Category: Guest Blog

With Faithfulness

Published on by gailbartlettharrisLeave a comment

by Julian Bartlett-Keates

I read something interesting the other day. Well I didn’t, really. I watched a youtube video.
It was about the nature of confidence. Confidence is something we see as an answer to so many things. It’s something we aspire to be. But what, really, is confidence? How does it look? Is confidence assertion, or acceptance? A boxer or a monk?


The video suggested that for advice on the nature of confidence we can look to the word itself. Fidence comes from the latin word fidelis, meaning “faithfulness”. Con is a latin prefix that can be taken as“with”.  We can read “Self Confidence” as “Self, with faithfulness”.

Something about that really resonated with me. Confidence really isn’t about being any specific way or thing. It’s about trust. Trusting yourself to be worthy of the world and the things in it.

Could this be about cultivating a relationship of trust between your current self and your future self and knowing that your current self will work to be better ? Could it be about trusting  your future self to appreciate and capitalize on that work? 

We need to feel assured that our future selves won’t throw away the things we are building today. We need to know that we’ve got this, both now and then.

What is it that you would like to be? Not an astronaut or a CEO. How does the best version of you look? Perhaps you’re kind. You always help others but sometimes can be a people pleaser and you wish that you could be more assertive. Rather than dream of being someone different, who speaks their mind and has their way and never gets pushed around, acknowledge the value of the seeds that you have to grow. What would that kindness look like in its best possible incarnation?


There are times we’d all like to be different. We’d all like to have different tools and capabilities and building materials. The world is full of monks who wish they were boxers and boxers who wish they were monks. What you have is enough.  Have an open-eyed look at what you really have to work with. With time, I suspect you’ll find it more than sufficient for the task at hand.

Final note to give credit where it’s due. I was introduced to this idea of self-faithfulness in a video by Dr. Thomas Smithyman on youtube.com. I found him to be clear, concise and genuine.

Load-Bearing Walls

Published on by gailbartlettharrisLeave a comment

By Julian Bartlett-Keates

A Load-bearing wall is a structural element that supports the weight of what’s above it. It provides needed stability to an entire structure. When a load bearing wall is taken out, the structure becomes unstable. Sometimes this happens dramatically, a house imploding in on itself like some kind of tragic souffle. But often, instead, It happens gradually. Ceilings sag, doors no longer close or open properly. Eventually, there’s a collapse, but it happens slowly. Load-bearing walls are removed accidentally all the time, and often with far-reaching consequences.

Timothy is a busy man. He works 10-6 through the week and coaches childrens soccer on weekends. On Thursday nights, Timothy is home alone. His wife works an evening shift, and with no kids he has the house to himself. Well, himself and the dog. He watches movies, he listens to music. He plays video games he used to be better at. For the past three Thursdays, he’s been trying to teach the dog to bark when it hears the Yellowstone Intro. And when Timothy’s wife gets home at 10.30pm he meets her at the door and tells her he missed her. And he does miss her. She’s his favourite person. Don’t tell the dog. When her work schedule shifts he greets the increased quality time with optimism. His wife has been wanting them to watch Yellowstone so they start watching three episodes on a Thursday night. Besides the constant barking, he doesn’t mind it.

A few weeks in, something strange happens. Timothy snaps at a co-worker. They’re late. Always. And frankly it’s always annoyed him, but this is really the first time he’s actually snapped. He notices he has a lot on his mind, and starts finding it harder to sleep. He’s never wanted to take a day off so badly. He notices himself getting frustrated with break room conversations, grocery trips and even, at times, with relatively innocuous things that his wife says. She brings it up. He doesn’t know what to say. They argue. He feels worn out. Really worn out. He feels like he can’t seem to find a second anywhere to breathe. I can take this in any number of dramatic and shocking directions, but I think you probably see where I’m going with this one. Timothy took out a load-bearing wall in his life.

If things feel important, even if you don’t have the words to justify why, it’s worth looking into why they feel important. And if you’re noticing sagging ceilings, and doors that stick, maybe it’s worth really considering the things you need in place to hold up everything above.

Effective Communication

Published on by gailbartlettharris2 Comments

By Julian Bartlett-Keates

“I believe one of the greatest human failings is to prefer to be right than to be effective”
This is a quote from Stephen Fry, someone I admire quite considerably. I believe it’s true. I’m guilty of it myself. I think many can relate to the experience of being so pulled into an argument that whether it’s a useful expenditure of your time and energy goes completely out of the window. Perhaps an internet argument. Perhaps Jenny from New Plymouth implied on one of your marketplace listings that you’re a bad pet owner and she can’t possibly be allowed to get away with it. The same thing can happen in relationships. Sometimes it can be valuable to make sure we’re aiming for the right thing. Am I trying to be right, or am I trying to be effective? Are we having the same conversations? Where will those conversations get us? Life is hard, and we all get tired. Trying something new takes energy we don’t always feel like we have. But new habits and new conversations lead to different results. And a lot of us could use some different results. So if we feel like we’re circling the drain of the same argument or disagreement that we’ve had a million times, let’s think about the conversations we’re not having