Tag: strength

Categories
Victory

Monopoly

What do you think of when I mention the word monopoly? A long board game, family fights, cheating, having to be the banker, getting out of jail… some how passing go, working out how to buy Mayfair…

I feel it is timely to write about a game that truly leaves its mark on family life generationally. I have fond memories of playing monopoly on family holidays growing up, even though the games often ended in tears. My Dad never showed any mercy and would win every game. My brother and I would try to conjure up ways to potentially beat him, but he always seemed to be one step ahead.

Now with my own family, other than to highlight my thankfulness for the shorter version of the game, we are making our own memories. Just to note: I am now Mrs Competitive who is more than happy to wipe the board every time and claim to be the winner… That aside, it is interesting to see the family dynamics play out. One child, must be the banker and real estate agent at the same time, he will also be the one to say, you don’t have much money left can I give you some. He is the risk adverse player and one who invests carefully and thoughtfully. Another child, just plays her own game, not paying attention to what anyone else if doing, she is focused on her property and available cash. Neither of them, are yet to pick up on my ruthless plan that ensures I win every time.

My thought is, how often do we spend time, just watching and thinking about the people in our life – whether family, friends or work colleges? Do we observe them, do we understand who they are ? How they are treated and treat others? Do we even want to know? I would argue we should – then we know how they tick and how we can best be a support to them when the need arises. For example, I know when one of my work mates is stressed, she loves to tell everyone she is stressed. That is my cue, to sit with her and work out what the next hour / day/ week needs to look like to minimise the stress and focus on outcomes. For me, this is not hard, but it wouldn’t have happened if I didn’t pick up on her behaviour when she is stressed.

This goes for my kids also. One of my kids, often has a shower to clear their head and reset. I’ve had to say to them, you don’t need to ask to have a shower, just do it. I know, if the shower is on at an odd time of day, the reset button is being pushed.

It may be time, if you haven’t had a family game of monopoly for a while, to play together. Use it to observe the dynamics and how well your family team works together. It may highlight some areas to work on, it may also, make you smile at how your family team works together.

Categories
Victory

#homesofvictory

There are only two ways to influence human behaviour: you can manipulate it or you can inspire it.

Simon Sinek
Categories
Leadership

enable

Enable means to provide (someone) with adequate power, means and opportunity or authority (to do something.)

Dictionary.com

Home of Victory has been designed to enable. The platform of Homes of Victory is built from a place of encouragement and seeks to provide opportunities for families to improve things in order to live in victory.

Aside from Homes of Victory, I love to encourage. I feel like it is one of my gifts, even a talent. I love taking kind words and wrapping them up in love and giving them to someone who is unsuspecting, someone who is in need of kind words or someone who doesn’t even  know they need kind words until they receive them.. I’ve always related easily to the word encourage which like enable is a verb meaning :

Encourage means to inspire with courage, spirit, or confidence

Dictionary.com

Since learning more about the words and their meaning,  I’ve come to realise enable and encourage are two very different things, although they work really well together, some may say in collaboration. Enable to me is the stronger more practical of the two words as the definition includes the words  adequate power, means, opportunity and authority. While encourage is the quiet strong emotion, as it has the words courage, spirit and confidence in its definition. While I love to encourage, I also love to enable.

What can you do this week to not only encourage someone but enable them? Who can you build up with kind words? Who can you give adequate power to, to ensure they can use their gifts and talents to their potential? Who can you give the means and opportunity to?

It may be one of your children? It may be your other half? It may be a work mate, friend or stranger. Whoever you choose make sure you enable with purpose and enjoy the giving process. This world needs more kindness and it certainly needs more encouragement. Let’s see who we can enable this week.  We can’t wait to hear your stories.

Categories
Blue Print

in conversation with Ben & Christina

Who is in your family?

Benjamin (39), Christina (39), Zachary (6), Abigail (3)

Are you planners or do you go with the flow?
We are planners. Going with the flow is quite stressful for us.

What does your normal week look like?

Well before Covid-19 our normal week was very full. We both work every week day, Zach has school and Abby has day care. In addition we try to fit in extra curricular activities and Ben is at soccer training at least three nights a week.

Weekends are then full of grocery shopping, house chores,squeezing in some rest, birthday parties / socialising, church, getting ready for the week ahead and a soccer game for Ben that generally takes up a whole day.

You are now embarking on an exciting project outside of work, that takes up a lot of time, how do you make that work for yourselves and the whole family?

We are currently developing an app, which is exciting. I knew I couldn’t do it myself so I have employed the services of an app development company. Ben and I have worked through the specifications for the app after the kids have gone to bed. I am the one that has all the interaction with the software company and reads all the documentation. Then I sit down with Ben and explain it to him and get his input into the design and features. We also like to talk about it randomly while we are out and I will take notes on my phone. When we have a version to test I know Zach will be excited to participate in testing.We have made sure that this project doesn’t impact much on family life and as such we are taking it a bit slower and only doing it when we have time.

What advice would you give to a family working through the family blueprint, designing the family life you want?

Our family needs to do this too, so first step would be to recognise that you need to do this! We don’t have a blueprint written down but we do have agreement on some things that we adhere to and these have come about from good communication and purposeful planning. Things like taking regular holidays, living on a budget, keeping the kids active, involving our kids in Christian communities, ensuring our kids see us giving our time and resources to help those in need and to help the church. All these things take planning and sacrifice. Our lives are very busy so we have made some very conscious changes this year that is helping a lot:

  • We employ a cleaner to free up more time to spend with the family
  • We use a shared calendar on our phones to improve communication
  • We employ a gardener when needed
  • We have paid for a bus to take the kids to after school activities.
  • We incorporate swimming lessons into the after school care session, so we are making one less trip out.
  • We changed to a daycare centre closer to home, which also has extra curricular activities like swimming available.

These changes have all worked to improve the time we have together as a family and has saved us a lot of running around. Our budget hasn’t suffered either because it means I’m able to maintain my working hours.

Categories
Leadership

beware the layers

This post was written pre COVID-19, but we feel this is as relevant today as any other day. We hope you are encouraged by it.

Have you ever had a year that you would rather forget? A season where you wished you could press the off button just for a minute to catch your breath? Well we were there two years ago, and feel like we have only just recovered. With that said, the stress experienced and the ensuing dramas, have taught us so many things, and led us to a better place in our family life, that honestly may not have happened if we didn’t experience all that we did. To give you an insight into our season, it began with plans to renovate our home.  Those plans were ticking over in the background when a beloved family member passed away and we found out we were pregnant with our much longed for third baby. Renovations commenced, the baby decided that four hours of sleep in twenty four hours was plenty – no joke (this lasted until she was 16 months old), my husband changed jobs due to the job market, I went back to work after nine months to a new boss, the newly renovated home got broken into, we finally moved back into our home – which was amazing, but I didn’t enjoy it for the first two months as the baby and I got dreadfully ill.

During this time, I was talking to my Dad, who just couldn’t believe what was going on in our world. Every time we spoke, something else had happened or was delayed or impacted our family. One time, as I tearfully added to the list of what was going on, he just said “ beware of the layers”. When he first said it I laughed as it reminded me of Donkey in Shrek – when they talk about how onion have layers…

We had seriously got to the point, where we practically lived on no sleep – thanks to the baby, we had decisions to make left, right and center with the reno, we still tried to work out some family time with our other kids who didn’t understand why we were so tired all the time. We simply had no idea on how to handle the building layers of stress, while continuing to work and do life. That word of encouragement, beware the layers – made such a huge difference to our mindset. We were able to compartmentalise some of the stressful things going on. We were able to almost categorise them into the level of urgency they had to be attended to. In the end, we sought the advice of a psychologist on how to handle what was going on. When he looked at me and said, tell me what’s going on… I started with the lack of sleep… his response, “ What do you mean?” I answered, “ I literally get four hours of broken sleep a night”.  I will never forget the look on his face and the nervous laugh of my husband. He asked me how I function… I laughed and replied not well, that’s why we are here. We did use his advice to work through our layers, and to build strategies that helped us deal with the layers of stress bound up in a ball of lack of sleep

I hope you don’t find yourself in a season like this, where although you learn a lot and you needed to go through the fire to get there, remember the phrase beware of the layers. Use it as a tool, to work through the various stressful situations, use it to motivate you – that you will get through the layers in due time. Use it to understand where your capacity is, and when you need to reach out for help. One thing I can tell you two years after this season is, I have got my sleep back,(I realised I am actually a nice person when I’m not sleep deprived) and I know that I am tougher and stronger than I ever gave myself credit for. In the end it was worth it.

Categories
Leadership

Leadership trait: Adaptability

It is not balance you need but adaptability.    

Erwin Raphael McManus   

Ah that word ‘ change’. I feel like the entire world has had an abrupt lesson in adaptability – that no more needs to be said.  What I will say though is – our response to change – influences those around us . Our response to change also determines the outcome whether it is positive or not. It all comes down to choice – how do we choose to respond when we have the responsibility of influence. I can admit my adaptability and the capacity to deal with change, is a learnt skill.

I am awesome at routine and love to be organised and on top of things. Over time, I’ve learnt to be adaptable and deal with change in a positive manner, taking my team along with me for the adventure. I am also now able to walk my children through changes in life, ones we are in control of and ones we aren’t.

Change is the only constant in life. One’s ability to adapt to those changes will determine your success in life.

Benjamin Franklin

How do you approach change? Do you lead by example and make the most of it, not knowing how it will pan out?

Start to look at what you can control and what you can’t. How does that change your sphere of influence and impact your family? Although as challenging as this time of COVID – 19 has been, it has really made me aware of how my words and influence impact my family. I love it, that my eldest child is now telling me all the good things about spending more time as a family… rather than whinging that she can’t see her friends. Over time, even a matter of weeks, our influence in her life has worked for the better. Our youngest, however is still grappling with why I couldn’t use baby wipes to take the germs away from the playground…

Being adaptable, doesn’t only make life easier and rosier for us as adults and leaders, but makes for a smoother transition for the children in our lives. Their capacity to deal with change, enables them to navigate life in a far more positive way, than if they cant. Change is simply a given and they need to be able to adapt. At times we have had our plans changed at the last minutes by other family members and so on, it is interesting to gauge how our children react and how we can talk them through the process.

I will leave you with this last thought, I believe being adaptable makes you less selfish as you are thinking of others, thinking of the big picture and not just of yourself. Rather, seeing where you fit into the bigger picture along with everyone else…

Let us know your thoughts on that…

Categories
Victory

#homesofvictory

Leadership is the capacity to translate vision into reality.

Warren Bennis

In our homes we are leaders whether we think we are or not. Our little ones who may not be so little any more, can’t help but see us as leaders.

What is it that you see in your future? What step, no matter how big or little can you take today to make it a reality?

May these words spark something inside of you today, that inspires you to take your dreams and vision for your family and make it a reality.