The Mick Morris Musing

The last two days have been spent at the Australian Water Safety Conference, organised on behalf of the Australian Water Safety Council by Royal Life Saving Society Australia, Austswim (the Australian Council for the teaching of Swimming and Water Safety), Surf Life Saving Australia and other member organisations.

The conference featured an International collection of delegates and presenters.

Social Media, Community and Effective Communication for Water Safety

In my role as the MD of the Samuel Morris Foundation I participated in the Plenary Panel discussion on Effective Communication. This panel looked at What is effective communication? The role of technology in effectively communicating water safety messages, the use of social media in our communication and a discussion of the state of core messages related to water safety. Part of my discussion on this panel was influenced by this great TED talk by Simon Sinek, and as result, I was encouraging people in the water safety industry to connect with peoples hearts, not their heads… or in Simon’s words to get to that “gut feeling” that the message is just right!

If you have been here a while you will know the story of How I got here and why I also presented a paper on “Non Fatal Drowning – A case study, advocacy and influencing water safety outcomes”.

Community readiness for drowning prevention

In this presentation I examined a model for community readiness for drowning prevention messages, the current state of community readiness, the contribution of Non-Fatal drowning statistics to community readiness (and how these statistics remain invisible in the current methods of statistical reporting), achieving the goals of the Australian Water Safety Strategy through partnership, collaboration and coalition, building new collaborations with emerging grassroots organisations, and discussed the due diligence checks that should be carried out to ensure that new organisations actions and ethics do not hold any surprises or any potential harm to your own organisation’s reputation. (a copy of the presentation is being prepared to be uploaded to the Samuel Morris Foundation website very soon).

Child drowning and non-fatal drowning continues…

Child drownings occur year-round and in developed countries like Australia and the United States drowning is one of the top two or three causes of accidental death for children aged 0-4 and in some jurisdictions, it is THE leading cause of accidental death, but as you can gather from the topic of my presentation this is only part of the picture because many more children are left disabled as a result of non-fatal drownings. (and the situation is far worse in developing countries) So no matter what season it is in your part of PLEASE take heed ……

Always supervise children in and around water (keep 0-4-year-olds within arms reach)
Provide effective well-maintained barriers to stop children getting into the water (four-sided isolation pool fencing, or fenced off safe play areas)
Teach children water survival skills and to swim (commencing as early as possible)
Have an emergency plan (knowing CPR may well be the difference between life and death for a child if all of the above fail)

Keeping all of our children SAFER

Water is lots of fun, but let’s make it SAFER for our children.

One of those days!

” I have just three things to teach:

Simplicity, patience and compassion.

These three are your greatest treasures.

Simple in actions and in thought,

You return to the source of being.

Patient with both friends and enemies,

you accord with the way things are.

Compassionate toward yourself,

you reconcile all beings in the world.”

One of those days….

Lets just say it has been one of those days…… one of those days that really challenges your resolve to live in accordance with the above quote from the Tao Te Ching, and to accept that things are the way they are.

The hot water system decided to blow up leading to an expensive replacement (which is going to leave us without hot water for a day or so) my nine year old also decided to blow up, my computer has decided to virtually go on strike (hopefully it is not going to blow up) and I have simply felt like crap. We all know that life does not stop on days like these.

The above quote though is somewhat a source of inspiration for days just like this one.

Simplicity

I have really had to try to simplify the day in order to achieve anything (let alone some of the BIG tasks that were scheduled). So having a handle on what is important, what is realistically achievable in your current state of mind, and being able to re-assess and modify on the run while not feeling well are keys to being able to simplify your day when it is really needed.

Patience

Despite not doing it successfully all day I have really had to work on being patient with my nine year old and give her the space she has needed to deal with some of her frustration and to deal with the impact of a few recent events.

While someone is blowing up at you it is easy to “lose it” and none of us are perfect. I admit at times today I failed in the patience stakes.

Trying to be aware of your own state of mind and any limitations that may be in play… such as feeling like crap… may have on your ability to remain patient are important. Being aware of your own fuse burning short, and being willing to walk away and re-group earlier than you might ordinarily in order to continue to be patient are important aspects to help ensure you don’t do any damage to an important relationship.

Compassion

Simplicity and compassion have had to combine in order to get through the day. Some of those big tasks have simply had to be rescheduled or I would be running myself into the ground.

In life if you can not look after yourself then you are unable to effectively look after anyone else. Being willing to be kind to yourself and cut yourself some slack when things are not going well

It may well have been one of those days….. but a willingness to see it for one of those days and to try to deal with it in a simple, patient and compassionate has made the day far better than it may otherwise have been if I had dwelt in the anger and frustration that some of todays activities could have resulted in.

How about you?

How do you deal with it when you have one of those days? Are you able to muster the simplicity, patience and compassion you need in order to continue?

image by Martin Kingsley