Spending Time with Your Parents
We are now entering the 3rd quarter of the year and today, I am going to urge all of you to take out some of your time and commit it with your parents.
I know we do not give enough credits to our parents. They are the ones that brought us into this world, raised us to what we are today with their endless love. But often, we do not reciprocate “that love” back to them.
Yes, all of us love our parents but how can we improve quality time to spend with them. There are many ways you can spend time with your parents and I am sure all of you have many ideas in mind too.
But before I share how I spent my time with my parents! Have you read my sister, Cheryl’s story of my dad? If not please go ahead and read the August 30 posting.
My dad is a story teller, he has many Inspiring, Influencing and Interesting (3Is) stories to share although he repeated many of his stories over and over again, we never feel bored because of the 3Is. That is true!
Let me share something interesting between my dad and me, we are both left handed. The difference is that my dad can’t use chopsticks with his left hand and I can. In fact, my dad can’t even use chopsticks with his right hand too! If you are my dad’s friends you will notice that he always asks for folk and spoon when having meals. There is a story behind why my dad can’t use chopsticks. My dad always tells us in his generation, the parents never allow their son to use chopsticks with the left hand, Every time he does it his mom will knocks his left hand. Being the youngest son and a good boy, my dad is quite smart by asking for fork and spoon to avoid any punishment. Fast forward, someone said once you practice something more than 10,000 hours, you will know what happen. My dad can never holds a chopsticks correctly till today! Another funny thing when we were holidaying in Korea, my dad has to bring along his own fork and spoon because most Korean restaurants don’t have fork and spoon readily. In Korea, they only use steel chopsticks… If you want to know why Koreans only use steel chopstick, just Google if not, ask my Dad. He is a talented and a handy man that can fix anything in our house… left-handed people-ma!!!
Now, let me share my personal time with my parents. I love spending time with my dad in his car whether or not we have any specific destination to go or not. We do not really care because we can share almost anything whilst travelling in his car. It’s like our personal space. Whenever he tells me that he is going for a drive, I would never fail to accompany him. Sometimes, I would even paid to go take a ride with him, so, why not?
I also love spending time with my dad over drinks and snacks at cafes and coffee bean though I don’t love coffee but it’s the quality time spent with him that I feel happy about. We can just sit there and enjoy the scenery even without talking but we will definitely talk to each other since both of us are chatty people.
As for my mom, I love spending time with her watching Cantonese dramas though personally I don’t understand this dialect at all! We would be watching the drama and sometimes I love irritating her. You may think we would be watching our show and not conversing but you are wrong. We chit-chat for the entire show about almost anything from the show to not even talking about the show.
I also love spending time shopping with my mom. We will be choosing clothes for each other and sometimes, the benefits of shopping with your mom is that she pays for your purchases. I am so proud of my mom for putting a lot of effort to accommodate to my style and generation. Besides that, I love clinging onto my mom while walking on the streets. We will be happily having a wonderful time.
I love the occasional eating out with my parents. This is when we get the whole family together and chit-chat about almost anything. Most of the time, we will be busy with our lives that we leave our parents out of the picture so having occasional eat outs will bring the family together. My dad always tells us that a family who eats together stays together. Even though we may be busy in the morning or afternoon, we will try not to miss dinner together. So we practice that a lot!
My family practices kissing our parents before we go to bed and before we go out of the house. It is sometimes quite embarrassing initially because you would hear your friends saying that it is gross and all. But as I grew older, my friends start to envy that I have a strong bond with my parents.
You must be thinking after hearing so much about my bonds with my parents, you would perceive that I have a strong bond with them. I wouldn’t deny that but sometimes I still don’t give my parents enough credits and I don’t express my love enough to them often. I feel awkward sometimes when I want to express my feelings for them and I’m sure some of you feel it too.
You must be thinking after hearing so much about my bonds with my parents, you would perceive that I have a strong bond with them. I wouldn’t deny that but sometimes I still don’t give my parents enough credits and I don’t express my love enough to them often. I feel awkward sometimes when I want to express my feelings for them and I’m sure some of you feel it too.
So I actually talk to my parents on separate occasions. They told me that as long as I’m not doing anything bad like breaking the laws, taking drugs, joining gangs and doing the right things taking care of myself then they would be happy. The best part they never ever pressurize me or my two sisters in studies but dad has already set aside money for each of his children to get at least a university degree. Currently, I am in my final year with RMIT. They also told me that even if I don’t often show them that I love them, they know I do and they will forever love me for who I am because I am their child. That was when I realized that I could actually talk to my parents about anything even beyond my expectations.
So, go home today, take some of your time and make them happy! My dad reminds us if someday we have to work oversea and not beside them, he wants us to call my mom every night. So please, if you are not with your mom now, call her. For my Dad who has lost his mom at the age of 14 year old…you will understand the importance why he wants you to call your mom.
Thank you for reading my story.
Desmond, son of FSY.
Back to my dad…
When an organization is true to its values, good stories are everywhere. They use stories instead of policies or procedures to achieve their goals. A true story of real-life experience told by one of your own people strengthens values and improves result better and faster. After all, organizational values form behaviour. Stories about your values in action create and sustain the organization culture for better or for worse.
The next time your organization has a town-hall meeting, get employees to tell true stories of the organization in place of the traditional senior managers giving PowerPoint bullet-point boring speeches. If you can’t…….
Help is here…
To be a better storyteller, you will need to at least practice on 6 stories.
Here are 2 options that I am proposing:
For a group of 20 participants, we can conduct a 2 full days workshop plus 6 half day coaching sessions. The 20 participants will attend the 2 full days workshop to learn the storytelling techniques and foundation thereafter they will be sub-divided into 2 groups of 10 to begin practicing on their 6 stories on a 1/2 day weekly session.
alternatively, we can conduct a 3 full days workshop with 15 participants to learn the storytelling techniques and foundation then practice on only 2 stories instead of 6.
Drop me a line at fsyqualipreneur2u@gmail.com so we can pick up for continuance exploration over kopi or tea
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