Firstly, let me say what a very humbling experience this was. I’ve had a few days now to process what I have just been through and you know something, we are as soft as Brie cheese that’s been left out in the sun for a few hours. I’m the first to admit that I love all my home comforts and am very fortunate and grateful to have all the mod cons for cooking and cleaning. We live in such a fast paced world and no wonder my head spins with each new day trying to work out what’s hot and where it’s cool to be seen… and that’s just online!!

This is not my first trip overseas to a place where the minimum monthly wage is way below the poverty line at $30.00, but it has been quite some time since I have experienced such a lovely race of people who will never have all the conveniences that we do and not even a fraction at that!

This is taken in the Kokoda Village.

Port Moresby itself is very dirty and all hotels, shops and restaurants are locked up and have razor wire around the boundaries. You DO NOT venture into the streets on your own no matter what! You see, there are many desperate people who wait for such an opportunity and then bring out a knife to take the contents of your bag. Apparently, it is the murder capital of the world and not somewhere you would want to be without security guards by your side.

Once in the villages, it is quite safe to mingle with the natives of the land. After all, their ancestors are the original Fuzzy Wuzzy Angels who helped our Aussie diggers when wounded by the Japanese during WWII.

So upon our arrival, we were briefed and enjoyed a couple of quiet drinks at the hotel in anticipation of what we were to face for the next 8 days!

The next morning we had to have our packs and ourselves down at reception at 6am. Kind of early I thought and in hindsight, we could have slept another 2 hours. Everything moves very slowly in PNG. We were all anxious to get going. That nervous energy filled the space we were in. Pacing, catching a few more winks if we could… eating our snacks out of boredom… and finally at 10:30am we received the news that the fog had cleared and we were ordered to the airport to catch our late flight to Kokoda Village for the start of our trek.

Our tour guide Dave from www.noroads.com.au pointing out some terrain we would cover on the trek.

Once there, we were introduced to our personal porters and others who would join us and off we went with courage and enthusiasm in our steps to discover what is the Kokoda Track and to take in the beauty and history as we went.

All in all, we were that excited to get going that the first day went quite quickly. A steady fairly easy climb until we were just outside our first camp site at Deniki where we experienced the first of many steep climbs. I think shock set in and I remember thinking that I hoped that there weren’t any others as steep as this! Did I say that? Already the psychology and mindset are prevalent.

Stay tuned for the next installment… !

The Deniki Camp site. Day 1

Yes, that’s right! 16 more sleeps until I am on a plane flying out to Papua New Guinea to trek the Kokoda Trail. Yikes!! The training has almost taken over as I prepare for this grueling trek. By the time I have packed to go out for a hike and then get to where there are mountains to climb, most of the day is over when I get back home. There have also been gym sessions and other walking and aerobic exercises as part of keeping my fitness up. The training has been difficult, however, I have just sat through a series of videos on YouTube which I had mixed emotions about and at times, had tears streaming down my face which I will show you shortly.

A few months back when I was looking into the history of the track, I found that there were many video’s and sites with information regarding Kokoda. It is not something that I had specifically wanted to do although I knew that a personal challenge such as this was on the cards in so far as my own personal development went and when my friend and personal trainer Marc Stafford was organising a team to go and asked me, I said “yes.” To continue to grow in mind and spirit, challenges or goals which seem out of reach must be set in order to step up to the next level.

photo credit-pomfotos

Now I am not saying that you all have to go and trek Kokoda to step up to the next level. You yourself know what might be out of your reach and going for it may be the ticket that opens your mind and helps you along your own journey of personal development.

One of my goals for this year is to Coach, as in a Life Coach so this trek is fitting to help me discover parts about me which I need to develop and also to increase my mental toughness. My mental toughness (or lack of) will surely show while on the trek and it will be around 60 - 70 percent of that which gets me to the end of the 8 days. I have affirmations which I repeat out loud to myself to get into the right headspace for now. I’m sure once I am on the track, they will come in very handy to get me from one village to another. One foot in front of the other… one step at a time.

This trek, along with my NLP training and my own personal coaching with a very tough coach is what will bring me closer to this goal of being in a position to empower others to achieve the goals and dreams they set for themselves.

So this is part 1 of 8 of the video’s which I watched embedded here with the links to the rest of the series. It is worth the 30 minutes to sit through them all and see this band of Australian personalities to get an all round vision of what the trek is like and how they cope along the way. As well as getting a look at some of the most pristine rain forest in the world. Share your thoughts with me on this once you have been through them.

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

Part 5

Part 6

Part 7

Part 8

Thank You for watching.

Over the last few weeks this site has had some strange happenings going on and I am putting it down to my lack of attention to it. You can liken it to a car for example. If you don’t put petrol in it, it won’t go!! To my loyal readers, for this I apologise in not bringing you material that keeps you informed and growing within yourself. With the upgrade and migration to a new server, I encountered some technical issues which are now resolved so all is up and running and now and I am back to writing for you.

Good vs Bad

I would like to bring your attention to something that struck me the other day. I watched a movie (shock, horror) which made me think about the good and the bad that is in the world today. Without the bad, there would be no good. What I mean to say is that every action has a complimentary reaction so when we hear of natural disasters or terrorist acts, we think these are bad things, but without them, we would not see the acts of kindness of the human race either. Follow me for a moment here.

In 2001, we all remember the planes crashing into the twin towers on 9/11. It didn’t hit me until one week later because at the time, I was with my firstborn in a sleep centre learning how to get her to sleep without too much interference from me. She happened to wake about 2am and that particular night, her cot was in the conference room where the night duty nurse had the TV on. I was half awake and the chaos of that day was unfolding right in front of my eyes on the tube. It didn’t really sink in until I was back home and my fogginess had cleared.

The events of that tragic day had everybody (or so it seems, as that is what the MEDIA portrayed to us) against terrorists and focusing on what they could and would do about them. Much later came the stories of acts of human kindness and because of this, there was a major shift in consciousness around the globe. People were helping others because it seemed the right thing to do. Now I am not discounting the thousands of people who lost their lives due to those attacks, and may they rest in peace, I am simply saying that if something as big as 9/11 didn’t happen, we may not have come as far as we have with a shift in consciousness.

I still don’t fully understand why it happened and I guess I never will because I cannot be those terrorists that made it so. What I can do though is be grateful that the human race can come together in times like these and give a helping hand.

Acts of Kindness

Now I have just described an event of mammoth proportions but it doesn’t take such an event for human kindness to shine through. Maybe you helped an elderly person cross the street, or maybe you cuddled a child who was hurt in an accident. It could be that you telephoned your wife/husband just to say “I love you” or even to take your mum shopping, or letting your niece write a post on your blog, lol! Whatever the case, I know each of you has this capability and if you wouldn’t mind sharing some thoughts on this, I am looking to write an ebook to be released when I get back from the Kokoda trek in which I will include a section about Acts of Kindness where I can feature what you share here.

PS. My niece who wrote the post prior to this has now set up her own blog at Michalea Is Me and I look forward to seeing what she does with it.

To Our Success

Hello to all ( : Ange left her laptop open so I decided to sneak a post in before she noticed.

My name’s Michaela. I am Ange’s niece, 14 years young. There’s really not much to write, mainly because I don’t really know what my auntie does on here. But I’m going to say this, Ange is the craziest aunt I have. Meaning crazy in a good way. She loves her family and friends and cares deeply about what’s going on around her. For that, I love and admirer her.

I don’t find her on the adventurous scale, and I somehow don’t think The Kakoda Trail was such a good choice of adventure for her, but I know she’ll survive it ( : I think one of the most caring things she has done in the past is ‘FREE HUGS DAY MELBOURNE’.

She has a strong mind and always has her own opinion. If you dislike well trust me, you’re missing out.

I think I’m done on here. Thanks for reading about my auntie Ange ( : Much love to all, especially the one this is about.

xxx

Have you ever felt like you were the only person in the whole universe with a challenge? You may have noticed that I have been absent from Buzzing with Ange a bit lately. To tell you the truth, I lost my creativity and didn’t want to bring you half-baked articles just to keep updating. Instead, I have been meandering along another path away from my laptop and that is the one of further study for my NLP (Neuro-Linguistic-Programming) Master Practitioner along with training for the Kokoda Trek!

Aside from that, we, that is my family, have recently found out that my dad needs to have open heart surgery and as I type this, he has been hospitalised due to a series of recurring minor heart attacks and we are waiting to hear when he will be able to have the procedure done. Needless to say, it has put us all on standby wondering what the outcome will be.

Through all this, I have learned something about myself and that is that I am not the super emotionally strong person I thought I was. Does this mean that I have failed? No, not at all! In fact, what is has done is made me aware of the vulnerabilities that we as humans all have and that is that when someone close to us that we love faces a life threatening challenge, we start asking the questions why. After all, my dad is a very fit man and at the age of 78, he walks 60 kms per week!

The thing is to not ask why, but rather, how do we adapt to make this experience go as smoothly as possible while maintaining a positive outlook so as to keep my dad’s spirits up and help him as best we can through this challenge?


This Is How We Grow

While being empathic to his reality, I think the best thing I can do is spend time with him and ask questions so that I can learn as much as I can about him… I’m sure there are many things that I do not know about my dad and at the same time, tell him how I feel about him. Use the time to really bond and I think I am sounding like this is the end for him, and I’m sure it isn’t, but what an opportunity to get even closer than I was before! My point is that sometimes we leave things unsaid and then have regrets that we shoulda coulda woulda done this that and the other. I have heard it too many times before and I would rather not be left in that situation so speak now before it is too late.

This way of thinking can apply to anyone in our lives who we may be needing to discuss things with. What I mean is to not let emotions hold you back from speaking up about something or clearing the air if need be. I’m thinking in particular about forgiveness and emotional intelligence which goes a long way towards your personal development. Being consciously aware of our reactions to particular people or circumstances and coming to an agreement with ourselves or others, helps us keep things in perspective and not make up stories about it… after all, your reality will differ from the next person’s reality. We all have a different view of life and whatever your beliefs, it is the right one for you. Remember though that holding onto negative thoughts you have without either writing them down or talking about them with someone, will only make you the victim so please, if you have something to say then say it.

I know I am not the first person to be faced with this situation and I won’t be the last. So, I am not looking for sympathy here, rather, I would like to ask what are some of the things you may have tried in a similar situation which worked for you and your family to get you through a time like this?