Why is it that just to take a week off requires several weeks prior of insanity. I've easily gone a week without anyone contacting me here and there, or with clients forgetting to get me stuff. But as soon as I say the words
"I'm going to be taking a few days off" it's like I've just told them I'll be gone for several months and they'll be on their own. My brother and his family are coming into town and he's rented a townhouse up in the mountains for the week. So this was part of the push for me to learn how to ski this year, because I wanted to to be able to ski with everyone.
Anyway, that's what I've been doing. The Pre-vacation Panic. It sounds like it should be some kind of line-dance. I'll bet it looks alot like people running around and bumping into each other and getting knocked out. At least, that's what I've felt like I've done at the end of each day.
I was given the opportunity to review a new book that will be coming out, and I thought I'd break from the standard here and ask a friend of mine to help me out and write the review for me:
The Napkin, the Melon & the Monkey: How to Be Happy and Successful at Work and in Life by Simply Changing Your Mind. By Barbara Burke. Northfield, MN: Front Wheel Learning, 2006; pp. 1+138. $16.99 softcover.
Reviewed by Katherine Weinstein, Ph.D.
It’s no secret that customer service work poses its own special challenges on a very personal level. Assisting disgruntled customers on a nearly daily basis can test and even dishearten the most positive and stalwart employee. Barbara Burke’s
The Napkin, the Melon and the Monkey provides both helpful advice to lift the emotional burdens of stressed employees and guidelines for better communication in the workplace.
Burke’s sage advice is packaged in the story of Olivia, a struggling customer service rep at a power company, and Isabel, the wise co-worker who takes her under her wing. Under Isabel’s guidance, Olivia learns to emotionally step back from stressful situations and have a SODA—Stop, Observe, Decide and Act. She begins by taking time every day to mentally “unplug,” and finds that the daily breaks help her to find calm in the middle of workplace turmoil. Once Olivia is able to stop taking her customers’ angry outbursts personally and actually helps them, her life at work and at home takes a positive turn.
The Napkin, the Melon & the Monkey is jam-packed with Olivia’s 22 “aha!” moments which are repeated over and over throughout the book. These include nuggets of wisdom such as “A simple apology works wonders” and “Winners don’t just point out problems. They fix them.” According to the book’s cover, the author has a customer service training program that incorporates the lessons of the book. You can almost see the Powerpoint presentation in your mind as you read along!
Burke’s book clearly has value as a tool to help employees communicate better with difficult customers and deal with the emotional stress of their jobs. However, some of the books “aha!” revelations are of the pat variety you might find printed on an “inspirational” poster next to a picture of a waterfall—ie. “Real freedom comes from letting go of the outcome.”
The Napkin, the Melon & the Monkey gives us a laundry list of such platitudes, but doesn’t always show how to apply these concepts in everyday life in a meaningful way.
M
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Mandy and Andy Renovating: $1.99*
*price at time of this writing.
(Side note: I have a list of iPhone apps I've recently purchased and have been playing with, so stay tuned, I'll have tons of that stuff to talk about soon - in the meantime, I leave you with another installment of my learn-to-ski saga)
So back to the slopes we went this weekend. I probably would have preferred to either take a break for at least a week after last weekend's fiasco (and the fact that the Sundance Film Festival is going on right now up there), but I kind of had to go. I had filled out a customer comment form on the resort's website and told them about the various problems I'd had - the first lesson, with all the equipment issues I had, then of course was last weekend where the class had been much more advanced than I had wanted. I got a call from the director of skier services and we talked a bit about how the classes are supposed to be run - obviously there was some miscommunication that landed me in the class I ended up in. He promised to have my favorite instructor be the one teaching the class I needed for the following Sunday if I came back to give it another try. So I had to go.
That instructor is a ski-goddess. I love her. I really do. If you are in the area (Park City, UT), (and especially if you are new to skiing and want to learn) and want to take a lesson with the most awesome instructor that ever was - let me know and I will give you her contact info. She has just the right balance of understanding my fears, but also getting me over them so I can progress. I never feel like she's talking "down" to me, and even when I'm trying to deal with a kind of silly fear (like my panic attack on the chair lift) she never made me feel bad about it, but still got me totally over it.
So the class started off on the bunny slopes I was comfortable with. She gave us a few little pointers to improve what we were doing, then up to the big slope we went. The same one I was "Yard Sale-ing" on last week. (I was told by a friend that it is passe to call it "face plants" - and that the cool kids call it a yard sale. This totally baffled me why someone would call it a yard sale until I saw
this video. Then I understood... Ah... they call it a yard sale because your gear goes in all directions all over the mountain like you're having a yard sale. LOL! Got it.) Before going up, she looked at me to make sure I was ok with the idea LOL! I told her I trusted her, and I totally do. If she thought I could do it, then I believed her.
I'm sure that part of the problem last week was it was really new territory for me and I just didn't have the same kind of confidence in that instructor that I do in this one. But also, I knew that if I started to have problems, she would be right there to help me out.
Ironically, this time, I had no trouble on the run. I didn't fall once. I didn't lose control once. I joked with the instructor that now she's in for it, because I think I just need her to be my personal lifelong ski coach. LOL! I will admit that I was still quite a bit nervous and I have this little mantra going in my head. It's totally ridiculous, but it does help. When I start to get a little nervous, I just say over and over in my head
"You can ski! You can ski! You KNOW how to do this!" LOL! Like I have to convince myself I know what I'm doing. But you know what, as soon as the mantra in my head starts, I start to ski better.
The run we did was about 3-1/2 miles I think, but part of it we did twice, so it ended up being about 5 miles. Downhill. No falls. I DID IT!
So now I think I'm done with the lessons for awhile and will probably just be sking this run (a green run) and maybe a few other green runs they have at the resort. I'm skiing now at the level I wanted to be at - so now it's just doing it over and over again until I feel really strong on it.
Meanwhile, Rachel was skiing blue runs in her class (kids learn so easily. It's so not fair. LOL!) And Zach also was really improving. We put him in their all day program and he had a blast. The instructor was really impressed with how well he's picking this up. He said he was listening really well (that alone is impressive!! LOL!).
Not sure if we'll get up there next weekend. The Sundance film festival is still going on, but by getting there early we didn't have trouble getting parking at the resort. Sam is on call with work, so he can't be away from the computer for the whole day like that. But Rachel and I might go up just ourselves. Now that I can do that green run, I know she won't be overly bored with skiing with me. 😀
We had our family ski day today. I should have known what was to come since I was feeling particularly anxious about it. To the point of barely being able to sleep the night before from the endless anxiety dreams. I know it sounds crazy - but when I get that worked up - it rarely ends up being a situation where you could say "See - all that worry for nothing!" If I'm worrying, and
that much... it's usually with good reason.
The big problems were what we were going to do with Zach. The group lesson we wanted to put him in was a situation where you had to get there, sign up after you arrived and hoped they still had an opening. You couldn't make a reservation. I was worried about him not liking it (I think he thought he was going
sledding not
skiing.) On the way up we even talked about maybe it would be better anyway not to do the group lesson and just do a 1 hour private lesson - but then what would Sam do the rest of the time with him? And as my fear came to reality - the group lesson was booked up - all we had available was the 1 hour private lesson. While I think that was great for Zach - he did really well in the class - it meant that Sam was entertaining him for the rest of the time we were up there - and that definitely had a time limit.
And me? The instructor I had for my private lesson last time had said that I should be good for a level 3 lesson the next time I come in. But either that was a gross overconfidence in my abilities, or this particular "level 3 lesson" wasn't your average level 3 lesson. There was one guy in there who said he had actually been skiing for 30 years, but just never took a lesson. I should have known then to ask for a different group. The instructor and I did NOT click (it was not the same one I had for my private lesson) and in fact he got kind of mad at me at one point because they had stopped kind of quickly at a steep part of the hill, and I had gone a little further down because, sorry, I just can't stop that quickly. Also, he apparently preferred to ski IN FRONT of the class. (How this was supposed to help us when he couldn't even see what we were doing, I don't know) So he took us
all the way up the mountain. When we would ski for a stretch, he would get
so far ahead. At one point I had fallen, and of course how could he know because he was way down ahead, and by the time I got back up and was able to get going again, I had no idea where everyone was. When I finally found them - I realized I was on the opposite side of the run, I tried to slow down, but could not, and fell, again. Meanwhile, I'm looking at them, and they're all looking up the mountain wondering where I am.
This happened a few times and then I finally said I was probably in the wrong class. He called in a snow mobile to take me to another lift nearby that brought me back down. My confidence has been more than a bit bruised. I guess I should be happy that's
all that's bruised, seeing how many times I had fallen.
My biggest fear is speed. I like to ski slow and controlled. I had hoped that green runs meant a less steep hill - and sure, it is less steep than blue and black - but I guess I need something even
less steep than what we were on. (Which
was green)
I got a few more runs in on what is apparently called the "turtle run" (Rachel told me thats what they call it - figures that's all I'd be able to do) and then I started getting text messages from Sam that Zach's patience for the day was ending. There was only 30mins left technically to our lessons so I figured it was close enough and we called it a day. (And don't even get me started with how I had to argue with Rachel's instructor to get her out of the class. He kept going on about how they're sticklers for the rules, and the class isn't over yet, etc. and I'm like - there's only 30mins left to the lesson, I am her MOTHER - we need to go - WE ARE GOING! Don't even tell me I can't take my own child! What the hell??)
My goal was to be able to do a green run - the easiest kind of run there is in skiing. I didn't think that was an outrageous goal - but apparently even still it's going to be quite awhile before I can do it without falling flat on my face every 5 feet, or going down the mountain as I fear: extremely fast and without control.
No, I'm not going to give up - but that doesn't change the fact that I feel pretty deflated right now. I felt so confident last week - and this time? Just awful.
On Saturday I went back to give the skiing another shot. I figured, with my level of discomfort and fear of the whole thing I was probably better off getting a private lesson, just to get over that hump and feel more comfortable. That is exactly what I got.
Talk about being out of my comfort zone - I went up there by myself feeling totally scared.
The last time I went it wasn't the most fun. But at least I'd had a friend with me. This time I was totally on my own. At least I already knew the instructor (I had requested the one from the last lesson) and knew she was a lot of fun and very patient. But even she said that she had been surprised (but really happy) that I'd come back. After the last time, she would have expected me to throw in the towel and said to hell with it. But I didn't feel the last time gave me a fair assessment of the sport. It had been snowing, my equipment sucked. Not a good way to start.
Despite it all, by the end of the lesson she had me turning back and forth down the hill to control my speed; we moved from the very very easy hill to a more steeper one. I was able to navigate around people in front of me. I actually only fell once the whole time - and even then I sort of did it on purpose because I wasn't slowing down enough and I wanted to stop. After that, I was getting better at controlling my speed so I didn't need to just bail like that to come to a stop. And the best part, I was really starting to have fun. When we went down the steeper hill, I really felt like I had gotten it. She was really happy with the amount of improvement I'd been able to do.
And now? I can't wait to go back. I've been thinking about the whole experience all day - I'll probably be on the mountain in my mind all week. Next weekend we'll all go up. I'm going to do a group lesson (now at least, I feel like I won't be holding anyone up), Rachel will do a lesson too. And we'll try to sign Zach up for an afternoon lesson. Sam will probably just be on hand for Zach's lesson since his and Rachel's lesson would end an hour before mine does, as well, this will be the first time we put Zach on skis so we have no idea how he'll react. My instructor said that probably one more (group) lesson and I should be good to do some green runs on my own outside of a lesson.
Aside from wanting to learn, I was really hoping that this would be something that we could do together as a family and it's starting to look like we just might be able to do that. That it can be something that we all enjoy doing together.
I'm also still on a high because for years, I have had a pretty strong fear of skiing. I really didn't know if it was something I was going to be able to do. I'm not exactly very athletically inclined. (Understatement of the year) I had always imagined myself getting on skis, not being able to control my speed and just hurdling down the mountain without breaks. So doing this; getting to the point of actually feeling comfortable on the skis; getting to the point of not being afraid - and in fact ENJOYING it. I feel like a faced and conquered a fear. It's extremely empowering.
I can't wait to get back on the mountain again.
So no sooner do I make
this post, my son turns the table on me. Who knows, maybe he can read, AND he reads my blog and figured he confuse me. 😉 Almost since the very moment I hit publish on that post, he's been a lot better behaved. I won't even presume to say he's over his "phase," I know he's not. And it's not like he's given up tantrums and whining 100% - he's just turned them down to once/twice a day and turned down the duration from several hours to just a few minutes. I can TOTALLY live with this.
The other thing - and I'm not sure what to make of this - is "manners" has become a game to him. It's become "fun" to try and come up with as many things to thank me for as possible. This... is really weird. Don't get me wrong - I am
loving the appreciation, but I feel like there's got to be a catch somewhere.
"Thank you Mommy for making me dinner"
"You're welcome"
"Thank you Mommy for the spoon"
"You're welcome"
"Thank you Mommy for the napkin"
"You're... welcome..."
"Thank you Mommy for the water"
"uh... actually you got yourself a cup of water..."
"Oh... then thank you for the cup so I could get myself some water"
"uh... you're... welcome..?"
He's got to be plotting something. Trying to distract me so he can catch me off guard. This just isn't normal.
Well, still, I guess I'll be blissfully ignorant (and slightly paranoid) in the meantime. However, I'm sure that clicking the "publish" button on this post is a guarantee this momentary blip will come to an end. It sure was cute while it lasted!
My name is Jennifer and The Working Mom is my online journal. I'm very bad about updating it regularly. I like writing, but not as much as I 
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