Sometimes we get given a lesson about how fortunate we really are. People who overcome the odds are inspiring and the lessons they give us are awesome. In the video below you’ll see how passion and determination can allow anyone to overcome their physical limitations.
Inspirational!!
Best Wishes
Chris & Ann
This is beautiful. In one video it captures both the human weakness and beauty. The weakness in that we are inherently suspicious and unwilling to engage strangers and also the beauty of when we do.
Life is beautiful. Hug a stranger.
Best wishes until next time
Chris & Ann
The world is full of amazing sights so we thought you might enjoy some footage of the lyrebird from Northern Australia.
Best Wishes
Chris & Ann
I’ll be honest, this isn’t original and has been around on Youtube for ages, but it doesn’t matter! It’s still heaps of fun and worth watching over again if you have seen it before and watching closely if you haven’t.
Life is about fun and enjoyment, and this video fits the bill just nicely in my opinion.
All the best
Chris
Watch and listen as Carl Sagan helps us revel in our own significance. Watch as he highlights our pettiness, our futile feelings of self importance when compared against the pale blue dot.
…and yet our ultimate brilliance, self reliance and mutual interdependence seems even more important as a result.
The Pale Blue Dot.
Chris & Ann
I really appreciate good art, and this is really clever what this lady manages to achieve with a few strokes of her hand.
Here’s to your success in your own artistic endeavours
Ann
So what does it take to become a CEO? Are you interested in giving your kids great lessons when they are young that will help them learn the leadership skills that they will need when they join the workforce.
Below is an interview with Denise Sullivan Morrison by Carol Hymowitz, a columnist for the Wall Street Journal, who had a great article titled, “Raising Women to Be Leaders - The Four Sullivan Sisters Learned to Work Early, Aim High and Try Again.” The article focused on how four sisters (Denise, Maggie, Colleen, and Andrea) were raised to be leaders by their parents. In the article, Hymowitz highlights, “It is rare for four brothers to achieve such levels of success. The fact that they are sisters is striking. Half of all managers in the U.S. are female, but most are stuck in midlevel staff jobs. In senior posts, men outnumber women by almost six to one.” The four sisters are:
Watch the video interview below with Denise as she gives some great advice that she learnt from her father, a senior executive with AT&T when she was young.
I hope you find this as useful as I did and hope that there are some tidbits in there that will help you with your kids.
Best Wishes
Ann
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Being American, it’s hardly surprising that today I am writing about Thanksgiving, that incredibly huge and indulgent holiday held the last Thursday of November each year. Having lived here for 16 years, I haven’t really celebrated Thanksgiving in Australia. However, this year I have met several other American mums at my children’s school, and we decided to host a Thanksgiving for several of our Aussie friends.
At first I was pretty nonchalant about it, but then as the time came, I started getting excited about sharing this traditional American holiday with my Aussie friends.
The day ended up being a huge success! Each family was responsible for making a part of the meal (salad, pumpkin pie, turkey, stuffing and so on). We rented a church hall (where else could we fit 18 adults and 24 children!), decorating two long tables (one for adults, one for children) complete with maple leaves, pumpkin and corn cobs. My friend made placemats with individual ‘Thanksgiving sayings’, some serious and biblical, while others just very funny (usually relating to the fact most people eat the Thanksgiving dinner within 12 minutes - which is the amount of time for half-time of the football game!) We also got to write our own quote about the day - most were very funny, about the dramas of making our meals!
It was such a great afternoon though. All the fathers took the children across to the local oval for a play, while the women prepared the hall for dinner. When the fathers and children returned, we started the meal. We all held hands, and although not everyone is religious, shared a prayer of thanks for the food we were about to eat and for the friends there sharing it with us.
It was another day of appreciation for me. It really hit home for me that I do have a good network of friends, who are like family to me. We all pulled together and had the most amazing day, giving and sharing with each other. It was so fun to see the dads able to relax and talk with each other.. the children running amok and having a fantastic time (even putting on an impromptu play on the hall stage), and the ladies sharing, laughing and cooking together. It really was good old fashion fun!
So enjoy the moments that bring you and your friends together.
Until next time, here’s to your success!
Cheers, Ann Eldridge
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As Chris has mentioned, our suburb went through a terrible storm last Sunday 16 November, 2009. The worst of it (a mini-tornado or category 2 cyclone) only lasted 30 minutes, but I have never been so terrified in my life — we had water leaking (pouring!) through four of our downlights, the sky lights ripped off the roof allowing more rain/hail in, and a gum tree crashed through our pool fence and into our pool causing a muddy mess. We were so worried about the damage we received, thinking we were the only ones with damage.
I just kept telling the children that at least we were alive and no one was hurt, trying to put things in perspective for myself as well! But really, I couldn’t sleep that night — I was so upset that there was no electricity, we had water damage, and our beautiful yard/property was a complete mess… And my sister was arriving from America for a week’s visit the next day. Stupid storm!
When daylight came the next day, all the neighbours gathered out on the street to assess the damage. So many people had trees crash into their yard, breaking roof tiles or sections of their roof. One house lost its entire roof, and the family had to move out. It was such an eye-opener as to how much worse it could have been for us.
I thought it was a good lesson in being grateful for the children - but it turned out to be a great lesson for me as well. We were so lucky that we had minimal damage… the bit of water on the floor, the discoloured ceiling due to water damage, and the crashed pool fence were really nothing in the scheme of things. We really were lucky that no one was hurt and we still had our home intact. Everything at my place was a mere inconvenience; there were others who had a serious
I actually ended up enjoying the aftermath… It was quite nice not having electricity! We didn’t have a BBQ, so our neighbours would invite us around for a BBQ dinner and some wine, sitting around their camping lantern while their daughter played guitar and sang to our children. The comraderie amongst the neighbours was incredible. We met more people in the neighbourhood than ever before! People pitched in to help cut down the trees in each other’s yards. It really brought our neighbourhood together.
So for that I am thankful… we were safe and sound, the damage was minimal and really, just cosmetic stuff… and I got to meet and really get to know some of our neighbours, which may not have happened if we weren’t brought together by the storm.
Until next time, here’s to your success….
Ann Eldridge
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As you can see, I’m still in Olympic mode with the title of this post, “Pass the torch, please!”. But no, it’s not the Olympics I’m talking about. My post this week has to do with passing on all the information we have learned in the various seminars we have attended and the books we have read , to our children.
This is something I have been thinking about a lot lately. We have learned so much over the past few years about life, passion, purpose and wealth… how do we impart all this on our children?
If there is one thing I know, it’s children learn by example. That seems easy enough, but how do we incorporate these learnings in every day life so our children (who are quite young, aged 7, 5 and 4) can learn these important lessons. Sometimes I think this is hard, because well, we just learned many of these lessons ourselves!
I guess the main thing is to start with what you know, and depending on their age, to bring it ‘down to their level’. That is, because our children are so young, we may not go into a high level of information. For example, with finance, you may not want to go into the finer details of making a covered call… and on the personal development level, they may not know their purpose in life just yet! However, you can start with baby-steps and give them the basic learning reflected in situations in every day life.
For example, today the kids were fighting quite a bit; constantly at each other with the cry, “Well he started it!” and so on. So later tonight Is spoke with them about the fighting and their attitude of someone else ‘always has it better’. I talked to them about ‘what goes around comes around’ and the way they treat others, and basically the world, is the way others and the world will treat them. That is, if one of them is never willing to share, they can’t expect that their brothers/sister will want to share in return.
Chris and I also believe in the power of gratitude, and to make sure the children know this, we have incorporated the ‘gratitude rock’ at dinner time. That is, the kids selected a rock from the garden and then painted it. We then use the rock as a sort of ‘talking stick’ at the dinner table, where the person who is holding it gets to say what they are grateful for that day. We are trying to focus the kids on being grateful for what they have, rather than always looking for more things (usually material things like toys and games) to make them ‘happy’. We also use this as a time to share what we like/love about each other (”I like the way Jack kicks the ball with me in the back yard”) and so on.l
So if you can incorporate any of the lessons you love in your daily life, your children are sure to follow. It will then become a habit for them, rather than something they have to attend a personal development course for later in life! 
Unit next time, here’s to your succes!
Ann Eldridge