November 6, 2024 Breakfast Meeting Notes
Guests were Kerry LaMontaigne and our speaker, Amy Hage. We met today at Annie’s Overflow as the Common Man was completely booked. We elected not to do a card game or 50/50: Tony was absent so there was no NH trivia.
Alicia gave us an update on the Penny Sale. Our goal was to bring in $21,000 and we made $25,000 so we did very well. (This was 30% more in ticket sales than in the past two years.) We had a lot of volunteers so that things ran efficiently. The earlier start time helped to get more people in. We have increased our social media following as a result of the sale. If people have photos, please share them with Alicia and she will make a new short video to promote our club and the Penny Sale..
Our Interact club is not active at the moment. Shelby (who spoke to us before she went on her Rotary exchange) and two of her friends from Plymouth High School are going to try to pull Interact back together. Interact may want to sponsor the Tuesday Trade Talks so as to market Rotary. A PSU student in attendance at the Penny Sale also expressed interest in starting a Rotaract Club at the college. PSU already has an active community service program so this should work out well.
Speech contest: We are going to try to work the speech contest into the English curriculum at the high school so that teachers can make participation a class assignment. We have already had one student ask about the speech contest this year. We can also see if Holderness school or the home schooled musical group is interested in participating.
We received a thank you card from one of the seniors at the Grafton Home who received a birthday card from us.
Two weeks from today, on 11/20, we will have a guest at our club who is a documentarian. He is creating a documentary on the Common Man for Ukraine. He will interview 2 or 3 people but mostly Alex, Lisa, or Susan. Look your best!
We are going right into the Hometown Holiday Celebration. Beth and Steve will meet this week on the donation planning. The float will be built at Phil’s place. Alicia will set up a time next week to plan the float. If you are interested in helping with this, send her an email. We will decorate the Common on the Saturday immediately after Thanksgiving.
This Saturday at 9 there will be a trail cleanup at the Walter Newton trailhead at the top of Texas Hill Rd. Bring loppers, (preferred) and hand saws. Chain saws are probably unnecessary.
Rotary after hours will be held next Thursday the 14th at 61 Main St. from 5-6:30.
Marybeth introduced our guest this morning, Amy Page. She had also hoped to introduce Amy’s son, Adrian Dellacolle, but he did not arrive before the meeting ended. Adrian worked in Valencia this weekend (he is working on a degree in sustainability in Madrid).
Amy is an executive functioning coach working with adolescents, women, women in menopause, and anyone who needs a little extra help. She started her career in outdoor recreation but moved over to executive functioning coaching.
Executive functioning uses the “thinking” and “doing” parts of our brains. Executive functioning has to do with emotional control, task initiation, compulsive behavior, managing our time, prioritizing our tasks, and using our working memory. We all have these skills but not everyone excels at every skill. She has helped develop a curriculum around life skills for young people and she works with professionals at all life stages.
One of her specialties is ADHD. People with ADHD often tend to procrastinate, but we all do this. Procrastination is our limbic system’s way of protecting us from something that feels dangerous. We tend to get irritated with ourselves when we procrastinate and this doesn’t help. We need to remind ourselves that a lot of what we are avoiding isn’t really a threat.
We need to think about what is making us uncomfortable about whatever we’re putting off. Perhaps we don’t know how to start. Once we realize this, we need to recognize what we are doing to procrastinate. We might displace ourselves by rearranging our spice drawer, vacuuming, making lists, or performing other useful nonthreatening tasks. There is a whole category of “productive procrastination,” which involves things like baking, laundry, or checking email. These all make us feel productive, but they don’t really get us to do what we need to do. The longer you put off doing something, the harder it gets. Sometimes we procrastinate for a while and then work like mad at the end of the time, thinking that the pressure will make us more efficient. But such last-minute rushes of activity tend to increase our stress.
Amy teaches people to learn to recognize their own patterns of procrastination. We can try to give ourselves deadlines and timelines that force ourselves to get things done in a timely manner. This may require driving out of the “ruts” in our brain that keep us doing things the same way. Practicing a different approach to getting tasks done can create a new pathway.
Respectfully submitted,
Lora Miller, secretary