun?” ” Are their love tanks full?”. The interesting thing is, when we have family time, the smiles on the kids faces and the spontaneous hugs we get is amazing. We have found ourselves really proud that we could make the kids feel so full and loved that it overflows. A love full love tank is definitely a new addition to our success criteria.

What does your family value at its core? ( For us we’ve realised it’s time, read the post – )

Once you start gathering your crierteria of family success, this will feed into your family blueprint. Write down some elements that contribute to your family’s measurement of success?

Categories
Blue Print

obstacle course 2

Who we are?

So you think you know each other… Answer me this, how you would your other half respond to the following questions?

We came across this book in Typo … ” What if”

Guess the other person’s answer, then ask them for their answer and have good laugh. If your kids are old enough have some family time and ask them these questions too. We had some great family laughs listening to the ‘why’ in their answer.

  • If you could be a professional sports player, what sport would you play and why?
  • If you were an animal, what would you be and why?
  • If you were given an aeroplane ticket to any where, where would you go and why?
  • If you could be a character in a book, who would you be and why?
  • If you could be famous, what would you be famous for and why?

Did you already know your partners answers? Did some answers surprise you? At times, we think we know the person we do life with, other times we are surprised, perhaps disappointed or other times completely in awe of how they handled a situation.

A great place to start when navigating life’s obstacle course is to really know the person you do life with. Not just as friends or lovers, but know how they really tick – in all circumstances. Know how they will handle stress, if they are a fight or flight kinda person or if they will lead the charge – just know who they are.

We came across a great website through some work training we did, Http://16personalities.com/. We have never before come across such a detailed and accurate personality test. The results work through the personality strengths and weaknesses, parenting style, career paths, friendships, romantic relationships and workplace habits.

The interesting thing about the results was, I learnt so much more about the guy I do life with, and I thought I knew him well. His response to my results were to predict what I was going to say as I read them out loud to him. Jokes aside we both learnt more about each other, even though we’ve been together for 17 years. Even though our kids are too young to take this personality test, we can see some of our personality traits in them, by knowing who they are in a more detailed way we have been able to connect with our kids better. It has also, made us both aware of each others strengths and weaknesses and we can work together on strengthening the weaknesses – which is always a good thing.

In case you are wondering I am married to a protagonist and I am a defender.

Take the time to go through the quiz and enjoy learning more about yourself and each other. It will absolutely help lay the foundations for navigating the obstacle course – as you will get to know eachother better.

Write down 5 things you learnt about yourself and about the one you do life with. Use these things to grow your relationship and build a firm foundation of understanding each other.