Welcome to June’s monthly musings, where I share random things that have tickled my fancy over the past four weeks. Some will be related to the content of this newsletter, and others…well…won’t be.
Hope you enjoy a little glimpse into my world!
Image created by DALL-E
Feel ‘the fear’ and do it anyway!
This month marked my return to facilitating large group sessions since coming back from maternity leave. The first session was a nerve-wracking experience, but once I got my nerves under control it was like riding a bike. And I remembered how much fun I can have with it. I have a post coming out soon on a technique that I have learned to control ‘the fear,’ watch this space.
Speaking of fear, last week it was my son’s first sports day at his new school. It was all going well, he was having fun, enjoying the beautiful day and being with his friends, and we enjoyed cheering him on. Until…
The teachers announced the ‘parents’ races.
Now, I’m no Shelley-Ann Fraser Pryce, but I was fairly good at sprinting in my younger days. I knew that I had a particularly good chance of winning if I participated. However, the nerves took over again, and I chickened out. This is very unlike me.
I don’t like losing, and I didn’t feel mentally or physically prepared to take part. Not to mention I was a wearing a dress, and it’s always a bad idea to run in dresses (am I right, ladies?).
Usually, I feel the fear and do it anyway. But I figured it would be better for my body if I had warmed up for something like this. Never underestimate the importance of a good warm up and cool down, especially as you get older! Instead, I spent the race eyeing up the competition - I’ll start training for next years’ parents’ races soon ;)
My favourite AI experiment this month…
Has got to be ChatGPT4o helping me to schedule over thirty participants in sixteen different countries and time zones. At first, I went straight to Google to find a website that could help me pick a suitable time for a conference call. Then I thought, “wait a minute! Surely ChatGPT could help with this task?” And lo and behold, it did. Wonderfully so.
Not only did it give me exactly what I needed, but it also talked through its thought process to get to its recommendation. It was like a child explaining its maths workings out. Brilliant. Give it a go.
I’ve just finished reading…
The Culture Map by Erin Meyer. This book has been interesting. I enjoyed Erin’s previous book Rules, No Rules about Netflix, so I thought I would give this one a go. It’s been great to help me understand the differences in the way my colleagues from different countries speak, listen, understand, and put across their point of views. There are even differences in the way we perceive time, so I’ve added this as a topic for a future newsletter. If you interact with diverse cultures in your role, then this book is a must read.
My favourite app this month - Merlin Bird
Spending more time in my garden means more time listening to the birds. I found this free app that tells you which birds are chirping by listening to their birdsong. If you have enough memory on your phone (i.e. it’s not full of pictures of your kids and this weeks’ missed grocery item photos), then you can also download the pack that shows you pictures of the birds too. I don’t have that, but even without the pack it’s still quite informative. Here are the birds that were chirping away in my garden this month:
Speaking of nature, we’ve also finally managed to start growing our own watermelons. Hooray! We’re all addicted to watermelon in this house, so to our pleasant surprise the melons we enjoyed from Cyprus have now sprouted and are growing in our greenhouse. Hopefully, they survive, and we get to enjoy them in a couple of months.
This one is called ‘Wade the watermelon’
My favourite device at the moment…
Red light (RL) and Near Infrared light (NIR) have been my two new best friends for the last 6 months.
Red light is visible and most effective for use on the surface of the skin. It occupies the “long end” of the visible spectrum with wavelengths of 630nm-700nm.
Infrared light is invisible and can be used on the surface of the skin and penetration of about 1.5 inches into the body. Infrared sits right next to red light on the electromagnetic spectrum at 800nm to 1millimeter.
I’ve been using them both on any ailment I can find in our household. From verrucae and warts, to splinters and earaches. These two frequencies wake up the mitochondria in your cells, so that they can get busy repairing and healing themselves. On the verrucae we used the RL and NIR for 8 weeks, 3-4 times a week, and they’ve completely disappeared! I kid you not. It’s like magic. I use this mini red light device from Bon Charge.
What happened in your world this past month?
-Selda
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Catch up on this months’ posts:
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