So another update for all of you on the happenings at Avo.

I do have to ask where the rest of you where last night?…. Hm, Hm? Those of us who went to watch Hanli’s boyf play at Cool Runnings last night had a blast. So the rest of you missed out! Things got interesting when they started throwing the instruments around at the end of the set! There was also a moment where we wondered if Hanli was an under-cover member of the band considering she knew all the words…
We have some weddings coming up this month too. Gill is getting married in about 3 weeks and Becky at the end of the month. I hope you girls know that we expect a ppt slide show with lots of pics and some yummy cake! Mmmm, cake… .

In slightly more gruesome news, my brother managed to drop a knife with raw meat onto his foot the other night. So it was off to the clinic for stitches and antibiotics! But don’t worry, a few days in and the limp is less noticeable!

Tazzy got her first car last week as a surprise after passing her drivers licence. It was waiting for her with ribbons and balloons and is ‘oh-so-cute’!

Okay peeps, have to run. I’ll let you know whats up in the world of Avo again soon so look out for the blog!

C.

Several times my daughter had telephoned to say, “Mother, you must come to see the daffodils before they are over.” I wanted to go, but it was a two-hour drive from Laguna to Lake Arrowhead. “I will come next Tuesday”, I promised a little reluctantly on her third call.

Next Tuesday dawned cold and rainy. Still, I had promised, and reluctantly I drove there. When I finally walked into Carolyn’s house I was welcomed by the joyful sounds of happy children. I delightedly hugged and greeted my grandchildren.

“Forget the daffodils, Carolyn! The road is invisible in these clouds and fog, and there is nothing in the world except you and these children that I want to see badly enough to drive another inch!”

My daughter smiled calmly and said, “We drive in this all the time, Mother.”

“Well, you won’t get me back on the road until it clears, and then I’m heading for home!” I assured her.

“But first we’re going to see the daffodils. It’s just a few blocks.” Carolyn said. “I’ll drive. I’m used to this.”

“Carolyn,” I said sternly, “Please turn around.” “It’s all right, Mother. I promise. You will never forgive yourself if you miss this experience.”

After about twenty minutes, we turned onto a small gravel road and I saw a small church. On the far side of the church, I saw a hand lettered sign with an arrow that read, “Daffodil Garden.” We got out of the car, each took a child’s hand and I followed Carolyn down the path. Then, as we turned a corner, I looked up and gasped. Before me lay the most glorious sight.

It looked as though someone had taken a great vat of gold and poured it over the mountain peak and its surrounding slopes. The flowers were planted in majestic, swirling patterns, great ribbons and swaths of deep orange, creamy white, lemon yellow, salmon pink, saffron and butter yellow. Each different-coloured variety was planted in large groups so that it swirled and flowed like its own river with its own unique hue. There were five acres of flowers.

“Who did this?” I asked Carolyn. “Just one woman,” Carolyn answered. “She lives on the property. That’s her home.” Carolyn pointed to a well-kept A-frame house, small and modestly sitting in the midst of all that glory. We walked up to the house.

On the patio, we saw a poster. “Answers to the questions I know you are asking” was the headline. The first answer was a simple one. “50 000 bulbs” it read. The second answer was, “One at a time, by one woman. Two hands, two feet and one brain.” The third answer was “Began in 1958.”

For me, that moment was a life-changing experience. I thought of this woman whom I had never met, who, more than forty years before, had begun, one bulb at a time, to bring her vision of beauty and joy to an obscure mountaintop. Planting one bulb at a time, year after year, this unknown woman had forever changed the world in which she lived. One day at a time, she had created something of extraordinary magnificence, beauty and inspiration. The principle her daffodil garden taught is one of the greatest principles of celebration.

That is, learning to move toward our own goals and desires one step at a time - often just one baby-step at a time - and learning to use the accumulation of time. When we multiply tiny pieces of time with small increments of daily effort, we too will find we can accomplish magnificent things. We can change the world.

“It makes me sad in a way” I admitted to Carolyn. “What might I have accomplished if I had thought of a wonderful goal thirty-five or forty years ago and had worked away at it ‘one bulb at a time’ through all those years? Just think what I might have been able to achieve!”

My daughter summed up the message of the day in her usual direct way. “Start tomorrow” she said.

She was right. It’s so pointless to think of the last hours of yesterdays. The way to make a learning a lesson of celebration instead of a cause for regret is to only ask “How can I put this to use today?”
Use the Daffodil Principle:

Stop waiting…

Until your car or home is paid off. Until you get a new car or home. Until your kids leave the house. Until you go back to school. Until you clean the house. Until you organise the garage. Until you clean off your desk. Until you lose 10 kg’s. Until you gain 10kg’s. Until you get married. Until you get a divorce. Until you have kids. Until the kids go to school. Until you retire. Until summer. Until spring. Until winter. Until fall. Until you die…

There is no better time than right now to be happy. Happiness is a journey, not a destiniation. So work like you don’t need money. Love like you’ve never been hurt and dance like no one’s watching.

Wishing you a beautiful, daffodil day!

Don’t be afraid that your life will end, be afraid that it will never begin.

It’s a book I’m reading by Tim Ward (you’ll find it on Google). It is subtitled, “One man’s search for the Goddess”. It flows like a conspiracy theory in that it tracks his growing discovery across the more famous historical sites of the world, and pieces together an image in explanation of why we don’t have a reputable Goddess figure in our contemporary Western culture, and how Her historical relationship with men has created this deficite.

I have only managed the first chapter so far, but already it echoes a thought expressed to me recently by a friend, a Gen Xer, married with children. He speaks of the Feminine in the context of his particular walk of faith, as that which holds the key to his personal masculinity. And he, like Tim Ward, is not speaking about getting on better with women, or learning how to be culturally sensitive to them. These men are speaking of how their gender is inextricably linked to, formed by, the counterpoint of the Feminine.
I’m walking in numinous territory here. Ward’s book is not the usual feminist (Sensitive New Age Guy) treatise to re-establish an ousted Goddess-of-legend. He seeks her image as a man and as an historian, and walks a Jungian path. He describes his suffering along the way…
The challenge to me, a die-hard-pinko-feminist: do I have the courage to say in response, “My femininity is inextricably linked to, formed by, the counterpoint of the Masculine”? (remembering that the Feminine as Goddess in all her aspects is only one aspect of me as human woman). And would it be true for me to say so? Do I as a 21st century Gen X pinko-feminist really understand what it is to be feminine? I’ll be thinking about that in the week to come (and probably for the rest of my life). What say you, Avos & Friends?

There are a few moments in every person’s life where they can look back on and know, for sure, that they are viewing one of their life-changing conversations or events.

Such has been my experience of this lottery project we have won.

For those of you not in the loop, we recently formed a new company, Ngikwazi, with Andre Grobler, one of our dear associates, and friend. Together, we have been on the ride of a lifetime: first doing the work to succeed in our bid; corporate jostling with our esteemed rivals along the way; high level, international negotiations with big-shot lawyers (we now have our OWN lawyers!) to conclude the contract; and then, of course, setting up the business of about 300 people to actually deliver on all our promises!

For those of you hardened businesspeople out there, you will know what I mean when I say it was MUCH harder than I thought it would be! Our launch date is 1 April, with absolutely no margin for error. Every team that has been set up to deliver parts of the project is working itself to the bone, putting in weeks of punishing hours on too little sleep as the hours and days tick away, getting closer and closer to D-day.

There are 3 things we have to do: find 8000 retailers who would like to sell lottery tickets on site, credit check all owners of each of those businesses, and then train their staff - a small number of 30 000 people! Oh, and did I mention? We have precisely 20 days in which to train the 30 000! We will deliver 579 training days in the space of 20 working days! The scope and logistics of this project feel completely mind-boggling!

But operations aside, I must tell you about one of the things that have made this experience so ground-breaking for me:

For the first time in my business career, I have had first-hand experience of how important it is to be skilled at managing people. We have assembled the best lottery brains South Africa has to offer. So technical skill is not an issue. But as people work harder and longer, and resilience begins to fail them, I am seeing the real performers begin to fly. And every single one of them has solid EQ and skills to be able to manage themselves and the people around them. Every single one manages to calm the people around them, refocus their teams, and generate fresh wind for their colleagues to fly with.

Through this experience I am seeing that the skills we teach at Avo are absolutely critical when it comes to high-performing teams: the ability to self-observe, and self-correct can give people the absolute edge when the chips are down. The bad news for you, if you are one of our clients reading this, is that our Avo team will be far more assertive in our claims in future: instead of quietly building our training content in a gentle business environment that sometimes seems removed from the real world, we are now new, improved businesspeople who have faced the hard-core business realities head-on with our cleverness and shining interpersonal skills. And come out delivering, confident and ‘bigger’ than when we began. We know this stuff really works, and we’ll want to help your people get better at it too.

Beware, precious clients and friends: the ‘relationship mastery revolution’ is on and we know where you work!