Reflections of The Year

Self-reflection is a process where we grow our understanding of who we are, understand our values and make sense of our thoughts and feelings.  It doesn’t have to be done on special occasions such as birthdays or seeing in the new year, but something that we can do all the time.  It allows us to learn about ourselves and accept who we are, inspiring us to live our lives with intention.  This week, I invite three friends, Amaya Alonso, Rudee Bertie and Trudy Kuhn to reflect on the past year.  Enjoy!

Links:

https://debbiewilliamspodcast.com

Title Music: Bouncy-Spongy by Ketsa,  licensed under an Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

Transcript

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SPEAKER_02 0:08

Welcome to storytelling. Self-reflection is a process where we grow our understanding of who we are, understand our values, and make sense of our thoughts and feelings. It doesn't have to be done on special occasions such as birthdays or scene in a new year, but something that we can do all the time. It allows us to learn about ourselves and accept who we are and inspiring ourselves to live our lives with intention. This week I invite three friends, Amaya Alonso, Rudy Bertie, and Trudy Kuhn to reflect on the past year. Hello, Amaya. Hi Debbie, how are you? I'm very well. Amaya, why don't you provide us with your reflection?

SPEAKER_03 1:20

Well, I think it's going to be an interesting one because when I speak with other people, I've been hearing how much they need other people, and they've been feeling lonely. In my case, I would say that I found the opposite actually. I found that having more time for myself and not being surrounded by people all the time is actually giving me a chance of thinking, enjoying myself, and doing a lot of things that before I didn't have the time because I prioritized to be with other people or being out all the time. So having more time and also my whole life has changed because working from home is been actually a great thing for myself. In terms of well, all the time that you usually have to spend commuting, you just have more time, basically. And I didn't find to be having the meetings with my colleagues online was such a difficult thing or awful. So I would say that the last 12 months has been really positive because of working from home had made my relationship with my partner even stronger. I feel free and not trapped in a routine, can have more kind of a variety of my day in terms of how to organize my day. And I guess I feel happier actually that I am able to enjoy the little things and I can live with less actually.

SPEAKER_02 3:20

Maya, thank you very much for your time.

SPEAKER_03 3:23

Thank you, Debbie. Thank you for having me.

SPEAKER_02 3:26

Hello, Rudy.

SPEAKER_00 3:28

Hey Debbie, you're right? How are you doing?

SPEAKER_02 3:29

I'm good, thank you.

SPEAKER_00 3:30

Let's go.

SPEAKER_02 3:32

So what are your reflections over the last year?

SPEAKER_00 3:35

Oh man, over the last year, I could go back over the last two years, but definitely over the last year. Let me start with in your household first. I've realized that you have to be more tolerable with people in your house. And I'm talking about people that you've actually lived with for most of your life, you know, wife, kids, and other family members. Because when you spend a lot of time with them in the daytime and the evening and the nighttime, you actually pick up little things, habits of other people that sometimes you don't really like or that you never really noticed before, and you try to ignore it, but then sometimes it comes out in the wrong type of conversation, and then you upset people. So you gotta learn to tolerate people, and they have to learn to tolerate you. That's one thing which I've kind of noticed. What's actually come out as well? I've got to know, I know it sounds a bit funny, but I've got to know my family a lot better. Not just the people that I live with, but my extended family. I've got three sisters and loads of nephews and nieces, but I've got to know them a lot better as well over the last year, definitely. And the whole way that we're using technology nowadays to communicate with family, before we only used to use it to contact family overseas, and that was a thing to contact your family overseas and used to get together, make a big thing of it. You know, WhatsApp was always there on the agenda. But what I found with technology, definitely with the younger generation, they're all up on this technology business, and they're getting us middle generation in tune with technology, then we're passing it on to the older generation. All three generations are on this technology and we're communicating, which is something which you probably never thought you was actually gonna even communicate or means that you were gonna communicate by in this day and age from a family perspective. That's what I've noticed. I've also, if I have to reflect again, like in workplace, I never thought in a million years that nobody would actually be in the building. I'm actually sitting here now, I'm the only person in the office, and there's about six different desks out there, and I'm the only one in the office, or no one else is actually on this floor. Talk to me, what, two years ago? I say no, never. You know, a company, people have to be here, you have to share experiences, you have to be together. The virtue of the name company, company that people get together, but the business is actually run a lot more fluidly. Business is actually run more mechanically, everything is on time. I think people are are taking it more serious because they realize they're being watched a little bit more in regards to time management, the work is being picked up and the work is being more accurately registering, the activity of certain people, how they work, and how they report stuff into the business. Yeah, so the productivity of the whole, especially my business anyway, the productivity of it is probably improved way over 100% because it shows in the targets that we've been reaching and overachieving definitely in the past year. I can even go back to the past you know, 18 months, but definitely in the past year. One of the other things, Debbie, is that in the first part of the lockdown situation that we had, I had injury to money, and normally, you know, you take things for granted. It's like, okay, I know where there's a physio, I'll either go to the gym or I'll go to the private one or whatever. But you take it for granted, you have an injury, you go to the physio, they sort you out, and then you're back home. Before you know it, you're back on your feet. In this case, there's nobody to see. It's always like, you know, you're calling a friend. Do you know a man that knows a woman that knows a man in some back street somewhere that you can see, but you have to see him at a specific time, and you have to pay him some extortionate amount of money to be able to come and see, and then they can't even see you at that particular time because, because, because. So I've had to find ways of trying to keep healthy through injury by virtual discovery. Uh, the gym that I belong to, they offered this virtual physio, and basically it's everything that you do when you go to the physio, but the difference is that you're just touching yourself. The guy's telling you, where's the pain? You know, touch here, put your thumb here, put your finger here, and all this type of stuff. That was quite eye-opening because when you don't actually feel your own muscular pain or your rip cords or whatever, you don't actually know what you're feeling or what you're touching. It kind of is a bit of an eye-opener that when you're actually being told what to feel for and how to move and what ligaments should be doing what, it's a bit of um of an eye-opener, really, of what these guys and girls have to go through in order to get you back on your feet. Again, going back to technology, we're about to learn how to use technology, not just learn to understand it, but you have to become like a proficient user of it, you almost like you're an expert. Like with Zooms and Teams, from what I understand, these two companies in the lockdown situation, they went through the roof, you know, like shareholding. Again, relying on technology, and definitely not from just like a personal aspect like FaceTime or WhatsApp, businesses actually took this to the next level. Every meeting that I've had this year, I've had the odd face-to-face, but definitely this year, it's either been on Zoom's meetings or it's been on Teams meetings. And lo and behold, what does the company do? The company believes, well, you don't need to fly anywhere now, you don't need to go across to the other side of the world to have your meeting or get your document signed or do like your workshops and all that kind of stuff. It could all be done on Teams, and yes, on Zoom, and yes, we can record it and we can share it with other people. So, again, from a workplace, it's allowed the working population to think and work differently, and at the same time, from a working environment, they're probably making a little bit more money by making the savings of not having to travel. Again, that's another thing. Not having to travel, not having to go out for dinners, not having to pay the bar bill and all that kind of stuff. There's a lot going on there, and again, just leaning on Zooms and Teams like schools. I I think parents out there are gonna appreciate teachers more and the schools more because when the parents were homeschooling, they you could be sitting in a sitting room with like four or five different people, two adults trying to work, and at the same time, you're sharing a computer or an iPad or whatever uh to teach the kids as well. Nightmare, right? So I'm pretty sure a lot of parents, when children went back to school, there was they was happy and there was like showing the teachers a lot more respect. Probably the teachers got a lot more apples and free lunches from that, I would imagine. There's lots, there's just lots. I'm looking at time management now. You can never be late for a meeting. Remember when it's like, oh, I'm stuck on the motorway or I'm just around the corner, I'll be five, ten minutes. Right? You can't have that anymore. You can't be talking about I'm late. Okay, you can be late, of course you can be late, but you're gonna be the last person to that meeting. There's gonna be three or four people waiting on that call for you to come in. And the other thing as well, when you're scheduling these calls nowadays on these virtual meeting places, they're back to back to back to back to back, so you don't really have the time to get up from your computer and go somewhere else, right? Which is it's got its good and bad advantages, but uh from my point of view, something which I had to learn was that I had to spread the meetings out. If I was actually holding the meetings, I had to spread them out because you don't want to do a back-to-back and you've got to try and make sure that your meetings don't run over. You know what though, one of the most important things, I do say taking things for granted, but I think we we take our families and friends for granted every single day of the week. And when you're not actually seeing your family and friends and your loved ones, that has a toll as well. From my point of view, I won't go so much as saying it had a toll on my mental state, but it did get me thinking quite a lot when I can actually get out and and get to see my mum and just the people that live in this country, because you know we can't go anywhere really. But it got me thinking all them family holidays that you've been putting off, or you wanted to see a family member which was overseas that you've been putting off, it kind of made you realise well, well, we don't put it off, man, because you might not ever have it back again. Yeah, I think that's the biggest one for me. Thank you, Rudy. No, no worries, man. It's all good.

SPEAKER_01 12:38

Hello, Trudy. What have I learned this past year? I've always thought I was invincible, I'd remain healthy forever. You look at old people, you see someone struggling to walk, maybe with a bad illness, or perhaps even really lonely because they can't get out anymore. You don't see yourself as that person. But at age almost 62, I found that things I always took for granted, such as going for a run, doing heavy gardening all day, they're now becoming much more difficult. My husband, who's a lot older than me, has become someone that needs lots of help and care. But luckily, he has me to look after him. But who look after me when I'm old? And this is a scary thought. Although I've learned the dreaded aging process is happening to me too, I've also learned there are things I can do about it. For example, I do try and keep physically and mentally active. And this should help me be stronger, more mobile, and more mentally switched on in years to come. And secondly, I try and mix with a variety of people from all walks of life, especially young people with fresh ideas. I don't want to be left behind. One final thing that I've learned is very important, particularly in this last difficult year, is to be available to help others and look for opportunities. They're not always obvious. I'm a firm believer that what goes around comes around. When I need help, particularly when I'm old and less able to do for myself, perhaps people will come and help me. Hopefully, I'll also have younger friends who won't find me boring because I've made an effort to keep up with ideas. And maybe I'll still have a body that enables me to get out and about. I hope so.

SPEAKER_02 15:06

Thank you, Trudy.

SPEAKER_01 15:07

Thanks for having me.

SPEAKER_02 15:09

Whatever journey you have experienced over the last year, I invite you to reflect on what you have learnt and to share your story.