Craig as toastmaster was suitably attired
with sparkly red bow, for the last meeting of the year, on the 12th
of December. Chocolates and juice were on hand. We were warned on the quality of
jokes!
Graeme honked his horn.
Paula ran a fabulous table topics Christmas
session - highlighted diversity of the club, by encouraging the sharing of
Christmas stores, traditions, how it’s celebrates, with in different cultures.
Everyone had a go and it went overtime but it was real treat to hear so many
different perspectives on Christmas. Michael – delightfully naughty, Graeme’s
was not a tale of cheer, Peter spoke about his sikh taxi driver and the
diversity of his friends and there was a great camping story by Hannah, of no
tent poles and Dad growing crankier and duly won best table topic. Mehran and
Shahar spoke of gifts of money for the kids at the New Year in Iran.
Patrick hated Christmas and the cold and
Israel warmed up to his version of camping with kids, a lot warmer than Northern
Mexico.
Well done Paula on getting everyone up to
speak!
Sandy did a very inclusive and positive
evaluation, acknowledging rich traditions and wide variety and diversity of how
members celebrate Christmas and New Year’s
Sahar introduced Laurel, went through the
objectives for her talk on from the Dynamic Leadership Pathway.
Sahar showed how much she has developed as an
evaluator. She said she was daunted evaluating someone of Laurel’s calibre so
admitted her vulnerably. She carefully set up the objectives and gave Laurel
both a thorough introduction and evaluation, commenting on what were the
highlights for her and commending her on meeting the objectives. Sahar won the
best evaluator and Laurel unsurprisingly the best speaker award.
Laurel being the only speaker and started
with the following hook ‘Mrs Francis you have to be cruel to kind’. This set the
framework for her life in terms of feeling unworthy from an early age. She
talked how the brain believes it’s unworthy but how you can use tools and
metaphors to reframe it. She talked about how this led her to studying
neuro-semantics and to becoming a practitioner and corporate coach. She shared
the metaphor of the seat belt, of fighting the resistance with competing
commitments and the importance of owning all your own emotions ‘good,’ ‘mad’,
‘sad’ and ‘bad’. Laurel has the ability to cut through to the audience with a
strong, powerful, clear message, to be vulnerable to share a story and to make a
point.
Laurel featured prominently next as well, as
Craig read her ‘Do you Believe in Santa’, a poem she originally wrote in
December 1994. Craig really bought the poem to life, he used modulation very
effectively, which is the use of pause, pace, pitch and volume to lift the words
off the page. He revelled in using a louder voice for ‘pandemonium’, lower
pitch for ‘quietly creeping around’ voice for, quicker pace for ‘devilish grin
and ‘angelic face’. An outstanding job! It was thoroughly enjoyed, and there
were calls to have it illustrated and published.
This meeting highlighted the strengths and
vast talents of Pania members the rich diversity of backgrounds and
experiences.
Arohanui and have a wonderful Christmas, New
year’s, holiday, however, and wherever you celebrate it
It’s great to have Hannah and Peter as new
members
Next meeting on the 23rd of
January.
Anna Coleman
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