Amanda Viviers

Posted on April 10, 2014April 10, 2014 by Amanda Viviers — Leave a comment

Nostalgia

One of the greatest hindrances to progressive leadership is nostalgia.

We find something that works and then flog that dead horse till we are dragging it up the mountain.

I am a great believer in tradition.

I am a great fan in reflection and learning lessons from my past but I am also realising that this can easily turn into nostalgia.

It is a liar. It is a selective thinker. It is easily convinced that everything was perfect, when it was far from it.

Nostalgia helps you remember the beautiful, lovely moments of success and forget the pain, stretch and chaos it took to get you there.

If you want to be a leader that brings change and leans into the new, you need to flush nostalgia out of your system.

Traditions are brilliant, lessons we have learnt from the past necessary, but doing the same thing you have always done will always get the same results.

If you are using the same systems as you were 10 years ago everything has changed, (in the last 10 years, facebook, twitter and instagram have completely changed the way the world communicates). Social media has brought new words, new customs, new problems in with it. Therefore systems and processes must change with the crazy changing landscape of society.

If you are singing the same songs from 5 years ago, in a leadership context, you are stuck in a moment.

If you are reading the same books,

Writing the same sermons, with the same jokes and the same themes,

Speaking the same language,

Wearing the same clothes, from the same shop, that you bought 5 pairs on sale a few years ago,

Sitting in the same seat, in the same cafe, drinking the same coffee…

I would guess some of your leadership outlook and strategy is stuck in a nostalgic moment.

I love routine, I love drinking tea and lighting a candle and pursuing truth but I need to continue to remind myself what CS Lewis wrote

‘There are far better things ahead, than those we leave behind.’

Are you stuck in a moment?

Then innovate something.

Today.

Speak soon

Amanda

Posted on April 9, 2014 by Amanda Viviers — Leave a comment

your unique

I started an online creativity course with Brene Brown this week. One of our exercises was to write down three things that we would like to learn or get better at throughout this course. Three creative things that we would actively allow ourselves to practise, no matter the outcome.

One of my three was photography.

This last Christmas my husband bought me a great camera, but so often I stop myself from using it, because one it’s easier to just pick up my phone and two because I have so many friends who are amazing photographers and I kind of feel like a try hard. (vulnerable moment right here)

One main reason why I endorse and love creativity so much is because it always brings out our unique.

There is a way that we see the world, that no one else does.

No one else has the same eyes, the same perspective, the same story and therefore everything we produce is unique.

Even if we have gotten the idea from somewhere our reproduction is always different.

Yesterday I jumped in the deep end. My mum runs a home for women who find themselves pregnant and in a place of vulnerability.

It is a beautiful home, that Max and I often visit to just hang with these brand new Mums, who are staying there finding a place to plant themselves and their new little family has some support to thrive.

Every time I hang there I find great perspective.

Strength, hope, potential, struggle…The stories the walls of that home holds.

Back to my story, one of the new Mums asked me to take some photos. (It’s funny when you make a private decision about something, opportunities quickly arise).

With permission from the beautiful Mum, here are a few of my favourites from yesterday.

I am learning that even when we just have a go, our unique comes to the fore.

What’s your unique?

Make a decision to explore it this week.

Speak tomorrow

Amanda

Posted on April 8, 2014April 7, 2014 by Amanda Viviers — Leave a comment

pen pals and inspiration

An English teacher gave a group of students an assignment to write to a famous author and only one wrote back. His name is Kurt Vonnegut and at the time he was 84 years old.

Here is the letter he wrote to the students.

What a legend! I hope I am as motivated in my 80’s as he was.

I believe the main way we can remain motivated and inspired at any age, is to try something new often.

Just recently I signed up here Post Mark Society I honestly don’t have the time or need any more tasks on my list to accomplish, but as a fellow writer, I am an inspiration junkie.

I have found being online so often of late really uninspiring so I quickly signed up for this, when I came across a little blog about it and am so excited that my first letter from my new creative/ writer/ inspiration seeker from New York is on its way.

Somedays we just need to force ourselves off the computer and do something that inspires us manually.

Letter writing come at me.

I am an eternal seeker of new ways to live inspired.

How about you?

Speak tomorrow.

Amanda

Posted on April 7, 2014April 7, 2014 by Amanda Viviers — Leave a comment

White noise

There is nothing more distracting when you are trying desperately to do something than a quiet background noise becoming foreground.

When we lay in that in-between place of sleeplessness, for example and a drip in the bathroom gets louder and louder.

That moment when you sit to write a letter to a friend and that back door starts to bang, annoying you now even though it’s been like that for days.

A baby crying in a cafe as you try to read your book, a loud teenager next door with their music just loud enough to crawl up your back.

A whisper of a text message arriving in that poignant part of a movie.

You know what I mean.

There is something so inspiring and so devastatingly distracting about noise.

One of our senses that inspires us and torments also.

Lately I have been noticing new patterns in my daily white noise quota that I believe are impacting my ability to dream and reflect.

As a stay at home Mum, it is easy for me to throw the television on and allow morning shows to fill my ears.

I can listen to them, watch them quickly as I skull my morning coffee, I can catch up on the news and what is happening and somehow they have become my morning companions.

My husband however, will turn off the television as soon as he walks in the room and turns on music. He always chooses music that inspires, music that creates a beautiful atmosphere, it breathes life into our little shack. Somedays this annoys me, but I am realising that this change of white noise has such a great impact on my dream space, my thought life and our home.

Where is white noise subtracting from your life? In your car as you drive to and from work? What you fill your mind with as you try to fall asleep? We all have white noise spots, that decisions in this somedays this annoys me, but I am realising that this change of white noise has such a great impact on my dream space, my thought life and our home.

The television, as much as it makes me feel connected somewhat to the world, it takes from the atmosphere. It fills my home with gossip and negativity, it speaks of things that sadden and disappoint me about humanity, it creates a white noise landscape that is often distracted and negative.

It is these routines that I am realising change my inspiration quota for the day. In some of the busiest seasons when I was a creative director and event manager, I would put my earphones in regularly and turn up inspiring music and my output was astoundingly greater.

Even changing the style of morning program from a sensationalist form of media to a more informative one, from commercial stations to government funded ones (i.e. channel 7, 9 and 10 in comparison to ABC and SBS) change the dynamic in my home.

When my day starts with a different dynamic, the noise the background changes and my levels of inspiration rise. My husband and I have a premium subscription to spotify which is an amazing way to listen and find new music. To fill our home, cars and lives with positive sounds.

What fills the white noise in your house?

Is this impacting your inspiration levels?

This is something I am pondering of late.

A bit like how much time my phone is in my hands. Today I put my phone away and walked the beach, allowing the waves to fill up my senses.

And yes, it has changed the whole tone of my day.

How about yours?

Speak tomorrow

Amanda

Posted on April 6, 2014April 6, 2014 by Amanda Viviers — Leave a comment

Others opinions

How easy is it to judge others?

How easy is it to think you know better and know what’s going on in their worlds?

I think social media makes it easier than ever before to judge, criticise and blame others.

You know what I find so difficult? Is that Christians are often the worst.

We find ourselves on high pedestals and often fall harder because of this pious place that we locate ourselves. Thinking we are living a good, productive, holy life.

I am not immune, I have sinned and fallen short.

7 1-5 “Don’t pick on people, jump on their failures, criticize their faults— unless, of course, you want the same treatment. That critical spirit has a way of boomeranging. It’s easy to see a smudge on your neighbor’s face and be oblivious to the ugly sneer on your own. Do you have the nerve to say, ‘Let me wash your face for you,’ when your own face is distorted by contempt? It’s this whole traveling road-show mentality all over again, playing a holier-than-thou part instead of just living your part. Wipe that ugly sneer off your own face, and you might be fit to offer a washcloth to your neighbour. Matthew 7: 1-5 Message.

Oh wow.

What can I say after this?

Personally, one of the biggest downfalls of judgement in my life, is that I fall prey to worrying and being consumed with others opinions.

When I have heaps of opinions about other people, I fall prey to the reaping of this thought pattern in my own world.

The more I worry about what other people think, the more I judge what others are doing.

It goes the other way as well.

The more I judge people, the more I worry about others opinions.

It is a Ferris wheel of emotion and guilt. It is a terrible place that I feel stuck and want to get off the ride as soon as I can.

I found this quote this week and it is everything that I want my life to be about these days…

‘I want to be around people that do things. I don’t want to be around people anymore that judge or talk about what people do. I want to be around people that dream and support and do things.’

Amy Poehler

This means for awkward conversations, when you say ‘Sorry I don’t want to talk or be like this’. It means for stricter blocking and unfollowing on social media, it means for shorter coffee catch ups with some people.

I don’t like politics

I don’t like gossip covered in the honey of ‘debriefing’

and I am far from innocent.

I want move mountains, I want to see people set free, I want to make a difference.

None of these are possible when I spend my days judging others and hiding in the shadow of worrying what other people think of me.

Tomorrow.

Smile

Amanda

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