Week eighteen – I do!

Some of us have said these two words more than we care to admit, but whether you said it once, twice or more, did you really mean it?

Going home at 4 am and writing my blog! 

Commitment is something many of us are afraid of and often we don’t understand the implications of what it means to say “I do”. These two famous words have been immortalised by the secrete vow of marriage and they symbolise our commitment to a lifetime relationship with someone. And many of us have discoverer that just saying “I do” does not mean we actually do! This week I have come to realise that like marriage, in every aspect of our lives we say “I do” but are we really committed to what we say “I do”?

Taking a rather cynical view of this I started to analyse what is commitment and how does it manifest in our every day life. As person who has been married twice I knew that in the past I have not always taking commitment seriously enough. So in my quest to find out if this is something we just say because we have to or society pushes us to commit to things we don’t really want to do or believe in. This year I will be celebrating 23 years service with my company, and when I start to analyse where I came from and where I am now I know that I am committed, otherwise there is no way anyone could stay around for so long. But I am only 47 years old and if I start to do the maths, it means that by the time I retire I would have done 42 years service! That is commitment!

And can commitment be also translated as loyalty? I believe that loyalty comes after commitment and only then you can become loyal; you need to know you want to stay to give your self completely. In the hotel industry we find ourselves battling every day with recruitment and loyalty and our biggest expense is replacing valuable employees who readily leave to our competitors. We spend all resources we have to attract them, orientate them, and it is a never-ending road when you think you have closed all your vacancies and someone tells you they are sorry to leave you but they are going to the competition for more money and better career prospects. Many see this as a lost battle, specially when people leave our industry; “we could never compete with those guys, they pay too much” I have often heard people say. But like marriage, I think we are going about this the wrong way.

If I go back to the beginning of the blog, we said commitment is something we take lightly. But most of the time, at least in marriage, we are with someone because we liked him or her. And we engage in the secrete vow of marriage because somehow we are prepared to “commit” to this lifetime relationship. So where does it go wrong then? Simply, once you are in that relationship you need to see what benefits are in it for you – in other words you need to become loyal to that relationship because you see a future of mutual respect and care. So the key here is to invest on that relationship and to foster a sense of commitment we need to have to make it work. It takes time, no one becomes loyal the first day, but we are committed from the start. And that is the answer, if you know you will enjoy a fruitful relationship, you will do anything to make it work, you will commit yourself to ensure it happens and in the end have that loyalty we so much yearn to have.

In the hospitality industry, if we focus on fostering that commitment and create loyalty, you wouldn’t need to spend all that money on attacking people to you business. And don’t get me wrong, change is good, some time you need people to leave your business in order to get new blood in, but there is no need to replace your entire workforce ever year because they found somewhere better.

I’m very lucky that many people I know are committed and also have become loyal. I see this every day, and it is very clear that these individuals feel that it is a two-way thing. I also see those who believe they are committed but are not. Putting in the hours, for example, is not commitment; it is simply not knowing how to organise yourself! And then there is those with no loyalty which time and time again I see, those who truly believe that the grass is always greener on the other side.

And is commitment and loyalty a thing of the past? This question is even more prominent as we see the new Gen Y coming through and demanding new ways of doing things. If you are Gen X, you would have observed an interesting phenomenon; our parents where the generation that worked all their lives for one company, and stay with one person (or at least they tried) Their commitment and loyalty was something you didn’t question, it was part of life life. Then we came along, and we started to change things, it became a two-way thing. “I will commit and be loyal if I know what’s in it for me” we started to ask what do I get out of this? This new generation started to see than one job in your lifetime was not enough (some actually had too many and we question their commitment and loyalty) and in many case also more than one partner in their lives. And now we have the latest generation, where people don’t want to commit; where loyalty is more than give and take, it’s a trend; it’s a fashion and a brand you follow. But when that trend goes out of “trend”, they move on.

Perhaps the idea that commitment is something hard has always been there, from our parent’s time, but as new generations have come we have become savvier when it comes to saying “I do” and we are only ready to commit when we know it is the right thing to do.

Are you committed to what you do, from your job to helping around the house? It is an interesting concept when you think about it; commitment takes a lot of effort, I know it, as I sit in an airport in Kazakhstan at 3 am writing this blog, it is a commitment I made to myself and all of your who read this blog every week. Thank you for your commitment!

Week Seventeen – Tempting Fate!

No matter how hard you try, there is never a good moment for things to happen and they will happen against all odds!

 Many years ago, when I was still young (notice how I am saying here I am still young!) I bit into a hard piece of bread and one of my tooth chipped. This happens to many of us and you just simply go to the dentist, he looks at it and fixes it. It was December in this particular occasion and I managed to get an appointment just before Christmas! How lucky I hear you say… indeed. However, what was to come became the worst nightmare of my life!

Dentists like to fiddle with our teeth, and often they want to fix other things you don’t need fixing (they sound like mechanics who always want to fix what is not wrong with your car) My dentist worked on my chipped tooth and, yes, he tampered with the others while I sat in the chair hoping the pain would go away! On the 22^nd December I left the surgery feeling better having had a filling and some other stuff done to my mouth. By the way, the dentist was going on a three-week vacation to Australia the next day. 23^rd of December I was feeling good, 24^th of December I was still feeling good and yes, you already guessed, 25^th of December I woke up with possibly the worst toothache I have ever experienced in my life! 25^th of December when no one, and I mean no one works! Against all odds, I was faced with the most excruciating pain ever know to mankind and no one to help me! It took 2 days before I could see an emergency dentist who then proceeded to charge me the largest amount of money, which was more painful that the toothache I had!

This sort of thing always happens when it shouldn’t! And this week was no exception!

Good Friday, I woke up to a broken boiler! Good Friday! A 4-day long weekend ahead of us! Why does it always happen when no one works? Have you ever asked yourself that question? Has it ever happen to you? I am sure everyone, at some point or another, have face this situation, it is just they way life it, and you can’t avoid it.

What is interesting is why does it always happen when you least want it? And do we “tempt fate” as they say? My boiler broke down when my family was away in Spain and on the Thursday night as we Skyped before their arrival on Saturday morning my son said to me “Dad, please make sure the heating is on when we get in, it will be nice to have a warm house when we arrive” Every time we come back form vacation the house is so cold, but this time, as I was there, I could make sure it was warm before they arrived; but alas, it was not meant to be! Was this coincidence that he made a comment or was he “tempting fate”? Was our boiler barking down in such a long weekend just luck or it was meant to be? Why this specific day? I was at home for four days before the weekend, why didn’t it break then when I could get it fixed? Is this a strange phenomenon or really just bad luck? I do remember thinking back when I had my tooth saga “should I wait to get my tooth fixed after Christmas?” somehow I knew there will be days ahead when things may be more difficult if you have complications. Was I “tempting fate” or “jinksing it” as they call it?

This go me thinking and I looked at other events similar to this to see if what I was observing was just coincidence or there was something bigger that drove this.

One of the most memorable experiences that jumped in my mind was a few years ago when I started travelling and I had booked a coach to get to the airport, which was very tight in terms to time. My flight was very early and it was a choice between arriving an hour before my flight (which is just about enough if you only have hand luggage) or leave 5 hours before and wait at the airport in the hard cold plastic chairs. So I went for the one-hour option. As I waited at the station I kept on thinking, “it’ll be alright, I have plenty to time” and as the coach arrive I saw it was a brand new vehicle, making me think “oh good, it’s a new coach, at least it won’t break down!” What I am about to tell you is nothing but the truth. We set off to the airport and after about an hour, just halfway there, the coach began to jerk. Within a minute the driver pulled and the engine stopped. And I promise you as I stand here before you, the brand new 54 seater coach had broken down! I could not believe it! Was this really happening? I didn’t make my flight and I often think did I “jinks” it or was it just pure coincidence?

I’m a great believer that everything happens for a reason. Nothing is by chance and that things are meant to happen. Ever since that day I have never booked a ticket where I only have an hour to get to my flight, as a frequent traveller is not a risk I can afford to take and so perhaps that day was meant to happen to show me that I cannot take the risk as there is always a chance that the coach will break down.

Think of times when this has happened to you, was it coincidence or was fate telling you something? Is fate what determines what happens in our lives and thus when you tempt it, it back-fires? If my son hadn’t said “make sure the house is nice a warm” the boiler wouldn’t have broken down? If I hadn’t said “at least the coach won’t break down” I would have not missed my flight? I guess this is one of the many mysteries of life that we human being we will never know, but for sure, I know that every time I don’t want something to happen, I try not to tempt fate and think of something else!

Week Sixteen – too tech or not too tech!

That is the question! Have we become too dependent on technology that when it’s gone we are crippled?

As an advocate of technology and an absolute fan of innovative products like Apple, I am probably the last person to question whether we have become too dependant on our gadgets to survive, but this week I faced several challenges that made me question if too much technology is making our lives a misery rather than a joy.

As a kid I grew up in an era in which we were just starting to get the taste of what it’s like to have amazing gadgets that are supposed to make our lives easier. I still remember getting all exited about getting my first “calculator” watch (remember one of those?) And this is how basic but amazing it was in those days, when as a young man you would get exited to be given a calculator! Of course this was on a watch, which made it all the more attractive but nonetheless a calculator!. And when you compare it to what is happening today, it is really no different, with the exception that things have got much sexier when it comes to these devices. Samsung produced last year a watch they named “gear” which was launched with their rather large phone/tablet and it is meant to be an extension of your stuff in the device. Apple is rumored to be coming up with something similar, the “I-watch”, which again will serve the purpose of accessing something you already have in your I-phone. So when you compare the soon to come out “I-watch” (which no doubt I will acquire!) with my calculator watch, not much has changed on how we love to surround ourselves with these “useless” gadgets.

But the question here remains “too tech or not too tech” and we have to understand if we really need all this stuff to get by in life. I am personally in two minds about this, especially after this week.

Why am I in two minds? I do believe that some of the technologies that exist have made our lives immensely better, as I learned recently when I was in hospital with my little relapse in health. Although doctors will never be able to fully diagnose what may be wrong with someone (at least not at present) with all these new machines, the equipment they have today to analyze and look for things is amazing. During my two days with chronicle chest pains I was put through several tests and equipment that really left me amazed at what we have come up to look for things. From the traditional ultrasound to the newest CT scan tunnel where they are able to see every vain in your body by injecting you with a liquid and putting your though what seemed Homer Simpson’s giant white doughnut! After all the tests they were able to tell me everything I didn’t have but to this day they still cannot tell me what I had. This is where I think we are still a long way to go with technology.

On the other hand this week really showed me that in some aspects the reliance on technology has become a hindrance and the old traditional methods work best. Let me share with you a couple of examples:

During my vacation I hired a car to get around in Spain. I am sure many of you, like me, have become almost dependent on the satellite navigation system to get you form A to B and without it, we get lost. They are pretty reliable as far as gadgets are concerned and most of the time “TomTom” knows best (even though we still believe we are superior to our machines and we question the route our imaginary SatNav friend has suggested) but they get us there. However, some times they don’t work! And when they don’t, all of the sudden we are not sure what to do, we become paralyzed and panic thinking “how am I going to get there!” This was the case as I was on my way back to the airport and my trusty navigation system failed. Now, as a techno savvy person, I do relay on other gadgets in case one fails and I took out my phone where I also have a SatNav application and the day was saved! Or so I thought… I soon discovered that I needed Internet to get it working! Do you know how expensive it is to data roaming? So my choices were, pay up or get lost! As I was working through all of this in my head, I also thought “how did we do it in the “olden” days?” and the answer was simple, we read the signs on the road and follow them and I am sure no one got as lost as I was because I am not accustomed anymore to use my instinct, reading skills and think how to get to my destination!

I also needed to print some reports this week for work which are done though a third party website. These reports are a personality questionnaire that people fill in on line and we use them as part of their development. In “the olden days” we had a form they filled in and then score, giving them the same results you get today on the computer generated report. The website was down, I could not print the reports and I panicked as I didn’t know what I could do without them. I was crippled because I did not have these reports and I through “if only I was doing it on paper…”

And like these, there are plenty of other examples where, when technology is not there, we freeze not knowing what to do. Think about it… electricity gets cut off, our systems are down and we cannot use the computer, we sit there, not knowing what to do, we relay too much on our laptops to get our work done! Or your e-mail is down, we can’t reach someone, Facebook doesn’t work, you can’t text someone, the X-box is broken and so on, all everyday gadgets that almost dominate our lives and we are useless without them.

Are machines taking over the world? Is the prophecy of the film “The Terminator” coming true? Or we will continue to be in control of our lives managing technology? I think the answer to this we will never know, or at least not in our lifetime and perhaps our children or grand children will become so dependable on technology that the question will no longer be asked. Perhaps then they will never know what life is without gadgets.

Week Fifteen – life/work balance

Actually the expression is work/life balance as we often hear this at work, and we do spend 80% of our lives working!

 

Holiday Selfi with my Family!

This week I am writing my blog from the beautiful town of Aguilar de Campoo, in Spain, where I am spending a week’s vacation with my family. And even though I am on holidays I still need to write my blog, because in my quest to write a weekly blog, I guess I don’t get vacation time for this! And it is appropriate that this blog is dedicated to understanding what many of us have come to know as the “work/life balance” struggle or as I called it the “life/work balance” because what we need to balance first is our lives and not work!

I also call this time away from work my “workation” as I don’t really leave work and focus only on my vacation. Many people often criticise me for this. They say “you should switch off, and enjoy your time away” but this unfortunately does not work for everyone. My work requires me to be available as much as I can. This means that I have to be in touch with work to keep an eye of what is happening in my area. I do not have a job that finishes the moment I walk out of the office (I don’t really have an office job) and it follows me everywhere I go. That is my day-to-day work and it is a fact that comes with the job. I love my work, as you already know, and I am happy to be available for my teams and for people to reach me when they need me. My work is also part of an industry that doesn’t close. In hospitality we’re open 24 hrs a day, 7 days a week 365 days per year and there are no “closed for business” days; so naturally anyone in this industry has to be available most of the time. There are some jobs that do not require you to be available all the time, but there are some that do and mine is one of them. So when I go away on holidays, I do have to keep in touch with work in order to stay on top of things before I get back to work “officially”. There is an official day when I declare to be away on holidays and a day when I am back; every other day in between is my “workation”

But the key issue to understand here is not that I am a workaholic, on the contrary, the reason I stay in touch with work while away is that I want to have that “life/work balance” all the time. Let me explain:

I once heard someone say that you can measure the success of your vacation by the number of e-mails you have when you get back; meaning that the more e-mails you have when you get back the better your holiday was. You did not access your e-mail as much or at all during your time away. However, in my case, if I did not access my e-mails while away when I get back, I am going to have so much work that I will probably end up stressed out and with a massive back-log of work that will take me a long time to clear, creating more stress, working longer hours and ending up having to spend more time at work than at home thereafter. In other words, my life/work balance will be out of whack. That is why I prefer to dedicate one or two “dead” hours during my break to read through e-mails, answer urgent enquires, deal with issues, complete easy tasks and by the time I “officially” get back, it is as if I had never left! Giving me the chance to continue with my well structures life/work balance. During my vacation I always find a couple of hours I can dedicate to work, when the family are still asleep, when they have other activities that do not require me to be present; there is always what I call a “dead” moment I can just open my laptop and work. Once this is done, the rest of the time is theirs, and mine to enjoy and unwind. I can then focus on giving them quality time, time we usually don’t have during our very busy lives. So I feel I am creating a balance, a life/work balance that allows me to enjoy my family during the break, keep in contact with the office and avoid having an excessive amount of work when I am back.

People often say to me “how can you have time to do everything you do?” In my life I travel, I work, I spend time with my family, I work around the house and I write, and all that without being stressed. And the answer is that I create a balance that gives me the best of all worlds. Remember that quantity is not the same as quality, and sometimes people think they are have quality time when all they are doing is spending time with people, while doing other things. If you create a balance, like I try to do, you have to fully focus on every activity you have chosen to do in your time. Work is work, and you give it your 110% every minute you have to spend doing it, family is family and the time you spend with them has to be quality time not quantity time, doing the thing you all enjoy; it is not about the frequency, but the quality of each of those moments. Then you have what I call “me time” which needs to exist. You need to have time for yourself where you give time to your hobbies or passions. And lets not forget our social time; it is essential to stay in touch with people and nowadays this can be done through social networks like Facebook. All of these areas are equally important, and each of them supports the others to create that life balance; neither work, family, social or me time are more important than the other, on the contrary, each deserves its time and attention in your life. Some times you have to interrupt one to pay attention to the other, but if they are perfectly in balance and harmony, that interruption would never be seen as a disruption, but a moment to pause what you are doing to bring that balance in your life.

Don’t be discourage if you have to answer a call during your vacation, some time you will have to walk out of a meeting to go and deal with a family emergency, or stop writing that blog to go and have a drink with your friends… which is what I am going to do now to ensure I have that “life/work balance” and review this first draft tomorrow before I publish it! Enjoy your life/work balance and live up to the max!

Week Fourteen – the fear factor!

“What is the worst thing that can happen?” this is the question we should ask ourselves when we are facing our fears.

THE FEAR FACTOR!!!

One of the most effective techniques of a sales person is to have the ability to approach a customer and sell them anything. This is what highly skilled sale people do, they approach the customer and they won’t let go until he or she walks out of the shop with something. If you have worked in a customer service environment you will know how difficult it is to deal with people, especially difficult customers. And often, inexperienced employees find it hard to approach someone and say, “would you like another drink sir?” In the hotel industry we train employees to up sell, this is how restaurants and hotels can make money and driven their profits. Every customer is an opportunity to up sell. And believe it or not, every times you have been up sold something you didn’t know it, you put it down to excellent customer service, attentive staff that really cared and looked after you! I am not saying they didn’t care but think about it, somewhere along the line you were up sold something.

Let me give you an example; you walk into a shop looking for a new outfit for your party and the assistant is very attentive. She pays you endless complements and everything you try she is advising you and guiding you, its almost as if you have your personal shopper with you. After trying several outfits, you chose the top and trousers and the shop assistant tells you “but guess what? That bag you see there would go amazing with the outfit!” You hang it on your shoulder and you look a million dollars! The cost may be slightly more than you wanted to spend, but the shop assistant says, “it looks amazing!” You walk out of the shop and tell your friends about the excellent customer service you’ve just had in that shop, not the fact that you were just up sold a handbag you didn’t need!

That shop assistant was not frightened to try and up sell what she could. And like her, other sales people who push insurance policies, mobile phones, an expensive bottle of wine or double-glazing, they are all trained to understand that the worst thing that can happen is that the customer says no. That’s it, nothing else, they are not going to get upset and accuse you of abuse or mistreatment, they are not going to report you to the manager or to the policy, in fact they may even complement you for your great attentive service after they say no. And a good sales technique is to turn the sale into good service and not just cash on the till.

This week I had the opportunity to take this idea out of a customer service environment and apply it to every day life, which prompted me to dedicate this week’s blog to such a simple premise that can help us achieve things that otherwise we may not do because of fear, fear of failure, embarrassment or ability in things we do. Believe me I have met people who have not done something and miss out through fear of failure, when the worst thing that could have happened was not all that bad.

As you know by now, my son wants to be a basketball player and we found a club in our area that he can practice with. This week was his second week playing and he was looking forward to going again. Whilst in the car I notice he was worried, nervous and he looked anxious, so I asked him what was wrong. At first he didn’t say much but eventually he opened up and confessed he was nervous. I asked him of what? What worried him as he had been there the previous week and knew what the practice was all about? He mentioned was worried about not being good enough to play with the other kids and that he may get it wrong or he may not be able to fit in. I think we all know what he was talking about; we’ve all been there, it is a hard as a kid trying to fit in, and at this point I wasn’t sure how to answer.

I began to throw at him a few words of encouragement, as you would, and he was not having any of it. I then looked at him and said “look go in, do your best and see how it goes, I mean, what’s the worst thing that can happen?” Silence. He looked at me and said, “they may laugh at me?” Ah! Fair point, I though, I needed to turn this around so I said “and if the laugh at you, what’s the worst thing that can happen?” he thought about this for a moment and then said, “I don’t know” Bingo! I knew at this point where to go with this, so I said to him “the worst thing that can happen is you don’t come back next week, right? Not ideal but not the end of the world, we will find another basketball club” he agreed and talked about the fact that if he didn’t fit in with this team we could find another, practice with someone else, but the worst thing that could happen was actually not as bad as he thought; he fear was gone. He went in, I guess with this in mind, and did a great practice session, enjoying being part of the team.

You can apply this to all aspects of life. Of course, not always “the worst thing that can happen” may be that simple, but in general it can help you overcome your fears. Often people will not ask someone out on a date because of fear of being rejected, but hey, the worst thing that can happen is that they say no (try not to embarrassed yourself by asking in front of a crowed!) and you move on (albeit with a broken heart!) but if you don’t ask, you never know if that person may also be attracted to you and you could miss out on your soul mate! Ask your boss for a pay rise, worst thing that can happen? They say no. Jump out of an airplane, worst thing that can happen? You die! (Only kidding) As I said, you can apply this to most things in life, of course like any other theory, if you stretch it too far it breaks, so yes, if you bungee jump the worst thing that can happen is that the rope brakes and you can die, so here you also have to apply the principles of probabilities which takes the conversation to a different dimension!

I called this blog “the fear factor” because believe it or not, I have audition for the X-Factor! And I only did it because I always wanted to do it and I thought, “I’m going to enter my name, what is the worst thing that can happen? That they say no” and at least I can now say I’ve done it and will not be on my list of things I regret not doing! My point is that often we don’t do something for fear, which will result in us regretting it for the rest of our lives, but by understanding what is the worst thing that can happen, we can accomplish so much more fulfilling our lives with rich and unique experiences and you never know, you may be the next winner of the X-Factor!

Week Thirteen – Keep on dreaming!

I often say to people “Dreams are our realities of tomorrow” because dreaming is just another way of visualising the future!

Last we I talked about the importance of never giving up and somehow it seems that people made a connection to never giving up on our dreams. A friend of mine after reading my blog wrote to me “I feel it is the moment to move on and try to make my dreams come true :-)” and I began to think what she was trying to say with this. Throughout the years people have been saying “dreams come true” and we all grow up believing this. Our early childhood memories remind us of how we were influenced by the magic of creators like Walt Disney, who still influencing millions of children around the world in believing that dreams can come true.

This magic somehow starts to fade away by realities of life as we grow and move away from being children who enjoy the concept of a Magical World full of dreams to then become teenagers struggling for survival and a place in society where there is no room for dreamers. We move even further away from our dreams when we go to college or University and we start to face the difficulties of adulthood. And then reality hits, we have to find a job, earn money and sooner or latter we join the cycle of society in a job that pays the rent and gives us a bit of extra cash to have a drink. I guess is what you may call “the circle of life” and we struggle to survive in it.

So how did we go from chasing dreams to chasing busses to get to work? Where did it all go wrong for the majority of us? Why did we stop believing that dreams can come true? Why are our realities of today nothing to do with our dreams of yesterday?

I took this idea of “dreams can come true” and spend the next few days observing people (my favourite pastime). After reading my friends comment I began to look for clues as to why people believe that dreams can come true or anyone “living the dream”. I began looking at my own family; my son wants to be a Basketball player. This is his dream! He spends most of his time thinking about being a Basketball player. You may recall in an earlier blog I described how he imagined the O2 Arena in London being a huge Basketball court and he saw himself playing there. He is a good example of how someone young “dreams” of his future. And this to me is clear evidence that dreams are just the realities of our future.

However, for dreams to turn into reality we must work hard to make them come true. I guess this is the part that Walt Disney didn’t share with us; this is the part that many of us will face and will stop us from making our dreams come true. So in order to make sure my son becomes a Basketball Player, he must work hard to make this happen. Now if you don’t live in the US and instead you reside in a small seaside town in the UK, you are going to struggle to find a basketball club! This is the first obstacle he needs to face in his path to achieve his dream. We did find one and finally I took him last weekend for a trial. It is going to be hard work as Basketball is not a popular sport in England and it will be harder to get there. So he needs to focus to make sure this “hard work” does not stop him from making that future reality coming true.

Like my son, I came across other examples. My daughter wants to be a signer, and unlike her brother, being a singer is more accessible than Basketball! However, just like every other dream, there is “hard work” here too! There is tremendous competition in this profession, which can push someone to giving up on his or her dream. She must work hard too in order to compete against thousands of excellent singers out there; she needs to want it more than someone else.

And even as adults we need to work hard to make our dreams come true. My wife has just completed an introduction course in design. She loves decorating houses and for years has been practising with our homes! She has a dream, a reality she can make true, but again, it will be hard work, some of which she has already experienced in the last 10 weeks! As she attended her class she remained a full time mother (with a husband who travels all the time) a part time worker and taxi service for the kids! But she did it! She began to make that dream come true.

Throughout the week I also came across people talking about dreams not coming true, things they want to achieve but couldn’t; realities that seem so far away. And the more I looked the more I saw many of us not only give up on our dreams but stop believing that they could come true!

I have always dreamed of being a writer, ever since I was a kid. I also wanted to be an actor, singer, dancer, you name it, I wanted to be them all! I had some many dreams I think this is why I was so bad at school; I could not deal with my reality back then which was contradicting my dreams of one day being in the world of the performing arts. And it is not just light headed young kids like me with dreams of fame who have a conflict with their present realities, it is anyone’s dreams of either being rich, powerful, famous or just simply a great scientist, doctor or lawyer, any dream that fits our personality and desires is a dream we want to make true, and a reality we need to fight for. I don’t get worried if my kid is not good at school, for me it is more important that he or she has a dream, has formulated a future reality they want to live, it is then our job as parents to support that young mind to shape his or her future with what they dream of today.

It doesn’t matter how old you are, at 47 years of age I still have dreams, and every day that goes by I work hard to make those dreams my reality of tomorrow.

The key is never to give up and not to be frightened of failure, keep going, work hard, remember this is where it breaks down, and one day, for sure, your dream will come true!

Week Twelve – Don’t give up on Lent!

It was last Sunday morning when I heard our priest say “Don’t give up on Lent” as I sat on the third row of our church listening to his sermon.

Finger licking good!

 And no truer words could have come my way that day! I don’t usually attend church on Sundays, I’ve never been a devoted catholic, like my mother was, and I think it was her devotion and years of having to be subjected to attend every Sunday that drove me away from the church. However, I remain connected to the faith through my wife and children and I try to support them as much as I can with this. And after my week of being in hospital and having suffered a relapse in my routine life, I thought I would accompany them and sit there listening to mass and the Sunday sermon, which I often enjoy at Christmas (the one time a year I go to church) because of the interesting messages behind it.

This is not a religious blog so please don’t stop reading; and before I talk to you about why I chose the statement “Don’t give up on Lent” for this week’s blog, let me give you some background information which will help you make the connection.

For those of you who are not catholic or are like me not sure what Lent means, as far as I understand this is the period in which people are asked to give something up for Jesus who suffered for us. At a catholic school, which my kids go to, they teach children the principles of this event and the moral meaning behind it. I also think it is an interesting period which teaches them to understand self control and will power as well as honesty and integrity to keep your promises. In other words, if you say you will do something you stick to it (albeit for Jesus), and don’t lie or cheat and use your self-endurance to get through it! Not a bad learning period for the formation of a young person. We have been doing “giving something up for Lent” in our household for a few years now and every year as a family each of us chose something to give up and we support each other through this period. It is worth mentioning here that it is a total of 40 days where you scarify this pleasure. Also whatever it is that you give up, has got to be something which is important or especial on your life, something you really like and normally can’t do without (otherwise there’s no point!, you’ve got to suffer for it). For those devoted Catholics reading this blog, please forgive for giving a very brief and practical overview of Lent, I’m sure there is more to it and those interested to learn more please feel free to Google it!

So now we all know (sort of) what Lent is, the other part I need you to understand is related to the “what” as a family we wanted to give up this year. Unusually, we all decided to give up the same thing, providing each other with extra support over the next 40 days, bring us together as a family, a “Family Lent commitment” if you like. So we sat at the kitchen table and we brainstormed what we all liked as a family that would be good to give up for Lent. And yes, if you know the Snyders well enough, you would have guessed we decided to give up our weekly family trip to the local KFC! My family has adopted my addiction to Kentucky Fried Chicken taste, and we have our routine trip every week to the local KFC restaurant where we order the same thing every time and enjoy our “finger licking good” moment together. So it was set, we would, as a family, give up KFC for Lent. As an FYI; Lent began two weeks ago and runs for the next forty days.

Now, you would think this was an easy task, right? It is only once a week, Lent is 40 days, take 40 divided by 7; we just have to be away from KFC for 5 weeks. No problem…. But here is where I make the connection to the statement “Don’t give up for Lent”. Unfortunately, just one week into the 40 days of Lent, on the Saturday, my son was away with a friend, my daughter had a friend round for a sleep over, my wife did not feel like cooking that night and so we decided to go out and eat… but what? This was the first weekend we cannot have KFC, so where do we go for a quick bite? We don’t like Burgers, we don’t want to sit at a restaurant, and we are not into Indian take always, what to do? And yes, you may have guessed it right, we failed and went over the KFC! We felt so bad… it was a feeble moment and we felt for it! We had now broken our promises and given up on Lent! Oh well, we had been good other years, surely everyone is allowed one time not to follow Lent! I’m sure we will be forgiven… eventually!  When our son found out, he was flabbergasted we had done it and said “well I’m not giving up” which was a good lesson for us.

So we felt bad we had given up our promise for Lent. Being adults and matured beings we thought, “you know what, we broke it now, so that’s that, next year we’ll stick to it” this was a wicked way of saying “we failed so let’s carry on and eat KFC at the weekends!”.

And it was that Sunday morning when the epiphany came along, the sermon of our priest hit me right between the eyes as he said “Lent is a time for giving up something, some of you out there have made that commitment and are sticking to it, other may have not chosen not to do anything because you thought it as too much hard work to stick to it and some of you may have started really well with all good intentions to keep your promise, then something happened and you give up. But Lent is about not giving up and if you’ve failed to stick to your promise, go back to it, start again and most importantly, don’t give up on Lent” and at this moment I knew it was not just giving up KFC, but we should not give up on us as a family.

For me this message was more than just a religious guilt trip for not sticking to doing Lent. It is about not giving up on things, not giving up on anything you do. So often we find ourselves quitting because we failed to complete something or we could not be bothered to finish it or just simply because we thought we don’t have the will power to stick to it. Think about it? How many of us have given up on our dreams because we thought, “it will never come true” Did you give up on being an Astronaut, Fire Fighter, a Doctor or a Singer? Perhaps it was too hard, or we didn’t focus enough to do it. How many times have we given up on something we wanted to do because we thought we didn’t have the will power to do it? Diets, giving up smoking, keep going to the gym. How many times have we given up on someone, because we think they will not make it or don’t have the ability to do something? How many times in our lives we keep on giving up just because it was the easier option?

This “epiphany” made me realised that no one should ever give up on “Lent”. We all have the opportunity to get back onto it, whatever it was we gave up on, to not give up and try again. After the blog, take time and reflect on “what” you may have given up, remember, there is still time to pick up where you left off and no more KFC for us for 4 weeks!