Better-Man-in-30-Days

Day 5 of the Better Man in 30 days challenge – Cultivate Your Gratitude --- Quite a few things to be thankful for, in no particular order: Friends who consistently come through. Needing to make a significant wire transfer earlier this week, a quick call to a couple of old chums resulted in a speedy resolution. Top lads C and O. Family - warts and all. And mine, myself included, do have warts! J whose patience with my stuttering, complicated self is a refreshing breath of air; Work - and the opportunities it has presented over the last ten years and counting. A certain stint somewhere in my past still keeps opening doors. Grateful. The internet and how easily it provides solutions - stumbled on an excel tutorial on spark-lines which might have saved a side project I am working on. Not one of the things I miss about those heady Eket days it must be said. (Not so) Little children, particularly F, my friend O’s precocious daughter. Hanging with her gives me hope for the future. I am not too damaged to make a half decent dad. Success in one more exam, no lengthy post nominals to append to my name unfortunately but small steps in the right direction I think. Health - no new major scares (as far as I know). Great work conversations - currently talking an old work friend through a weighty decision. That she and I are still in contact nearly five years after we last worked together is so much more reassuring given my current work situation. And Nandos – ’nuff said.

Day 4 of the Better Man in 30 days challenge - Increase your testosterone --- The ‘symptoms’ pretty much describe me at the moment, even though I like to think the drivers are slightly different for me, given I am chasing a lot of things at the moment. In an ideal world, #9 would have been the perfect shoo, but real life dictates, and I went with actions 6, 7, 8. Lunch was a Boots salad bowl whilst dinner was grilled chicken topped up with almonds as a snack. ...

Day 3 of the Better Man in 30 days Challenge - Find a Mentor — In thinking through today’s challenge, I realised there is a shed load of historical mentors I had to acknowledge - the Artful dodger (so nicknamed by his own father no less) whose MO always seemed to be to stay just on the right side of the law at all times (he was the inspiration to go into engineering), OO, the social studies teacher who intervened when yours truly was nabbed trying to pilfer a book from the secondary school library, Dr K at the Steel plant where I interned in 2000 who sowed the seeds of an appreciation for materials in me and DEL and MMK who held my hand as I took my first shaky steps as a rust geek back between 2003 and 2008. All that is part of why mentoring and mentorship are core values I intend to hold on to dearly both as a giver and a recipient. ...

Day 2 - Shine Your Shoes Shining my shoes is usually not top of my to dos on any given day, given I consider them functional items of clothing rather than providing any aesthetic value. Notwithstanding, in the spirit of the challenge I decided to give my favourite, battle hardened Doc Martens some love.. From the looks of it, there’s still some life left in those beasts. Given my sense of pride and accomplishment upon completing today’s task, I suspect I’ll strut about a tad more than usual in the office tomorrow. :) Or maybe I’m just being overly enthused with my dodgy technique.. ...

These have gone through several iterations in the past, but having taken time again to consider this the five below stood out as my core values. It’s obvious I need to work on several of these to make them front and centre, given the reality of my life in certain areas doesn’t reflect these values. But don’t they say a problem identified is half solved? Faith: God, faith and how these interact in the real world and translate to personal and worldview integrity. Family : Nuclear and the future family :) Continuous Improvement: In three main areas - professionally, relationally and in delivering on the stated objective of contributing to life in the civic space. The intent is to actively seek out opportunities to learn both formally and informally for self improvement and a broadened knowledge base; challenging myself in the three main areas identified above. Mentoring: As someone who has benefitted greatly from the input of knowledgeable others both in my personal and professional life, taking an active interest in the lives of others with the aim of improving them is something I want to do more of. Health and Healthy Living: The ‘rigours’ of being a hands on rustgeek demand that I pass a medical exam every two years. The numbers from the last check in 2013 were a real wake up call - no thanks to shed loads of pizza and salt. That prompted a rethink and serious action to get the weight and junk food binges down to good effect. Getting healthy, staying healthy, leveraging technology to identify and eliminate risk factors and all the little decisions that feed into that has to be be more of a focus going forward.