I’ve been thinking about a lot of things over the last few weeks and now I’ve got the challenge of intertwining several seemingly unrelated themes into a coherent piece – I mean that sort of is what was writing is, but it shouldn’t really come as a surprise when I get to the conclusion and all loose ends are tied up. It feels like that should happen purposefully.
For transparency then, the plan is to start out talking about problem solving in relationships, move on to the idea of patience, and then combine those two ideas using an anecdote from the last fortnight and make it appear as if I’ve done that in a cogent manner.
Here we go then. Writing, uninterrupted.
I’ve spent the last 2 years trapped in a vicious cycle that I’ve endeavoured to placate but, as implied, have only aggravated further. I don’t want to get in to the details, only to say it’s fucking exhausting and I want it to end.
It is true in life that you’ll always have a problem. It might be your job, your bills, your relationship; it might be small, medium, large or super-sized; it might be a perpetual, nagging problem that you can’t seem to shift or it might be a colossal problem that has crashed down on you out of nowhere like an avalanche. The only people without problems are those in the cemetery.
To avoid every problem ending in the cessation of your existence, you need to be able to draw on your problem-solving skills, which may also include the intervention of third parties and the use of new perspectives. That’s where your friends come in.
I’ve relied heavily on mine recently.
Whether it’s been catching up over a drink and dinner, or the football, or out in a cottage in the Peak District, I feel very grateful for the people that have been there this week or the last year or the majority of my life. I would have given up a long time ago if it weren’t for you. Anyway, before this turns into sentimental, heart-warming, drivel – I just wanted to say thank you.
Problems are always harder when they’re your problems. This is why perspective is important – if you can get an objective position on the situation, it immediately makes it easier to deal with. As Einstein said, you can’t solve a problem using the same thinking that created it. And if you can’t do this in your own mind, use someone else’s.
You might look at this situation and go “you’ve had the same problem for 2 years, this clearly isn’t working” but (and you’ll see the magic happen here) there is another crucial factor in problem-solving. Patience.
I’ve said this before, even if I’ve not written it down, but there is such a lack of patience around. Everything is instant. Communication. Instant. Food. Instant. Money. Instant.
I can’t stand it, almost as much as I can’t stand still having this problem to deal with after 2 years.
There are no guarantees with problem-solving. You have to go through the process, however long that takes. There may be shortcuts – and these most likely come from people who have experienced your problem before, or from new ideas sourced from your allies – but there might not be. Something that you think might be the solution, may just take the problem in a new direction. This is the process and it requires patience to get through.
Another problem that I have, and this one truly will never go away, is that I’m a diabetic. For reasons I couldn’t quite comprehend, after living with it more than 15 years, I found myself on a week long course about managing the condition. I’m not going to lie, I was cynical and acerbic in my discussions about it, because if I’ve made it this far without it, the likelihood is that I’m probably managing alright.
As it turns out, it wasn’t too bad. Most of it was a reiteration of things I already knew, but there were some pointers in there that I found useful. We were a good group too and I’ve made a couple of new friends of the back of it (tenuous link there back to relationships. It’s coming though, wait for it), which is always a good thing – particularly when one of them knows people ‘in the trades’. I don’t know why I’ve put that in inverted commas, I think I’ve made that an innuendo now and its not meant to be. They’re just plumbers and electricians.
One of the guys though was just not getting it at all. He couldn’t quite let go of his methods from the last few years and he was very anxious to get everything correct straight away. Inevitably, making lots of changes in a short period of time in order to solve the problem didn’t work. He simply lacked the patience (bingo) to try one thing at a time, see the results, and make a judgement about what to do next – he wanted it to be correct instantly. For this reason and others, we can never be friends.
There you have it then, a fairly coherent piece delivering on what it set out to do in the beginning, with no surprises. As satisfying as that is, I’ve somehow managed to strip the joy out of my own writing now - we’ll go back to unplanned rambling next week.
I had every intention of posting once a week and whilst I’ve kept that streak going for nearly 4 months, inevitably, life got in the way and my run is over. It’s not something to be disappointed about, though – in fact, it’s something to be happy about really, knowing that serendipitous events can occur and it’s not the end of the world.
One of the important aspects of habit building is consistency; and whether that means in timing or in method and technique, consistency is a fundamental part in creating habit loops that take you from conscious effort on a task to ‘something that just happens’.
I’ve managed to be consistent in posting once a week, but I could improve this by making sure it is the same day every week. You’ll probably notice that a lot of the dates are Sundays, and it might appear as if that’s the day I’d chosen on purpose but the more scrupulous amongst you might realise that it is a coincidence and the underlying reasons for my posting day being a Sunday aren’t that it is purposefully chosen, but that Sunday is the last day of the week and I’ve been so desperate to keep that run going.
The reason I didn’t post last Sunday specifically is because I was enjoying a weekend in London, fulfilling one of my lifelong dreams of seeing Metallica in the flesh (well, I say lifelong, it’s more since I grew out of The Spice Girls in the early 2000’s).
The chance occurrences actually happened this week, giving further credence to the theory my habit of blogging on a Sunday is just a last-ditch effort to keep a run going, but to avoid going off on a tangent – let’s get back to habits.
We’ve established consistency is important when building habits, and if you are looking for rules, there are various sources that will give you a number of days as a target for successfully embedding your chosen habit – 30 days, 61 days, 97 days – but in truth, the number of days is not so important as it is what you do when your streak ends.
If I’m trying to build the habit of going to the gym every day, and I’m working under the assumption it takes 30 days to build this habit, and I get to day 29 and don’t go the gym – what does this mean?
The answer is it depends what I do on day 30. If I don’t go again because I’m feeling dejected at having broken my streak, then in habit building terms I’ve set myself back about a week. If I do go again, it’s like having a checkpoint in a video game that I’ve just gone back to as if nothing happened – day 30 is just like replaying day 29 all over again and the habit building progress is not lost.
This is really important because it’s so easy to take that first option – think about the times people are on a diet, and they have a bad day, what do they do? They follow it up with another bad day (especially if it’s a Saturday, because who wants to start their diet again on a Sunday? Start Monday!) and then before they know it, all the progress is lost and they’re back to square one.
Tracking a sequence of successful days is good because it motivates you to keep going and for every tick you put on the calendar, you get another small dopamine boost, but be careful not to switch the focus from the goal to the streak – because when this happens, this where a sequence breaker is likely to be a habit breaker and you won’t achieve your goal.
The thing with consistency and what I mean by this is that it’s not so much about doing the thing well it’s more just doing the thing at all.
When it comes to doing the thing well, this is where that focus on the end goal is important, and this is what I mean when I say technique and method.
If I use writing as an example, it would be all well and good for me to write for 30 days in a row and declare that I’ve successfully built that habit, but If I’ve just written 30 days’ worth of incoherent nonsense, am I any closer to my goal?
Possibly – it’s likely that I’ve improved over that space on time, and writing something is always better than writing nothing, just as playing a song badly when you’re practising is better than not practising at all; but I think part of building the habit is also reflecting on what you’re doing well and what you could improve the next time.
If I write one page of disjointed ideas one day, the next day I could write one page around a single idea. If I did 20 reps of an exercise and injured myself one day, the next day I could do less reps with a better technique (bad example, don’t make the injury worse). If I played 3 songs on the guitar and played 40 bum notes one day, the next day I could play 1 song with 5 bum notes. You get the idea.
If you’ve been reading my blog every week, then remember – keep that streak going (I know, it wasn’t in your hands this time, I broke your streak technically) and if you missed one it’s fine.
When you’ve spent 5 days in a new job, it seems appropriate to reflect on what you’ve done; what you could have done better and what other people might learn from your experience (that sounds familiar, doesn’t it?).
Thinking about it, it probably isn’t appropriate at all, but I’m going to do it anyway.
1. Tacit knowledge is taken for granted
I’ve realised how many quirks and ‘I just know’ tools I had in my locker in my previous job, and now they’ve all disappeared, I feel very exposed.
This isn’t necessarily a bad thing for me because it’s a learning experience – I started without all of those ‘You just have to click it in this specific location 3 times, spin around, and sacrifice the weakest member of your team’ type fixes before and I acquired them over time – and it will be the same here, except the things being fixed are different.
This is a problem for businesses though, and more specifically, the ones being left.
Tacit knowledge is very much shrugged off – “Oh how difficult can it be for somebody to learn that, just train them” or “Can’t you put that in a guide? People can read can’t they?” – but the reality is that this knowledge is more valuable because it’s through experience. When you don’t have the option for ‘So-and-so knows how to do that’, you’ll soon realise what you’ve lost. This is not meant to be an ego thing either because nobody is indispensable, but some people are more indispensable than others, and you need to realise that people with experience are difficult, if not impossible, to replace.
2. Office cultures vary…
I’ve been through a new experience this week of worrying what to wear for work. I know what you’re thinking – this shouldn’t be a new experience, nearly every person in the world has been through this before, surely? – but I’d been in the same job for 4.67 years (as you well know) since leaving university and during that time, I’d only been allowed to wear plain blue or white shirts, with a grey or navy suit, and black or brown shoes. That’s really not a difficult decision to make on your attire; and now to all of a sudden be thrust in to a world where ‘as long as your shirt has a collar on, it’s probably fine’, is quite daunting.
I’m not an advocate of a dress code in business, particularly not one that removes any hint that you might have a personality beneath your dull, tired, robotic exterior; but there is something to be said about not having to make that decision (ask Homer Simpson or Barack Obama), and I’ve not been brave enough yet to get away from my corporate garb.
It was dress down though on Friday, so I went with a blue shirt that had stripes on. Small steps.
3. …but the same problems are still there.
This isn’t the fault of either of the companies I’ve worked for specifically, it’s more an environment thing in that the office setting itself is just not conducive to working productively.
I think offices tend to go one of two ways; they either promote a raucous atmosphere that gets you pumped for work, whilst simultaneously distracting you from doing what you’re supposed to be doing; or they create silos of activity that mean you get stuff done, but nothing is shared between teams leading to resentment at best, and complete hush at worst.
What I’ve realised, or rather reaffirmed very quickly, is that I’m not suited to an office. Not only do I hate gossip and petty rivalry between teams, I also hate sitting in deathly silence while the clock ticks down to the end of the day. Even further to this, I just hate being inside all day. If it wasn’t bad enough being depleted of vitamin D and any morsel of happiness through winter just by the grey, miserable, British weather – my new employers have removed any hope of respite from the low winter sun by tinting the fucking windows.
Put me in a field or up a mountain – I’d take frostbite over this.
4. If you’re the smartest person in the room, you’re in the wrong room
I saw this earlier today on the twitter feed for @thehumanxperience and it’s pertinent to the situation I’m in and it’s made me realise what an idiot I’ve been.
In my old job, I treated certain people with a level of disdain for asking ‘stupid questions’, but I should have realised that they’re just trying to learn from me – they’re not asking questions to be annoying, they want to understand so they don’t have to ask the questions. Admittedly, this only goes so far and if you’ve asked me the same question a thousand times and have not even remotely attempted to learn (See: Where has the initiative gone?) then I feel I’m within my rights to ignore your stupid questions and file you away in the drawer in my mind marked ‘fucking morons’ where you will remain for eternity.
Now, that being said, my mistake has been twofold. As above, I shouldn’t have reacted to questions so badly, when they were genuine attempts to understand something new; and secondly, I should have been in more rooms where I had the opportunity to ask the questions (or taken the opportunities when they presented themselves) because now I’m in that situation myself, where I have to ask the questions because I don’t understand, it’s a very different feeling.
5. You can’t learn 10 things in 5 days
I could probably stretch to 6, 7 at an absolute best, but I’d be scraping the barrel (I mean really this doesn’t even count does it, this is a thing I’ve learnt over the course of writing this post) so I’d rather wrap things up there so there’s not any noticeable asymmetry with the last article.
Maybe you can learn 10 things in 5 days, I’ve not particularly tried.
There we go, that’s a nice way to end; you give a try. Report back. No, go on, I insist.
When you’ve spent the last 4.67 years of your life doing the same thing, it seems appropriate to reflect on what you’ve done; what you could have done better and what other people might learn from your experience.
I’m going to spell out what those things are right now.
1. Management does not equal Leadership
I probably knew this before, but I’ve reaffirmed what I thought. People in management positions are not leaders, or at least not always. The idea of management and hierarchy gives people the false belief that because they are at the top that - naturally - that would mean they are leading the way. In the words of Les Dennis though, our survey says ‘XXX’.
During the last 4.67 years, I’ve seen leaders emerge from unlikely places and not a single one of them was a manager at the time. It may have been a contributing factor in them becoming managers later on, but it was definitely this way round – leadership first, then management.
Leadership as a concept works because it’s beneficial to both leaders and followers. Leaders get to enjoy the benefits of being at the top, which in this context means a senior title and more money. Followers get to enjoy the comforts of having a leader that protects them, and they are happy to sacrifice the benefits of being at the top for this kind of security.
Far too often, leaders fail on their part. They take all the glory but when the going gets tough – guess what, the followers pay the price. Followers do not stand for this and quickly turn on their leader, ousting them in some way or another. The best example of this is with the banking crisis – fat chief execs (the leaders) cashing in their massive bonuses, while all of their workforce (the followers) loses their jobs. In times of struggle, the leader should be the one making the sacrifice for the good of their followers, just as the followers have sacrificed for the leader to be in that position.
I’ve seen this happen far too many times over the last few years, where the followers pay the price, and the trust in management (the leaders) has completely fallen off a cliff. They scratch their heads at why there is an unmotivated workforce; why turnover is so high and why productivity is low. It’s because they have no trust in the direction of the leader because they know that when things go south, they will be the ones to suffer.
2. Change is inevitable but widely resisted
I’ve seen so many initiatives go down in flames because somebody is unwilling to embrace change and the possibility of something better. Change is not always good, but it is inevitable, and people need to be more willing to accept this so they can make the best of it, rather than putting all of their energy in to preserving the status quo. It is a complete waste of time.
The people that embrace change and take risks are the ones who win. It’s very easy to look at the level of success you have now and assume that everything is going great, so there is no need to change. It’s a short term view and the success will be short lived – look at the bigger picture and what success means in the long run, and then go gung-ho on those changes.
3. Values are the key to effective decision making
If you take the strategy of putting all of your decisions through your value system, you will always make the right decision. If you claim to be fair, open and honest – all of your decisions should have been assessed against these values, and people will have something to believe and buy into, because they know what you stand for and you’re consistent in the way you act. I think too many people negatively equate consistency with predictability, as if it’s a negative to know how something will behave in a given situation – it isn’t, it’s a good thing; it’s good for your customers and it’s good for your employees because they know what they are going to get. It is possible to be consistently good.
If you don’t go through this process, your values mean shit. You can’t be fair open and honest some of the time, when it suits your interests, you have to be willing to stand by those even if it doesn’t go in your interest. You have to be willing to turn down that short term opportunity that goes against your values for the longer term success you will get by sticking with them.
4. Money isn’t always a motivator, but it is a hygiene factor that needs to be addressed
Not everybody needs or even wants to earn huge amounts of money. It is perfectly possible to live a happy life without millions in the bank – in fact it’s probably easier- and whilst some people are willing to give up every hour they have in the pursuit of more cash, some people aren’t.
The problem is that whilst money might not be motivating, it’s still necessary. Nobody is going to say you can live without money – they’d be deluded. There needs to be a point where money is not an issue for anybody; a base level where people can feel comfortable in the knowledge that they can continue to live. After this point, people can decide for themselves whether they are motivated to pursue more money by putting in more hours, more effort, more more,more,more or they can choose to be content with the money they have, knowing that they are safe. Take that issue off the table, do not keep people living from month to month wondering whether they can survive.
5. Be prepared to ruffle some feathers – do not become a yes man
Early on, it seems wise to agree with everything your peers and superiors say. You don’t want to stand out from the crowd too much. In time though, this is the wrong decision. You must be prepared to disagree – as this gives people the opportunity to question why they believe what they believed in the first place. This is another critical element in the decision making process. A room full of people simply agreeing with each other will ultimately be wrong. Ask the questions, people will be thankful in the end.
6. Gratitude is important above all else
You must be grateful for every opportunity that you are presented with and for every piece of help you receive. If you appreciate the time and effort that people have put in for you, they are more likely to want to do it again in future. Part of being gracious then is also to be willing to give something back. People quickly realise if they are being taken advantage of.
7. Choose your mentors wisely
A mentor should be someone who has taken the path you wish to follow. Learn from their story, from the mistakes they made, and don’t repeat them. If you are arbitrarily assigned a mentor, whilst you might gain some value from their insights, over time it will be fruitless if you don’t want to go the same way that they have been.
8. Maintain a network of connections for the best results
The more diverse your connections are, the better your output is going to be. The benefit of diversity is the same as having one naysayer in a room of yes men – it makes your question your position and consider the alternatives.
You are very unlikely to build deep relationships with a lot of people – the effort would be unmanageable – but you can nurture a high number of connections with just a small piece of regular communication.
Bill Clinton is always the famous example used here, with his 10,000 note cards on all of the people he’d met. I’m not suggesting that we should all have our own dossiers on every person we met on the bus once on the way to a meeting, but there is a lot of value in developing a system like this, so we can know who to call and when.
9. Give people the what, let them decide the how
Creativity gets stifled when people try to spell out every step of a process and impose this on somebody. If you know what the outcome is, you should leave it to the person carrying out the process to determine how they get there.
Micromanagement is the death of creativity and productivity; the creativity will be yours, and the productivity will be the micromanagers. It’s very easy to spot this kind of relationship – the micromanager will claim to be busy (all of the time) and yet you will see little if any output from them. All the while, the employee will be sat wondering why none of their ideas matter and why they can’t be more helpful in alleviating some of the pressure.
If you delegate a task to somebody, make them believe that you trust them to complete it and then leave them to get on with it. I’m not saying you should wash your hands of it, be around for support absolutely, but do not impose yourself on the process.
10. Die a hero or live long enough to see yourself become the villain
There are so many good quotes from The Dark Knight aren’t there?
Always know when to get out – I’ve learnt this the hard way. I look back over the last few years and there have been times where I have felt like the hero; I’ve made a significant improvement to a process or way of work and the praise has come in floods.
Perhaps I’ve suffered from egotism here, because in times where that praise has dried up, I’ve felt like the villain and have been more concerned with what other people think about me and my work than the work itself.
The real learn from this may not be to know when to get out, but to be always focussed on what you can control; your work, your effort, your beliefs; and less about the externals, because they will change constantly and to live for praise and recognition is to die at the folly of others.
For me then, on to the next challenge and to put the systems and processes in place to avoid these pitfalls again.
One thing that never ceases to amaze me is the complete lack of initiative in people. I can’t count the number of times a day I get asked a question that somebody could have found the answer to themselves if they’d just tried – but the first instinct of people seems to be to immediately pass it on, absconding from any form of responsibility.
There is a lot of criticism that gets aimed and Gen Y, and Gen Z now, about being lazy and entitled and I have to agree with it – but it isn’t just those generations, everybody seems to be doing it. If somebody can’t even try to search for an answer from the company intranet, or they give up at the first sign of an error message, what chance have they got at overcoming any real life problems?
I’ve stopped responding to emails like this, where all I’m asked to do is something the sender could have done themselves if they could be arsed.
Now perhaps I’m being too harsh, so I want to make the distinction between genuine requests for help, which everybody needs, and attempts to pass the buck, which nobody needs. Take some responsibility, have a go, fucking try something first!
You understand my frustration, I know. There’s so many examples of this kind of thing in the workplace, I’d be very surprised if you can’t immediately think of at least one person who plays the ‘please can you Google this for me’ card on a regular basis. And if it’s you, stop it.
Is it actually their fault though?
Maybe not.
We live in a world where everything is instant; we want it all and we’d have liked it all yesterday to be honest, but ASAP will do (I just want to point out that I hate ASAP more than any other acronym in existence, because it’s fucking meaningless. All tasks are done ‘as soon as possible’. Oh, what’s that? You mean you want it done quicker than is possible? Well why didn’t you say that, if you’d put QTIP…I still wouldn’t have done it any quicker. Because I hate you. And your children.)
This kind of environment where everything happens at the swipe of a finger or click of a button leads to impatience. If you want any proof of this, the next time you receive a WhatsApp message, read it but don’t reply. I guarantee you they’ll text again.
This impatience then, moving down Dante’s Inferno of Laziness, leads to situations where if people are not getting everything instantly they think there is a problem. These problems start to stack up and all of a sudden they’re overwhelmed. They now believe they’re too busy to do everything and so they stop taking action and start ‘escalating’.
These escalations are largely along the lines of ‘I pressed the logon button and it didn’t work, was I supposed to type my logins first?’ except they don’t even add that clarification, that’s simply for your benefit as a reader of what would otherwise be a long and tedious email exchange if I transcribed it fully (Lazy, I know).
Once in you’re in this Circle of Laziness, there is no getting out. You might as well beat yourself repeatedly with your keyboard, or smash your face through the monitor, there really is no hope for you.
And all you needed to do is have a little patience; or some initiative to try more than one solution; or at the very least, one solution.
I’m not sure there is an easy fix to this downward spiral, and it isn’t necessarily a people problem, it’s an environment problem. While ever people expect instant, anything less will lead to this chaos. One thing we could do though is use a general rule of thumb that if you have access to Google or Youtube, go here first for your solution. We literally have more knowledge at our fingertips than ever before, and that resource grows on a daily basis – it’s so unlikely that you’re the first person with your problem, there is bound to be at least a starting point out there.
I know this won’t work for everything, as I said – there are instances where you need to ask other people for help, I completely get that, but the motivation for this came from generally menial problems that could very easily be fixed with a little effort.
What’s that, your web browser isn’t working? Have you checked your router?
There is more than a hint of irony about this particular post. I’ll warn you now, reading it will be a bit like drinking a fruit tea; there’s a lot of flavours and things happening on your palate and occasionally you’ll go ‘ooh that’s bit of ginger there’, except the ginger will be a metallic taste, like the one you might get if you lick a battery, or if you eat a jam tart with the foil still on.
I quit social media about 3 years ago now, and what I mean by that is that I deactivated my Facebook account. I had Twitter, but I didn’t really use it so that didn’t count, and Myspace had long gone. Facebook was social media as far as I was concerned, and it was about to disappear.
It was a momentous occasion in many ways, as it’s shaped the way my life has played out over the years since, but what felt like a leap in to the unknown was actually just a nostalgic glance back to what I’d had 10 years earlier before social media even existed, like when things happened in real life and not on a screen.
The way that people respond to you deactivating Facebook is the same way they might respond if you predicted you’d be struck by lightning, seconds before being struck by lightning (that’d also probably leave a metallic taste in your mouth, ironically). It’s like a mixture of shock and awe.
It really did feel like I was about to delete everybody and everything from my life, leaving me to go it alone, like some sort of Will-Smith-I-Am-Legend-Survivor in a post-apocalyptic world.
The reality though is that it’s not that bad.
I’ve done some of the greatest things in my life over the last 3 years; I took up swing dancing, Spanish lessons and public speaking; I completed 3 charity treks; I bought a house; I quit my job (I quit my job, did I mention I’d quit my job? I quit my job).
Overall, I’d say the positives of not having Facebook have far exceeded any positives from having it. The things you think you’ll lose in the way of friends or social events are soon replaced by actual friends and actual events to actually attend, and that’s much better than any of this virtual, constructed, hoodwink-ery going on within the realms of your Newsfeed.
But.
The problem I’ve got it this – if you want to get a message across, you have to go where the eyes are. This is very much another Vaynerchuk maxim, but to try and build a brand, even a personal one like this – it’s imperative that you have a social media presence.
And this is a dilemma for me, because I’ve spent so long preaching the benefits of a Facebook-free life (as in that has become my message, to the extent where I get introduced as ‘this is Liam, he doesn’t have Facebook’) that to suddenly just go ‘all that stuff I said? Yeah forget it, it’s bollocks’ would just seem wrong.
I think what I’m aiming for really is moderation. I want to be able to show that you don’t need to be glued to your phone 24/7 to enjoy a good social life, but that there are benefits in being able to engage with people through the channels that are there.
I’ve rejoined Twitter for example, as a toe-dip back in to the vast ocean of narcissism, and so far I think I’m doing well at moderation. I’ve not been sitting around all day just refreshing the feed; I’ve started to post my own things on there, retweet others and share things that I’m interested in; and I’ve also interacted with people that I otherwise wouldn’t have. That feels ok.
If I’d posted a picture of every meal I’d eaten, along with a witty thought about something innocuous I’d observed every few minutes, then I’d be worried.
I’ve said before about the necessity to be real, and if I’d done any of the above, it wouldn’t be authentic – it’s just not me. I think this is why I’m so torn about Facebook, because on the one hand I’ve made it my nemesis; the pinnacle of evil; and the catalyst for the downfall of civilisation, and on the other hand it’s just another channel to get a message across.
Perhaps the goal should be to prove that it’s still possible to build a successful brand without the use of Facebook? That would feel genuine, but it also feels self-defeating. Perhaps I’m overthinking this.
There’s a lot more exploration to do here. If there’s anything to take away from this so far though, its that firstly, social media isn’t inherently evil; secondly, it is possible to be a fully functioning human being without Facebook; and finally, you can ironically push the benefits of a social-media-free lifestyle by blogging and tweeting about it on social media.
I was sat in the Manchester office of my current employer (the one that is about the become my ex-employer) and I heard the following exchange.
“Ryan, what does des-pah-see-toe mean?” said the Yorkshire lass, in that desperately drawn out accent, where every vowel lasts a lifetime.
“Well, despacio means ‘slowly’,” ironically, “so it’s something like that…” offered Ryan, who looked like he was juggling some invisible bean bags between his hands.
From the other side of the room, Becks chirped up. “Oh my God! Ryan, can you watch Narcos without the subtitles?”
It seemed inevitable; knowing how to speak Spanish and therefore being able to watch a Spanish TV show.
It was. “Yeah,” he confirmed. “I find it too confusing with the subtitles if anything.”
Becks’ eyes lit up in awe. “That is my dream,” she said. “To watch Narcos without the subtitles.”
I let out a small laugh, and then when I started to think about it, I realised that in some ways, it’s also my dream too.
Whatever you do, don’t let anybody get in the way. If you’ve got a vision for what it is that you want out of life, there’s no reason to let anybody prevent you from getting there.
Put in the work - ‘Hustle’ as Gary V says. You might think you are already, but you’re not.
If other people think you’re crazy – good, that probably means you’re doing the right thing. It’s much easier for people to criticise and have you conform to their standards than it is for them to accept that their standards might not be good enough for you.
We’re raised in a society that is all about getting people to conform, and fall in line with the expectations of everybody else. Fuck. That.
I’m sick of people telling me how much I should be earning, what job I should have; how many kids, houses and degrees I should be in possession of; where I should be living, who I should be living with. Nah.
I can’t watch Narcos without the subtitles, it’s not my dream exactly (as much as learning Spanish is a goal of mine, watching a TV programme is generally not on my to do list), but it stands for what my dream is – to be able to just pursue something that you want, just because you want it.
I’m not sure where this is going yet, so you might have to stick with me, but I promise we’ll be ok in the end – to be honest this is fairly reflective of the weird week I’ve had and the resulting state of mind; even if only in the sense that I don’t know where I’m going now in life, but I know it’ll work out alright.
I’ve flicked like a metronome between emotional states – the elation at lifting the burden of work versus the fear of an impending apocalypse caused by unemployment; the pure joy of a picnic in the sunshine last weekend versus the misery of face-pressing the window at dark, heavy clouds this weekend; and the feeling of freedom to choose anything you can think of versus the overwhelming worry at the array of choices to pick the correct one from.
Either way, the effect of the above fairground-ride-metaphor-of-a-week is that I’ve thought about Pandas.
Yeah I know, it surprised me too.
I saw an article on the BBC news website a couple of weeks ago entitled ‘Panda enclosure incident prompts safety fears at Edinburgh Zoo’. Although this was on the home page, it’s one of those stories that indicates to me that firstly, it’s been a slow day on the news desk; and secondly, even when there is no obvious sign of Armageddon in the world that journalists can still find a way to pile some more misery on to your plate by worrying you about attacks from cute, fluffy Pandas.
They’ve even used the word ‘fear’ in the title. Fear? And Pandas? Are you mental, what’s to be scared of! What are they going to do, tickle me to death with a bamboo cane? Drown me in sneezes? Stop me in the street and trick me into signing up for a monthly donation, leaving me short on disposable income, forcing me to shop at discount retailers and eat at £5 all-you-can-eat buffets, until I’m ostracised from society and then live out the rest of my days as a hermit?
And then I remembered that Pandas are in fact Bears.
And the word ‘Bear’ conjures up much more sinister images and words - like ‘mauling’ for example – that’s not a kind thing to do in anybody’s book; and yet Bears do it. When sports teams are nicknamed ‘The Bears’ and they ‘maul their opponents’, this would not indicate a close contest and you wouldn’t be surprised that it had happened. However, if ‘The Pandas’ mauled their opponents you’d be in utter disbelief (and I think there is as much chance of finding a sports team nicknamed ‘The Pandas’ as there is of finding one nicknamed ‘The Little Fairies’, but feel free to prove me wrong in the comments).
What I’ve realised then is that Pandas are a victim of marketing. It’s not their fault that the word ‘Bear’ has been purposefully dropped from their full title (see: Panda Bear). It’s not their fault they’ve been promoted as cute and fluffy. It’s also not their fault then that if someone wants to go for a cuddle, that they proceed to rip their fucking face off.
We’ve all been conned by wildlife organisations – well maybe not the organisation specifically but by marketers (I would like to point at this juncture that I can neither afford nor have the will to defend myself against a lawsuit for slander, and the below story is entirely fictitious and in no way represents my feelings about the work that any specific animal charities do).
There was a marketing team sat around a table discussing potential logos, and they realised they needed something endangered, because that’s indicative of what they’re trying to do; save animals from extinction; but they also realised that it couldn’t be something dangerous, because nobody is inclined to part with cash to save an animal that wouldn’t think twice about tearing your limbs off.
So what they did was, they thought about all of the endangered animals (Tigers, Rhinos, Tyrannosaurus Rexs; by looking at the nicknames of sports teams) and all they had left after ruling these out was the Panda Bear.
They knew it was good, but it was just missing something – or rather it needed something to be missing – and that was the word ‘Bear’. So the team went about branding this new animal, the Panda, as a playful, dopey, non-sexual entity, that would make children and their gullible parents want to raise huge sums of money to rescue it from extinction.
And it’s worked a treat - for everybody except the Panda.
The Panda is now confused about it’s identity; inside it’s going ‘well, I’ve got the paws of a Grizzly Bear, I’ve got the stature, I’ve got the teeth; I mean I sort of look like I’ve been boxing as well, and yet for some reason, nobody is scared. I perform an army roll and they just laugh. I break bamboo with my bare paws. I can make a pun about Bear paws – which admittedly is funny – but it shouldn’t make up for the fact that I’m an actual Bear and all I’m really thinking is I’d love nothing more than to strangle them with their camera straps, pop off their heads, and drink their insides as a smoothie’.
Maybe I’ve been a victim of marketing too (hey look, we made the link in the end!) – maybe we all have – and the turmoil I’ve felt this week is nothing more than the fear that’s created by marketers about what life and work should be; what my internal sense of self is against what society’s expectations are of me.
I’ve had life marketed to me as series of milestones regarding how much money I should acquire, how many partners I should have and how many things I should own; and it’s scary to think of the influence this has on happiness, by attaching it to external things that really don’t matter.
It feels good to be able to break out of this mental enclosure, probably about as good it feels for a Panda to scalp an unsuspecting tourist at the zoo…but they wouldn’t do that.
On Thursday the other week, one of my team members handed her notice in. On the Monday, I went down to London to congratulate her on her new position and use the occasion as a good excuse to see the city, have a few drinks and show my appreciation for her work up until that point.
I had a good night, which ended prematurely due to my lack of foresight with my travel arrangements – which roughly translates as ‘I booked a train that left too early for a celebratory night out, ended up rushing across London in order to make said train, and then spent the next hour and a half drifting in and out of consciousness on my way back to Leicester.’
A lot of the conversation that night (aside from the bits that lead to the crushing realisation that I do not register as a sexual being on 100% of those girls’ radars) was around work. It was about the reasons for leaving; the daily frustrations with the role and with other people; and with the small glimpses of happiness that occur when you have a supportive group of people around you.
I knew I wasn’t happy, but until then I hadn’t quite realised just how unhappy I was.
And then on Tuesday morning, I resigned.
I’ve talked about expanding your comfort zone (by doing ridiculous things like freefalling to your inevitable death on a zipwire) but I can tell you now, the best way to get rapid and expansive growth in your comfort zone is to quit your job.
I don’t think I’ve ever felt more motivated to get up and do something, knowing that in 4 weeks’ time I could be out of work completely, struggling to pay my mortgage, and on the cusp of becoming the next top salesman for The Big Issue. I could end up homeless, or worse, back at my parents.
But a funny thing happened. Well, two funny things really. And not even funny, just amazing.
The first was that the act of handing in my notice immediately freed me of any burden I felt about work. All the shit from management; the same questions day in, day out; the constant undermining, underappreciation and unfulfillment immediately disappeared.
I don’t think I’ve ever felt so liberated before. Admittedly I’ve never tried skinny-dipping, so my comparisons are limited, but the closest sensation I could describe would be the one you get when you’ve finished your final exam at school.
I am a minimalist and I understand the relief you get from unburdening yourself with possessions, so perhaps this is a better comparison, but even the amount of clothes, DVDS, magazines and keyring collections; unused crockery and random gadgets that I used once; and assorted items that I’ve been presented with on ‘significant occasions’ that I’ve got rid of have not even scratched the surface with the relief you get with going ‘fuck this, I am done’, flipping your desk, and strutting out of the office to epic music and explosions.
I mean none of that last bit happened; I got a nasty email that I responded to in kind along with a footnote that said I’d be leaving, but it was fucking good.
The second amazing thing that happened was that almost immediately, people came out in support of my decision and gave me options for what to do next.
This is the thing about expanding your comfort zone. You take risks in order to expand it; to feel like you’ve conquered something that was previously unknown or impossible to you; but in order to take risks, you need to be comfortable knowing that there is a safety net somewhere on the way down. It’s a symbiotic relationship, a positive feedback loop – the more risks you take, the more comfortable you are to take further risks.
What I found out is that my safety net is a lot bigger than I ever imagined and it’s overwhelming, really. I’m so grateful for all of the people that I have around me that have passed on job descriptions; that have extended offers of places to stay; that have even just acknowledged that they are there for me – I cannot thank you enough.
If I’d have known, I would have taken this risk a long time ago and I’m really struggling to work out why I didn’t do this sooner.
I have always realised just how fortunate I am to be in the position I’m in, and I’m by no means going to patronise anybody by going ‘Hey, go quit your job, it’ll be fine honest!’ when I know that it isn’t that easy for a lot of people. I don’t have children to think about, or a significant other, or a dependent relative where the repercussions of me making a selfish decision could deeply impact on their wellbeing. I don’t have that, so I know this isn’t for everyone. If none of that describes you though, and you hate your job – quit. Now. I will even write that email for you, but it’ll simply say ‘nah, not for me boss’ and have that meme attached of the minion dropping the mic and walking away.
People have said to me that it takes guts to do what I’ve done, which might feel like it’s true in this age where to risk the things you own might seem the same as risking your life itself, but it’s really not. I want people to realise that whatever you think the worst case scenario is (‘If I don’t have a job, how will I pay for this 52” TV that I don’t need? How will I succumb to marketing that makes me think I need a 54” TV? What if I don’t own it, nobody will ever truly love me, and I’ll die alone, in standard definition, with just a gramophone scratching at a record in the background, is that what you want for me?) it definitely won’t be as bad as that in reality.
You can have these words tattooed on me in 4 weeks time, when I’m wandering round just wearing a sandwich board that says ‘My comfort zone has expanded…’ on the front; and ‘… in to the porch at McDonalds’ on the back.
The only question I’ve really had this week has been ‘So what now?’ and this is a fantastic question, one I don’t currently know the answer to, but that feels like the answer could be absolutely anything.
I receive an email from a property website and one of their regular features is along the lines of ‘The Top 7 Property Type X for under Price £Y’, where X is something crazy like ‘converted former cotton mills’ or ‘1950’s pre-fab concrete council houses’ and £Y is the average price of a former cotton-mill-cum-concrete-council-house.
I find it interesting. You do get to see some real gems on this feature (you’d be surprised how many bedrooms you can cram in to a retrofitted cabbie shack), as well as some places that make you go “I think that one is actually still a cattle shed”.
One of the features that recently came through included what I would consider one of the gems, in the form of a 5 bedroom maisonette in Bath. It was perfect; my dream home.
Now, I’m quite the minimalist and this might seem contradictory to my values, but I’m allowed some extravagances (we’ll cover needs and wants another time). Regardless, and with regret, at present I’m not able to lay my hands on £1.5m in order to purchase it…and that’s where you come in!
I joke, of course, but this is exactly the kind of thinking that most people have – that you just have to want something in order to acquire it (see: fuck you, pay me).
There’s two roles models that I want to highlight that have completely broken this mindset and focussed entirely on what does matter – putting in the hard work to get the results.
The first is Conor McGregor – and I know that ‘The Notorious’ is not everybody’s favourite person – but it’s hard to argue against his process. He embodies an attitude that I admire, which focuses on, well, focus. I’ve watched numerous videos of interviews with him where he describes visualising the outcomes of his fights, having tunnel vision and not allowing anybody in to his circle that is not entirely committed to the same outcomes.
When Conor McGregor talks about being the best, or just winning a fight, this is not just hype. He truly believes what he says and he puts in the work required to make that belief a reality. Watch the victory over Nate Diaz and listen to how McGregor describes exactly how it will happen, weeks in advance.
If you really want to cut out the hard work needed to get the results – ask Conor McGregor what the lottery numbers will be at the weekend.
Thinking about buying a mansion then, just believing that you will be able to afford it is not enough. You’ve got to have that belief, absolutely, but what you also need is a process. You might even know what that process is, but what you really need is to be in love with that process.
This is where my second role model comes in – Gary Vaynerchuk.
He is the source of the idea that you need to ‘love the process’ and he is 100% correct. He says that ‘there is no e-book in the world for hard work’, which is just fantastic when you think about the amount of quick-win solutions we’re constantly presented with (fad diets, instant abs, £10k per day…) and how the focus of these is all wrong – because they’re too concerned with the result, rather than how you get there.
It’s such an easy trap to fall in to, and I’ve done it myself, where I’ve thought about something that I want so desperately and yet failed to realise there’s a gap that I need to bridge, between where I am now and that end result.
I’ve dreamt about being a stand-up comedian for example (I know, you can’t believe I’m not one already) but what I’ve not dreamt about are the endless days writing material, the years on the club circuit failing with that material, or the drunk heckler who is funnier than I am. The only bit I’ve dreamt about is the packed venue, where I’m delivering absolute gold from start to finish, and the annihilation of any hecklers with my razor sharp wit.
Yeah, I’m not in love with that process, just the outcome.
There are a lot of similarities between Gary Vaynerchuk and Conor McGregor in that they’ve both got an arrogance about them (which for me is more confidence, but I understand how it might appear to others), they’re not afraid to say what they want (or what the fuck they want, for that matter), and they both have a clear vision that they work every day to achieve.
McGregor’s is about beating Mayweather, where Vaynerchuk’s is about buying the New York Jets.
I’ve not really done either of these enough justice, and I’ll revisit both McGregor and Vaynerchuk in future because they’re great role models, and as I’ve said, my role models too.
Remember then, when you think you have a dream, it will only become a reality when you believe in it; when you know the steps required; and when you love taking each and every one of them to get there.
I always get asked about my routine and whether I’m sticking to it.
My suspicion is that this is mostly down to the fact that when you mention to other people that you get up at 4:30, the initial reaction is “What? Like, in the afternoon?” and then when they realise there’s more than one 4:30 in a day, they don’t tend to forget.
I actually quite enjoy it though – both my morning routine and the fact that people chase me on it – because it makes me feel accountable and, in the most part, more likely to keep it going (it’s very difficult to lie about something you didn’t do, particularly if it’s a lie you have to repeat daily).
My current morning routine looks like this:
4:30 – Alarm goes off
4:45 – Gym
5:30 – Shower
6:00 – Breakfast
6:30 – Reading
7:00 – Meditate
7:30 – Lunch Prep
8:00 – Start Work
I’ve been following that schedule, with some slight variations, since the beginning of May and it’s a pretty good schedule; it packs a lot in to 3 and a half hours but by the time I’m through, I feel ready to start the day.
What started out as a challenge last year – to get up at 4:30 for 21 days in a row – just carried on. I’d like to say that it was something I came up with myself to get out of my comfort zone but I stole it from a TED talk that you can watch here.
Now admittedly, it is much easier to get up at 4:30 when the weather is good and the sun follows you up (if you lived in California, for example (spoiler alert for the TED talk there)) but this is still achievable, even in the UK when there is a chance of sunshine once every few years.
I would encourage anybody to give it a try, not necessarily the exact routine I’ve described, but just a morning routine. I know what you’re thinking - the reactions to my routine are largely the same and end up somewhere between “I’m not a morning person” and “Sorry I drifted off there, what were you saying about this afternoon?” but I assure you there is more you can do in the morning and the rest of your day will be better as a result of it.
I have to admit I haven’t carried this routine through winter – I started the challenge last April, made it through to October, then picked it up again in May this year (and just to clarify at this juncture; I haven’t lied to anybody when I’ve woken up late, I’ve been very honest about the days I broke my routine for the same reason- it makes me accountable and I feel the pressure the get back on it) but I know that for the time I’m doing it, it’s much better than no routine at all.
The biggest challenge I’ve found is keeping motivated when it’s cold and dark (see: California), which has been alarmingly more frequent this summer than last, and I’m yet to work out what I need to do with the official winter months.
The other challenge I’ve had is picking the routine back up if I’ve had a reason to break it, for example if I’ve had to travel for work or be away from home overnight. It’s decidedly more difficult to get up at 4:30 when you’ve got to persuade a roommate it’s a good time to start the day, especially after a few gin and tonics the night before.
There is an irony to this that comes from the fact I started this routine to break an old routine, and whilst this is exponentially better, there may come a point where I need to break it again (and I mean completely break it, not just have the odd day off).
Perhaps this is part of the reason why I can’t keep it going through the winter, because no matter how good a routine is, almost by definition, it will become boring.
A little bit like this post actually which I had high hopes for but it’s very much gotten away from me – I was away at the weekend which has (ironically) broken my routine and also (ironically) left me feeling quite tired!
To summarise then – make yourself accountable for your goals (not the point of the post, but still a good point to take away), create a morning routine that works for you and be prepared to keep breaking it to keep it useful. Oh, and move to California.
Oh dear, this sounds like another potentially deep and meaningful question.
We’ll not go through the biological complexities again for why you exist (spoiler alert for previous posts) but needless to say, if you are expecting a discussion around physics, religion or spirituality in any form, you are going to be very disappointed.
Despite only being four weeks in to this, I feel like I’ve already had an identity crisis (crisis is probably a strong word) after re-reading my first post back and thinking it sounded quite…preachy.
It would be quite a twist if after such a short space of time, that despite me saying that you must be up front about your purpose and you have to be transparent about your motives, I decided I was wrong, that this had all changed and fuck you, pay me.
No, that’s not the case. Nothing has changed on that side of things – I still want to be able to write things that I think will help – but I don’t want it to feel like a doctrine. And I think after reading that post you might have been convinced this was some sort of religious cult that I was setting up, where we’ll all eventually populate a small island (See: Jonestown), live under a huge gazebo and marry each other in order to become the happiest, most connected community in the world.
So I want to clear that up – it’s nothing of the sort - really, I just want it to be fun.
I’m sure we can agree - fun is a subjective experience.
I enjoy writing, playing guitar and long walks along the promenade (that’s taken directly from my dating profile), and yet I’m not a fan of poetry, musicals or sunbathing (I know, I’m such a conundrum). If you stumble across my (imaginary) dating profile then and, actually, your hills are alive with the sound of music, it’s not likely we’re going to have a good time together and you’ll probably just swipe whichever direction is the bad one (see I told you it was made up) and continue searching for some chump in a technicolour dreamcoat.
What I’m trying to say is that I want it to be fun collectively and that requires at least two things to align.
The first is that by reading this you see some shared values, or feel that we’re on the same wavelength, or you get my vibe, or any other appropriate metaphor for connecting with me; and that makes you want to read whatever it is I’m writing about.
The second is that, as a result of feeling like we’re joined in holy matrimony (probably not an appropriate metaphor) that you feel compelled to interact with me in some form or another - Leave a comment. Click Like. Send me an horrendous email about being a poser. Whatever, just do something.
There is a catch-22 here. I need to post content that you find engaging, but for it to be engaging, I need to know what you find engaging, which requires you to engage so you can tell me ‘this is shit/good job old boy, keep up the good work’.
Being true to my motives, I’ll just continue to post things that I believe uphold them and act on any feedback in the appropriate manner – delete anything I disagree with and create a confirmation-bias-vortex of supportive messages.
Unfortunately, my zip wire experience over the weekend was cancelled and you’ll be forgiven for thinking that I had anything to do with it, as I so vividly described my fears of what the outcome would be, you could very easily have decided that I just chickened out.
This was not the case though (and I have witnesses to corroborate) because what actually happened was that life got in the way.
Now, it seems ironic that life might get in the way of a near death experience, and I don’t mean it so literally, it’s more that something unexpected happened which altered the plans. In this case it was quite simple – the predictably unpredictable British weather meant that everything in North Wales, from zip wires all the way through to those small stands selling pointless tat with place names on, was closed.
It’s very easy to sit here now and say “If it hadn’t been cancelled, I would have definitely done it” – and I definitely would have done it – but my point really is that, even with the best will in the world, sometimes things happen that you can’t control and there is not a damn thing you can do about it.
Think about any goal that you have currently. It doesn’t have to be fear related – let’s say it’s health related and you want to lose 2 stone before a wedding that you’re going to in 6 months time (this is going to be difficult to imagine as I’m trying to gain weight and I actively hate weddings…and even if I didn’t, who gets married in winter?).
You can plan your exercise routines, buy some new gym clothes, join a Bikram Yoga society; you can plan your meals, track your calories and clear out the cupboards; you can even create a fancy spreadsheet tracker for your vital measurements – but you know that day, at work, when it’s Barbara from Human Resources’ birthday, and she brings in a fat, gooey, triple chocolate fudge cake? You are going to be all over that like a fly on shit.
It isn’t your fault though, you didn’t know it was Barbara’s birthday, you thought she was off after suffering near-fatal injuries in a zip wire accident (weight restrictions were ignored) – but life (Barbara’s life) did literally get in the way this time, and now you’re eating a years’ worth of calories in one sitting.
You’ll say to yourself “Oh well, I have been good recently”, and you’ll soon follow that up with “Seen as I’ve pigged out at lunch, I might as well make a day of it and get a Chicken Balti for my dinner” and before you know it “nomnomnom cake…give me cake…who’s wedding?” (This is probably more an example of a lack in willpower, but it’s still a scenario in which an unexpected event has caused an objective to be missed, so we’ll stick with it).
The link here between achieving your goals and being blindsided by force majeure is that in pursuit of your objectives you are supposed to fail, you are supposed to have set backs, and it is not supposed to be easy first time – but it has to be like this.
Why? Because this is the only way you will ever learn to keep pushing yourself to get what you want; by going through the process of failing time and time again until finally it clicks and you can say to Barabara from Human Resources “I don’t want your fat, gooey, triple chocolate fudge cake, I’m really enjoying this quinoa and I don’t want to be wearing a dress the size of a marquee”.
Sometimes you will fail to achieve your goals because you made the wrong decision (eating the cake) and sometimes you will fail because you didn’t consider the possibility of a thing happening before it happened (everything closing because of adverse weather. Literally everything. Why a café can’t open because of a bit of rain and a stiff breeze, I will never know).
Willpower you can control, weather systems you can’t - you will learn something though from every failure, even if it is just to book thrill seeking events in places that have a more consistent climate.
In summary – embrace failure in pursuit of your goals, realise that there will always be things beyond your control and finally, always say no to your co-workers enticing offers of chocolatey goodness.
To Conquer Fear, You Must Become Batman Or Something
Fear? Don't talk to me about fear.
I remember watching Edward Scissorhands as a child and being absolutely petrified by it.
The scene of Jonny Depp with his porcelain white face, wide-eyed stare and straggly hair (oh, and fucking scissors for hands!) creeping out from behind the roof timber is truly the most terrifying thing I'd ever seen.
Or at least it was at the time.
Since then things have changed – I don't have nightmares anymore about having my feet chopped off and rather than going to sleep worried about my extremities being exposed, I'm now scared about things in the real world (like how much my electricity bill is going to be, or my boiler breaking, or whether I'll get asked a question on a conference call when I'm not listening).
The point really is that most fear is irrational – as a child this is based on what your imagination can do with shapes in the dark; and as an adult it's based on how many big red zeroes you can imagine after a currency symbol.
My relationship with fear has changed a lot over the last few years, with a simple realisation that the only way past it, is through it.
Now I'm not saying that I've become some sort of dare devil – far from it – but what I have done is attempt to challenge myself with activities to push my comfort zone and break through the barrier that the fear is creating.
As another example, I've never liked public speaking.
I remember being at primary school one particular year, waiting for names to be read out regarding who had been selected for each role in the school Christmas play, and I was sat at my desk, with my eyes shut and my hands clasped firmly together, hoping that I would get a non-speaking part. I was whispering the word 'please' under my breath too as some sort of mantra. That is how desperate I was not to have to get up on stage and talk (my teacher clearly wasn't sympathetic to my plight and she genuinely said the phrase “no praying allowed”).
Anyway, having been given the part of 'Villager in Shop' (I really had no hope of getting 'Mute Beggar #3), I managed to deliver 4 lines of speech without perishing or being ostracized by the other children and their parents.
This was a small step forward in realising that there is nothing to be scared about when talking in public but fast-forward to 2016 and despite numerous small steps, I decided that I needed to push myself to the next level. I'd obviously had many more occasions to stretch my vocal chords in the adjoining years, but in order to break the plateau of PowerPoint presentations at university, I joined a speakers club.
I attended the club once a month to participate in a mixture of ad-lib-'Who's Line Is It Anyway?'-type speaking rounds and 8 minute long pre-planned speeches, which might seem like fairly innocuous activities, but they pushed the boundaries of my comfort zone and allowed me to develop as a public speaker.
Since then, I've used my new found public speaking confidence to deliver training sessions and other presentations at work (the school Christmas plays have dried up to be honest) and I'll continue to look for other opportunities to grow (larger audiences is probably the next hurdle).
The only way to overcome fears is to go through them.
If you're scared of meeting new people, talk to the cashier. If you're scared of looking like an idiot, join an improv group. If you're scared of spiders, grow four additional limbs. You get the idea.
You've probably heard before that babies are born with two fears; the fear of loud noises and the fear of falling.
Along with my other fears of Edward Scissorhands, public speaking, spiders, snakes and flying, I can also confirm I am yet to outgrow those two innate fears.
But, in the interest of pushing the boundaries – I am going to participate in a zip wire experience in Wales next weekend – which will either alleviate my fear of heights, or it will induce fears in the viewing gallery caused by the loud noises I'll be making whilst plummeting at 80mph in to the side of a mountain and my inevitable death.
It sounds like the kind of question that would lead to healthy discussion about the spiritual and physical worlds; or to a face-off between religion and science; or even to a biological endeavour into the mechanics of reproduction and childbirth...
Alas, it’s none of those things.
What that question actually leads to is an answer about why I’m writing this post, or rather why I’m writing a blog at all, and it’s infinitely more interesting than any of those age-old debates.
I say debates, and, I’m not sure there is one around the mechanics of reproduction and childbirth, but I am happy to hear anyone out with evidence to the contrary (storks anyone?).
I’ve always liked writing so it won’t surprise you to know that this isn’t my first attempt at a blog. It may be the third or even the fourth.
My previous attempts have included: a daily journal that I started when I was 14, as an outlet for my pent-up teenage angst, detailing the kind of universal shit that matters so much to boys; a humorous take on local new stories, titled Braking Nooz (good use of puns, not so much on the phonetic spelling); and a well-meaning-but-largely-lacking-in-sound-medical-advice take on type 1 diabetes, drawing from my own experiences (I know what you’re thinking - this guy loves a pun, he probably called it ‘Diabeaters’ or something ridiculous like that... you can see a theme emerging here, can’t you?)
There are some differences this time around though.
Firstly, I’m not a 14 year old boy anymore and it’s much easier for me to see what the bigger picture is, having now lived through the subsequent 13 years realising what a winy little bitch that kid was.
Secondly, I didn’t have the tools or the knowledge to realise what was necessary to make those ideas grow from nothing to something. I’m not saying I have the blueprint for success nailed right now either, but I have learnt a lot.
Finally, the motive is different. The only purpose of the other blogs I wrote was to boost my own ego - even if trying to help diabetics seems like a noble cause now, ultimately it was just so I could be famous. And rich. And loved by all.
This is probably one of the biggest lessons I’ve learnt:
The purpose has to come first, and it has to be about something bigger than you as an individual.
This is why I’ve started out with this as a topic - so you know what I believe, what I want to achieve, and so that you can decide for yourself whether you’re on board or whether actually, this is not for me you winy-little-sugar-dodging-faux-journalist.
The last 3 years of my life have been the best, without question. I’ve developed an appetite for knowledge that I lost somewhere along the line; I’ve become socially more adept, taking on new hobbies and physical challenges that I never thought I could and ultimately; I’m a damn sight happier.
The purpose of this blog then is this:
To provide you with the stories and sources that I’ve benefited from to give you the possibility of increasing how happy you feel about your life.
I realise this is a bold aim and that there are thousands if not millions of sources out there offering some variation on the statement above and I also realise that some of these sources are exceptionally good, but these are the ones I want to draw from because I believe that they have changed my life and they can for you to.
I can hear them now, the cynics among us, “Hang on, if you really do achieve that, you will be famous. And rich. And loved by all. You sell out! I thought this was about us, not you!
For me, that’s all secondary. I know with the way that the world is that authenticity matters, and to betray peoples’ trust in your motives is unforgivable. This is why I’m telling you this now. If I make one person’s life better as a result of the information I’ve curated and presented, then I will have achieved what I wanted knowing I’ve been true to my principles.
Anyway, ignore the cynics and carry on regardless - so let’s get this diabeaters-braking-nooz-happiness-show on the road!
My first recommendation would be to go and watch Simon Sinek’s TED talk Start With Why. The messages in that video underpin everything I’ve said today and it really was the catalyst for me to get started in changing my life.
