I love work. I love acomplising things. I love creative ideas that take lots of time - and make me have to stay up late. Don't know why - just love the process.(as long as we're really making something - long nights of useless discussions drain me!) So the other day, as we were preparing our Tjeko Fun Fair days in Jinja, I got really excited about the opportunities of celebrating birthdays of thousands of kids that never get to celebrate their birthdays! The whole year we'de been planning these days already - writing and illustrating our first ever Tjeko Book with Guillaume Girault - raising money to organize 9 new fun fairs - and spreading the manifesto of Tjeko to more schools and NGO's in Uganda.
One of the staff was telling me about the arrangements that were made in Kampala, and it would take us a whole day to get things done - but the sooner the better.
"Well, let's go tomorrow!" I said in excitement, "I know there are other things that need to be done - but to get this birthday book printed is more important. We shouldn't let that wait..."
Everybody was getting excited too - and we made the arrangements and schedule changes that were needed to make our trip to the 'printer' of our 4200 books a reality. We planned to leave Jinja at 6am - to make sure we wouldn't loose any time in traffic.Everybody happy.
As we were closing off the meeting - one of our Tjeko staff prayed a quick prayer over the where-abouts, when it dawned on me...Tomorrow. Tomorrow is... Tomorrow is my sons BIRTHDAY! Oh crab!
In my excitement of the preps of celebrating the birthdays of so many other kids... I had forgotten my sons!
It's in these kind of moments I realize one thing. In time of crisis you always fall back on your core values. It's the core of your being that takes over when you only have few seconds to make up your mind. In the 'blink' of an eye you have to decide: "What am i going to say, ones this quick prayer is over...".
Or in other situations:
Do me a favor. Make sure that you know you fall back on good core values. You are the only author of those values... so make sure you have the right ones...
More on core values? The 7 habits of Highly Effective People made me realize more about them.
Love to hear your experience on your core values!
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| My son. Ok, few days AFTER this story, but I love the pic. |
One of the staff was telling me about the arrangements that were made in Kampala, and it would take us a whole day to get things done - but the sooner the better.
"Well, let's go tomorrow!" I said in excitement, "I know there are other things that need to be done - but to get this birthday book printed is more important. We shouldn't let that wait..."
Everybody was getting excited too - and we made the arrangements and schedule changes that were needed to make our trip to the 'printer' of our 4200 books a reality. We planned to leave Jinja at 6am - to make sure we wouldn't loose any time in traffic.Everybody happy.
As we were closing off the meeting - one of our Tjeko staff prayed a quick prayer over the where-abouts, when it dawned on me...Tomorrow. Tomorrow is... Tomorrow is my sons BIRTHDAY! Oh crab!
In my excitement of the preps of celebrating the birthdays of so many other kids... I had forgotten my sons!
It's in these kind of moments I realize one thing. In time of crisis you always fall back on your core values. It's the core of your being that takes over when you only have few seconds to make up your mind. In the 'blink' of an eye you have to decide: "What am i going to say, ones this quick prayer is over...".
Or in other situations:
- What am I going to ask my child when he comes home...
- What will I tell this casiere about the mistake he made in giving my change
- What do I need to do, now everybody is looking at me for an opinion...
Even though the birthday celebration of my 3-year old son would only take 10 minutes in the morning - I knew I couldn't do it if I had to go to Kampala. But I know I could never do all the things we had just decided upon a minute ago if I would stay to celebrate those 10 minutes once my son would wake up...at 8am...
That day I fell back one my core value: the poor will always be with us - but the childhood of my son is only coming by once...
I had to tell these guys that all our plans had to be switched again. I had to stay home that next morning - no matter what...
And you know the funny thing? Even though I thought for a moment that everybody would be very annoyed? Nobody was! Once they all understood why plans had to be changed - they respected the reason - and they all helped change the whole schedule again. And they always will.
Core values that make sense - more often than not are accepted. Just make sure you have the right ones.
Do me a favor. Make sure that you know you fall back on good core values. You are the only author of those values... so make sure you have the right ones...
More on core values? The 7 habits of Highly Effective People made me realize more about them.
Love to hear your experience on your core values!
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