Have you ever seen the show Beyond 2000? It was a show that showed us all about the gadgets of the future. What we all had to look forward to "Beyond 2000". It was on the tv, way back in the nineties!

Well my birthday gifts were like an avalanche of Beyond 2000 gadgets. 

First of all I got a Garmin watch, a Vivo active. I have been looking, researching, reviewing smart watches online for sometime and had told my husband that I hadn't yet found the "one". I thought maybe I would never find the "one" for me. But on receiving this watch, I am convinced this is the "one" for me. I wanted it primarily for running. I do park runs on a Saturday and was using my mobile device, with a free strava account attached to it. Which was working fine but you do have to fiddle around a bit. For getting started it is absolutely fine, as you just need a zip waist holder, you press start before you get to the start line, zip it up and wait for the start call. 

Yesterday I went for a bike ride, and I used my mobile with strava as well as my watch. And its a good thing that I did that because I didn't even press all the right buttons on my watch to get it to record my activity! doh! What was I thinking! Today, I have mastered recording an activity on my Garmin watch, its very straight forward. You set up your most favourite activities so that when you press the key button, the fave activity will popup for selection. You press the key button (the only button that protrudes from the side), choose your activity and wait for GPS connection, press the key button again and big green play icon appears on the watch face. When you have stopped, you can press the key button and a big stop button icon appears on the watch face. Then the watch will ask you if you want to save the activity. Voila.

Another gift I got was the DJI osmo mobile 3 gimbal. What the in the what the? Well back in February when I went to a two day face to face marketing event learning all about digital marketing, one of the girls I met there, had one of these and I was intrigued, she was taking selfies and video, and the gimbal would follow her through body movement and was producing very stable video footage. When I got back to Brisbane, I looked it up and waited for a sale to arrive before getting one. I also told my husband that I wanted one when the next sale came around. I am not sure if it was on sale but I now have one. I've got the upgraded edition, which has the tripod also, this means that it can be used stationary as well hand-held. I do quite a bit of social media for my parents bricks and mortar business and I also film the kids doing their activities and do vlogs etc. You connect your mobile device to the gimbal, and you take both still images and video footage with it and you don't need another human being to do it for you. On my birthday, my sister who lives in Bangkok, couldn't be with us, but to get around this, I had her on my mobile device, sitting on the DJI osmo gimbal tripod and it was essentially the next best thing to having her in the same room with me. 

I will share more on my birthday gadgets in the next few posts because I am still discovering all there is to discover with them. I will also teach you what I learn so that you avoid my analogue mistakes. 
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I saw a video last night on my social media posted about taking a stand against racism through covid-19.

I shared it with these lines one family, one world, one humanity.

I saw it again in my professional network and shared it again with the same lines one family, one world, one humanity.

It got me thinking, so I wrote a post on it straight to my professional network and I thought stuff it. I don’t care if this is the professional network. I’m going to say what I need to say.

I also got to wondering if we are a world that embraces inclusion and diversity, then it’s a start for me to overcome some concern over sharing who I really am in the world on my professional networks!

Hence why I have also held back on this platform for fear of something, being judged, being assessed by others? Do you have a fear of sharing yourself? Or is the fear that you’re afraid of how big your responsibility will become when you have a voice? My brother and I discussed this. Is it that we’re shy? Or is it that we have so much to say and we will be bigger than we know ourselves to be and are we prepared for that?

Well I say, just do it. We live on this earth for such a short period of time. I imagine if one thing I say makes a difference to one other human being then I am happy and my life is fulfilled anyway because I’m being my true self wholeheartedly sharing of myself.

So here is my original post:

I’m going to say what I believe inclusion and diversity to be at a very real simple level. It starts with your own family - accepting them for who they are and who they aren’t. Your extended family - accepting them for who they are and who they aren’t. Now controversially, it’s also about accepting all of who you are - everything you are and everything you are not. When you accept yourself wholeheartedly - you will start to see that the human experience while diverse is also one experience. When you really let that land on you - I am you, you are me. So why would I want to harm/hurt myself? If I do, the only reason can be that I don’t love myself or enough? So my pledge is to love all human beings always and another way of saying that is inclusion and diversity. You’d freak out if I said I love you but I genuinely love all people and all human beings. My stand is that you start loving all the parts of yourself. The world will change because you do.

When I think of my people - it’s every single person I’ve ever exchanged words with, ever glanced a knowing look, ever shared a soft silence with. But it’s more than that, it’s the moment of connection encapsulated by those moments.


From a little me to a big me I have loved people. Revealing the reasons, a journey of journals, a delicate discovery, uncovering what’s covered, a detective’s duty.


People will surprise you moment by moment. They’re not what you think they are at first. Never judge a book by its cover...


You have to read the pages, you can’t skip chapters to read ahead. That’s just not the way it works.


You begrudgingly bookmark at a suspenseful spot you definitely don’t want to stop at!!!!!!!


The excited eagerness awaits, anticipates, your fingers furiously wanting to get to the next page.


This time the bookmark is stuck in one place and it feels like you’ve no permission to turn the pages, you feel stuck, you feel stopped, you feel trapped, you feel lost.


When will I turn the pages again? When can I turn the pages again? How will I know when it’s time?


Did you know you can read the pages before the bookmark? Did you know when you read those pages again, you’ll see something you didn’t see before?


By the time you arrive at the place of your bookmark from the bookmark of before, it will be time to read the next pages.


In honour of all my people I just want you to know that the pages we’ve penned together have been amazing for me. They are filled with love and connection, authenticity and vulnerability, rawness and rip-roaring laughter, vividness and aliveness. To me you are light, love, vibrant energy. Your capacity to be is limitless. I see it from where I am and it’s what allows me the space to be me.


This is a work in progress.

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For such a long time you learnt not to trust yourself.


You were 1, 2, 3, falling down and getting back up again 4, 5, 6 learning to float and swim, learning to balance and ride. Mastering these challenges was your milestone, you yearned for.


7, 8, 9, things seemed fine, you learnt the ropes of going to school, 10, 11, 12, what’s happening here? It’s called puberty.


13, 14, 15, you emerged to a reality you’d never known before called ‘working’. You stood at the end of a checkout aisle told to smile and not fall ‘short’ in more ways than one. Begrudgingly you took your place, thinking to yourself “is this what it’s all about to put a notch in my payslip?”


16, 17, 18, you joined the family business, helping mum and dad after school, staying up til midnight to finish homework.


19, 20, 21, you went away, to a bigger city to get a degree, lived away from home, working to make ends meet but realising there was never enough money to cover all expenses.


22, 23, 24, you came home after getting the degree and entered the workforce after hundreds of rejections, as a waitress. You loved being with customers especially the kind ones. But you spent what you earnt drinking. Your dad told you to get a hobby, and this helped you get yourself out of this zombie mode. You went back to the bigger city to find a ‘better job opportunity’. You became a bank teller.


25, 26, 27 six years of corporate ladder climbing, you learnt a lot on the job, helping customers, being with and leading people, then you met people who didn’t have your best interest at heart. When this happened you learnt not to trust yourself.


28, 29, 30 you discovered new parts of yourself through personal development, getting married and having your first child.


31, 32, 33 baby two and baby three arrived. You set a goal to go back to work when she was just 8 months old, painting the picture, that she’d be crawling and weaning. She started walking at 9 months old and you were at work.


34, 35, 36, juggling all these buckets in the air, one could drop at any moment.


37, 38, 39, told you one would drop, it was you, and your health, you had this sudden and unexpected medical emergency. You realise life is precious, you’re a blank canvas, you begin again and this time you are trusting yourself wholeheartedly. You found a learning platform, your mentors, a collaborative community and a way to uncover your hidden talents, applying what you learn to the businesses you are creating.


40 begins on Monday and I have so much to tell you (remember that book?), I am bursting to say that when you trust yourself, you find out what you are truly capable of, you find out that there are so many more ‘milestones’ for you to achieve.


You yearn for more milestones, and all that got in your way was living a reality that wasn’t really yours. You didn’t choose it. You were told that’s the way it has to be.


So you chose this time, to live a created life. And so this is what I’m doing and I’m sharing with you that it’s within your reach too if you trust in yourself, that will be the first big investment in you.


To trust in yourself.