0CEO blog for July
Although it is winter and the temptation is to curl up and slow down, this is not happening at Lantern! The August newsletter is packed full of stories of our many adventures during June and July, including Naidoc week, two lovely seaside outings to St Kilda and Mornington and an adventurous trip to the snow with the Mind respite program.
In July I had the pleasure of being a panellist at the NAB Staff Forum on youth mental health, alongside Lifeline, headspace and Reach Foundation. There was some great information shared, but for me the thing that resonated most strongly was the importance of listening.
Listening and not solving. Listening and being truly present. Today we get so busy that we often do two things at once, reading our emails on our iPhones as we sit at the dinner table for example. To be truly present with someone means switching our full attention to them.
When people we care about are troubled it is only natural that we want to help them and sometimes we try too hard and start given advice or taking it on ourselves to solve their problems. I need to remind myself constantly to work on my active listening skills. Acknowledging the other persons feelings, offering to listen and being truly present with them is validating. When people feel safe and validated they will be able to release their feelings in a healthy, safe and supportive way which is often the start to feeling better and being able to solve their own problems.
Coming up in August we have Kerryn Burgoyne presenting at our Wellbeing Series on Asperger’s Syndrome. In September the Wellbeing Series will feature the topic of ‘Young People, Social Media and Cyber Safety’. Two other important diary notes are Thursday August 25th and the Annual General Meeting on October 26th. These two dates are interconnected. The theme this year’s AGM will be, ‘A day in the life of Lantern’. This is your chance to tell your story and to share what Lantern means to you. We will be filming a short video and taking still photos on Thursday August 25th. We hope lots of you will get involved.
Until next month,
Cheers
Janet Hopkins (CEO)
Some useful links:
nabITAT – National Australia Bank
Lantern’s bookmarks – useful websites and articles via delicious
Blossom Blog – Challenging our assumptions
May 30, 2011
An assumption is something taken for granted; something you believe to be true often without any evidence.
Something came up in a discussion I had with a friend recently. She had assumed she knew what I felt; she did not actually know and was clearly struggling to fit the new information with the old assumption. Has that happened to you?
Assumptions are very handy. We use them all the time. They save us a lot of time and energy. We don’t have to think about everyday things, we just know that things are as they are. We can all have similar assumptions like; ‘all children like lollies’, ‘everyone starts work on Monday morning’, ‘if it’s dark outside its night time’.
We also have personal assumptions developed from our life experience, peer, family and cultural influences. Often these assumptions are embedded and we don’t know they are there until something happens to make us think about them.
What we do when we realise our assumption doesn’t fit any more is really important. We can ignore the evidence and go on as normal or we can have a look at our assumption and review it.
I have had my own assumptions challenged often over the last year. In fact just recently I made an assumption about a person – I thought I knew what it meant to be her in that circumstance and I was clearly wrong. I think of myself as a free thinker with an open, enquiring mind but that’s not always true. That same enquiring mind then went into over drive trying to figure out how I ended up with that conclusion!
Not looking at these assumptions, not thinking about the relevance of the assumption can stop us from exploring and growing, this can stand between us and new life experiences. My suggestion is to at least have a look at the value of your assumption and wonder what it is and is it of value to you now.
Take your assumption out, give it a shake and see what happens when you really look at it closely perhaps it needs adjusting or to be discarded to allow you to see things in a different more relevant way.
Janet Bromley
Talking about ‘me’ at Blossomproject this week
Each one of us is a multifaceted individual with many parts, unfortunately it is way too easy to become ‘the issue’ to others and sometimes to ourselves…
‘Talking about me’ why are we doing that? When we access support for a specific purpose we present and are often only treated for that issue, sometimes we can get lost in that and not remember who we are as a whole person. Each one of us is a multifaceted individual with many parts, unfortunately it is way too easy to become the issue to others and sometimes to ourselves.
What I want to do is remind you and myself that we are all made up of many parts. Personally I am a mum, nan, manager, support worker, a friend, an acquaintance, an artist, a neighbor, a child, a sister, an aunty, a person who would like to sing but can’t and when I interact with the world what people see is the me that I am at the moment, but inside me I am all of those aspects put together.
All my parts make me who I am and make me different to other people, even people who are close to me. It is good when you are dealing with an issue to focus on that part but it is also good to remember all of you.
I sing in the car so others don’t have to hear and so that I can sing out loud. How do you deal with your parts? Do you bring them out sometimes look at them and quickly put them away?
We each are who we are. What has happened in the past before this moment is not changeable, but how you feel about it can change and you can change what happens in your future.
So remember who you are and value those parts of yourself, even those parts that aren’t quite how you want them to be, “sing out loud”.
Janet Bromley
Services Manager
