I'm baa-aack

Hi guys,

In case you've been wondering where I've been I'm now back from holidays.  Quite an interesting experience actually.  I was in Japan for the earthquake, tsunami and nuclear melt-down (never in any real danger but there nonetheless) and then in Thailand for a wedding and was stranded by unseasonal typhoons that cancelled ferries, ruined airports, caused landslides and resulted in an aircraft carrier being despatched by the Thai Govt to evacuate stranded travellers.  Fun times.

It was an interesting demonstration of resilience and I enjoyed watching how my various friends coped with adversity, uncertainty and the challenges associated with communicating in a foreign country.  It was also interesting too to see how the locals, who were much more seriously affected than we were (I mean we could eventually go home) responded.  I've no doubt they must've thought us Westerners to be rather precious.

Hey, have any of you had a near death experience?  I've often been a little envious of the characters you hear about who have such an experience and then go on to make radical transformations in their lives.  I've often enviously thought "if only that could happen to me, then I could finally make those changes stick"  pffst!  Now I know the stupidity of that thought.  I now think that the change they made and the effort required to make would still be just as hard as it is for the rest of us on any normal day.  Maybe their motivation is different, I don't know?   Anyway I tell you about mine.   When our 12th floor Tokyo hotel room was caught in an aftershock and the building was creaking and groaning and the curtains swinging like crazy I seriously thought I was going to die.  Seriously.  I was shitting myself.  Grabbed my passport and all I wanted to do was get the hell out of dodge!!!  The feeling of helplessness when I realised that I couldn't was pretty confronting.  To cut a long story short, my near death (in actual fact I was never in any danger at all but I didn't know that at the time) experience hasn't really changed my perspective on things, or my ability to make changes so I guess I can stop wishing for some external bolt of lightening to make changes for me and take some responsibility for making the changes myself.  Now, if I can just work out what changes I want to make....

I am however refreshed after my holiday and keen to get back into some regular training.  It looks like work is picking up too which is great.  I can't begin to tell you how depressing it has been to be selling services that no-one wants.  Particularly when the service is you (me).   And just to clarify.... I'm not a gigalo.  I'm a facilitator and work predominantly in the public sector.  First the GFC then a recent spate of natural disasters has seriously slowed my business down.  I haven't really talked about it much.  Two reasons really.  One,  I didn't want to give voice to my more negative thoughts and two, my rationale brain (yes I do have some rationale in there somewhere) knew that things would turn around.... eventually.

Ok.  Bye for now.  Next time I'm going to talk about something that's been really messing with my head.  Why am I here?

Be Happy