There were so many ups and downs this week that I don’t know how to feel about it all other than to say I’m exhausted.
Plus my wife has gone overseas for work and I don’t know what to do other than to dump my thoughts here and try to work thru them.
The Downs:
Grandpa not improving and is still in hospital.
My other Grandpa who died last year's ashes were spread and my Nana is very sad.
Lawyers breathing down my neck and threatening to sue me for using the name Alfred.
Missed important Giants sessions for Alfred due to work meetings going over.
The Dock constantly being mentioned in the Brittany Higgins trial.
Work has been hectic
My day job is Communicating Change at KPMG, and for the first time since starting in March, I felt like I wasted my life after spending most of the week doing password resets and dealing with a rude client.
I know my energy is low because both things usually wouldn’t bother me as I love helping people get the most out of technology, and have dealt with drunk patrons who have acted far worse.
But with all the other things requiring energy, on top of Grandpa not improving and still bedridden in hospital, I feel super flat.
His impending death is highlighting to me how short life is, even if you make it 97, and I hate feeling like I’ve wasted a large part of 5 days, and I wish that time was spent trying to help more people with Alfred.
Perhaps I’m overacting because I’m tired and next week will be better, but I guess time will tell.
What also has me down is that while loads of great things also happened this week, I didn’t have the energy to feel very happy about them.
The Ups:
Alfred received it’s first investment!
Alfred partnered with S1 Studios for their 8-Week Challenge with 100s of their clients.
KPMG said they’re sending me to the Barossa to present an Energy Management and Resilience session to the team there.
Was on a panel discussing Energy Management with 2 other ex-athletes who also work at KPMG.
Did my second Energy Management and Resilience chat with our team as it’s approaching crunch time on our engagement
The Dock was super busy now that Covid is finally behind us.
The girls are all happy to be back at school after the holidays.
Running 4 Resilience (R4R) had a record turnout for our annual race “The R4R Gift”. (170+ runners)
R4R founder Breeny won the ACT Mental Health Community Award.
An awesome week for Alfred despite the legal stuff, and while the opportunity to go do my first big Energy Management session is great, I feel like a massive hypocrite talking about it while my battery is flat.
I also feel uncomfortable talking about Resilience as it’s becoming a corporate buzzword managers use to guilt trip their staff into pulling their socks up and trudging on.
But I’ll use the opportunity to call out that type of behaviour and share that I think Resilience is “the strength you draw from others” and that resilience only comes from being connected to healthy communities, so you can draw energy from others when times are tough, as I strongly believe you can’t be resilient on your own.
And with the energy management part of the preso, I guess I just need to practice what I preach and spend today recharging my battery, so I produce good work for the team tomorrow, and not feel like a massive fraud when the time comes to present.
Energy Givers
Whether they realise it or not, two people helped me get thru this week and I’m becoming increasingly addicted to being in their presence because of the positive energy they emit.
One is Eliza from work, who has been (to be blunt) fucking awesome to me since I started at KPMG and has always gone out of her way to help me get up to speed, and helped me prepare for my Barossa presentation. She even offered to babysit!
Still in her mid-20s and the daughter to a high-ranking General, Eliza is by far the youngest person at her level of the firm (well above me lol), and I’m constantly blown away by how she goes about her work. She also makes me feel like I’m on the same team as George Smith or David Pocock again, as I felt more confident when I ran out with those blokes beside me.
The other is Running 4 Resilience founder Matt Breen, whose friendship has been a highlight since retiring from footy. And despite everything he’s gone thru, he’s always positive and looking to help others.
Breeny mate, I can’t put into words how much our friendship means to me, as your positive energy is inspiring me to keep dusting myself off and push on.
Anyways, I just felt I needed to write this to get everything out of my head, and thanks to another good mate Sam Wilson who writes Sobering Thoughts for the inspiration, as he did a brain dump of his own last Saturday night when he felt overwhelmed.
Thanks for the energy your post gave me mate.
For what little it may be worth, I really needed to read this! Your definition of 'resilience' really resonates. Instead of looking at the good, we pile on ourselves about what we're not doing well. If you're me, the inner critic then has a field day in cutting me down further. Here's a positive for you - today your words had an impact and made a difference.
I’m honoured! The feeling is mutual mate.
Great article too. Always important to acknowledge when things might need to slow down or when the stressors are mounting.
I hope you can take some pride in those wins, though... they read like a bloody good purple patch.
One thing a former boss told me that resonated with me is “it’s never as good as it seems and it’s never as bad as it seems”.
We always seem to lean into which ever way we’re already leaning and that’s great when times are good, but rough times become tougher.