I know it’s been a year longer than we had hoped, but now, despite the current global issues, which reminds me of the Billy Joel song, ‘We Didn’t Start The Fire’, we’re back for season 2 of the Xperiential Education podcast!
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This season, we cover all sorts of great programs from art, to science, to risk management, to outdoor ed, to a really wonderful student-led medical program and a few things in between. The depth and breadth of the podcast and our guests, highlights how important it is for students today to learn to be adaptable problem solvers.

Season 2 is brought to you by Xcursion Risk Management, for all of your risk management training and software needs for running great experiential education programs.

https://training.xcursion.com.au/

https://www.xcursion.com.au

For more info, guest suggestions and other feedback visit:

https://xperiential.education/
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Everyone loves a good drama. At work, the gossip around who’s dating who is far more interesting than doing your job. Newspapers and media outlets rely on bad news to sell papers or in digital terms create ‘click bait’ so you click on the article. Often, in both cases, the headlines don’t match the actual story because if they did, people wouldn’t read them. It’s far easier to get someone to pay for a paper with the headline “Virus Outbreak! 95 Year old Dead and Infections on the Rise.” Rather than, “55,000 people have already recovered from the Virus many only experienced mild illness.” This is not to understate the issue at hand. Yes it is concerning and yes we need to do something about this to slow and/or stop the spread. However, the impact this has had on outdoor education alone is massive, with countless school cutting all programs, no matter how remote or disconnected they are from the fact that children are not really being affected. The level of perceived risk is through the roof, the level of actual risk for most people remains relatively low.

I saw this again on the news last night. ¾ of the whole news was about the ‘massive’ jump in cases. The ‘sick and elderly dying,’ the panic buying, the dark days ahead and all of this negative crap which gives the average person the impression that the zombie apocalypse is here. For most people, given the popularity of the show, the Walking Dead, they’re reacting as if a zombie virus or Ebola has gotten loose and is wiping out 80-90% of the healthy population. The fact is, this couldn’t be further from the truth. The reality is that fear and panic are driving this and hyped up by the media, is driving the world economy into recession.
 
Ironically, like a fine print disclaimer at the bottom of some ludicrous advert, one of the later stories in the news was basically, ‘Oh by the way… if you wash your hands, don’t touch your face and mouth after contacts and don’t have prolonged close contact with an infected person, the risk of catching this is really low. The number of cases of this in the country and around the world are testament to this.
 
Added to this, most people are not dying. They’re experiencing mild ‘flu-like’ conditions and recovering. What’s the problem? The problem is that everyone loves the drama and focuses on the negative side of the drama, rather than looking at the whole problem in context. The world is not going to be completely overrun and shut-down by this virus. It’s not wiping out the next generation of young people and healthy people, but mild viruses which don’t kill lots of people, don’t make good news stories.
 
On 30th Oct 1938, the radio show ‘War of the Worlds’, by Orson Welles first aired. This sparked wide-spread panic, with people thinking they were being attacked by aliens. Now we might laugh at this now, as we know it’s a story, but at the time, that felt so real as it was coming through their airwaves.
 
The media has a lot to answer for in this. They’re far from reporting the facts and this has been so over-editorialised and hyped up that the fear and panic they’ve put into the community could have a really long-term negative effect. This will all blow over given time. However, how many businesses are going to be wiped out? How many fights are going to break out over nothing? How much panic is ok before the media is taken to task over this, which, to be honest, they won’t be.
 
If you look back in history, the world has survived many things. However, fear and panic is so contagious that the impact it has on a mild crisis can and does turn everything into a major catastrophe. We’re experiencing runs on banks, stampedes in stadiums, riots over food and supplies, when the supplies aren’t at risk. The timeless words of Rudyard Kipling’s ‘If’ echo loudly through this current world crisis and we should always remember:

The full poem can be found here:
 
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/46473/if---
 
It is time for us to take stock and see this for what it is. It is not the world ending pandemic that will turn everyone inside out. It is a virus, which spreads quickly through close contact and poor hygiene and the effects of which are generally mild with most people recovering. Let’s not lose our heads. The world has gone through worse and there will be worse to come, but standing firm when everyone else is losing it, is so important for the world right now. We need more people to have level heads and respond to this current issue accordingly.
 
For some stats on the current virus check out:
 
https://informationisbeautiful.net/visualizations/covid-19-coronavirus-infographic-datapack/
 
For some crucial tips on surviving a zombie apocalypse check out:
 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JyUbQTEFuss
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Ok, so I’ve been watching all of the hysteria over the Coronavirus. Whilst this is no doubt a highly infectious virus which has spread quite rapidly, we also should put this into perspective as to the effect of this virus. Most sufferers are not dying from this. Most are recovering quite well, as with any other cold or flu. There is a mortality rate currently between 1% and 4%, depending on country, age and healthcare standards.  In terms of a monumental threat to life as we know it, it’s really not that bad.
 
Therefore, why are so many people going crazy? Why are the supermarket aisles stripped of toilet paper and tissues? Why are people having punch-ups over things which you could live without? It’s weird, isn’t it. It often takes a crisis for us to remember how stupid some people are. The whole notion of people being able to think for themselves seems to go out the window and is replaced with this insane ‘mob mentality’. This fear and anxiety is far more contagious and dangerous than the virus itself, as people then turn on each other for no real reason.
 
The media hasn’t helped either. Whilst it’s good that it’s being reported, as are all bad stories, the media just latch on (kinda virus-like) and suck the life out of the story. I saw one media outlet which I won’t name, (but they have a track record of idiotic headlines and stories written and aimed at angry bogan 10 year olds). That organisation is running an infection counter on its website, as if it’s some sort of doomsday clock. I think this is horrendously irresponsible and only fuels the fear of those toilet paper toting hoarders.
 
From a risk management point of view, I understand the hand sanitiser, even the paracetamol to fight off the infection, but what the hell are you going to do with car-loads of toilet paper? We don’t import it, so it’s not as if it’s going to be stopped and be sitting on a dock somewhere. If I were going to go hysterical and start hoarding things, I’d be going for tinned food, bottled water, some fuel, gin, tonic, limes and a few good books to read. The TP is really not even on the list. So why is this the thing for which people have rushed out? To be honest, I have no idea! It really makes no sense at all, but it’s fascinating behaviour to watch how irrational people can be when fear sweeps over them.
 
Whilst in the past we would talk about the fight or flight mechanism we have built into us, perhaps that needs to be extended to the fight, flight and flush. Whilst the coronavirus is a concern, as is any communicable disease which can kill people, the far more dangerous thing at this point in time is the fear and anxiety which is being fuelled by media and mob behaviour.
 
Before we all rush out, knock over a few old ladies in the desperate effort to buy a roll of toilet paper, take stock of the reality of the situation. The virus can be prevented and avoided by social distance and ensuring you have good hygiene and wash your hands properly. Doing this will help stop the spread of this virus. Here’s a great video from the WHO about that exact thing:
 
https://openwho.org/courses/introduction-to-ncov
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This year sees the banning of mobile phones in many Australian schools. This is an initiative which is something that everyone should welcome with excitement. Whilst some technology is beneficial, the fact is that we’re seeing a massive increase in mental health issues, many of which can be linked with social media addiction and a complete disconnect from reality in which young people growing up with smart devices can find themselves.
 
Whilst many bleeding heart civil libertarians and anxious parents might be wailing and decrying the ban as over the top, the fact is that children don’t need a phone at school. For that matter, they really don’t need a phone at all. I’ve written a number of articles around this and the problems that phones are causing, of which we’re only just starting to see the impact.
 
In terms of taking risks, I recently wrote about finding the one reasons out of ten for doing something versus the ten reasons for not doing something. I think the same is relevant to this problem. However, the opposite seems to be true of the decision-making process. Parents hold onto the one reason for their child to have a phone and that’s ‘in case of emergency.’ However, how often is there an emergency where there’s nobody else around to ask for help? If we then delved into the ten reasons why you shouldn’t give your child a phone, we would find the potential negative impact to be huge versus this supposed ‘emergency’ which is most likely not going to happen.
 
However, without going into all the ins and outs of what might or might not be reasons or justifications for giving a child a phone, let’s look at what’s been the impact at school.
 
Peer-pressure! This is probably the number one driver of why children end up with phones. ‘Because everyone else has one’. This is not a great reason in itself, but it massively fuels the peer pressure which children face each day.
 
One of the main impacts at school however, is the level of distraction that a smart device causes and the subsequent lowering of children’s attention spans. If you’re trying to engage students in learning, then having something which distracts them and constantly provides them with a dopamine hit versus your maths lesson, you’re not winning anytime soon. In general terms, it takes fifteen minutes for you to get into an activity. Each distraction or change of task, then takes another fifteen minutes for you to get back into that activity. Hence, in an hour lesson, you don’t need too many distractions to have wasted an entire hour.
 
There’s the social impact. If break time is filled with time spent playing games on the phone or engaged on social media, this significantly reduces the child’s ability to develop friendships and meaningful relationships with real people. All they see is a filtered view of the world and this filtered view is toxic and destructive.
 
From my experience, often children will claim they’re talking with or messaging their parents during break times so it’s ‘ok.’ This firstly is a load of crap, as most teenagers wouldn’t be constantly messaging their parents and secondly, if they are, their parents need a slap across the face for being so stupid. Stop trying to live your life through your children. If you have nothing else better to do than message your kids all day, then go and get a job, or volunteer somewhere. There’s lots of need in the community, so make yourself useful!
 
Having said that, most parents don’t do this and the children are just making it up as an excuse. The fact remains however, that it’s a disconnect with the environment, space and purpose of education. For those people who say, well it’s part of life now, then I think they’re missing the point as to how damaging this part of life is. In the 19th century, opium was a widespread part of life. That was not something which was a wonderful progression in the development of humanity, neither is this. Phones and technology are tools to be used to benefit communications, work and create some great efficiencies. However, at the same time, like firearms, they’re a dangerous tool in untrained hands and that’s the reality of this technology with children.
 
A phone manipulates and controls their behaviours, dominates their attention and rescues their ability to cope with the real world. Removing the phone, not only from schools, but from children in general until they have the skills, maturity and abilities to use it as a tool and not have it use them as a tool, is vitally important to their long-term health and well-being.
 
The Australian school phone ban is great! It’s a big step towards modernising education and making it relevant in the 21st century. Let’s hope this ban expands to all schools in Australia and across the world. If you can’t go six hours without a phone, then you have far more problems than that supposed ‘emergency’ for which the phone was originally intended.

In life, we can always come up with ten reasons for not doing something. The negative talk of most people determines why something shouldn’t be done more often than why it should be done. In general, people don’t like to take risks and this becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.
 
However, taking risks is how we grow and develop. If we’re so risk averse that we’re not willing to try anything new, then this really doesn’t allow us to reach our potential on any level. Yet when most people encounter something new or different, they will run through in their minds all the reasons why it won’t work, rather than all the reasons why it will.
 
This is common at work and in people’s social lives. The comfort of knowing the outcome is a wonderful thing to be able to hold onto as it gives us certainty, which is always comfortable to have. However, this certainty can often hold us back from interesting and exciting experiences.
 
One really good example of this is abseiling. Over the years, despite this being a really safe activity to do, abseilling has been the most challenging activity I’ve seen for many students and teachers alike. You can see them talking themselves down, even before you get started. Some people won’t even put on a harness because they’re afraid of heights, rock falls, ropes breaking, slipping back, falling off the cliff, being dropped off the cliff, the rope being cut, the anchor giving way, the double anchor giving way, looking stupid or afraid whilst on the rope. Despite this huge bunch of negative talk, what’s the one reason you should forget all of this and just go for it?
 
Now I can’t answer this for anyone, but what’s important is that we encourage people we’re working with to find the one reason for doing something. This might not be easy, as the easiest thing to often do is nothing, but where does that get us? It disempowers people and means they will never be able to live up to their potential.
 
The irony of all this is that often by not doing anything, or taking any risks, people end up with a false sense of what real risks are and often the risk of doing nothing is far greater than the risk of giving something a go.
 
When you’re setting up an activity which might have a high-level of perceived risk and a high-level of resistance from participants, why not chat with them about the benefits of taking a risk on something. Use a tangible example of that as well, to ensure they can see how and why finding the one reason to do something, versus the ten reasons not to. This is massively beneficial to their own personal development and growth.
 
There will always be plenty of reasons not to do something in life, but if nobody took any sort of risk, then we’d still be living in caves. Even if something doesn’t work out the way we thought it would, taking that risk can mean we end up having a wonderful and unexpected experience and learn and grow from this. This is followed by other experiences we have as a result of finding that one reason why, versus the ten reasons why not.
 
Take a risk today! Try something new and different and surprise yourself as to how wonderful that new experience can be.

​In Australia, we’ve just experienced the most horrendous bushfires in living memory. The size and scale of these unprecedented fires has shocked the world. In the 1980s we had musicians performing at the live-aid concert to raise money and awareness for the famine in Ethiopia. Today we have some of those same musician (and a whole stack of others) raising money for us, a first world country with an extremely high standard of living.
 
Whilst contributing factors to the fires include a long running drought, this was well-known for some time and the complete lack of preparation and any sort of pre-emptive large scale response has been nothing short of pathetic. Whilst this is not a criticism of the rural fire service, as they’ve done everything they can to put the fires out, this is a criticism of the complete lack of forethought in preparation to respond to what so many people predicted was going to be a horror fire season. Why don’t we have a standing fire fighting force with sufficient aircrafts on hand to battle these fires when we know they happen every year? Why don’t we have thresholds for triggering a military response in these scenarios? Why did it take so long for anything to happen on a federal level until hundreds of homes were destroyed, lives lost and hundreds of millions of animals wiped out?
 
Is this a case of fundamental incompetence at a federal level? Is the current government so useless that if they were to plan anything for a scenario like this, they may be seen to be admitting that climate change is real and the magic clean coal fairies of future power production utopia they currently believe in don’t actually exist? The fact is that so many narrow minded bafoons in federal politics have banged on about the ‘safety’ of the economy and ‘dangers’ to our prosperity by acknowledging climate change and if they did then it could cripple our way of living.
 
Well news flash idiots, the magic fairies of clean coal don’t exist, humans are having an impact on the world’s climate and by denying it and doing nothing we’ve been smashed by devastating fires which have already significantly impacted on the Australian economy and will continue to do so for years. Sadly the federal government will continue to do nothing, other than some pathetic window dressing or an expensive and pointless ‘inquiry’ into a major issue that has not only impacted our way of life for months, the impact of the destruction of native animals, habitat, farm animals, pastures and our international tourism industry has a far greater impact still to come. The impact on healthcare services is also unknown as the air quality on peoples’ respiratory systems is still unknown and the cost of managing the PTSD which will come from the shattered communities and those first responders who have been on the ground for months trying to put these fires out and protect life and property.
 
For a government who claim to be ‘good economic managers’, they have failed dismally in any basic risk management of the economy and the well-known environmental powder keg of bushfires of which they were warned months earlier in April 2019. This complete incompetence has already costs billions, lives and irreparable damage to us as a nation and for what?
 
As a country we’ve failed ourselves and this has to be a tipping point for real action on climate change and understanding the impact the modern world has on the natural environment. Nobody wants to live in an apocalyptic desert world fighting for the last glass of water or gallon of gasoline, but weeks of living under dark and dirty orange skies being rained upon by ash has left me feeling like we are heading in that direction.  If we just keep pretending there’s nothing going on and nothing to see here then the Mad Max future will be upon us faster than we could ever have imagined. The federal government may believe there’s no such thing as climate change, but at the same time, they also have no idea of the political climate change that has just happened to them in an instant in Australia.
 
Sadly it always takes a massive disaster or catastrophic failure like this for people to take action. Let’s just hope this is the wake up call we need and it’s not just another thing that will be soon forgotten and dealt with through political spin. The climate is changing, it is impacting on our way of life and if we don’t do anything about it, it will devastate our economy and way of life, not to mention the complete destruction of the natural environment. It’s time we all started to actually do something about this because nobody wants to live in a world in which you simply can’t breathe. 

​I know it’s been a long time coming, but we’re getting ready to launch season 2 of the Xperiential Education podcast. A podcast all about learning through doing and the skills this helps students develop so they can thrive in life and what is an increasingly uncertain future. Not because of the potential threat of global conflict with China, more so the mass automation of jobs and services and the social and economic dislocation this is brining.
 
If you haven’t listened to season 1, then what are you waiting for? Get on your favourite podcasting thingy right now and start listening.

                                                                        Xperiential Education Podcast

​We cover a range of diverse and unique educational programs and ways of teaching and learning.
 
Season 2 we have some awesome guests and have some really interesting conversations around environmental programs, entrepreneurship, Outdoor Ed and the arts! We have a couple of episodes still to record, so if you’re running a unique program, we’d love to hear from you.

Most teachers go into teaching with good intentions. The desire to teach others and help them to do something useful and productive with their lives which contributes to the world, could be seen as a noble cause. However, teaching and noble causes are somewhat different, yet many schools use this mistaken belief as a way in which they can over-work staff and keep adding roles and responsibilities until they just can’t cope.

Rather than enough people drawing the line and saying this is ridiculous, as the roles and responsibilities pile up, for which a lot of people have no training nor systems in place to do properly, people just put in more and more hours and become less and less effective at everything they do.

I’ve seen this happening with increasing frequency at schools as someone has another idea which will ‘be great for the kids.’ This is a good thing, but instead of taking something away, this ‘good idea’ is just added to everything else that’s being done. Maybe one extra idea is ok, but then another one comes along, and another and another. Before you know it, you’re spending every waking minute of the week trying to get through all the competing responsibilities of teaching, planning, preparation, sports, community service clubs, co-curricular activities and planning and going on trips with students in the holidays. This is truly noble, unsustainable and completely mental.

One of the root problems is the fact that students actually learn more from all of these co-curricular programs and the real experiences they have, than they do in the classroom, but our schools are so ridgéd in their thinking around this, they tack these programs onto everything else that they’re doing, rather than just look at it with some perspective and find natural fits between the academic requirements and the real life experiences of all these ‘add-ons.’

This seems to get worse with non-government schools as their co-curricular programs form part of their marketing materials where everyone’s smiling and looking so happy and everything is wonderful in the world. The problem is … what’s the cost of those photos and those marketing materials?

The cost is that teachers are so overwhelmed by the sheer volume of work they end up doing, it starts to significantly impact on the rest of their lives. At one school where I was working, this was putting the staff’s health at risk and students’ well-being at risk. Time and time again concerns were raised as things were being missed and overlooked all the time. Not from staff incompetence, but teachers were under so much pressure to ‘perform,’ that the more work that was thrown at us, the lower morale became and the risk of something significant going wrong dramatically increased. The tipping point for us in that organisation was after a four hour staff meeting in which the maintenance man inferred that we were just being lazy and the director said ‘That’s just what teachers do,’ it was clearly time to go.

Yes that’s right, you didn’t mis-read that, the maintenance man was, for whatever reason, sitting in our staff meetings giving advice on teacher and program performance. Thanks for that Grounds Keeper Willy. Insert stare face/rolling eye emoji here 😳😳😳!

Maybe most schools don’t invite their ground keepers to staff meetings, but this highlights in a stark way how people who don’t understand, or don’t seem to understand the realities of the pressures teachers are put under, view the job of a teacher. After all, they get all those holidays! In many teaching roles I’ve worked. I’ve worked back to back 70-90 hour weeks, most of which was actively engaged with teaching, supervision, co-curricular programs, staff engagement and meetings. This was totally unsustainable and whilst you always pushed through with the idea that ‘this will be great for the students,’ the fact is that it’s not. Running a school filled with exhausted demoralised staff is idiotic in the extreme and is something which needs to be addressed in many schools. It’s not just concern for the health of teachers, but it’s about being effective as a teacher.

Some schools however, really understand this and provide opportunities for balancing this workload out. When good leadership within a school can see this and the contribution which teachers make over and beyond what most other sectors require, you end up with a happy sustainable workplace in which staff and students can thrive.

We must avoid being drawn into the trap of overwork and an undervaluing of that work. Where a culture permits or encourages that, it’s time to find somewhere else. The issue of workloads and sustainability comes from the top and the creation of good cultures within schools. However, in the absence of any common sense and leadership in the creation of sustainable and positive cultures within a school, then the tendency is just to use this throw away line of ‘that’s just what teachers do,’ which seems to justify terrible and unsustainable practices.

As teachers, we all want what’s best for students, but at the end of the day, looking after yourself and your team is far more important than any other consideration. When you have a happy team that’s not stressed to the eyeballs all the time, you have the makings of an amazing school for everyone who goes there.

​​Ok, so if you watch the Simpsons, you would’ve already kinda realised what were about to talk about. If not, why haven’t you been watching the Simpsons?
 
We face all sorts challenges in life. Some big, some small. Most people are ok with the small stuff. You miss the bus, you can’t find where you left your glasses (they’re actually sitting on your head), you forget to pick up your children from school…, you leave them in the car at the Casino… It’s annoying but manageable and everyone gets over it, eventually.
 
However, what happens when that small challenge turns into a real crisis? How well equipped are we and those around us to deal with these sorts of situations? For most people, it’s impossible. If something doesn’t go to plan, everything falls apart. However, for those who can keep a calm demeanour, whatever the situation might be, they’re able to see a way through the crisis.
 
When everything was falling apart for Homer in one episode of the Simpsons, he’s saying how hopeless everything is. However, Lisa jumps in to say that the Chinese word for crisis and opportunity is the same. To which Homer replies, ‘Crisitunity!’
 
Whilst crises are never a good time, they are what often sparks innovation and prompt us to rethinking what we’ve been doing and make changes to improve the situation. Essentially, we want the crisis to stop and we want to return to normal operations and daily life again. This however, could mean that daily life is not quite the same, but has changed for the better. The only failure in a crisis is to do nothing and learn nothing from it. If that’s the case, you’re doomed to repeat the same mistakes over and over and over again until you’re ultimately rewarded for your efforts with a Darwin Award.
 
To be able to see the opportunity in a crisis, you do need some lateral thinking skills and have an openness and willingness to adapt. Too many people are so comfortable in the way they’ve always done something, they’re unable to cope with the rapid and fluid thinking needed to bring a crisis back from the brink and turn it into a wonderful opportunity.
 
Recently, I was running a residential program and we had two crises in two days. Firstly, we ran out of water. I discovered this fact late at night when I went to have a shower and the shower head angrily spat air at me,  so I tried the tap, which did the same. “Hmmm, that can’t be good,” I thought at the time, but not much I could do at that hour. The bore from which we’d been getting our water for years ran dry. This was not surprising, given how little rain and residual ground water there had been for the past few years. Luckily, we had a 100,000 litre water tank, so that was an easy fix. Call the water people and get them to deliver lots of water. Done! Crisis averted, back to normal operations. It’s amazing how little appreciation we have for essential services until they’re gone.
 
The second one however, was a bit more of a challenge. When you’re running a residential program with 60-80 teenagers and adults living on site, you generate a lot of washing. For years we had sent all of our piles of dirty laundry off site and a couple of days later it magically reappeared clean, ironed and folded neatly. However, this year was slightly different. We were all ready and prepared for doing exactly the same thing, but with one problem. The first weekend of the program, the town laundry burnt to the ground. Now we suddenly had a mountain of dirty clothes and no magical fairies to come and take it away. With a nine weeks’ program ahead of us and being in a rural town with no other laundry, this was a major problem…
 
The first thing was to let everyone know. This is the easy part. The next step, was to think about how we could do something about it. We had 65 people, a commercial kitchen and 4 washing machines and 3 dryers. Whilst this might be ok with adults, with teenagers who have never washed a single item of clothing before in their lives, this becomes a problem. The first step was to get us over the first hurdle. We needed some clean clothes and we needed them quickly. One machine and dryer was out for kitchen use only, leaving us with 3 and 2 respectively to take down Mount Washmore!
 
Rather than think it was all too hard and try to find another laundry, the clear way forward was to create a laundry roster, show the students how to wash their clothes and let them learn from the experience. We worked with the students on the first day to make sure they had clean essentials (underwear and other inner layers). The outer layers such as jackets, could just weather the storm of daily use for a bit longer. With a few people predicting disastrous visions of 50 disheveled children walking around looking as if they’d been on an epic journey with a band of hobbits, it didn’t turn out that way at all. It wasn’t exactly clean, neatly pressed clothes either, but a happy medium in between.
 
With a little more time and seeing a few holes in our original plan, we updated and amended our systems and instructions and before too long, the weekly washing became just another normal part of everyone’s week. Students somehow worked out that you can’t put dripping wet clothes in a dryer and others worked out that you don’t put new red and blue clothes in with your whites. However, without the laundry burning down, which forced our hand to adapt quickly, we wouldn’t have changed what we’d been doing for the past 20 years and turn it into a learning opportunity.
 
If I were to have proposed that we stop sending our laundry to the magic fairies to do and instead said that we should get the students to do it themselves, I’m quietly confident that this would have been rejected and I would have been told that it wouldn’t work. Yet being forced into a situation where we had no other option than to make it work, meant that from this crisis, emerged a great learning opportunity not only for now, but for the whole program into the future.
 
When you’re next faced with a crisis, what are you going to do? Will you put your head in your hands and cry, “I’m Done! This is not my job!” or are you going to look at the problem laterally and find a way to make the most of the crisitunity at hand?

This year at Christmas, it’s important to stop and reflect on the year that has past. Was it a good year? Was it a great year? Was it a year to forget? Why was it like this? How do you feel about work, family life, friends, sport, hobbies? Is your life happy and fulfilled?
 
It’s often this time of the year that sparks quite polarised feelings about life that we’re either really happy with, or that worry us intensely. The constant bombardment of media, movies and ads showing happy families at Christmas all getting along well, laughing and enjoying their time together can either bring a sense of joy and happiness, or dread and resentment.
 
It’s tough that this time of the year can be the hardest for many people. However, if this is the case, then what are you going to do about it? It’s all well and good to feel sorry for ourselves, but rather than focus on what’s wrong, this is a great time to review what’s really important in life and make some positive changes to build on that.
 
As I’ve written about before, this is not about New Year’s resolutions, which are generally a complete load of crap. Most overweight people who start their new diet are still overweight at this time the next year as there’s not the action to back the change that’s needed. I think it’s more important to think more broadly and look at what will really make a difference in your life.
 
Fast forward to your 90s, which is a good innings. What does a life with no regrets look like? What would you say if you could have a conversation with your younger self? Ok, so I should qualify this with the fact that I’m not suggesting you take the approach in the Decameron, but instead, what is going to be happy, fulfilling and rewarding for you and your family?
 
One place to start is to give back to the community with no expectations. The gift we can give someone through actions of kindness, compassion and generosity can make a huge difference in their lives and what better time to start than now. Join a service club. If you’re under 60, you will dramatically lower the average age of those involved.
 
I have no time I hear you sigh that you have no time. Why is that? What’s the root cause of the lack of time? What can you do to make your time more efficient and effective? For starters, start saying no to lots of things which don’t matter. Our lives can become so consumed by pointless noise. If we filter out that noise and stop doing things which really aren’t that important, then the amount of time we have to do important things which are fulfilling dramatically increases.
 
What’s important to you? How can you focus on that over the next week, month and year? How can you help others? Most importantly, how can you live a wonderful, meaningful and fulfilling life? At Christmas, forget the noise of marketing, of fads and what the world tells you you should be doing for the new year. Instead spend some time focussing on what’s really important in your life and how you can focus on that to ensure every year, despite its challenges, will be a wonderful and fulfilling one for you and your family.