OVERCOMING OBSTACLES - Marked For Changemarkedforchange.co.za/.../eBook-Overcoming-Obstacles.pdfobstacles that are going to come your way. Things will always go wrong somewhere Things

ã 2018 MARK A. DANE. All rights reserved

OVERCOMING OBSTACLES

By: Mark Dane

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In The Beginning

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One of my passions is spending New Year in a different country. In 2001 I spent it in Sydney. After negotiating my way into Business Class, (I mean there has to be some advantage to walking funny), I ended up sitting next this guy from Scotland. At first I couldn’t understand a word he was saying but after a while I got used to his accent and in no time I was following everything he said. Some of you may have to get used to my accent but I promise you in a very short while you will get used to me too. I am about to take you on a roller-coaster ride through my life to prove to you that “Within each one of us lies the potential to be whatever we aspire to be, despite whatever obstacles life may put in our way”.

Cerebral palsy The biggest obstacle that I have had to overcome is having been born with Cerebral Palsy. Let me explain! Cerebral Palsy is a range of neuromuscular disorders caused by injury to an infant’s brain during birth. In my case lack of oxygen affected those areas of my brain that control my speech (in case you hadn’t noticed) and my co-ordination. In other words, I’m about 175% normal. Up until recently there has been no apparent cure for CP but a few months ago I was in Woolworths, minding my own business, when this lady tapped me on the shoulder and told me she had the solution to my problem. She said my body was lacking something causing me to walk the way I do. This was her prescription: ‘a can of sweet corn for breakfast and another for dinner, for ten days, would make Mark a whole man’. All my life I have believed I had CP, but according to the lady in Woolworth I have SCD, otherwise known as Sweet Corn Deficiency. She talked me into buying all this sweet corn but I hate the stuff so I guess I’ll just stick to walking funny.

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The Career After matriculating I was faced with the daunting experience of choosing a career. I have always felt a compassion for people and therefore wanted to become a psychologist, but my physical disability forced me to choose a career where I would not have direct contact with people. I decided to become a computer programmer and enrolled at the Natal Technikon for a National Diploma in Computer Data Processing. After my first year, Toyota offered me a bursary together with a three-year contract. I remember how exciting it was writing my first programme, but after three years I got bored so I left Toyota and joined the NBS. I really thought that moving to a company where the carpets matched the wallpaper would make a significant difference to my career. Well we all know it doesn’t. I found myself in exactly the same position.

Pot Bound Syndrome Let me digress for a while and introduce you to my flat mate. Nick and I have been living together for the past 10 years. He was just a little chap when I met him but he’s now taller than me. Nick is a ficus tree. A close friend of mind gave Nick to me as a flat warming present. I must confess the first thing that came into my mind was “what do I know about pot plants” but the instructions were simple. Water it once a week and it will grow. I had Nick for approximately one year when one day I realised that he hadn’t grown any higher since the day I got him. I discussed this with a horticultural friend of mine who immediately told me that Nick was pot bound. He ensured me that if I repotted him into a bigger pot Nick would start growing again. Nervously I transplanted him into a bigger pot. At first he started losing all his leaves and I thought he was dying but after a while new shoots started appearing, until eventually he grew to twice his size. But one day, all of a sudden, he stopped growing again. The only difference now was I knew exactly what to do – yes, a bigger pot. I’ve repotted Nick several times since then and he now occupies a quarter of my lounge. Up until this point in my life I had lived an extremely protected life. I had become very secure in my comfort zone and the idea of change terrified me. I had developed a serious dose of Pot Bound Syndrome, which had stunted my growth. Nick taught me

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that unless we change the situations that cause us to stagnate, we start wilting and eventually we shrivel up and die. I guess my biggest fear was change but I was starting to realise it was essential if I wanted to grow.

Discovering Your True Passion The main reason for my dissatisfaction hinged around one word - passion. Despite the fact that I had this great career I eventually realized that I was pot bound and wasn’t passionate about what I was doing. We all need to discover our true passion and strive to turn our dreams into realities. But how do we discover our passion. Let me help you discover your passion. Let’s take an all-expense paid trip to a beautiful island leaving everything behind. Imagine that on this island you have everything you will ever need to fulfill your passion – all the money in the world and all the resources at your fingertips. What would you do? Answer this question and you’ve found your true passion. Now, we have to convert this passion into a reality. Imagine building a brand-new house – let’s say your dream home. What’s the first thing you have to do? Visualise: Build a mental image in your mind with as much detail as you possibly can. Plan: The next step is to have plans drawn with detailed specifications right down to the number of bricks needed to build this masterpiece. Budget: Then comes the awful part – the budget detailing all the costs for the project. Work: It’s now time to get to work. And remember we can never do everything ourselves, it’s quite ok to sub-contract certain aspects of the project to other professionals. Obstacles: Deal with the inevitable obstacles that are going to come your way. Things will always go wrong somewhere down the line but the secret is never to give up – deal with each and every obstacle and move on. Revisit: And finally, revisit the original plans periodically, and don’t be afraid to make adjustments wherever you see fit. Like most young people my dreams were to travel the world, buy my own home and start my own business but there just seemed to a so many obstacles standing in my way. Let me continue the story. As destiny would have it NBS decided to restructure the company and started offering their staff voluntary retrenchment packages. I knew this was the break I had been

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waiting for. I remembered reading a quote that said: If you try something it has the potential to fail or succeed: If it fails, you lose nothing. If it success, you gain a lot. But if you don’t try, you will never now. The time had come to start repotting myself. Ten year ago computers suddenly started becoming vital to almost any job and the need for people to become computer literate was becoming essential. However, despite this I was meeting more and more who had a terrible fear of computers causing them to be left behind in the rapid move towards computerisation. There was a gap in the market for one-on-one computer literacy training for people with “Computer Phobia”. I decided to set up a training center that specialized in training these people.

The First Home Cooked Meal By now I was on my way. I had returned from a wonderful holiday overseas, I had moved into my flat and my new computer school was all set-up and ready to go. But there was one thing I didn’t bargain for – the obstacles that were about to come my way. It took me a little while to get settled into my new flat and during this time I continued having meals at my parents. Everything seemed just fine until I decided to cook my first meal. I’ll never forget it was a cottage pie, which simply needed warming up in the oven. I managed to put it into the oven but disaster hit when I tried to take it out again. It was now piping hot, I panicked, missed the counter top and it smashed all over the kitchen floor. Around about the same time I was just launching my new computer school and had a series of advertisements running in the newspaper. I had a really good response but almost every time the phone rang, people would, after hearing the way I speak, either politely tell me that they will think about it and get back to me or simply slam the phone down in my ear. You can just imagine how I felt. The two things I had dreamed about all these years were turning into nightmares. Someone told me that an excellent way to make business contacts was to play golf so I went along to the local golf club and signed up for a course. On the first day my instructor handed me this pole with a big knob on the end and told me to hit the little

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white ball, past that tree, over that pool of water and into that little hole”. He then added “and when you get really good, we’ll handicap you”. Now I’m sorry, I may walk funny but I am certainly not stupid – and this was stupid. I replied, “You mean the whole aim of what you’ve just told me is to get this ball into that hole?”. “Yes” he replied. I bent over, picked up the ball, walked over to the hole and dropped it in. I was then asked if I would prefer to have lunch.

Life is an Obstacle Course Life is an obstacle course. Just as with a game of golf, obstacles are put in our way to make the game more challenging and ultimately to make us grow into better players. How much more does this relate to life. People see obstacles are omens when in fact they are challenges put in our way to help us grow into bigger people. Without obstacles life would be mundane and just like the game of golf there would be nothing to work towards. We will always have obstacles throughout our life but the secret lies in how you deal with them. We all have freedom of choice – we can choose to let them get us down or we can decide to face them head on, deal with them and move on.

I Don’t Play Golf – I’m Just Handicapped While I was over in London a friend of mine took me to my very first rave club. Now I need to give you just a bit of background information - I don’t drink alcohol simply because if you drink it through a straw you pass out after the first glass and I don’t take drugs because it appears I don’t need to. I walked into the club, nervous as hell, and in no time at all I seemed to be the most popular guy there. People were coming up to me one after another, shaking my hand and asking, “hey bud what shit are you on” and then whispered, “Do you have anymore?” I had no idea what they were going on about but the attention was rather flattering. I eventually caught up with my friend who explained what was going on. I must confess the thought to go out and buy a box of Smarties did cross my mind. I would have made an absolutely fortune. Anyway, it was really hot inside there so we decided to get a drink at the bar. After standing in a queue for at least half an hour we were eventually served by this huge

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body builder barman. I politely asked: “Please may I have a coke and a straw” to which he replied, “we don’t sell that kind of stuff here”. I managed to convince him that it was in fact Coca Cola that I was after but justifying the straw was almost impossible. I was exhausted at this stage so I decided to rest on a barstool in the corner of this horseshoe bar, coke and straw strategically placed in front of me. As nature would have it, I was eventually forced out of my little corner to go to the toilet. As I approached the head of the bar I was stopped by a rather comforting young man who said: “it looks like you’re in the same position that I’m in mate”. Embarrassed I edged my way past and continued on my journey to the men’s room knowing full well that I would have to pass him again on my return. As luck would have it, he was still there, but only now he had built up a team. As I tried to creep past him again he stepped in front of me, put his hand on my shoulder and said: “No more for you tonight”. I replied: “No, I’m always like this”. He started laughing. Desperately trying to justify the situation I bellowed out: “I’m handicapped”. He turned to his friends and said: “You see, this is the guy from the golf club”. Giving up I walked back to my coke, bent over and swallowed the entire glass only to be punctuated with a loud comment from across the bar: “That’s why you are so drunk – you’re drinking through a straw.”

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Curbing The Obstacles

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Do you remember those two huge obstacles I had when I moved into my flat – the food all over the floor and the obscene phone calls? Well let me finish the story. A few days later I sat on that kitchen floor and thought how am I going to get around this one? After an hour I worked out that the reason why I was having a problem was because of the way the kitchen was designed. The oven was too far from the counter top and by just redesigning the kitchen I was convince that I would be able to manage. One idea led to another until eventually, when it was all over, I had bashed out an entire wall and installed a brand new designer kitchen. But it didn’t stop there – I went into the bathroom and decided to bash out the wall and combined the bathroom and toilet. But now the carpets didn’t match the kitchen so we tiled the floors – I obviously needed to buy designer furniture for my design flat and I ended up with a flat that, even if I say so myself, could have been features in Garden & Home.

By the time it was all finished the bug had really bitten. It was time to sell, as is, buy another one and start again. After selling this flat my next purchase was a two bedroom, two-bathroom apartment in a very prestigious block in Musgrave Road. Unfortunately, I do not have the before picture, but this is how it was sold a few years ago. Up until this point I had always lived in apartments blocks but the time had come to expand my horizons to a town house with a garden. Four years ago, just before the property market started to boom, I discovered this gem. A three-bedroom, two-bathroom townhouse in Upper Glenwood with a swimming pool. But, when they refer to a property as a “renovator’s dream”. I now understand what they mean. The property was located in one of the best positions in Glenwood, but unfortunately the person I bought it from didn’t have quite the same eye for decorating as I did, and coupled with her total neglect of the property made this one the biggest challenge I had ever had to work on. This is how it looked from the outside before we started tearing it apart. And then the worked began. I have pretty much renovated everything, from relaying every single brick paver, the installing a brand new kitchen, updating each bathroom,

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repainted and carpeted the entire unit and lastly totally re-landscaping the garden. Let me take you through a quick tour of how it ended up. To wrap up this part of the story, I have subsequently build three houses on the North Coast, one of which was featured on Top Billing.

Business Success Remember the problem with the obscene phone calls? I realised the problem lay with the first impression I was giving when people were making inquiries. Everything changed after I hired secretary. I had been training people for about three years when one of the biggest accounting firms, Deloitte & Touche contacted me to discuss the possibility of converting their entire Durban office to Microsoft Office. Having never seen the software let alone train it, I was given a month to learn the software, produce the training material and train six selected people. Based on their feedback I was to then train the entire firm. Well I got the contract, which meant for the next four years I was fully booked. On completion of the contract another repotting session seemed way overdue, but the question was “where to from here”. After selling the computer school I went up to Johannesburg to explore business opportunities and while I was there I popped into to visit a friend of mind who works for Rand Merchant Bank. They were busy organising a huge golf day and were in the process of printing name badges for each of their 800 participants. Watching them do this triggered a thought to develop a software package for event management. At the same time a friend of mind arrived back from overseas looking to get into the software game. Two years ago we formed our own software company and today Event Organiser is current being used throughout South Africa as well as in Australia. After having seen Event Organiser, BoE contracted us to adapt our system for their training department and I am very proud to announce that we have recently launched our second system Training Organiser which apart from managing training, also caters for the new Skills Development Act recently passed in South Africa.

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Circles of Life We use so many systems every day to management our business activities: Telephone systems, payroll systems, Internet systems without which our entire business would come to a grinding halt. But, how many of us have a system to manage our own lives. I have designed a personal management system for myself and I use it each time I am confronted with obstacles. Let me show you how it works. I represent my life as a little circle which I relate to the core of myself – my soul – my character, surrounded by a series of concentric circles which depict, in order of priority, the human elements which make up my life. In my life the first circle relates to my health. I believe it is important to look after our body because a healthy body results in a healthy mind. If you don’t feel well it greatly affects your feeling of well-being. The second circle relates to my home. I have invested most of my money into it and therefore see it as my security blanket. The third circle is my financial circle – unfortunately money is the source of our sustenance and financial problems can cause serious unhappiness. The fourth circle is my work – an extremely important part of my life, because it provides a platform for me to perform and succeed. Interestingly only the sixth, seventh and eighth circles are my family, friends and finally the everyday person on the street.

I use my personal maintenance programme to deal with any problems that may come my way. I subconsciously mark the areas that the problem affects, which enables me to see it in perspective, focus on it, solve it and get on with my life. By doing this, the unaffected areas of my life remain protected and I’m seldom devastated by anything anymore. I woke up the other morning with a pounding headache. As I walked through to the lounge I

found that the dog has bitten a huge chunk out of my brand new sofa. I arrived at work to discover that one of our sites had a problem with their system. Just then the lady

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from office at the end of the corridor barged in and started complaining that someone had parked in her parking bay. Feeling just as frustrated as anyone, my tactics to solve the problems went something like this: I started by flagging my health circle, my home circle, my work circle and my society circle. Instead of wallowing in self-pity I did something about them. I started off by taking a Panado to get rid of the pounding headache, which by now was on its way to a migraine. Remembering that I have a household insurance, I got the secretary to submit a claim for my chewed up couch. I called the client only to discover that she hadn’t turned the screen on. And lastly send the old bag down the corridor a bouquet of flowers with a note saying, “Enjoy your day – it can only get better”. Problems solved!

I’m Not Stupid – I Just Walk Funny One of the most frustrating obstacles I face almost on a daily basis is interacting with people who, because I walk differently, automatically assume that I’m stupid. One of my favorite pastimes is dining out but often it becomes a bitter/sweet experience. A while ago I was invited to a dinner party at this really smart restaurant to celebrate a friend’s birthday. We all met for drinks at the bar before being seated for our meal. The pub was extremely crowded so I found a bar stool right in the corner, perched myself on it and ordered a Coke and a straw. Next to me sat this lady, who I must confess didn’t seem to have been given a full complement of brain cells. She had obviously just bought herself a cell phone because she had it strategically displayed on the bar counter. It was similar to mine with a red light to indicate incoming calls. I noticed the red light flashing and through the loud music tried to tell her that her phone was ringing. I will never forget what she did. She turned to me, smiled sympathetically and said: “IT’S A CELLULAR PHONE”. I smiled and said: “Oh!” I was dying to ask her if she knew that she could link her cell phone to a lap top computer and connect up to the Internet. I decided not to. When everybody had arrived we were shown to our table and introduced to our waitress. Having worked her way round to our end of the table, it was finally time to

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order my meal. Just as she was finishing writing down my partner’s order she then proceeded to say: “And what does he want to eat”. She hesitated for a short while and then placed her fingers on her temple and replied: “I’m sorry it’s not coming to me. Why don’t you ask him yourself?” I asked for a plain hamburger without any garnish. A rather simple order – so I thought. A half an hour later my burger arrived covered in garnish. Frustrated as hell I called her back and said: “I ordered a hamburger without garnish – that means no lettuce and no tomato. Do you understand?” Just then my friend came to the rescue and said: “Look what happened to him the last time he had garnish. You don’t want him to get worst now, do you?” “No,” she replied and returned a few minutes with my plain burger. The next task was to order a cup of coffee with a straw but we won’t go there. Now if you think ordering a meal with a physical disability is bad, you should try buying a new car. Last year I decided to upgrade my car and while up in Johannesburg, popped into this really posh car dealer looking for an automatic. Being the only person in the showroom, apart from the salesman, I would have expected him to leap to his feet to serve me but maybe he was very tired that particular day. After getting his attention, I asked if he had any automatic cars on the showroom floor that I could test-drive. Shaking his head, he confidently told me that there were none. Just then, coincidentally, I happened to be looking inside one of the vehicles and to my amazement saw an automatic car. Excitedly, I rushed over to salesman and said, “There’s one over there”. “Oh, he said I forgot about that one.” After having to show him my driver’s license, he reluctantly took the car out for me to test drive. After telling me to put my foot on the break before moving the gear into drive, we were eventually on our way. While we were driving around the block he asked me if I had a job. Tempted to tell him that I pack screws into boxes, I told him that I was a computer programmer. I don’t think he really believed me but anyway. When we arrived back to the showroom he then asked if I had money to buy a new car. I spontaneously pulled out a piece of paper from my top pocket and said: “It’s actually my birthday today and my father gave me this blank cheque and told me to go and buy myself a new car”. As his face lit up I continued: “But, he told me that I must be very careful not to buy a car from a salesman who doesn’t give you the same service

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that everybody else gets”. At that point I smiled and politely walked out the shop. Strangely he must have gotten over his tiredness suddenly because he ran after me right down the road. A few days later I couldn’t resist driving back into the showroom in my brand new BMW and telling him not to worry, I had found what I was looking for. Apart from the blonde with the cell phone, there have been special people who have been able to look beyond my physical persona and have supported me over the years. I would like to thank you for taking the time to read this short story. Life is not a rehearsal, it’s the real thing and we only get one chance to get it right. I live every day to the fullest, despite all my obstacles, are you doing the same. If not – what’s your excuse. Remember: “Anyone who has never made a mistake has never tried anything new.” Albert Einstein

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OVERCOMING OBSTACLES - Marked For Changemarkedforchange.co.za/.../eBook-Overcoming-Obstacles.pdfobstacles that are going to come your way. Things will always go wrong somewhere Things