LOL - it's New Year - Day 38

Day 38 (Sunday 7th January 2018)

38 years ago on 7th January 1980, Indira Gandhi was voted back into power in India,
with a landslide majority. Despite her surname she is not related to Mahatma Gandhi,
but is part of the Nehru political dynasty. She was Prime Minister from January 1966 to
March 1977 and then again from the start of 1980 until her assassination in October 1984.
She was one of the earliest female heads of government - only preceded by Sirimavo Bandaranaike
the Prime Minister of Ceylon, who was elected in July 1960.

Today Is it me or are the days speeding up? It is Sunday already. Our decorations are down and the house feels strangely empty.

Today's post is by Angela Mortimer, the Founder and Director of one of Europe’s most successful recruitment consultancies, Angela Mortimer Plc.  Established in 1976, the company currently employs people in offices across London, New York, Brussels, Amsterdam, Paris, Geneva, Lyon, Sao Paulo, Shanghai and Hong Kong and provides people for clients around the globe.  Angela Mortimer has developed the careers of more than 200,000 individuals, mainly female, since its foundation. Angela believes passionately in the need to encourage everyone especially women, to achieve their maximum potential.  She seeks to inspire  confidence and positive thinking by sharing insights developed over 40 years through training, public speaking and her blogs. You can follow her on Twitter (her handle is @AngelaMortime3 - but she is less active than many due to time constraints).

For a number of years Angela was a visiting lecturer on the Mountbatten programme in New York and supported graduates in finding placements after their Internship.  Angela has made numerous appearances on television, radio and in the press, including documentaries about The British at Work on the BBC, Women in the Workplace, which was aired on television and radio, and on on the unique nature of the company she owns. Angela is a patron and founder sponsor of the National Youth Ballet with an involvement motivated by the desire to foster the themes of women, youth and excellence, and, for several years, Angela worked with the International Centre for Prison Studies counselling prison governors.

For over 12 years Angela served on both the Confederation of British Industries SME Council and The London Council of the Confederation of British Industry.  In 2009 Angela was the winner of The First Women Awards for Business Services in association with Lloyds TSB Corporate Markets and supported by the CBI, and, in July 2003, Angela won the European Women of Achievement Awards in the Entrepreneur section. More recently, Angela was recognised by the Staffing Industry Analysts as one of the top 50 in their Global Power 100 – Women in Staffing list.

Her post is NOT to do with business but it is a lovely read.

*******************************

I’m a self-admitted crybaby.  When I was pregnant I would regularly dissolve into tears at the sound of the little girl asking her mother as she washed the dishes ‘what makes your hands so soft?”  It’s embarrassing but the truth and it happened more than once with the same Fairy Liquid advert and was witnessed by astonished friends so couldn’t be denied.

Don't get me wrong – I can be strong when needed as is proven frequently in the office and on the golf course.  I can manage threats, disappointment and fear with a measure of equanimity but I have this low threshold of crying when touched by nostalgia and when touched by the kindness of another toward me.

An example comes to mind of an extraordinary kindness shown me some thirty odd years ago when my time was stretched thinly between home, office and two children under the age of 5. 

At that period in my life I was busy practicing being Superwoman.  I could manage everything in 24 hours that an organized energetic modern woman had expected of her – make lots of money, be trim and sleek after a 6 a.m. swim in the open air pool and spring effortlessly into my spiky shoes and designer suit ready to slay clients with my expertise and easy charm.   I disappointed no one – that was simply not my game.

I left my housekeeper a note that day – we had been entertaining and had run out of standard groceries and all the stuff that a family gets through at the end of a big week end – asking for a lot of basic shopping to be done.  My Housekeeper was more a wife to me.  She was Portuguese, long married and did not have a bank account of her own when she joined me.  In her family it was not considered appropriate or respectful for a wife to be this independent.  I persuaded her to open one so I could provide her with a float for my shopping.  This was a good system though her husband remained unaware of it for some time – easier that way.

At the end of my twelve-hour day I returned to the house to find a phenomenal number of soft white bread rolls were in the kitchen.  There must have been a hundred of them.  What on earth are they doing here I wanted to know.  ‘Well you asked me to get them but I’m sorry, there aren’t 100 rolls, there are only 80 because though I drove all over town I could not find any more – the bakers and supermarkets were out of stock – I cleaned them out’!   And then she burst into tears because she had failed me.  I was still mystified as to how she can have thought I wanted them till she showed me my note.  There in black and white was my writing and clearly listed was ‘loo rolls’ looking like ‘100 rolls’.

Well that was when I started to laugh till I cried.  I laughed at my clumsy failure to communicate with my lovely helper who was challenged in her second language to understand my written slang and I cried because she was so upset to have failed me with the shortfall.    And then we both laughed and cried together and that was a very good cry indeed and a happy one.  We stayed together for 25 years as a very good team and never forgot that day – a classic in miscommunication.

And that made me reflect on the astonishing range of opportunity we have to fail to communicate effectively with others unless we are meticulous in our spoken and written words.  A serious thought and a useful one to hold in mind as we enter this special time in the year when overloaded with nostalgia in every advertisement we see for a perfectly unattainable perfect Christmas and New Year, emotions might more readily be tipped from positive to sad. 

And now - if you want a really good happy cry, go see Paddington Two but take a box of tissues – no spoiler – you might need them, I did!  Happy New Year.

Bouncing Back

Day 38 (Saturday 7th January 2017)

38 patients were tested for 26 weeks in April 2016 in Denmark, in a drugs trial that appears to

offer the first breakthrough in treatment for Alzheimer's sufferers. Imaging showed that Liraglutide 

maintained the brain metabolism of sufferers while in those given a placebo it decreased.

We are a week into 2017 - I hope the New Year is treating you well. 

Today's post comes from Helen Green, the Director and founder of Orient8 Consulting Limited, a business that focuses on improving performance and which helps individuals to shift their focus from "what is" to "what could be". Helen herself is an excellent executive coach and able to help individuals and teams, regardless of the challenges - check out the client testimonials on the Orient8 website. Helen has a background in Sales and Marketing for FMCG organisations and she has a genuine interest in understanding what drives behaviours. She has an MsC in Organisational Change, a Postgraduate Certificate in Executive and Business Coaching, a Systemic Team Coaching Certificate and a BSc in Psychology, having studied STEM subjects at A Level. She is well-grounded, commercial, analytical and empathetic. You can connect with her on Twitter (her handle is @orient8you)

It should come as no surprise that Helen is a thinker - her below post is full of observation and all the pictures in Japan were taken and provided by her. It is a piece that will make you, amongst other things, think about power, impact, hope, shame,  war, grief, harm, conscience, courage and resilience. It is personal but simultaneously universal. Thank you Helen.

**************************************

Bouncing back

“Resilience is that ineffable quality that allows some people to be knocked down by life and come back stronger than ever. Rather than letting failure overcome them and drain their resolve, they find a way to rise from the ashes.” Psychology Today

New Growth Sprouting Up Through the Ashes of the Spring Prairie Burn by Madison Guy

When I was contemplating what to write for this year’s series, I thought about reviewing my year with its wild ups and downs, but one memory kept coming back to me. I was held, transfixed by what I saw on a holiday to Japan this Autumn, in the delightful city of Hiroshima. It is this that I feel compelled to write about.

My Lonely Planet guide states “Leafy Hiroshima, with its wide boulevards and laid back friendliness, is a far from depressing place. Present day Hiroshima is home to a thriving and internationally minded community and it’s worth spending a couple of nights here to experience the city at its vibrant best.”

We didn’t have a couple of days, unfortunately, just a few hours before we boarded the bullet train back to Kyoto, but in the short time we had there I experienced it as a lively, attractive and friendly city.

Our limited time was largely focussed on the history of the city.

The word Hiroshima will be forever associated with the atomic bomb dropped on the city in 1945.

On the way to the Peace Memorial Museum, we passed the Atomic Bomb Dome. It was built in 1915 by a Czech architect and was the Industrial Promotion Hall until the bomb exploded almost directly above it. Everyone inside was killed, but the building was one of the very few left standing near the epicentre. The shell has been preserved as a memorial and in 1996 it was declared a Unesco World Heritage Site.

In the photograph I took that day, you can see the Atomic Bomb Dome and also the kids walking by. It was a school day and very much business as usual in 2016 Hiroshima.

Matsui Kazumi, Mayor of Hiroshima, wrote these words in the Peace declaration written on August 6^th 2016,

“1945, August 6, 8:15am. Slicing through the clear blue sky, a previously unknown ‘absolute evil’ is unleashed on Hiroshima, instantly searing the entire city. Koreans, Chinese, Southeast Asians, American prisoners of war, children, the elderly and other innocent people are slaughtered. By the end of the year, 140,000 are dead.”

It is estimated that 350,000 people were directly exposed to the bomb.

We visited the Peace Memorial Museum along with a few hundred tourists and probably a couple of thousand Japanese schoolchildren and their teachers.

We silently filed through the various rooms depicting the horrors. The schoolchildren looked at the images and artefacts without saying a word. I cried.

A few moments later, I caught the eye of another tourist. She looked as I felt, shocked, sad, raw. She said something like “it’s terrible. And the kids ………. they are being exposed to all of this……..” I nodded and with anger rising said “and those who really need to come and see this will never come.”

The last image in the main part of the Museum was this one. I stood and stared at it for a very long time.

The words are these; “That Autumn in Hiroshima where it was said ‘For seventy-five years nothing will grow’ new buds sprouted. In the green that came back to life among the charred ruins, people recovered their living hopes and courage”.

Seeds from a tree damaged by the atomic bomb dropped on
Hiroshima have been successfully grown in an Aberdeen park.