My Mother's mojo

I just pulled out some osso bucco for lunch that my Mother made and froze a few weeks ago, and it made me think about how lucky I've been to grow up in the family I've grown up in.

It's a bit sad that my Mother still makes my lunch for me at 33 years of age, but it's something that she does so well and so often without expecting praise, that it is at risk of being taken for granted, but nobody takes my mother for granted. My mother is like a tube of Selley's liquid nails, when things look shaky, she steps in with her tambourine, has a glass of wine and makes things better. Her parents were the "liquid nails" of our family, but after the death of her mother (where Mum played that bloody tambourine as people were leaving the funeral), Mum has taken over that mantle seamlessly, hence the osso bucco for lunch.

Mum recently said to me that she felt she was "losing her mojo," and as I consider myself something of a mojo loss and retrieval expert, I wanted to give her my thoughts on her comment. Mum is a bit like Superman in the scene where he catches Lois Lane and she says to him "You've got me, but who's got you?" She's had people's backs for as long as I can remember, but now it seems she's wondering who's got her back, and the answer is everyone. Mojo isn't a matter of what you're doing, it's a matter of how you perceive the importance of what you're doing - making osso bucco probably sucks, but the act of making lunch for your son is beautiful.

If Mum needs any reassurance to help her perceive the importance of what she's doing, and thus reboost her mojo count, she just needs to look in her own garden, where the 4 seeds she first planted nearly 36 years ago have flowered into a television channel manager with a wife and children, all with impeccable manners, who all live in the home they own, a diabetic stroke survivor who is getting ready to play his 100th AFL game for the mighty Dees, a co-owner of a new bar that's due to open in Perth in the next month, and a globe-trotting event manager who lives and works in London.

If mojo is about perception, you don't need to do anything differently, you just need to step outside your situation and see how important what you're doing is.

Postscript:

I just got back from lunch and the osso bucco was sensational.

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For information about Barnaby's motivational speaking, go to: http://www.barnabyhowarth.com.au/