| Welcome to Issue 260. I hope you are well and, if you’re a parent, your little one(s) have settled comfortably into their new classrooms. I always found the first few days zapped a lot of energy from Josh and Lottie …so I made sure the first weekend after a term start was gentle with lots of mum hugs! From the many OOOs we’ve been receiving in response to these messages over July and August, we know this week is a “back to work” week for many of you. We hope you’re easing back into your role again! At a time when we are getting used to new routines to take us through to the end of the year, I am reminded of an archive Lunch n Learn which I’m going to share again today. This issue mentions my lovely friend Sarah Howson of Strategic PA Recruitment and Network fame and her gorgeous boys. I hope it acts as real “food for thought” when it comes to considering change, challenge and resulting opportunities. Here we go… I had a lovely “out of work hours” text conversation with Sarah Howson, Founder & Director of Strategic PA Network and Recruitment the other evening. Sarah has the most gorgeous young boys that I have had the pleasure to meet and I love following their cheeky antics on socials! When I first met Sarah I gifted all my daughter’s childrens books to her boys. During our text conversation, I got the cutest video of her youngest son “reading” one of his favourite books about an owl and sharing some very impressive “twit-twoo” sound effects! Sarah sent a photo of the book insert which had “this book belongs to Lottie Taylor” on it. It brough back such happy memories of storytime (before bedtime) with Lottie. Lottie’s favourite book was an Elmer the Elephant board book (not one that we gifted to Sarah as the edges were rather tatty from overhandling and it was in a bit of a sorry state from being over-loved!). I remember vividly trying to turn 2 pages at once and shortening storytime (it had been a loooong day and “in the know” parents will empathise with this “2 page turn” strategy to bring forward bedtime…). Lottie was so cross that I’d missed a bit of the story out. Her pre-empting and knowledge of every page of the story was evident. It got me to thinking about the familiarity and predictability of situations and their resulting comfort. It’s comforting isn’t it when we know “what’s coming next” and we can confidently turn the page with a certainty of narrative to our story? When we miss narrative, when we don’t know what the next page of our story contains or indeed (in as in the “2-page turn” strategy) when we miss content, this can be incredibly unsettling. With predictability and familiarity removed, we are faced with different content and a foreign narrative. Remember though, with difference and change comes opportunity and the promise of a new exciting narrative. Balance this with the return of familiarity and some predictability on the horizon too. Maybe I would be taking it too far with the Fairy Tale-esque “and they lived happily ever after” but who knows?! What do you think? |
