Wow it’s April 2012 already! So many things have happened since my last post. As a family we’ve moved house, moved schools and changed jobs. Our new location in Greenwood, WA is wonderful and the girls are enjoying their schools. I’m doing some strange things for work these days but I can’t complain that it’s boring!

But perhaps the biggest change of all, and more so in the days, months and years ahead has to be the amazing and most anticipated arrival of our newborn daughter, Nalina Ray Pich. Born at 6.57am Tuesday morning 24th April (which just happens to be the same day as her Uncle Till’s birthday!). She weighed 2.67kg and was 47cm in height. So overall she was small (which we already knew) but she was perfect.

The day of labour was a mad dash and perhaps the fastest actually delivery I ever witness! By the time I had rushed into the delivery ward (with a fit ball and yoga matt no less to get ready for the hours of labour ahead) it was too late! Iris was giving birth immanently!  The midwives, obstetrician, pedeatrician and all the staff at Glengarry Private Hospital did an amazing job of ensuring our baby girl arrived into the world safely and they did a stellar job of looking after Iris in her recovery. And from my point of view their food was top notch!

We brought Nalina home on Saturday to the loving reception of our daughters Lili and Eve Pich who are doing  great job as loving older sisters. The days ahead may be slightly sleep deprived  but we honestly couldn’t have wished for anyone more perfect to join our lives.

Nalina means lotus or the gentle one in Hindu. She is indeed a precious miracle…

I am grateful that I have a full time job that pays well.
I am grateful that I have a job that works well in picking up and dropping off my girls to school.
I’m grateful that the weather today is simply perfect but nevertheless there’s a working fan in this room.
I am grateful for my diary so I don’t have to remember things mentally.
I am grateful that I am sore from Wing Chun training.
I am grateful for creamy pasta dishes.
I am grateful for people who design cool t-shirts so I don’t have to be boring and can expressive my personality.
I am grateful for people who can let go and forgive.
I am grateful for the IGA that is open at 7am in morning when I have run out of milk.
I am grateful for news on the web so I can save money and not have to buy the paper.
I am grateful for whiteboards so I can draw stuff and not have to cling onto my creations.

What are you grateful for?

It’s interesting when some one else is taking photos of you, unguarded, revealing sides of you you were not always aware of – especially of my daughter Eve. I love these shots because they seem timeless. Huge thanks goes to Adrian Noetzli for taking them.

Wishing you a wonderful day and much success,

Samith Pich

‘Just be yourself, everyone is taken.’ – Oscar Wilde

“What you leave behind is not what is engraved in stone monuments, but what is woven into the lives of others.” –Pericles

Time stands still for no one. We also can’t save it for a rainy day and use our time then, perhaps under some blankets and a warm cup of milo. Time can only be spent and I think about my days a lot as I come to the end of another year. I’m asking my friends now their thoughts on the year they’ve had, whether it’s promises were fulfilled or was it possibly just another year. I hope it’s not the first time they’ve ponder their days but the tentative answers don’t give me much hope – as if they’re trying on the words for the first time.

Some things I haven’t done this year are:

• wrote a poem
• learnt how to swim
• and gone sky-diving.

Some of the things I have done:

• applied and got my passport
• written out my CV
• had two art exhibitions
• married the love of my life
• started Wing Chun

What is life measured in? I doubt it’s measured in time.

I love Google Reader it, it brings all my favourite subjects and authors to me and lets me read at my leisure.

Tim Ferris’s Blog (Author of the 4 Hr Work Week) had a great post on Stoicism and it reminded me of some practical similarities it had with Buddhist philosophy – espeically it’s ideas of self experimentation and observation and not taking yourself too seriously.  Benjamin Disraeli’s quote of:

‘to be conscious that you are ignorant is a great step to knowledge’

also rounds off the conversation because I think it’s true that we are our most dangerous when we believe we know everything. To believe you know everything is it’s own form of ignorance.

Goth Seth had some great pointers (when does he not?) to say about efficiency and cultural change in companies.

I want to leave you with these words from a wise man:

‘Everytime you don’t follow your inner guidance, you feel a loss of energy, loss of power, a sense of spiritual daedness’

I have been having a conversation with myself for a couple of months now, one in which I confuse myself and don’t like the answer. If you have ever done this, you will know that not knowing is a hard, but knowing what you want to do and not doing it can be as hard on you. I pray for courage, wisdom and patience.

On Sunday 3rd October, I fulfilled a long held dream and that was to marry the love of my life, Iris Pleyer. From the moment I saw her I knew straight away she was the one. It’s been an amazing two years (almost) but the wedding would have to be a highlight of my life. The day was perfect, the venue and ceremony was unforgettable and everything surpassed my expectations. And the bride? Stunning. Here’s some shots…

At the place I work which is the Swan Youth Program in Cyril Jackson where I work as a classroom teacher for disengaged, disadvantaged youth we have a ‘No Crap’ Policy. Rather than a punitive policy it actually a program that rewards positive behaviour under the idea that students won’t start crap as long as no one starts crap with them. It’s a tentative truce of sorts that doesn’t always work but still reinforces good behaviour.

I only bring up the subject because I wish I had the same policy in some areas of my life, and how ironic it seems that the virtues we try to instill in our youth we still battle with in our adult life. It certainly is easy to blame others but the central premise of the ‘No Crap’ philosophy is simply one of personal leadership. I truely believe that the hardest thing to lead is yourself but t’s also the most important and rewarding.

Personal leadership is not only giving yourself goals and following through it’s giving yourself permission to be visionary and to envision something that many people will find hard to see. Personal leadership is about building a sense of character and certainty in a sometimes uncertain world.  I forget who said the quote but it was marvelous person who said

‘Character is doing something long after the motivation is gone’

I’ve noticed in myself that I go through spurts of being motivated and not, and then character rears its head and proves to me the mettle I am made off. Sometimes I am found wanting and sometime I inspire myself.

It seems that you can only ever control somebody superficially for a short period of time, but you can inspire people for much longer. And you can do that by first being a leader to yourself.

1. Not aware you lack a skill (Not knowing what you don’t know)
2. Aware you lack a skill (Knowing you don’t know)
3. Actively working at a skill although it requires a lot of effort (Trying to know)
4. So skilled that you no longer have to even know about it.

We can take this competency matrix and put it in the analogy of learning to first drive a car or any skill. Before you start laerning, most teenagers would have no idea how much they don’t know. When I was starting to master a clutch, and as the car shuddered and lurched forward I became acutely aware of how bad of a driver I was and how bad I was at driving my dad’s car. As time went on, I started to put the peices together and I worked hard on learning to drive. But it took countless hours of practice and many mistakes. Do you remember the first time you need to turn a corner, over take or change gears through a round about? Now I can happily class myself in the ‘so skilled I now no longer have to consciously think about it.’ I can listen to music, look at scenery, occassionally eat something and (naughtily) make a phone call. In fact, sometimes it’s so much on auto pilot I’ve been many a time known to drive straight home when I was actually needing o go past it – it just happened by condition!

At the moment I am hovering between Stages 2 -3 in regards to Internet Marketing and Stages 3 -4 in terms of Art. GuruBob continues in a later blog post about how we can more easy move through the stages. Two factors seem to be really important in moving through the stages and they seem to be:

1. Motivation – are you internally or externally motivated? Are you motivated by pain or pleasure, or motivated to move towards a goal or away from something?
2. Ability to follow through and the  length of time it takes to be successful.

Being motivated from the inside without having to be told to be really helps you attain your goals. But the second part of that is the following through and continuing to learn until you no longer have to ‘consciously’ think through the steps. In regards to the time to being successful it all depends on the individual. We all know people (depending on the circumstance) that give up on something after a few tries but in other situations cling stubbornly to their guns, impervious to mortal cares such as sleep and conversation until they have attained their goal (Me and God of War).

Along the way to reaching your big goals it helps if you give yourself small rewards after you’ve reached small milestones along the way, but only AFTER you’ve done them and not before!
I know I can reach my goals if I follow through and take action. And so can you. Is that motivating enough?

Oh the irony – the bug called Samith caught a bug! :p Stayed in bad all afternoon, sick as hell. Then later Iris came home and we were sick together.

I wrote a poem tho!

Men are not islands

men are not islands
floating without feelings
in desolate seas

men are not swords
whatever they cut
cuts them deeper after.

the heart of man
is not the dark heart
of a jungle

the heart of man
is very much like yours -
alive and beating

and it too cries
like a morning sea bird
looking for land.

men are not islands.