Ngahi Bidois: Make time to do what you really want to do

According to my records this is my 100th Daily Post article.

I would like to start by thanking Te Atua i runga rawa for the opportunity to share some of my life lessons with you and The Daily Post for inviting me to write for the Te Maori page back in 2008.

I acknowledge nga hunga mate who I had the privilege to know and write about in these articles, including Taine Morrison, Hawea Vercoe, Don Stafford, uncles Manu Khan and Kepa Hiini, Okeroa Douglas and Rawiri Te Whare to mention a few. Ko ratou te hunga mate ki a ratou, haere, haere, haere atu ra. Kua wheturangitia ratou. Ko tatou te hunga ora ki a tatou, kia kaha tatou ki o tatou oranga. Tena ano tatou katoa.

I would like to thank all of you who read The Daily Post and especially those of you who have have stopped me in the streets or at your workplaces and complimented me on my Daily Post articles.

I really appreciate your feedback which has truly inspired and motivated me to continue writing. To my Aunty Jitty and my cousin Hune who collect my articles - I reckon you are awesome.

Let me put it this way, you certainly make up for my wife and kids who keep me humble by chucking my printed articles in the rubbish before I even get a chance to read them

Numerous times I have returned home from business trips and one of the whanau has said: "Oh yeah, one of your articles was in the paper this week." I then ask: "Cool, where is it?" The standard reply being "umm ... either in the rubbish bag or in the rubbish bin". There's nothing like whanau to keep you grounded and humble eh?

Despite that, I would like to thank my whanau for allowing me to write about them. We have a whanau rule that nothing gets posted on Facebook or any public place unless we get permission from that person first.

I must confess to bending the rule a couple of times and writing about whanau while they were away such as the time I wrote about missing my son so much when he was in Mexico for three months that I started crying in The Warehouse and my daughter told me to toughen up.

I wondered what wisdom or inspiration I might be able to share with you for this 100th article and was struggling a bit until I met my friend, Gordon Macgor, at the recent World 240 Superstock champs at the Paradise Valley raceway.

He said he hadn't seen me much at speedway this year and I replied I had been too busy working.

He then gave me a classic piece of wisdom by saying: "Well that's no good Ngahi. You ought to make time to do the things you want to do, because you spend enough time doing the things you have to do."

So there is my Macgor advice for us all in my 100th Daily Post article. Let's make time to do the things we want to do, because we certainly spend enough time doing the things we have to do.

Kia kaha kia maia tatou ki te whaia nga wawata me nga moemoea.

-Ngahihi o te ra is from Te Arawa and is an international speaker, author and consultant. His book is available at Mcleods book store and the Lakeside caf in Rotorua. His website can be viewed at www.ngahibidois.com.