Apologies to everyone who reads my blogs.

In February, there were none to read. I was lying in hospital with a fractured collar bone.

It’s an odd sensation, becoming virtually left-handed instead of right-handed. In fact, everything changes: dressing, eating, blogging, not to mention energy levels.

I have a new appreciation for my body!

Cheers

Lisa

At the Cincinnati Art Museum

These are the pix I promised way back at the beginning of January, 2012.  Yes, it’s taken long enough, but I’m sure you’ll agree that they were worth waiting for!

Every museum has its major attractions, its drop-dead features. The city rightly showcases them and they draw patrons from miles around .For me, the toilet décor was a winner.

As the pix show,  Cincinnati museum provides fresh flowers in the women’s loos. The sign assured me that they were fresh too, and that information came as a great relief. Not only flowers, but fresh flowers!

Women get flowers, but the poor men have to make do without any toilet decorations. Indeed, the sign warned them explicitly lest false expectations were raised.

Now tell me, have you ever seen signage like this?

They were among the most quirky things seen on my USA travels. Love love love.

The poor guys miss out!

© Jan-12 Lisa S Gorringe. If you’ve enjoyed reading this blog, you may also enjoy my other blogs and my ebook Switched on Speech: making conversation work for you.

Read the Out and About category on this site for more observations on the world.

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Working from home, in the opinion of the author (who does), is easy to talk about and less easy to do. It has been hyped as the answer to everything from traffic pollution to urban sprawl. But commentators often overlook the human dimension of people working in isolation.

Social distance and the fact that your work is always there mean that you need to strategise for sanity as well as business growth.

Whatever you provide, your self-management as a home-based worker is an underpinning to your personal and professional success.

If you don’t make things happen, they won’t. Is that compatible with your personal style?

Consider these suggestions and adapt them to your own situation.

Vital attributes

You need more than a briefcase, a business card and bounce back.attitude. You will need health, resilience and determination to learn from all your experiences and the courage to make your personal vision come true. If you’re shy or a slow learner, you need to do some work on yourself fast. Learn as much as possible and work on your self-development while you’re employed – it’s easier.

Make pessimistic predictions

Be aware that the success you want may take longer than you expect. Think of a number in your worst -case scenario. Triple it. Have you the tenacity to hang on in there? Have you alternative sources of funding? How will those back at the mother-ship (home) react to your funding proposals? Will what you’re doing result in World War 3? How this impact on the relationship?

Set up Support

Do you have at least one person who’s prepared to support you? Better still, a group which offers mutual support? We’re talking here about like-minded souls who are not competitors.

Who and where are your contacts? They are an obvious place to start prospecting. We all have networks, no matter how small. Take the approach that everyone you meet is a possible prospect.

Strategic alliances are also very useful: where you and a non-competing business support each other’s product/service. (Providing you feel comfortable about them and their ethics/product etc.).  Don’t rush into working with a partner-your first partner is rarely your last partner.

Elevator pitches are not just for elevators

Think of a benefit-laden one/two liner to describe your business – the ‘elevator pitch’. It’s about 25 words or fewer, describing your business. Many people fumble and bumble when they’re asked and it doesn’t lend credibility to their presentation. After all. if you don’t know why you’re there and what you have to offer, why should anyone else? Frame your business in terms of their needs and how they will gain – time, money, skills, pleasure, whatever.

The question you need to answer is How can I improve their life or make it easier? Does it save time, resources, money? Does it lead to more confidence, fitness, better health? Up to you to find an answer that fits your style and that you’ll remember.

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© Jan-12 Lisa S Gorringe. If you’ve enjoyed reading this blog, you may also enjoy my other blogs and my ebook Switched on Speech: making conversation work for you.

Read the Self-Help and Business categories on this site for more observations on similar themes.

www.switchedonspeech.com

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‘Rounds add pounds’

And don’t they just! Strategically placed to add extra width just where it’s not needed

We’re talking about the front pockets most women’s trousers or jeans are equipped with.

What do the makers think women are going to put in them, for heavens’ sake? They’re too small for anything useful and too big for anyone with hips. That’s most women! While pockets are guaranteed to hold nothing but hope, they do add inches to any but certified sylphs.

Sylphs can wear sacks and they know it

By definition, though, certified sylphs can take having a few pounds added.

Indeed, this is advice given frequently to all sylphs wanting to make a larger statement.

They belong to the school of dressing which makes sacks look sexy, grunge look great. Their bodies are so taut and tiny they’d look terrific in a tent. This is scant (sorry!) consolation for the more frequently – encountered body shape. With real hips and real thighs it does not need any sabotage in these areas.

Designer sabotage

So, are the styles meant as designer sabotage? As in: We’ll dictate what goes on round here. You’ll wear trousers with pockets and like it. Forget the Image Management  people’s cheery saying ‘rounds add pounds’. We’re designing the clothes, all you have to do is wear them, (having paid for them first).

What’s the function of the pockets? As I said before, they will hold no more than hope.  Therefore, they’re unwanted, just as unwanted as the pounds they add.

Style Nazis

Then there are the so-called wrap skirts which don’t. The sales assistant confided sadly that they didn’t fit her either ‘I have a pear shape,’ she whispered. This was an attractive young woman who looked fine to me. I reassured her that she has a normal woman’s shape and not to give a flying fig for Style Nazis.

 Consumer revolt time

Consumers must revolt and join the SLIM movement (Stop Loading Inches Manufacturers). By refusing to buy garments with pesky pockets or indeed, any other daft clothing, they will send a message to designers. Machinists will have fewer things to worry about too.

All in all, it’s win/win (or slim/slim) for everyone but women-hating manufacturers.

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© Jan-12 Lisa S Gorringe. If you enjoyed this blog, you may also enjoy reading my ebook, Switched on Speech: making conversation work for you, available from this site.

Read more on Self-help in other blogs on this site.

We wait and the time is short, waiting is long. T.S.Eliot

Why do we wait for things to happen, people to turn up, the sign to appear and so on? Waiting to be saved is magical thinking and it’s seductive too.

Inaction is different from being in action.

Waiting can last forever

Waiting, waiting, waiting for the mythical time when life will be absolutely perfect. The day the stars will be in alignment, the planets perfect and we’ll be ready for action. (As well, we will be having a good hair day!). Then we’ll make our move, sing that song, write that blog, join that group, take that step into the unknown.

We can avoid taking responsibility to move if we’re passively waiting (or writing about it for that matter). At the same time, we fool ourselves that we are taking steps, that what’s happening here is essential before the next step actually demanding action.

We can spend the rest of our lives assuring ourselves that thinking and action are equivalent. Both are important, but they are not the same.

Life is imperfect at the best of times

We know deep inside, that life is what it is – variable at the best of times. Still we hold to the dream of perfection. It’s consoling and  waiting  for it means we don’t have to act. Such as make the hard decisions. Take the hard action. Take risks. Make ourselves ‘vulnerable’. Raise our heads above the parapet.

Accept that sometimes we’ll succeed and sometimes we’ll fail. How much will this ‘cost’ us? Often, the biggest cost is a psychic charge –most times it’s our egos which take a beating, nothing else.

Being scared of imaginary disasters

Many dedicated dreamers, (me included), waste so much time living the scenario in their heads, frightening themselves with all the things that could go wrong. Instead we need to focus on those things which can go right. Become a little less risk-shy and more galvanized. Wean ourselves off the buzz of that extra adrenalin and settle for the quieter glow of achievement.

Loss of control

Accept that to step forward involves both risks and loss of control. We can minimize these by research and scoping before acting. We can create B and C plans as fall-back positions. We can adopt as role models those who’ve succeeded at where we’re aiming to be. We can remember that Tiny steps will still get you there ( March 2010 blog).

The smallest action actually accomplished is better than great plans that never get started. Source: unknown but idea still worth pondering over

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© Jan-12 Lisa S Gorringe. If you’ve enjoyed reading this blog, you may also enjoy my other blogs and my ebook Switched on Speech: making conversation work for you.

     Read the Self-Help and Communication categories on this site for more ideas.

www.switchedonspeech.com

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The NZ Herald, Fri 13 January, 2012, came up with this gem about the happy families owning dogs.

Dogs cause domestic fights

Evidently, dog ownership causes 2000 family arguments. About everything from where the animal will sleep, who will take it for walkies, to what type of food it will eat.

Reallllly? These are sobering figures indeed. Only 2000?

I’d have thought it would be many more. But these are only family arguments. There’s another group to consider.

They are those people known as the neighbours and while they’re usually not consulted at all and they will be impacted nearly as much as the family. If it isn’t whining and yelping, it’s full-scale barking and conversations with all the local dogs.

Owners deep in denial

As a rule, owners are not that keen on hearing from those who’re annoyed by doting owners’ Precious Baby as she yelps and barks round the yard.

Owners tend to be a. very surprised, and b. in denial that it’s their dog that’s a problem. Are you sure it’s our dog? There’s a big black dog up the street. I’ve heard it barking its head off. You must have made a mistake.

As if it’s not enough having to complain about the animal, now the complainant is accused of making a mistake or having defective hearing.

When the by now teed-off neighbour replies through clenched teeth that no, it’s not the dog up the street, but this dog over the fence which has been doing its Hound of the Baskerville act all morning, the owner talks to the hapless dog as though it’s the sole cause of the problem.

Oh Minnie, didums be naughty then? Be good baby, or (insert complainant’s name) will be cross with oo. Apart from the revolting baby talk, this is a blatant attempt to cast those tired of dog noise as the bad guy. Or dump the blame on the dog.

Then the owner or owners makes a vain attempt to get doggie to quieten down. Oh come on Minnie. Be a good girl for Mummy. Daddy, come and talk to this naughty girl. Meantime there’s the sound of vomiting offstage. (neighbour!)

Dogs rule o.k.

Minnie shows no sign whatsoever of hearing or, if she does, of caring. She can figure out for herself that she has the doting owners wound tightly round her little paw or whatever.

That number of 2000 arguments certainly doesn’t include dog-related disputes with neighbours. But then, the survey probably didn’t dare go there.

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© Jan-12 Lisa S Gorringe. If you’ve enjoyed reading this blog, you may also enjoy my other blogs and my ebook Switched on Speech: making conversation work for you.

Read the Out and About category on this site for more observations on the world around us.

www.switchedonspeech.com

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Oh, the casual comment delivered often by those with no connection with us, but still assuming the right to comment anyway! While they’ve probably forgotten them a minute later, we don’t forget. We take them to heart, stew over them and wonder if they really are correct.

Casual comments

We’ve all experienced a casual remark or throwaway line. Sometimes it’s delivered in an offhand way quite at odds with the message being sent, sometimes it really is a throw-away line – a casual comment.

We often accept them

These messages are the equivalent of a rip in the sea. Deceptively calm but having lots of negative potential. Because they’re delivered in a relaxed way, we often accept them without the challenge: What do you mean?

They’re used by everyone: parents to children, friend to friend, teacher to student, work colleagues, casual acquaintances.

I’m thinking of magazine article about a woman who had her nose shape criticized by a casual boyfriend and later had a nose job. But there was only the smallest of differences to her ‘after’ appearance. She looked fine before.

We always remember

Or parents discuss children in their hearing (children always hear!). The child grows up but the memory remains. More than that, it often impacts on their whole adult life and achievements.

Maybe we need to ask ourselves whether it’s up to us to share our thoughts with this person at this time, at this place. Can they do anything about our comment? What is our relationship with them? Fleeting or more connected?  Why are we saying this?

Words can and do hurt and wound. There’s a message there for us all to watch what we say and how and where we say it.

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© Jan-12 Lisa S Gorringe. In Serrated-edged compliments cut like a knife, October, 2010, nasty messages given under a cloak of compliments are discussed. You may also enjoy my other blogs and my ebook Switched on Speech: making conversation work for you.

Read the Self-Help and Communication categories on this site for more observations on similar themes.

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Certainly turning up’s the first step. Although it’s related, it is not the same thing. More is needed before we can earn that description.

I first blogged on the importance of turning up, even though that may the last thing you want to do  (Nov-Dec 2010). Now it’s time to consider the importance of follow-through or reliability when you appear. 

When someone describes you as reliable what do they mean? Do they see you as solid, a steady presence in the background who can be counted on to be there?

Or maybe reliability is the same as boring?

Credibility

I see reliability as an underpinning to credibility in personal and professional life. Without it, people never know whether to trust that you’ll deliver or not. Or they dismiss your comments as mere talk which they know you’ll forget.

If you’ve ever heard someone being dismissed as unreliable, you’ll know what I mean. It’s even worse, if that comment is about you!

Turn up, do nowt

A common problem attached to reliability is that people think it’s enough to turn up and look pretty. They don’t consider that rarely are folk (unless they’re models) required to do only that.

Those of us who don’t make our living from looking drop dead gorgeous are expected to turn up and take action. Whatever we’ve committed ourselves to do way back when we felt mellow and everything was possible, and nothing was too much trouble.

Even if it is inconvenient, tedious and deeply distasteful now, it wasn’t then. Grown-ups are expected to suck up and get on with it.

Rapunzel’s parents an example

All you regular readers of fairy tales will have noticed characters in them who were unreliable–they could not be depended upon to do what they said they’d do. Instead, at the moment of truth, they tried to weasel their way out of their promise. Rapunzel’s parents are a good example. They promised their child to the witch in return for fresh veges for the mother.

Quite apart from the fact that it was a daft thing to do, they then had an additional problem when it came time to hand the child over.

(As an aside, I’ve always wondered why they couldn’t have grown their own veges. Greens are not that difficult to grow).

Never over-commit

What all this is leading to is: be careful, very careful about your commitments. Once you’ve made them though, follow through to the best of your ability. The moral here is never over-commit and always under-commit.

A reputation for unreliability is as bad as having a witch on your trail.

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© Jan-12 Lisa S Gorringe. If you’ve enjoyed reading this blog, you may also enjoy my other blogs and my ebook Switched on Speech: making conversation work for you.

Read the Self-Help and Communication categories on this site for more observations on similar themes.

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No matter how hard we look, finding what we want won’t happen if we’re looking in the wrong place.

So how do we recognise the right place? There will probably not be skywriting informing us, therefore it’s important to know our own guiding stars before we start.

v  Fit and attraction

How well does our goal align with the sort of person we are and our values? Does it harmonise with them or does it clash? For instance, someone who valued material comfort before all else would find becoming a volunteer in a developing country difficult.

How interesting is the goal? Is it ours or someone else’s? Do we like it?

v  Inner voice

Sometimes this can speak a lot of meaningless chatter or nonsense. It can be deceptive. However, if we start to have a recurrent powerful thought or inclination to do something, we can and should pay attention. Even if we decide not to follow that message, at least it’s a considered decision.

v  Use skills existing skills or talents

They are the abilities here already – we don’t have to go searching. Certainly, we might have to polish and extend them, but we have the foundations now. Actions we take will be grounded on experience and past successes. Deferred successes (failures to some!), will have been analysed to uncover what went wrong. In other words, we’ve learned from them.

v  Support available

Where is our support team? Do we have financial support or sources ? How comfortable are we at asking for (and accepting) help from others? Will we be hindered by false pride whispering that we have to know the answer to everything – that we are never allowed to be learners?

What other sorts of support can we count on? This includes family, friends, health, fitness, resilience, sense of humour… The list goes on and on!

v  Comfort

Do we feel at ease with the place we’re at? Is there a sense of knowing: this is where I’m meant to be/do? Or do we keep following every alluring will- o’ -the -wisp of possibilities?

v  Indications from the universe

We start noticing events, signals, comments and their relevance to us and our goal. Sucess often comes heavily disguised -usually, as the old saying goes, it appears as work.

But we can be aware of things becoming a little easier- repeated actions tend to have that effect. So does confidence in ourselves and what we’re doing. So does the end of false starts and dead ends. We’re focused and that immediately removes those distractions.

v  Focused action is everything

Goals are not set in concrete. They can be, and often are, reformatted. It’s focussed action which matters.

And, while no one can guarantee that we’ll still want what we sought, if we get it, or that we’ll achieve it, the process of trying moves us along to a different, enriched place.

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© Jan-12 Lisa S Gorringe. If you’ve enjoyed reading this blog, you may also enjoy my other blogs and my ebook Switched on Speech: making conversation work for you.

Read the Self-Help and Communication categories on this site for more observations on this theme.

‘Tis the season for travelling, and that often means staying in hotels. Alas, things are not always what you’d expect or want.

• Beds positioned in the sight line of a TV set or a fire alarm whose evil eyes glow all night. In the case of the alarm, it also flickers, just to drive the occupant really mad

• Pillows which could sub for trampolines, they’re so bouncy

• Water leaks from the shower onto the bathroom floor because the screen is inadequate

• Non-adjustable shower roses placed for giants.  Users get a free hairwash

• Bedside clocks always needing to be reset

• Reception staff bored with their work

• Reception staff who gabble gibberishly

• Blackout curtains which don’t

• Frigs which chuff through the night like tractors

• Feedback forms noticeable by their absence!

© Jan-12 Lisa S Gorringe. If you’ve enjoyed reading this blog, you may also enjoy my other blogs and my ebook Switched on Speech: making conversation work for you.

Read the Business and Out and About categories on this site for more observations on the world scene.

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