The first place we must win the victory is in our own minds. If you don’t think you can be successful, then you never will be.
Joel Osteen
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Tag: team
We’ve just been through a time, where Mr 8, decided to eat every meal in a taco. I had absentmindedly put some leftover taco shells in a container and left them in the pantry… he found them, 5 in total. He decided after we sat down to dinner each night, to go to the cupboard and get a taco. He had spaghetti in a taco, pulled pork in a taco, a sausage in a taco you get the idea.
Why am I writing about this? This was a week where I didn’t battle my son, I chose not to feel defeated but rather went with the flow. Each night as I rounded up the kids for dinner (read cats that keep wandering off) I would wait with anticipation for the “ Can I please go to the cupboard?” question. I happily obliged, actually I chose to. I chose not to argue, I chose not to worry about it, I chose not to spend energy on it, I chose perspective.
I had flashbacks of my Mum getting really upset when my brother would cover his dinner in tomato sauce every night. She would always say, “that’s not how I made it to be eaten”. It would annoy her and upset her every single time. I agree with her, and know the effort that goes into making a meal that the whole family will eat and the heart of it is, you want the whole family to enjoy it.
The thing is, we can all enjoy the same thing differently and there are things in life that are not worth the energy involved in getting upset or annoyed about. I needed to and wanted to see his love for Taco’s through his eyes.
Do you have a taco like habit? One that no one else agrees is good or nice or could possibly make you happy?
Do you, your other half or kids have a taco like habit that you can’t stand?
This week instead of a battle, choose not to, choose to see it from their eyes. Save your energy and put the battles into perspective.
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blueprint strategy 3
Action plan
By now, you should have five or more goals written down, that you are both or all happy about and agreed upon. How do you feel? Excited? Daunted?
For those of you who are not planners, and setting goals seems so foreign, please do not feel that this is not for you. It is, as much as it is for a planner. The action plan that you will create, can be as detailed as you like, it can be at the forefront of all family decisions or not. It can be what you want it to be for your family situation. For us, we are half- half planners. We love to have goals ticking over in the background, while we get on with it and have fun along the way. At times we get really distracted and need to remind ourselves of the goals we set and why, but day to day, we are not dictated by our goals. We know what they are and how much of them we have achieved, but we still like to have an element of flexibility and improvisation.
To put everything in perspective, a strategic plan (which we call the family blueprint) gives you a place to record your vision, purpose and values (which is your family values statement), as well as your long-term goals (the goals you’ve written) and the action plans you’ll use to reach them (what we will now do).
As overwhelming as an action plan can sound, you will get your groove on, once you get started. We found the easiest thing to do, was ask a set of questions, write down our answers and then tweak it as we go along. We’ve added in the questions we asked to form our family action plan. For this we didn’t include our children, but if they have been involved in the process of developing goals or even your family values statement, it may be good to include them in some if not all of the action plan creation.
Activity: Answer the following questions according to each individual goal set.
- What: (The goal – as per family values list)
- When: (Time frame)
- Why: (motivations and how does it link to your family values statement)
- Actions required: Include when you plan to complete each task
- Measure of success: What criteria will be used, how will failure be dealt with
- Link to family budget: Estimated cost and savings plan
Creating an action plan will take time. Work through each goal at your own pace, work together to come up with an action plan for each one.
Once you’ve completed your action plan, take some time to let the goals and outcomes sink in.
Ask, is the plan as a whole realistic for your family?
What adjustments could I make, to ensure every goal is achieved?
Here at Homes of Victory we love to share thoughts and real life with you. This was written by a career woman, who has three young children. She always questioned how to balance life and work, children and career. This is shared with permission and we hope it encourages you and inspires you.
Hey my babies one, two and three.
I wonder if you’ll ever know how much I love you. When the day dawns and the crazy begins I hope you see it’s love that motivates me. When we’re all tired but we need to keep going I know you feel the warmth in my hands when I hug you, the empathy in my voice when I encourage you and the pride that radiates from my heart.
I feel the guilt of work and yet another kind of guilt if I don’t. As I pick you all up after a long day I breathe you all in – one, two, three I miss you dreadfully yet worry I won’t find the strength to make it to bed time. I know at times I’m cranky more than I should be. I know at times I’m in auto pilot. I never wish time away but some days I only want my bed. I wonder if you’ll ever see that I draw my strength from Christ and no one else. I wonder if you see the love I have for you that drives me every moment to keep on going. I’d never quit, never thought to but some days I’ve had to dig deeper than I knew possible just to get you through the day and off to sleep peacefully.
When I hear you wake during the night it is love that draws me to your side. I sleepily step towards your room saying mumma coming it’s okay. My eyes are full of sleep but my heart is always about you my one, two, three.
If it’s a bottle, nappy or cuddle I’m right there. I wonder if you’ll remember my hugs with two hands holding you tight knowing tomorrow you’ll be that little bit bigger and that little bit older.
My babies one, two, three I wonder if you ever notice my long tight hugs. They’re more than just annoying they’re me holding you close to me. One day hugs just won’t be the same so I cherish each one. So much about you is hidden in my heart. Saved and savored. Every day you remind me to laugh and find joy in the little things.
Then, when I tuck you in tight and kiss you goodnight, you whisper with your eyes closed ,”I love you Mumma”. Then, and only then, do I realise, I have wondered in vain and I realise I have been too hard on myself. Forever I will love you one, two, three. Forever you will be my motivation, my joy, my completeness. It won’t matter how big you grow or how fast the years go by – I will always know my heart belongs to you on, two and three. I know your heart too, will always have a special place for me.
Love your Mumma Bear
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carve out time
It has been interesting how in the returning to some what normal, the busy has crept back into our lives – almost without us realising. One thing we have noticed in our home especially is that lack of time we as parents put aside for each other. Time to chat, time to hang out, time to relax. Time to invest into our relationship.
This was highlighted to us, in a conversation had with a health professional. We were talking about camping and she mentioned how she loved to go with her teenage kids. She kept mentioning ” we” so innocently, we asked who “we” is. The look of dispair came across her face, and she said, my husband and I are only just ‘ we’ at the moment. I work 12 hour days and we never get to see each other. We are trying to find time together but it is near impossible. She continued that they are committed to trying to make their marriage work, and not let growing apart be the reason they are no longer together.
How many of us, inch into that zone without realising, work, life, everything else seems to be ‘ important’ but we miss the real ‘importance’ of continually building relationships with those we live with, with those we love to do life with, those we have committed till death do us part.
Today’s encouragement is this: carve out some time to invest into those you do life with. It may be a 10 minute coffee, it may be a family game, it may be booking a date night – be proactive today and do something to show your committment to family, committment to marriage, committment to what is really important.
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Sometimes when you’re in a dark place you think you’ve been buried, but you’ve actually been planted.
Christine Caine co-founder of A21
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Who is the loudest?
This week has been one of opportunity and disappointment. Highs and lows all rolled into one. Both the opportunity and disappointment have been caused by the opinion and decision of others. We also received valuable unwarranted encouragement while also struggling to comprehend the knock back of a well-rounded argument for an amazing collaboration opportunity. It is something we have no control over. In the middle of a download about why the we felt disappointed, we started talking about the positives of the situation, how we were building resilience and that the encouragement came at the perfect time.
To put the brakes on the disappointment, we had an interesting conversation about making a choice about who and what we were going to listen to and to allow the disappointing moment wash over us as we continued on with our work. We decided in the moment to listen and remember the words of the encouragers rather than the naysayers. We would use the disappointment to form our determination for future opportunities. The choice we made lead for a brighter end of the week and lessons learnt.
The question I have for you in your situation is.. In your moment of opportunity or disappointment, do you choose which voice you listen to, or do you listen to them all? Chances are if you do,
The negative voices in your life will speak the loudest and linger the longest in your thoughts. Don’t listen to them.
Do you listen to the encourager, the naysayer, the ‘you can do it’ voice or the ‘don’t even try’ voice? Only you get to choose which words stick and which ones you need to let slide off. Likewise, in your life whether at home or work, are you the encourager or the naysayer? Do you see opportunity or feel threatened by great ideas? Are you someone who enables another to thrive, or do you like to do all the thriving?
In life everything comes down to the choices we make and when. Make choices today the contribute to building others up, that encourage others while seeking to find the best solutions. Wouldn’t it be a better world if we all encouraged one another, gave constructive feedback, and had the capacity to see what others see in terms of their dreams and visions.
Side note – May Homes of Victory be a positive voice in your life, may you see the passion and encouragement behind each post. Live each day making choices that lead towards victory in this season.
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Those who follow the crowd usually get lost in it.
Rick Warren, author of The Purpose Driven Life: What on Earth Am I Here for?
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crisis management plan
To be honest crisis management is something that we don’t often come into contact with in a formal sense. From a business perspective, there is always one ticking over in the background and pending the type of business the frequency of its activation is determined. Applying this to home life, is more than a financial contingency plan which I find most common – the suggested saving of three months wages for the just in case – for more info read The Barefoot Investor for families by Scott Pape. A crisis management plan is not so much a plan as a process that can be divided into three sections pre – crisis, crisis response and post crisis.
By building this into your family blueprint, as a family you will be prepared to an extent for a crisis, emergency or disaster. The idea behind having this type of plan, even briefly mapped out is to reduce the fear involved and enable the navigation of it to be the focus.
To lay it all out on the table crisis, disaster and emergency are defined as:
A crisis is a time of intense difficulty or danger.
dictionary.com
An emergency is a serious, unexpected, and often dangerous situation requiring immediate action.
dictionary.com
A disaster is a sudden accident or a natural catastrophe that causes great damage or loss of life.
dictionary.com
As you can see, it is a sliding scale of impact on your family and community. None are ideal, but in life these types of situations are not an ‘if’ but ‘ when’ scenario. No one is immune from unkind situations. Here at Homes of Victory we are going to give you some framework to create a crisis management plan to enable you to navigate these seasons in life and hopefully feel more equipped.
Pre-crisis plan
First up, we have the pre-crisis plan. The following series of questions will assist you in creating a list of actions regarding the contents of your family a pre-crisis plan. We have included the basics of what we believe will contribute effectively to your family blueprint. You and your family may have other aspects to add to this part of the plan.
Red Cross have a great online plan that lists everything you need to consider in an emergency or disaster type situation for example bushfires and floods.
When it comes to other life situations such as a crisis like an injury or illness with financial impacts there are other aspects to consider.
Documentation & medication information:
The Red Cross has a great plan for these details. This is a great template to use, for listing important documents and medication information.
Insurance:
- Do you have an up to date will?
- Is your superannuation up to date? Do you know how much insurance you have under your superannuation?
- Are all of your insurance policies up to date – home, car etc… ?
- Do you have all medicare and medical insurance up to date?
Financial:
- Do you have a savings plan in place, in case of loss of employment or unexpected expenses?
- Do you have other investments you could rely on?
- Do you have plans for multiple income streams?
Education:
- What tools are you going to use in your family life, to keep the crisis in perspective?
- Is there any education you need to invest in? e.g. first aid training, financial management, resilience, stress management etc…
- Are you aware of each other’s personality types? Keeping in mind we generally revert to this personality type under stress.
- Look for ways to be able to talk to your children about particular situations. Check out your local library for books that explain the experience.
- Do your children know how to phone emergency services? Relay their address?
Assistance:
- Do you have family you could call on for help when needed? Who is it, and do you need to have a conversation about it?
- Do you have a network of friends you could call on for help with the children.
By having a pre-crisis plan available to you and your family, it enables a level of organisation to be available for when life gets tricky.
Crisis Response
I feel this is one thing that is hard to define. For business it is all about making the crisis look minimal on the outside, while on the inside the business scrambles to mitigate the impact. From a family perspective this is far harder to do. I know for us, at time we do go quiet while dealing with issues that pop up in life, we take in a sense time out to deal, and then resurface. We are quite independent and over time have learnt to share what is happening in life and to accept support from friends and family. We tend to be the support rather than the supported. With all of that said, over time, we have also learnt to put measures in place, like what was discussed in the pre-crisis plan to enable us to navigate the obstacle as best we can. In the post – beware the layers, we share how we went through a hectic season of one crisis after another which brought us to our knees. One thing that pulled us through was our determination to continue to communicate, to continue building on the foundations of our relationship we had set, and deal the best with could with the layers of stress. These experiences have shown us how tough we are and we realised we are way stronger than we have ever given ourselves credit for. It also showed us, that in the end, we could be proud of how we managed it, as we did our best and that is all we can ask of ourselves. It wasn’t a fun experience, nor was it exciting. It was hard work, day in / day out – to stay afloat while staying grounded and keeping it all in perspective.
Take some time to think about situations that your family have faced. How did you pull through?
Were you proud of the way the crisis was handled?
What changes in your behaviour or thinking could you make to reduce the impact of it on your family?
Keep some space in your notebook, for the next crisis – take note of how you handled it and what improvements you’ve made. It does sound a little gloomy, but it is something to celebrate when you can see improvements on how you and your family deal with the not so nice situations in life.
Post crisis
When things settle down, and life carries on, it is important to look in retrospect at the situation or season and take some time to let the learnings sink in. When you are ready, take some time to look at:
What are your learnings?
How will what you’ve learnt equip you for the next crisis?
Who can you share your learnings with? Who will benefit from them?
What could you do to be more prepared next time?
We do acknowledge that we can never be prepared for everything in life but the more we learn as life goes on, the better we can deal with unexpected situations together.
Sometimes when you’re in a dark place you think you’ve been buried, but you’ve actually been planted.
Christine Caine – co-founder of A21
This absolutely represents what I believe should happen through our experiences in life – even the dark places, we can learn and grow, and something good will come out of it. It may take time, but eventually we will see the good.
We are basketball fans in our house, actually when I say we – I mean my husband is, and I grew up collecting basketball cards with my brother and loving the Charlotte Hornets purely because their jersey colours matched my netball uniform… Any way, the Lakers are a favourite team in our home and as the playoffs are in full swing in America, we thought it apt to quote perhaps one of the greatest players of his generation LeBron James.
always strive for greatness
LeBron James
At Homes of Victory, we couldn’t agree with this more. It’s not always about winning, or achieving, it’s about always striving – trying – making an effort. Whether your love of basketball like my husband or like myself – remember in life it is not always about winning but the process behind it – the effort – the thought behind every decision to grow and achieve.
What greatness are you striving for in your home? In your family?
What greatness are you striving for in life?
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Building Resilience
Resilience, in its finest form, is like wearing armour with our feet firmly planted, ready to do battle with the season we’re in.
When looking at the 5 pillars of resilience or what we as individuals can do to build resilience, these characteristics are very internal facing. They are: self-awareness, mindfulness, self-care, positive relationships & purpose. By equipping ourselves with these types of weapons and armour we will be better equipped to be resilient and remain resilient. I am guilty here of lacking in self-care… I tend to always focus on doing, rather than taking time out to just relax. You could say I’m good at burning myself out. I get bored when it’s quiet – can anyone relate to that? With time I am slowly learning to stop and take care of myself.
What area do you need to work on to increase your resilience?
Another way to look at resilience or the qualities that work together to form resilience is known in psychology as the 7 C’s:
- Confidence
- Competence
- Connection
- Contribution
- Character
- Coping and
- Control
Without some measure of these in our repertoire, we are not going to thrive in terms of resilience as well as we could. These skills can be learnt over time, and do take practice. With that said, we have added some practical ideas for ways to build resilience in yourself, your family and your home life.
Building Social Resilience:
- Learn to communicate effectively
- Learn to resolve conflict
- Be present
- Listen to one another
- Care for one another
- Look beyond yourself
- Put yourself in others shoes
- Learn to appreciate those around you and;
- Use humor where appropriate
Building Physical Resilience:
- Exercise
- Participate in a sport or activity that stretches your fitness
- Engage in activities that you enjoy and find relaxing
Building Mental Resilience:
- Do not isolate yourself – stay connected to friends and family – those around you – even if you are physically isolated, do not disconnect from friends and family.
- Ask for help when you need it
- Be consciously flexible towards situations
- Ask: What is your purpose and how can you fulfil this starting with everyday tasks
- Learn new things – find things you are interested in and go through the learning process.
Building Emotional Resilience:
- Practice self-care – be kind to yourself
- Learn to manage strong feelings
- Be self-confident,
- Be able to see the big picture
- Pay attention to your own needs and feelings.
Try some of these ideas this week and see how you go. Building resilience takes time and thought. It will also bring a greater capacity to see the world as a better place, and guide your leadership to a more positive mindset.
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Learning to lead using freedom
We’ve just had a week away camping at the beach. We feel incredibly blessed as where we live Covid restrictions have lifted to the point where we could do this, as it is our absolute favourite thing to do.
Every time we camp on the drive home we chat about what improvement we could make to the set up and experience. Bit by bit we add to our camping gear to make camping that little bit more organised, enjoyable and easier.
The addition to this trip was a set of walkie talkies… our kids don’t have phones ( they’re 10,8 and 4) and our camping trips are screen free as much as possible. We take bikes and scooters and love to give our kids freedom to ride, play and meet other kids so these walkie talkies were perfect. They allowed them freedom with boundaries. We could relax knowing we could contact them.
Reflecting on this camping trip we realized our kids had learnt some valuable lessons by being given freedom. All of which contribute to their developing leadership skills.
- Confidence: They could choose where they went knowing we could still keep them safe and were available if they needed us. The walkie talkies gave them the confidence to be apart and meet up again as they chose.
- Communication: This section was three fold. 1) The kids were able to communicate with us, when they wanted , and thought through the process before contacting us. 2) They communicated with each other clearly and decisively – as they were having too much fun to spend too long talking. 3) Having a communication tool on hand made them feel safe – while having the freedom to explore together or alone. The fun part was the kids allocated every one a bird name as our ‘ code name’ for the walkie talkies. It added humour and fun to the conversations.
- Decision making – they knew the boundaries of where we stayed and knew to stay within them. They did explore further – but communicated that to us first. We showed trust in their decisions and they in turn displayed communication and trust.
Without even knowing it, they spent the week learning a different dimension to their current leadership skills. The freedom we gave them – along with the trust, gave them the confidence to do what they wanted to and explore.
Likewise in the workplace- we too can give freedom to our staff – possibly not with walkie talkies on a camping trip, but freedom within their role – as we observe mentor – freedom for some – opens up so many possibilities and will get the creative thoughts flowing.
What ways can you build freedom into your family life?
What ways can you build freedome into your staff?
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communication summary
When pulling your communication plan together, remember it needs to be flexible and evolve according to the needs of your family. Communication is vital and powerful – it creates connection, it creates a sense of belonging and it can be the difference between feeling secure or not. It is not something that is static. It will take time to develop.
Over the coming months take some time to look back on all of the elements of a communication plan as below. Reassess how your family is going. Enjoy the wins and be encouraged by the learnings.
- Why we communicate
- What we communicate
- How we communicate and with who
- The methods we use to communicate different sets of information
- How often we communicate
The family landscape is always changing as kids and parents alike are always growing and changing – make sure your communication expectations align. Are you as parents demonstrating respect and language that you want your children to reflect? The children will copy you, whether you want them to or not.
Finally, in coming to a close on the communication plan, enjoy talking about and mapping out your communication plan. The value of this plan will come into play when the next conflict or stressful situation arises. It will become the backbone of agreement between family members on how to behave, that will day by day have a more positive and refreshing influence.
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Be the best you can be until you know better. Then when you know better, do better.
Maya Angelou
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Under the microscope: Resilience
Resilience is the talk of the town here at HOV this week. Considering the year we have had – personally, as a community, as a nation and globally, I am sure we can all relate to the quest for finding resilience and remaining resilient through prolonged seasons of stress, overwhelming situations and isolation. Resilience is not putting happy pants on and doing a dance then being ready to face the day with a plastered smile on your face, resilience is so much more than that. Resilience at times can be treated with contempt, as we wonder what next, in our stressful situations. Resilience, however, will offer us a look into the positive, could-be’s and may-be’s that negativity does not allow for. Resilience, in its finest form, is like wearing armour with our feet firmly planted, ready to do battle with the season we’re in.
We all have varying levels of resilience, at times we may feel we have bucket loads, other times, we wonder where we can find more… So, let’s take a closer look at resilience, and why it is necessary, important, and critical to our home life, workplace and community.
Resilience is defined as:
1. The power or ability to return to the original form, position, etc., after being bent, compressed, or stretched, elasticity.
2. Ability to recover readily from illness, depression, adversity, or the like, buoyancy.
In your home, resilience is vital for several reasons as it enables us to develop ways to protect against experiences that could be overwhelming. Resilience helps us maintain balance in our lives during stressful periods and protects us to a degree from developing mental health difficulties and issues.
In the workplace, resilience is a key strategy to enable us to tackle stress, competitive job markets, workplace conflicts and address challenges and change. Learning to be resilient in the workplace is so important as we often identify work as the number one stressor in our lives.
In community, resilience becomes all about the recovery from adversity and how individuals / families contribute to that.In Australia over the past few years we’ve had our share of devastating fires and floods along with the rest of the world weathering coronavirus– it has been a mix of grief at the loss and devastation but also a joy to see how the communities affected rally together and inspire the recovery efforts.
So, how do we go about building resilience, staying resilient and teaching those around us how to be resilient? To answer this question, we need to look at the types of resilience and where our strengths and weaknesses lie. Once an awareness of our current capacity of resilience, we can then build on this foundation.
We all experience ebbs and flows of resilience pending the circumstances around us and its severity – we are a work in progress on this too. The idea behind building resilience and staying resilient is reducing the difference between the ebbs and flows.
Start to think about what impacts on your resilience? This will become a key factor when increasing your resilience and staying resilient through the long haul.
I know when my kids were little, lack of sleep played a huge role in how resilient I felt. I remember one night, making a sandwich for my eldest, my husband innocently asked what I was doing, and I burst into tears…. Not very resilient hey – the reality was I was living on four hours of sleep a night and his lovely well intended question pushed me to tears… it’s funny now, but when I look back, all I wanted was the strength to get through each day. Have you been there? Are you living this now?
Here at HOV we are not experts in this field, nor claim to be, what we are interested in doing is giving you some pointers to get you started and support and encourage you on the adventure of building resilience.
Before we get into the how to build resilience, it is important to note that there are four different types of resilience we can build:
- Physical
- Mental
- Emotional and;
- Social
All four areas in our lives require some level of resilience, as we face major life problems, situational problems, daily problems and what we like to call micro stresses. The little annoyances that build up, or the ones we see when we are in a negative head-space.
Think for a moment and rate your level of resilience for each area? Use a scale of 1 – 10. Where do you feel your strength areas? Where are your weaker areas?
If you are doing this with someone you are close to and feel comfortable – rate each other and talk about your answers. This is about growing and supporting each other.
Keep an eye out for the next post of under the microscope: resilience – in reality. In this post we will be looking at practical ways to increase your resilience and how to stay resilient.
Homes of Victory 