Rotary Central Melbourne Meeting Report, August 24, 2021
Chair: Russell Rolls
Reporter: Malcolm Fielden
The meeting was attended by 41 Members and guests. Visitors were –
- Clare Desira, Guest Speaker,
- Teresa Carlson – Echuca Moama Rotary.
President Elias Lebbos opened the meeting with an Acknowledgement to Country and welcomed Members, visiting Rotarians and Guests including the Guest Speaker to the meeting.
Meeting Chair, Russell Rolls, proposed a toast to Rotary International and introduced the Guest Speaker, Clare Desira.
Guest Speaker:
Clare Desira provided a most informative and entertaining talk on “positive thinking won’t cut it (what we need right now instead)”.
Clare commenced her presentation by pointing out a strong connection to Rotary. Clare co-directed Rotary District 9780’s RYLA program for over a decade and remained actively involved in the program for 17 years after attending the program as a University student.
Clare observed in her early work that even people who were holidaying in “paradise” still found things to complain about. People seemed to be delaying their happiness until sometime in the future. They were creating a gap between where they were now and where they wanted to be. Clare’s training and tools are designed to help people close that gap.
Clare’s work experience covers forty countries, hundreds of organisations and thousands of people. She spoke about using filters to train your brain, the greatest filter we have. We can use this to strengthen resilience, navigate change and build motivation. The aim of the tools is to build a stronger mindset, resilience and mental health and have a bigger impact in work.
Our brain is trained to make strong connections, which can sometimes close us off to making new connections. We should ‘slow down’ and take the time to train our brain to make new connections.
We should be looking to be more (the HEP principle) –
- Helpful,
- Encouraging,
- Productive.
We should write down 5 positive memories of our day. Too often, we focus on the negatives. For instance, the saying “bad things happen in 3’s” tends to train our brain to look for problems. We need to flip that around and say “good things happen in 5’s”.
We should “Teflon” our bad thoughts, and “Velcro” our good thoughts. Our aim should be to be more Confident, more Connected (less lonely) and more Generous.
In response to questions from Ignacio and Mary, Clare added that we should set a mind-set goal. We can start this by preparing a Feeling List and an Outcome List instead of a To-Do list.
We also need to have a balance between reality and talking things up. We need to let our brain be a main driver and filter, and continue to train our brain.
Milestone Announcements
Member Birthdays
Hon Member Geoff Fairhall 26th August
Partner Birthdays
Amanda Cachart, David Laurie’s partner 30th August
Murray Robinson, Therese’s partner, 30th August
Wedding Anniversaries
Nil
Date Joined Rotary
Lady Pastidio 28th August 2018, 3 years
Announcements:
1. Roger Thornton – Unfortunately, due to Covid, it has been decided to defer Garden Design Fest (DGF) until November 2022.
2. Neville Taylor – Reported that the mentors' onboarding session was held on 17th August to kick off the Ambulance Victoria (AV) mentoring program for 2021-2021.
3. Rob Hines reported that the recent raffle raised $650. The prize draw was conducted and the winners were –
- 1st prize Marjorie Gerlinger
- 2nd prize Allan Driver
- 3rd prize Doug Robertson
The Inquisition:
Brett Jones conducted ‘the inquisition’ and this week’s member under the spotlight was Doug Robertson.
Doug grew up in the Geelong area and spent time in Colac. He was one of six children. His early pleasures were going to the beach, holidaying at the beach and playing cricket.
He chose a Maths/Science course at High School which didn’t go well. He commenced work at 16 ½ at Howard Smith Shipping Agents, a very interesting first job. He undertook night school to complete an Accounting degree and went to a Public Practice firm in Geelong. His next role was at Target Head Office, also in Geelong.
A move to Melbourne for work at Myer as their Corporate GM Audit was next. The day after he commenced, Coles started their takeover of Myer. He was kept busy in IT roles dealing with Y2K and the GST implementation.
Doug was invited to join Rotary by Roy Garrett. He is a MCC member and a proud Geelong supporter.
President's announcements:
President Elias Lebbos made the following announcements stemming from the recent Board meeting –
- August is normally Club development month. In light of Covid restrictions, could we all consider new members.
- Accounting firm KPMG has offered their staff to assist in Rotary projects during October.
- The financial budgets were produced and are currently being reviewed.
- The deferral of GDF will leave a hole in the budget. We need to think of other potential income streams.
- Kevin Love has done an exceptional job in setting up the Bernie Gerlinger Scholarship. Donations can still be made.
- There are 2 new Rotary Clubs being formed in Vietnam. They could be looking for connection with RCM.
- The great work done by Roger Thornton and Anne King on GDF was acknowledged.
- The oxygen concentrators donated to our Sister Club in Calcutta are being handed over on 25th August. A Zoom link has been sent out for members that would like to be part of the presentation. (Note from the Editor: at the time of publishing, this event had taken place. Please refer to feature post in this bulletin.)
To finish, Elias encouraged us to –
- Focus on being helpful to each other,
- Focus on productive thoughts, and
- Keep the enthusiasm up.
Conclusion:
Allan Driver advised that next week’s meeting will be a Zoom meeting and the guest speaker will be Mandy Watson discussing “Whales on our Coast”.
Gerard Hogan will send out the virtual seating arrangements. Please make contact with the people on either side of you.
The aim is to have a Face-to-face meeting on 7th September, Covid restrictions pending.
