We dropped young James off to catch the school bus in the morning and as I was reading the destination boards on the buses that passed by, a thought occurred to me:
Good clean school buses with cute, memorable names like Possum, Koala and Penguin
Most bus companies use route numbers to show where the bus will go, (on top of the bus will be the number 336 or 245 or whatever).
No doubt there is logic in this from the bus company’s perspective, and yes, regular travelers on the buses will know which number equals which bus route.
But what if it is a school bus and small children need to know which bus to catch? Or what if travelers are dyslexic – buses 345, 453, 354, 543 could be very confusing.
James catches a Transborder bus to school each day, and what I think is really cool is that not only do they have nice clean coaches, but each bus route is named after a cute native animal which makes the bus company sound very friendly and approachable too.
The kids just need to remember to get on possum, koala, penguin, platypus, kangaroo, emu or whatever.
I love these simple friendly ideas.
The media is currently relentlessly pursuing Lara Bingle and Michael Clark over their ‘possible’ relationship break up. We don’t know the real story but do we need to?
Lara Bingle persued by photographers
The media constantly seek out drama, and often elevate a non-issue and turn it into a drama – this fuels the fire and generally makes a bad situation worse until they finally get the story they wanted and make the money they need to fund the next story. (eg. Why Michael Clarke couldn’t take anymore of Lara Bingle mess )
When the media start negotiations to pay for the story, speculation goes up another notch, and by publicising that the story might be for sale makes the story seem that much more juicy. Everyone might make more money! (eg. Markson puts dollar value on Bingle’s reputation )
How about a reality check?
We are all in relationships of some kind, and all relationships go through good times and bad. The last thing anyone needs is media attention adding fuel to an already difficult situation.
Their story is just a story to the media, but it is a very deep, all consuming and emotional issue in their lives that needs to be treated very carefully.
Irrespective of whether they break up or not, if they are to have any chance of dealing with this, their story needs to be treated with the utmost confidence.
Imagine you were having a domestic with your spouse and the office blabbermouth camped outside your front door to get photos for the office newsletter. Does everyone you work with really need to know that you had an argument with your wife/ lover/sibling/mother?
Do all Australian’s really need to know the ins and outs of Lara and Michael’s relationship woes? I know I don’t.
As a personal coach, I help people deal with relationship issues all the time and even if they were my clients, the last thing I’d need to know is their story. The important thing is to help them move forward – and that isn’t about churning over the past.
UPDATED (19 March 2010)
I got a real laugh watching this skit on the ABC ‘Who is Lara Bingle?‘
Tags: relationships
We all need a push every now and again if we are going to achieve our best.
As a personal coach, it is my job to push my clients into achieving the best they can in many aspects of their lives, and like them, I too need a good push every now an again.
I’ve been a long time advocate of early morning exercise as a great way to kick-start your day.
In my recent article, Breaking your own glass ceiling I mentioned pushing myself on my morning run last week and achieving my fastest 5km run in over 18 months.
This led me to wonder at why I was able to achieve this and why had I become so slow anyway!
We all know that as we get older, we get slower. So, at 50 years of age, it is easy for me to tell myself that I have reached my limit.
What really happened is that over time I had found a comfortable jogging pace that had become my own glass ceiling. I had convinced myself that when I was running fast, I was going as fast as I could and so I didn’t push past this.
I was held back by my own self-limiting beliefs… something I’m often helping my clients overcome.
So how did I finally push through my glass ceiling? I used the same technique that Roger Bannister used to break the impossible four-minute mile glass ceiling. I ran with friends who were faster than me, they were my pace men.
For many years, the scientific and athletic communities thought that it was impossible to run a four-minute mile. Yet, in 1954 Roger Bannister finally broke this barrier in a time 3:59.4 and he did it by setting up a team of athletes to set the pace for him.
Once the 4-minute mile barrier had been broken, suddenly the world knew that it wasn’t impossible and within weeks athletes around the world began breaking the four-minute mile glass ceiling.
Today, the four-minute mile barrier is a distant memory and the best times these great athletes achieved would place them a long way back in the field behind current record holder Hicham El Guerrouj who ran 3:43.13 in 1999.
No matter what field of endeavour you are competing in, you will have a glass ceiling – a barrier that you think you can’t break through.
What do you think your glass ceiling is and how much do you want to break through it?
See also:
Breaking your glass ceiling at the gym
Breaking your own glass ceiling
Tags: glass ceiling
One of the things I often advise clients to do is find a buddy who shares a similar goal, and work toward them together.
If you have a fitness goal, this can be an easy thing to do. The world is full of people who want to get fit, but for one reason or another, can’t stick to a regular fitness routine.
Regularly going to the gym is one of those activities I’ve struggled with over the years until, about five or six years ago, when I teamed up with a friend and together we’ve kept each other on track by setting gym appointments with each.
It is a lot harder to miss an exercise session when you know your training partner got out of bed at 5am and is standing there waiting for you.
The hidden downside of regular exercise
Making an appointment with your workout buddy really helps to keep you motivated. But simply turning up and doing your workout together is not the final solution.
If you aren’t constantly vigilant, complacency can easily sneak up on you. Sure, you are regularly doing some exercise, but the benefit you get from it can easily diminish.
When you first start doing regular exercise, it is hard. Then, over time it becomes easier and easier as your body adjusts to the routine, until it reaches a point where your body hardly notices the exercise at all.
What happened?
Your body reaches a point where lifting a certain weight becomes comfortable. You find yourself doing ten reps and you stop, because 10 reps is what you’ve told yourself you need to do. You have just created your very own glass ceiling and complacency sets in when you don’t push yourself much past it.
It is funny, but it sneaks up on you. This happened to Don and I a few weeks ago. I suddenly realised the exercise wasn’t really having much effect on us – it had become too easy and we had stopped improving.
We decided to change to drop sets, starting our workout with a weight that we could hardly lift and dropping down a bit in weight until we had achieved our goal for the set.
Continued… Breaking the glass ceiling when running
See also:
Breaking your glass ceiling at the gym
Breaking the glass on my morning run
Tags: glass ceiling
It is so easy to fool ourselves into thinking that we are doing our best, but are we really?
It is just too easy to be mediocre. In fact, the world seems to conspire to make us fit somewhere in the middle… to be average. I’ve fallen into this trap many times myself, and what it means is that we create our own glass ceiling in each aspect of our lives.
A week ago, I decided to really push myself at the gym. Working with my personal trainer, I managed to lift much heavier weights in almost every exercise I’ve tried. Spotting me, my training partner Don, has been having similarly dramatic improvements.
Only 4 weeks ago (Jan 21) I tore my right calf muscle and was out of action for a few weeks.
Then yesterday, I went for my morning run and pushed myself, managing to achieve my fastest run over 5km for the year – even faster than I did the same distance last year…
This surprised me because I’m 50 years old, (so any improvement is a good one) plus I’m a bit heavier than I was for most of last year.
The glass ceiling
It is human nature, that when faced with a challenge so much greater than we have ever faced before, our first response is; ‘I can’t do that!’ And so we set ourselves a more achievable goal.
Whether it is a work challenge, a fitness challenge or a financial or lifestyle challenge, unconsciously we create our own glass ceiling for everything we do. Commonly, we set our expectations too low. This way, it becomes easier for us to achieve what we set out to do – and unfortunately, we rarely rise above the goals we set ourselves.
So how did I break my fitness ceiling this time?
In my experience, breaking your glass ceiling requires three steps; in this order:
- Change your mindset about how you set your goals.
- Set yourself up for change by doing something different.
- Put it into action
Continued… Breaking your Glass Ceiling at the Gym
See also:
Breaking the glass ceiling on my morning run
Tags: glass ceiling
