Category Archives: Discipline

Posts relating to the First Resolution:
“To overcome the restraining forces of appetites and passions, I resolve to exercise self-discipline and self-denial.”

100-Day Challenge, Day 27. Talk -or read – yourself into success.

27 Thursday Jul 2017

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I have never really been all that enthusiastic about affirmations, those sentences one states (ideally out loud) to oneself that are intended to reinforce the cognitive integrity between what we say to ourselves and how we behave. Not that I don’t believe that what we say to us influences us, but the woowaah suggestion that doing so out loud makes any difference. Until this week.

Until last week, I had got into the habit of reading my PMS daily – it was on my to-do list and the brevity of time it took, allied to the simplicity of the particular to-do, meant it was an easy ‘tick-off’ in my planner. I didn’t shout out loud (partly because I was in an office full of personal development sceptics, aka ‘detectives’), but I did focus on the reading. And for the couple of weeks I did that I lost weight, produced, and lived according to said PMS.

This week, I did not. I allowed myself to believe that I had, by now, ‘got it’ and didn’t need to read it any more. This was the week I didn’t exercise, ate too much (and it doesn’t take ‘too much’ to stop weight loss, I assure you), and didn’t study for my forthcoming test as well as I could have.

In other words, my failure to read my PMS influenced – well, my failures.

So it is back in the planner and will be read daily this week. And I respect affirmations a little bit more than I used to. And to be frank, if they are good enough for Stephen Covey, then they are certainly good enough for me.

Now, dear sceptics – you may think this silly. Now ask Lewis Hamilton, Tiger Woods, many premiership footballers, and copious other successes who you’ve SEEN talking to themselves or meditating with closed eyes just before they perform, what they are doing. And if it is good enough for the successful – why isn’t it good enough for YOU?

100-Day Challenge, Day 23.

22 Saturday Jul 2017

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Here I am at day 22 and a hiatus. Despite every hope that I would gently resume and commit to running daily throughout July, it is clear that my knee is not going to let me. I suspect a cruciate ligament malady similar to one I encountered before the 2015 Baker-Vegas Relay Challenge, which side-lined me for months only for my Achilles to go when the cruciate settled. Methinks I need a new strategy for the fitness side of my Challenge – probably a gym, with bikes, rowers and light weights – which I detest because – well, just because (there is no excuse, after all!). Gutted because I was seeing genuine progress in terms of speed. Face it, David – you’re not 20 anymore. Train like a 55-year old, instead.

No weight loss this week, probably because (a) I couldn’t exercise as well as I wanted and (b) because I ate all the ice cream. More commitment needed, or at least better use of the gap between stimulus (look, food!) and response (eat food).

 

100-Day Challenge, Day 13. And a bit about kids and the world of work.

13 Thursday Jul 2017

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No run today – knee trembling (no, not like that) and as I am suddenly conscious that running as often as I am when I am as overweight as I am may not serve structural integrity unless I am careful. in other words, I must give my joints time to rest between runs, and if there’s a twinge – I should take note. I’ve also been to the doctor, who thinks my numb toes may be a recovering slipped disc somewhere around L5 in the spine and I certainly don’t want to make THAT any worse. Baby steps, Buster, baby steps.

Other than that, I’ve cleared out a bucket load of clutter and I can move in my ‘office’, which means I am closing on the final chapters of Police Time Management, which I am editing to make it more up to date. And I still eat wisely.

I was briefly amused by a report in the Welsh press about the Assembly’s desire to create 1,000,000 Welsh speakers by 2050. Nothing wrong with that, but such reports always give rise to swathes of comments about the pros and cons of that particular project.

Regardless of the debate on that particular subject, it made me think about children’s education in general. Universities are complaining that students are having to be taught ‘educational basics’ when they get into that top level of education, because they aren’t learning it/being taught properly at the primary and secondary stages of school. That may be so, but there is something even worse about those levels of education – they don’t teach our children how to live.

I am talking here about ‘Second Resolution’ competencies, competencies that enable people to live and serve others because they aren’t busy simply trying to live. Where are their money lessons? Where are their ‘how bureaucracies work’ lessons? Where are their driving lessons? (Okay, maybe that’s a logistical issue but simple drivers’ education may help them get jobs when they leave – and stay alive, perhaps.) And my personal favourite, how to manage their time to be most effective at getting what they want while providing service so that others can get what they want.

Years ago, it was suggested that education was warped because it had one malign intent – to prepare children for the workplace. Well, that horse has bolted. Kids are arriving at work unprepared for it. They have a Geography GCSE but its relevance in entry-level retail or repairing computers remains to be seen.

They arrive in work unaware that they are entitled to contracts (where applicable), that the money won’t last for ever and that maintaining a CV is a good idea. They occasionally work with an unfortunate, source-unknown sense of entitlement. We now have courses now where managers are taught how to manage ‘millennials’.

I am a dinosaur, I know, but here’s how to manage any new worker. Learn these lines:

“Do as I say until you can show me you can do it properly, then develop ways to make it better. Show me you are trustworthy, then I can let you have your head. Communicate that you won’t be a liability and cost me, and then I’ll leave you to it.”

Not: “I’m sorry I am asking you to do ‘work’, really I am, but that’s what we are here to do.”

Okay, over-reaction, but the message we need to tell ourselves as much as we need to tell our kids, is that all work is noble, we learn because we don’t know it all, we all get better by doing, and we are treated better if we show respect and earn trust.

Competencies can be learned. Character needs to be instilled – by parents, by peers, by education.

And isn’t it great when a school does that?

100-Day Challenge, Day 12. If you’re tired – work even harder?

12 Wednesday Jul 2017

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I don’t think it is a scientific fact, but I believe that the best time to run is when you least want to, which probably extends into the philosophy that the best time to do anything related to self-discipline is when you least want to do that ‘anything’. There is scientific research that suggests that just as overextending a muscle increases the strength of that muscle, over-extending one’s willpower (self-discipline) increases the capacity of that willpower, over time. For that reason, going to the psycho-gym is a good idea (provided that by ‘psycho-gym’ you don’t mean attending a Dexter-led Course in dissection of other human beings).

So, go me, because I really did not want to run until about half a mile into today’s effort. And like many personal development experts agree, I felt a lot better after I’d used up a couple of hundred calories.

Yesterday was the opposite – I didn’t go for a run and, oddly enough, after I didn’t go for that run I did NOT feel better at all.

Other goals also got ignored yesterday, while all my goals have been worked on today. Extrapolating that, one wonders if the mere ‘existence’ of activity begets further activity. This fits in with academics being well-informed in multiple disciplines in addition to their specialisms; people writing while speaking while travelling while having happy family-lives; and other examples of massive productivity by already busy people, which puts the rest of us to shame.

The busier one is, the busier one can get. The more chilled one is, the worse one feels about even the smallest of tasks. I can even attest to that being true – I can sit around with no tasks allocated to me, bemoaning that lack of work – only for the genuine emotional response that when a piece of work suddenly arises, I am being interrupted!

This is why busy people are the ones to ask to do more work – because they can, while the unproductive will fight the imposition so much that you give up on their ever doing it.

In conclusion, therefore – in order to avoid being tired, get even busier!

100-Day Challenge, Day 8.

08 Saturday Jul 2017

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“Good news, everyone!” (For those who don’t know, that is Professor Farnsworth’s catchphrase in Futurama.) Week one ended with a 3.6-pound weight loss and a faster 2-mile running time. That’s without a starvation, faddy, even calorie-focused diet – just eating wisely and exercising sensibly. And it is on-track for the 10 day target, although I suspect I shall have to raise my game next week.

While running after Abby today, it occurred to me that many people confuse values and standards in the sense that they equate the two directly, by assuming (for example) that when I say I want to perform at a high standard then I have to do so at your level of expectation, and that is manifestly not true. When I set out to exercise and lose weight, it wasn’t my intention to start performing 4-minute miles, 300lb weight-lifts and perfection in all other areas. It was to perform at the best level I can perform in the moment and with an intention of getting better as those moments arose.

Which is way of thinking I apply to all those overweight people that I see. I admit that I have been judgmental in the past, but now I have experienced their challenges I understand – they are doing their best and they are trying to make that best better.

Think about that when a colleague, friend or politician makes a mistake (other than ethical ones). The good ones are trying to be better.

Joke of the Day: What do you get when you cross The Atlantic with The Titanic?

About half way.

100 Day Challenge – Day 3.

03 Monday Jul 2017

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First day at work on the 100 Day Challenge, and it was ‘one of those days’ when urgency was demanded but life got in the way. A job needed to be done that had to be fitted around prior appointments; then the necessary ‘things’ weren’t where they were supposed to be, nor were they where they thought they’d gone, and then miraculously they were back where they’d gone and the job got done. On the he bright side, while travelling from job 2 to job 3 my satnav decided a ‘straight line’ route would be better than a motorway route, so I explored parts of Wales I have never seen before (possibly Stella’s Pontyberry), and drove a spectacular valley route at speeds hitherto unknown for a Hyundai i20. Specifically, 60mph. And the opportunity for some spectacular overtakes.

Arriving home knackered, I still managed a 2-mile run, exercising our youngest family member, who is 5 years old at the weekend. Or 35 plus in dog years. Then it was marking IPI student’s submission, tasks arising, a household task, and then this blog. Soon be 7pm…… and I still have my Roadcraft studies still to do.

I need staff.

The main thing I achieved today was maintaining integrity with my values and mission statement – being patient and productive, particularly when challenged. And complying with my diet objectives.

‘‘You ate…..wisely’.

Philosophy of the Day: “I treat everyone I deal with in the same way that they treat me. Some of them get quite offended when I do that.”

Raise YOUR Standards – don’t lower or adapt them to those of others.

02 Sunday Jul 2017

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Judicious and tasteful intelligentsia who have gone to my mission page will note that one of my objectives is to “perform with a view to achieving meaningful outcomes, through excellent personal performance and the pursuit of ever higher standards”, which is something we all tend do when it comes to our working lives if we want to keep our job, or get promoted or a pay rise. One thing came to mind when I wrote that.

The first is that although we do exactly that ‘at work’ and therefore ‘when we are being paid’ – or when it is a hobby that engages us – we all have a tendency, at knocking off time, to not just knock off our work. In addition to ‘knocking off’, we kick off our shoes and metaphorically kick off our standards.

Of course, my own favourite example is demonstrated by the fact that in work we have to be focused and direct and we have to perform. Then most people walk out of the door, sit in their armchair, lean on the window sill, and with one finger steer a ton of metal at up to 80mph surrounded by other lazy bast4rds doing the same, ALL of them expecting the OTHERS to perform at a high level of skill while we, ourselves, just chill.

My favourite question in IAM lectures is this – what if you were en route to Ibiza and you looked into the aircraft cockpit to see the Captain with his feet on the dashboard, finger on the controls and gabbing on his mobile phone? Of course, HIS standards have to be complied with, while your own are negotiable.

(Don’t get me started on speech patterns, poor grammar and dress codes.)

Read closely: Your own standards are, or are seen to be, a reflection of how you see yourselves and, like it or not in the PC world we live in, they reflect how others perceive you.

I am amused by the directive that we should not stereotype people, when I see an adherent to the Green agenda with lank hair, ill-fitting clothes and a weather-ravaged persona. The same goes for pop stars (scruffy and unkempt but after a LOT of effort to look that way), young bankers (shiny suit, skinny tie, brown pointy shoes), ex-Army officers (country-gent shirt, moleskin trousers), women seeking ‘natural beauty’ and ‘gender respect’  (while paying hundreds to look like the wastrels from the US reality show whose name I will not type), and so on.

We stereotype OURSELVES.

Which brings me to self-leadership. Self-leadership means creating your own high standards and complying with them – not blindly following somebody else’s. It means deciding that you are one congruent individual all of the time, not a ‘professional’ 9-5 and a scruffy tw4t after work. It means acknowledging and accepting that certain standards benefit us all, and complying with them for the good of everyone.

(And acknowledging that the risky overtake or lane change on a roundabout that might have killed you just saved you the time it takes to unplug your phone charger when you arrive at work and try to park in your desk space. It didn’t even save the waiting time for the lift.)

Raise your standards and then strive towards keeping them. (No, it is not easy. Try anyway.)

 

100-Day Challenge, Day 2.

Yesterday went well. I started running again without injury, further than I expected given the time I have had off. I didn’t have lunch, although that was more by accident than design. And I did everything on my task list and still had time to relax. It is now 1030am and I am well into today’s list, too.

I have discovered a new approach to my planning, using the FranklinCovey 7 Habits Daily Planning System.

As you can to see, the prioritised daily task section on the left is divided into three headings. I guess it is so designed to allow people to separate work, personal and ‘other’ tasks.

I use it to divide the list into The Three Resolutions headings. Top section is the disciplines (mainly physical); the central section involves character and competence e.g. studying, exercising the mind, becoming better; and the lower section is a list of the services I provide. But as my book says, doing all these things serves improving in all three areas – the more disciplined I am, the better my character and the greater levels of service I can provide. The more organised I am about planning, the more time and better attitude I have towards the disciplines. And so on.

That’s m’new method. Let us see if it works as well as I hope.

Reboot – I am back.

01 Saturday Jul 2017

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It’s been longer than I thought since I last posted on this blog, and to be frank I am not altogether sure that I had anything meaningfully different to write. That is the trouble with the principle-centred self-leadership field – finding something really new and inciteful tow communicate, or at least finding newer examples to illustrate the philosophies is hard because once you accept the basic premises of a principle-focused life, you realise that they are so simple. It’s executing on those ‘simple’ principles that is so hard.

Or, perhaps put another way, it is conscious execution on those principles that is difficult. Why is this so?

In our day to day work, we do things by habit. Routines, processes, practices and their consequences just ‘happen’ without thought. For example, in my job I take statements of evidence from witnesses, and after 30 years I can do this very, very quickly. My experience tells me what needs to be evidenced. This means I have to give less conscious effort to doing a good job. It just ‘happens’. On the other hand, those things which challenge me have to be consciously attacked if they are to happen. I have to overcome my reluctance to train, or overcome my enthusiasm to eat, for example.

This makes self-leadership a bit harder because in order to ‘feel the buzz’ of having done something principle-centred, one has to know that one has done it, and habit does not feed a sense of accomplishment. What habit can do, however, is raise the bar so that when the buzz IS finally felt, it is because something better has happened.

That drives achievers – that bar being raised so that another achievement makes them better.

When all is said and done (at the end of the day, when push comes to shove, when the rubber meets the road*), even those of us who don’t have the advantage of income, inheritance, geography and talent can still achieve, if only by being the best ‘us’ that we can possibly be. By being good at what we do, being great at ‘how’ we are, and by serving in some capacity. By executing on the Three Resolutions.

I’ll ask you this – are you good in all three dimensions, or two, or even just one? Are you the fittest and slimmest incompetent in the workplace? Are you the best worker who sits at a desk all day because your weight stops you moving about? Do you serve others well, but only when you have the energy and motivation to get out of bed?

That’s where I feel I occasionally fall short. On paper I am good at the Second and Third Resolutions but quite poor at the First. That’s why I am starting a 100-day Challenge during which I intend to improve on my productivity, health, fitness and attitude!

Why 100 days? On the 7th of October 2017 I have committed to providing a public YB12 Keynote talk on Procrastination at the Chepstow Mind and Body Fayre, and that is (was) coincidentally 100 days away from when I committed to do it. I have 100 days to do some serious weight-losing and preparation. Let’s see how I get on, shall we?

Let’s see if I can live in accordance with the contents of my book.

 

(*A colleague used to preface most of his comments with ‘at the end of the day and after 5 days of that I admit I shouted all the others as possible alternatives!

It’s not someone else’s fault. It’s YOURS.

26 Sunday Mar 2017

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Almost every book I have read on personal development suggests that one key method for massive personal success is to get up at stupid-o’clock in the morning, strap on your trainers and go out of the front door to greet the day with a run. The first thing I note about such books is that they are frequently written by Mid- to South-Californians and not the Welsh. I would challenge any Californian to get up in Brecon at 5AM in December, strap on their Magnum boots and go for a skiddy run-fall-snap.

The other thing I note is that early morning for those NOT self-employed, childless and of independent financial means is a time of stress, trying to get ready to comply with the quite reasonable expectations of their employers and children, in whatever order. Bearing in mind that the old 9-5 day became the 8-4 some time ago if you wanted a parking space, and for the same reason the day is quickly becoming a 7-3 if you don’t want to park half a mile from your workplace, a 6AM run would only last 5 minutes anyway.

Yes, I know there ARE people who love that early run but we are not all the same. I tried an early run twice and it was miserable, even in summer. For me. Mid-day, early evening, love it. 6.30AM – shove it.

Hyrum Smith asks, “What do you do for the magic 3 hours from 5AM to 8AM?” To be frank, I usually sleep for the first two.

Which brings me to another reason I hate early morning runs. It’s my wife. When I wake up, the wife does, too. If you’re as lucky as me, when you wake up together you have an opportunity to hold each other for a while before you get up. I am not willing to lose that for an exercise opportunity.

The funny thing was that because of all those books, I started to blame t’wife for my failure to exercise because I didn’t want to deprive her (us) of that cwtch*. I wasn’t running because of her needs. It was her fault I was fat because I don’t run in the dawn gloom.

Blaming other people for our failures to execute in some life areas is easy. It absolves us of responsibility for what we aren’t doing that we know we should be doing. But that is a slippery slope, because one thing all the PD writers say that I absolutely agree with is that We are responsible for our situation, even if that responsibility lies only in how we choose to respond to our situation.

In other words, I am able to choose whether t’wife or an early morning run is the more important thing I need to do (I should rephrase that…).

I am able to decide what job I seek, even if I can’t dictate what I am expected to do when I get that job. I can decide how I respond to an imposition, and do a good job even though I didn’t want that (part of the) job in the first place.

Therefore, let me state quite clearly – I CHOOSE not to exercise in the morning. Just as, at the moment, I am choosing not to exercise at all. Which is a choice I must choose to change, and quickly, because I can’t find a reason not to. Damn it.

Oddly, when I am away from home I routinely go for a half hour on a treadmill at 6AM. Maybe it IS her fault after all………

In life, we are responsible for our decisions. Let’s make good ones but not just because someone promotes something that sounds good – it might not suit our situation and even if it might, what we gain may not be worth what we lose. Like cuddling a warm bum on a winter’s morn.

 

*Look it up, it’s Welsh.

Do what you say, not what I do. After you’ve done what I say, and I do, too.

19 Sunday Mar 2017

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Occasionally, I ask myself what people think about my writing this blog. I wonder if they understand the purpose behind it. It’s simple: like any teacher, I have a desire to (a) tell people about the things that I find interesting, that (b) I would like them to use to their benefit; but also (c) so I can hold myself accountable to the things I ‘preach’. The first of those three is the easy part – the other two are damned hard.

People are reluctant to carry out meaningful self-examination, particularly when they are encouraged by others to do so. They sense judgement, an ulterior motive and, in extreme cases when talking about The 7 Habits, religion – even when all of these, and the other rationales for resistance, are actually absent. It is as if they think, “If I didn’t discover it, it’s dodgy.” Then they discover something and wonder why we apply the same thinking!

The funny thing is – and I refer here specifically to personal and professional development training and advice – the motive is unlikely to be negative. Okay, if I am trying to sell it there will be a perceived self-interest to espousing the principles, but in this field the chances are high that we believe in what we are selling because it did something for us. But what if I am trying to persuade you to just read a book written by someone else? Or providing advice I paid for, but for free? I promote the writing of a personal mission statement, or at least the discovery of a defined set of personal values, and you don’t have to pay for either. You just have to accept that doing so will be of benefit.

The other part – (c) above – is the other motive. I want to be better, I want to hold myself accountable and I want you to hold me accountable. But here’s an important caveat – I want you to hold me accountable to my values and how I define them, not to your values or how you define mine. So if I value fitness, then just because you love swimming does not mean I have to get wet. Make me run, if that is my chosen route to a healthy physiology. Ask me first what my intended route is, and encourage me to take it. Only after doing that might you say, “Have you considered X”, and if I want to know more, tell me then.

Hold me accountable to what I have promised. There’s a big clue on the Personal Mission page of this site. And have a look at your own sense of purpose – or try to discover what it actually is because I bet many people don’t really know.

Just to be clear – in terms of my own MS, this week I will be training someone to drive at an advanced level and representing my industry at a national standards-setting institution 160 miles from chez moi. (I’ll also be trying to diet……)

Apart from your paid work, what will you be doing that is keeping with your values-system this week?