I’m so thrilled to share this insightful and entertaining conversation with the extraordinary Julie Woods – we cover practical solutions from rubber bands to technology, tasting New Zealand wine – and how to make overwhelm disappear.
Here’s the transcript below if you’re reading along – but hopefully you can listen so you get the joy of Julie’s chuckle also.
Listen below, on Apple Podcasts or Spotify or find more platforms here.
Kerrie Phipps 0:01
Hi, Kerrie Phipps here connecting with confidence. And today we are connecting with Julie Woods, as we continue this series about adapting to extraordinary change, which is the subtitle of Julie’s first book, How To Make A Silver Lining. Welcome back, Julie.
Julie Woods 0:16
Thank you, Kerrie.
Kerrie Phipps 0:18
I’m so enjoying this series. And it’s, there’s so many insights in what you’ve shared already. And I’m so excited about today, key number five, do you want to take over from here and tell us all about that key?
Julie Woods 0:31
Key number five, find your own solutions. When I went blind, I had lots of problems. So I had to come up with lots of solutions. Sometimes those solutions could be as simple as a rubber band. A rubber band was to help me tell the difference between shampoo and conditioner. So if the rubber band was on the conditioner I knew, the one that didn’t have the rubber band on it was the shampoo. And that was just one simple way of creating a solution. Sometimes the solution would be a bit more complicated and it would require two rubber bands. If I had a bottle of Riesling and my fridge and a bottle of Chardonnay, I would put a rubber band around the Chardonnay so I would tell it apart from the Riesling, Riesling, but if I had another type of wine like Sauvignon Blanc, then I would need to put two rubber bands around that so I could tell the difference between the Chardonnay and the Riesling.
Kerrie Phipps 1:32
And I guess we’re talking New Zealand wines there, Julie?
Julie Woods 1:34
Oh, my goodness. Yeah, they were white ones weren’t they
Kerrie Phipps 1:38
Yeah, New Zealand is famous for wine just in case anyone doesn’t know that. So now you can differentiate.
Julie Woods 1:45
I didn’t get to the Aussie reds.
Kerrie Phipps 1:48
Right. Okay. But I’m sure you would have extra rubber bands or something else to help you. If…
Julie Woods 1:54
Just done that Kerrie. Sometimes the shape of the bottle can be an indicator.
Kerrie Phipps 1:58
Yep.
Julie Woods 1:59
For a red bottle was often a different shape to white bottle. Not always, but there is one indicator as well. So, you know, solutions come in lots of forms, and it’s just about taking notice. And in the beginning when I couldn’t say I had to learn how to do things in different ways. Smell, hear, taste and touch and for the likes of the wine, my solution would come through my sense of touch and telling the difference. Either using the rubber band or the shape of the bottle.
Kerrie Phipps 2:29
And I guess a bit of a taste test every now and then too?
Julie Woods 2:31
Quite right, yes. That’s called “blind tasting”.
Kerrie Phipps 2:38
We’ve all had a go at that in some form. So, yeah, that’s really interesting, because often it is just little practical, things that make a difference, isn’t it?
Julie Woods 2:49
It does, it can be as simple as a rubber band? That’s right, you’re right. But sometimes it does take, more and sometimes you do need to learn a new skill. So that you have a solution for your your problem.
Kerrie Phipps 3:04
Yeah, what are some of the bigger things?
Julie Woods 3:07
I was thinking about learning reading I guess was some of the bigger things. So, if we looked at the first way I read after I went blind was through my ears. So I would listen to talking books, I had to learn how to use a talking book machine and operate that and work out the process of getting talking books. In the old days. ‘In the old days,’ years ago when I went blind, came by way of a cassette tape through the mail, systems I had to learn to to be able to read with my ears, getting the tape cassette putting it on the player, leaning how to opperate the player and then playing it.
Kerrie Phipps 3:49
Yeah. Not so many audio books back then.
Julie Woods 3:53
No, that’s right. But now Kerrie of course, audio books have changed and My Talking Book Machine Is my iPhone.
Kerrie Phipps 4:02
Wow, that’s cool.
Julie Woods 4:03
So I get learned how to use an iPhone with VoiceOver on it and download apps and listen to talking books using my iPhone. So my solutions in that, in that case, were they progressed really, they changed from the different formats, the cassette tape to the CD to the downloadable audio file.
Kerrie Phipps 4:29
Yeah, and there’s, the power of other people finding solutions to because how much has technology changed even in the last 10 years that would have significantly impacted your solutions, you know, other people have been finding solutions and and you’ve been finding solutions and upskilling and learning?
Julie Woods 4:48
Well, I’d say it’s a great time to be blind. I mean, with technology available for blind people, it’s creating a huge amount of solutions? So the important question to say why not to are the ones, for me that relate to technology and upskilling and constantly learning, you know how to touch type or how to learn to use your iPhone, how to learn to use zoom. It’s an ever changing landscape, and you have to constantly be keeping up with it to, you know, to find those solutions.
Kerrie Phipps 5:26
Yeah. So when, when there is that sense of, you know, having to constantly keep up, how do you move from overwhelmed to I guess, you move into curiosity, or you move into this decision that helps you move forward rather than, you know, the overwhelm that I think so many people would relate to.
Julie Woods 5:45
I know that the overwhelm disappears as soon as I take action.
Kerrie Phipps 5:51
That’s powerful.
Julie Woods 5:52
So if I can get clear on what kind of action to take, that’s the challenge. What is it? Unless I’m clear, I can’t take action. Sometimes getting clear is about having conversations with people in the case of an iPhone it would be talking with other blind people, having a conversation with my adaptive technologist, asking what kind of iPhone they used, or how accessible were they, which was a bit of one, was it an Android? Okay? So gathering lots of information Kerrie to then to be able to make a decision to get clear on what you wanted to do. And then then to take action.
Kerrie Phipps 6:36
Yeah, yeah. And you know we first connected as we discussed in a previous episode about how we connected through coaching, and and we’ll talk about how I was coaching you and helping you find your own solutions, but you’ve also been coaching people since about 2007. Or?
Julie Woods 6:54
Yes, yes. Yes. Yep.
Kerrie Phipps 6:57
As a you’ve been helping your clients also to find their own solutions. So what are some of the questions that you’ve asked that have unlocked insight for your clients?
Julie Woods 7:10
How would… what would it look like if you had a solution? What would the impact on your life be? What would it feel like if you could do this?
Kerrie Phipps 7:26
Yeah.
Julie Woods 7:28
How great would it feel to conquer those?
Kerrie Phipps 7:32
Yeah, they’re great questions that can stop you in your tracks for a moment. But then, as you pause and consider, which I think we need that time don’t we? To pause and consider things to find our own solutions. Sometimes we want to just get it quickly or see it quickly; but sometimes it takes that reflection, doesn’t it?
Julie Woods 7:51
That’s right. And I think it’s about focusing on the gain and not the pain because I think we often get stuck in the pain of how hard it’s going to be to to create the solution or how hard it’s going to be to learn something or that’s going to take too long as you say, it’s, you know, it’s around patience. And exploring the options, so thinking about end point, I think is really important.
Kerrie Phipps 8:22
Yeah. So and you just mentioned patients then and I was also thinking about your curiosity. So has that developed or do you think you’ve always been curious? Have you always been patient? Just pick one and tell us about it.
Julie Woods 8:37
If you ask my ex husband, ask my current husband. I think I’ve always been relatively patient. Not sure about that actually. Okay, I’ve developed, yes, I’ve developed patience. And I’ve developed curiosity as well as I have. I remember back to my university degree Kerrie and Oh, God, it just seems so dry and dull, and I think to me, the tuning theory into action is when things come to life for me. So theory doesn’t always make me curious but applying it does. And that’s why I fell in love with braille because it was taking the theory of braille and then applying it to my own life, by the way of writing labels and putting them on CDs or my baking containers, and doing those kinds of things that really made it come to life.
Kerrie Phipps 8:46
Oh, Julie, you’re just taking me back to a very precious memory. Do you remember what you posted me? Probably in 2008.
Julie Woods 9:55
Braille biscuits?
Kerrie Phipps 9:55
You sent me this big parcel which customs did go through, because it was a little bit jumbled from your description to what was actually in front of us, but they were Braille biscuits that you cooked. And a card that you wrote in Braille that we had to get curious about and figure out what does this say. But in the meantime, having a husband and son, who was probably eight or nine at the time, some of the biscuits were sampled. Before we, before we decoded the message that said, “these biscuits say what you do to me”, and then we put together the remaining biscuits and realise that, that they spelled out the word. Do you remember?
Julie Woods 10:42
Inspire?
Kerrie Phipps 10:43
Yeah, that’s right.
Julie Woods 10:44
Yeah. Thats nice.
Kerrie Phipps 10:46
That’s beautiful. So you. Yeah, you led us to be curious too, about them.
Julie Woods 10:53
And then those biscuits came about because I asked myself the question when we had braille tea party when I worked at the blind foundation here in New Zealand, and I had to say to myself, “What do you have afternoon tea at a Braille tea party?” And the answer I gave to myself was Braille biscuits. Of course. So my solution to that was to find one of the volunteer Braille transcribers, who was also a very proficient Baker.
Kerrie Phipps 11:27
Oh cool.
Julie Woods 11:27
put those two things together and she created the first batch of Braille biscuits.
Kerrie Phipps 11:32
Oh that’s fantastic. So for anyone who’s wondering, if you can picture Braille, then you can picture, rectangle. biscuits like shortbread, I guess. And with, like dominoes, yeah, with the…
Julie Woods 11:47
With dots with either icing or a lolly dots. But let’s say a white icing dot on a brown biscuit, so that there was colour contrast for the sighted person. You sighted people. On each letter was a Braille letter which is made up of one of six dots. So the letter would be made up of one of the six one of six icing dots. So the letter K, which has two dots on it would have the two icing dots on the left hand side.
Kerrie Phipps 12:17
Yeah, so as we’re actually choc chip.
Julie Woods 12:20
Were they?
Kerrie Phipps 12:21
Yeah, they were, you know, traditional, what do you call it yellow, you know, plain coloured biscuits.
Julie Woods 12:30
shortbread, sorry, shortbread.
Kerrie Phipps 12:32
Yes, a regular shortbread looking biscuits with chocolate dots, which was an absolute hit, I tell you. I’m glad we figured it out before we ate them all.
Julie Woods 12:45
Even blind people have to worry about what it’s like for a sighted person’s experience. So we’re aware that you use your eyes to distinguish contrast. Whereas we would use Touch. So it was important to have the colour contrast between the chocolate dot and the biscuit.
Kerrie Phipps 13:07
Yeah, that was very, very gracious of you. Thank you.
Julie Woods 13:11
We do what we can.
Kerrie Phipps 13:13
Yeah. And you know inspired me to come up with you know, new solutions. You know, I wanted to send you a card as I send, you know, lots of clients and I thought well, okay, obviously someone can read it to you, but how do I make it more? You know, more of an experience for you so I sent you the fluffiest most textured card I’ve ever created for anyone. They may have been some pom poms.
Julie Woods 13:42
I thought they were cotton wool balls.
Kerrie Phipps 13:45
No they there are actual little pom poms for Spotlight. Yeah, so and and then you did create a Braille card for my clients at an office organisation here in Dubbo that had a blind student in the in the class. And so that was really beautiful to to have you send me a card from your Braille machine because I don’t have one handy. So and you do that that’s a solution that you that you do you create people’s names in Braille as part of one of your goals.
Julie Woods 14:24
That’s right, I’ve got a dream to write a million names in Braille. And I’m just thinking when I’m hearing your talk, Kerrie that when you’re blind, you know, we have problems galore. Daily problems, hourly problems, problems every minute. We can face so many problems. So we have to focus on the solution and what we can do and that’s what as blind people, we get very proficient at. And as do other people too, it’s not just for the blind, but that’s what finding your own solutions was all about for me when I went blind.
Kerrie Phipps 15:05
Yeah, and I guess, you know, we’ve been connecting about this and talking about adapting to extraordinary change because the world is going through a period of extraordinary change right now. And we are looking for new solutions. And for a lot of people, there’s solutions around, you know, going online becoming more proficient online, which is something that you did getting better at using technology. You know, maybe it’s different, different options in terms of shopping. We actually grew some veggies on the weekend, well, we didn’t grow them. We didn’t grow them on the weekend. We started that process, you know, because I think it’d be nice to just hop at the back and pull some veggies out and put them in dinner. But there are all kinds of challenges that we’re faced with every day, whether we’re in a period of significant change or not, but that’s where we become aware of that. That moment of “Do I sit in the overwhelm? Or do I start taking action?” And I thought that was really powerful. He said, You know, when you start taking action, you start moving forward, then that overwhelm drops away. And you Yeah, your curiosity can take over. You’re being patient with yourself which is fantastic. And you’re retaining your sense of humour, which is our next episode. So, I mean, I’ve already had a laugh today. Let’s come back and talk about your key number six, which is ‘laugh at yourself’. So thank you so much for sharing this today, Julie.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai
