Welcoming my emotions (all of them)

Do you know this feeling, when you get really excited about something and then it’s taken away..🙁

Two days ago I got a surprise email with an invitation for an interview on a radioshow in South Korea about selfmarriage. I thought it was very cool that they found me and that the topic somehow is getting some attention. They phoned me to check the connection and said they would send me some prep questions the next day. I shared it with my friends on facebook, who shared my joy by reacting enthusiastically, which made me even more excited. The next morning (yesterday) I got another email, saying they were sorry to say that they confirmed another person for the interview.

I felt dissapointment and immediately my mind started to rationalize to get away from this feeling; “nothing bad happened, it’s not that big a deal, there’s probably not even that much people listening to this radioshow…blablabla.” Then I noticed this old pattern of neglecting my emotions and thought about my Weddingvow “Emotions are welcome. All of them! So I sat down and welcomed the dissapointment to be fully felt.

And with the feeling of dissapointment, there came a memory of my first big dissapointment (that I can recollect). When I was in pre-school I wanted to give my teacher a present, so I wrapped an orange in nice looking paper. I was really excited about it. My mother walked me to school and because we were early I could play outside for a few minutes. My mother went back home. I put my present on a little wall and played until the bell rang. When I came back to the wall, my present was gone!! Some kid had unwrapped it and ate the orange! I was so dissapointed, hurt and angry that I ran back home by myself. My mother was ofcourse surprised to see me back, tried to comfort me, and brought me back to school.

It is these little, seemingly unimportant little moments that define your life. I decided not to allow myself to get too happy and excited about something, because before you know it, it can be taken away, which causes painful emotions.
I’m learning now to allow those painful emotions back into my life, because I want to be able to fully step into my Joy too.

It’s an interesting journey.

Lots of Love,

Annemarie

How to change things, when change is hard?

“People don’t resist change, they resist being changed”

In the book “Switch, how to change things, when change is hard” from Chip & Dan Heath (in dutch “Switch, veranderen als verandering moeilijk is”), they have some interesting insights and practical advice on change management.

There’s an inspiring story in the book about Jerry Sternin, a guy that worked for an international aid organization ‘Save the Children’. In 1990 the government of Vietnam invited him to set up an office in Vietnam and help to conquer undernourishment. He got the message to make a difference in only six months. Sternin had read as many as possible about the problem of undernourishment. There were many interconnected issues like bad hygiene, poverty, no clean water available, the lack of knowledge about nutricion of the people liviing in villages. Sternin thought this knowledge was TBU (True but useless). “There are millions of children that can’t wait for those problems to be solved.”, he said. To end poverty, clean the water and construct new piping, it would never happen. And certainly not within six months, with almost no money to spend.

Sternin had a better idea. He traveled to the villages and met with groups of mothers. He told the mothers to go out and measure and weigh all children in the village. Then they looked at the results. He asked them; “Have you seen children that were poor like the rest, but were bigger and healthier than the rest?” The women replied “Yes”. So Sternins’ strategy was to look for bright spots in the community. If some children were healthy despite their poverty, undernourishment was not inevitable.

He said: “let’s not sit still and analyse undernourishment. Let’s find out what the mothers of these bright spots do?”

It turned out that the bright spot mothers used the same amount of rice than the other mothers, but they feeded their children 4 times a day from it and not the usual two times. Also they were more active in feeding there children, by hand if necesary. And a big difference was that the bright spot mothers mixed small shrimps and crabmeat, that they found in the ricefields with the rice. And also the leaves of a sweet potatoeplant, that the other villagers thought of as inferior food.

He then invited the bright spot mothers to teach their way of cooking to the other mothers in cookinggroups.

By finding the bright spots, the solution to the problem was a local one, that was much more accepted than a solution from outside.

Six months after Sternin came to this Vietnamese village, 65% of the children was better fed, and it stayed that way. The program reached 2.2 million Vietnamese children in 265 villages and made a huge difference.

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What I like about this story is that often organizations reach for external help (consultants, researchers, interim management) in dealing with their problems. But these external solutions often encounter resistance with the people. In this story, the solution comes from within. It is allready there. The only thing you have to do, is to find these bright spots and learn from them.

In creating a more positive company culture, I look for the uplifting people that energize the rest, and put them into the light. Often they come from surprising positions in the organization, like the secretary or a maintanance person. I tell them they are the (sometimes secret) positive change agents, that bring joy and playfulness to the workplace. By acknowledging them and allowing them to be their natural positive selves, they invoke positive change in the organization. A change that is needed to answer to today’s challenging world.

With playful greetings,
Annemarie Steen

Caregivers Recharge Event Singapore

Last week I had the privilege of delivering an interactive Joy-Care workshop(*) with Avi Liran at an event in Singapore. The event was organized by Khoo Teck Puat Hospital for the Caregivers of Singapore. Almost 150 participants joined us in a series of playful and fun exercises to destress, recharge and connect with eachother. After the workshop many participants (from Singapore, Philipines, Myanmar, Malasia and India) came to thank us for the uplifting experience and insights with simple tools that they can implement into their daily lives, working with sometimes difficult patients and many stressfactors. I feel very grateful for the opportunity.

(*) Our Joy-Care Concept is based on insights and findings from Positive Psychology and neuroscience. The playful and fun experiential learningexercises are aiming to enhance the participants well-being in teaching and stimulating the 5 elements of well-being; positive emotion, engagement/flow, relationships, meaning and accomplishments (PERMA as described by Martin Seligman in “Flourish”)