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The Daily Win.

14 Thursday Jan 2021

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I’ve said it before, so I’ll say it again. All those Californian, rich(ish) personal development speakers and writers and their ‘Rise at 5AM and exercise’ freaks are invited to come and live where I do in South Wales, where it’s easier to pick up the dog eggs in the garden at 6AM because they’re rock hard with ice. Where the idea of a home gym is fine if you live with a spare room big enough for a running machine or static bike, said room being centrally heated to at least ‘bearable’ for that early effort. And where going to bed early so as to get a decent kip before getting up at 5AM isn’t easy because the road and neighbours aren’t 100 yards away and are living their noisy lives while you try to drop off. And fitness clubs remain an expensive luxury.

Which is not to say that exercising is impossible. So far this calendar year, with the exception of the 1st and the 9th, I have exercised daily. Furthermore, with two exceptions, I have done so as soon as I got out of bed. Which, lucky me, is 7.30AM because I ain’t got a proper job.

I have a spin bike, a relatively inexpensive yet reliable (3 years so far) model. I have a mount (thank you Santa) for a 7” tablet through which I watch YouTube videos which inform, entertain or anger depending on the day’s choice. And a garden shed to put it in. There simply is no room in the main dwelling. You see, I am not a financial success like all those 5AM loonies. I am a moderate professional success on that I have always been employed doing work I enjoy, on the public purse in their service. So none of that ‘earn twice as much, work half as hard’ twaddle that Brian Tracy and Jack Canfield promote – which is valid for the entrepreneur or commission-paid individual but not the vast majority of us. If I wanted to earn twice as much as a copper I’d have had to work 76 hour weeks AND ask permission, first.

Each of us loves in his or her own circumstances, which do not necessarily reflect those described by such writers. Some do. Lucky them.

Back to me.

What gets me out of bed at 7.30AM, or more specifically onto the bike at 7.40AM, is The First Resolution. ‘To overcome the restraining forces of appetites and passions, I resolve to work on self-discipline and self-denial.’ I don’t want to ride a bike first, but it would be rude of a promoter of such a concept not to try. So that’s what gets me up. My Integrity. Doing the things I don’t like to do because (a) they serve me and (b) I said I would. If only to myself.

I should also be up front and state that it doesn’t work every day. If I don’t sleep well I’d make the next day worse, not better, if I self-flagellated with exercise before starting work. (I can always exercise afterwards, if I feel up to it.) But here, the point isn’t to apply self-discipline to the point of self-punishment. That’s a route to failure.

But I will also add that doing that exercise first, and educating myself while I do so, sets me up for the day exactly as Stephen Covey promotes in his books. He calls it the Daily Private Victory and to be fair, that’s as good a description of that process as any. It is (as he also puts it) mind over mattress. Long term gain over short term discomfort. Many cliches, all accurate.

I get up. I go out into the cold shed and exercise.

I win. The rest of the day is a breeze.

So much so, this took 15 minutes to write. In the flow. And with integrity – nothing I write is a lie to myself or to my reader. Whoever you are.

Be disciplined. But be disciplined early. Ish.

Welcoming Disruption. I like a challenge.

24 Friday Jan 2020

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The wife’s got the painters in. Not a euphemism, we’re having the lounge done properly. If I painted it, it would look somewhat off-centre because I can’t paint straight lines. Of course, losing the main living area of the house for the day is quite disruptive and I insisted on making sure that the wi-fi was still plugged in, even if I am missing the morning TV and the amusement of the Trump Impeachment debacle. Hence the early post.

There are two kinds of disruption – planned and unplanned, and the amount of whining associated with either is often disproportionate to the amount of notice provided. It’s as if knowing in advance what could go wrong is more annoying than the unexpected. Having notice gives you time to plan, but it also gives you time to consider ‘what is wrong’ and ‘why didn’t (someone else) think about this when they organised it?’. NOT having notice brings out the martyr in us, but it also brings forward a surprising amount of initiative and creativity.

And people like that, because it the adults’ time to play.

Personally, I prefer the forward-planned disruption because of the time management protocols I can bring into play, but I also enjoy the unplanned interference with a plan.

Why is that?

It is because the unexpected disruption brings into focus just how well I planned the day.

If I have planned well, I have done the most important tasks before the disruption arises or, if the disruption opens the day, I can plan major events around it. I can fit the new problems in and that’s the exciting and challenging part.

When I was a DC in a busy city, disruption was the order of the day. Murder, death and mayhem were routine. But unlike many of my great colleagues, who’d abandon their intended plans when ‘something big’ came in, I’d work my tasks in around the new stuff. If there was a ‘prisoner in the bin’, they would just sit and wait and think. I would use the time where I was waiting for solicitors and other teams’ input by making telephone calls, altering priorities and even conducting previously-planned interviews around the new priority.

On the day, the effect didn’t show. But a week later, when they were playing catch up with all the stuff that hadn’t gone away while they ‘waited’, I was free to deal with new things, or able to do a better job of all the ‘old’ things like paperwork, case file preparation, and so on. I’d created time, while they had just packed what was available with the stuff they could have already done.

Priorities matter, but you can work all of your priorities around each other.

I tried, goodness I tried, to train colleagues in time management but the organisation itself wasn’t open to mass TM training for all. Despite a paper in 2010 about it, colleagues still run around chasing their tails because they haven’t been taught how to manage themselves in the context of the time available and the people they spend that time with.

There are many professionals who don’t even think they need time management training – which is odd in some cases because they bill by the hour.

Personally, I consider it not just a professional necessity but in times of mental health focus I consider that it is a lifestyle necessity, one which would have a positive effect on not just our work but our personal lives, too.

Imagine how much stress you’d NOT suffer if that small pile of paper had been done at the optimum moment instead of the ever-growing pile being addressed ‘when I get around to it’.

Think about it. Disruption is fun – if you have a strategy for dealing with it.

 

NEVER Mind the Gap. (I’m proud of this one….)

23 Thursday Jan 2020

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I’ve been cogitating about another space. Not the one between stimulus and response, where we can choose that response and, in that choice, choose wisely or otherwise. There is another Gap, which must be important because I used a capital ‘G’.

The self-help (ugly term) industry is designed to help people close the Gap between ‘where they are and where they want to be’, as Jack Canfield trademarked it. This is the Gap of which I write.

In my latest rewrite The Three Resolutions, which I regularly review as my understanding of the contents improve as my experiences and studies dictate, I reminded myself of a time when I was providing personal development to police colleagues, and in one of my lectures I drew a diagram which illustrated the Gap. It looked a bit like this

The Gap

and was also intended to show how some of us have a HUGE gap between where we are and where we (careful…..), some of us are lucky and have a smaller Gap to close.

And it struck me, counter-intuitively, that the larger that Gap the easier it was to make it smaller, whereas once the Gap narrowed to a sliver its closure was harder to achieve. Which meant I had to figure out why this was.

My conclusion was this: when we start out in that HUGE Gap, we believe we have a million things wrong about our lives that need correction. As time passes, we tick off the faults which are easy to correct, and each closure has a massive effect on our lives. But as we get ever closer to our ideal ‘self’ we start to address the harder challenges, the ones which cause us the most stress, the ones we avoided earlier but which are also, by their very nature, the biggest of our problems.

But here’s the kicker. Despite that remaining Gap and the challenges it represents, we have become better individuals through making the Gap that much smaller. But we tend to forget how far we’ve come. We get so focused on the last 10 yards we forget we’ve travelled miles and miles.

Now and then, I suggest, look at what you were and compare it to what you are.

Not just in terms of wealth and professional standing, but in terms of knowledge, relationships, freedom and some other immeasurables. Are you better than you were at 25? Are you better after closing some of the Gap? In which case, CONGRATULATE YOURSELF.

Then set about that last bit in the knowledge that you are more capable of closing it now than you ever were. Celebrate the fact that you even know that the Gap exists, because penny to a pound you didn’t recognise it when you were younger/less experienced/alone or skint.

Yes, there may be one or two challenges left, and they may be the hard ones, but what have you got now that reflects your progress?

In 1995 I was a sit-at-the-back, let it happen of guy. Now I always sit at the front, I can think and write at a level I would never have thought possible even in my 30s, I have pursued things rather than waited for them.

So I’m a bit broader in the beam than I ought to be.

My family loves me and I love them. I am financially secure. I can read, write, count and argue with people and yet happily lose an argument.

Yup. Today, I like me. Like yourself, see how far you’ve come. Then gird your loins for the next bit……

The hardest 100% Pass Mark you’ll ever achieve.*

22 Wednesday Jan 2020

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In his book ‘The Success Principles’, coach Jack Canfield wrote about a principle he called ‘99% is a Bitch, 100% is a Breeze’. The idea was that once you make a self-growth (denial or discipline) decision you act on it 100% of the time. This is because acting in accordance with your decision 100% is easier than doing so for 99% of the time for a simple reason that is both philosophical, and surprisingly logical.

With 100% there is no need to apply any further mental or emotional effort to the decision and its subsequent consequence. There is no reconsideration, doubt, angst or time wasted. With 99% you have to reconsider that decision every time you have to decide whether or not you should apply your standards/discipline/denial/values/principles ‘this time’.

For example, if I decide I will write 500 words a day (like Ernest Hemingway, apparently), then if I am taking the 100% route, that’s it– I will write 500 words a day, come what may. I’ll make sure I have my laptop with me, or I will write longhand on paper and transcribe it tomorrow, along with the 500 words for that day, too. If I go ‘99%’, then I have to decide, each day, if I am going to bother. That’s when the easy excuse will be ‘I have to go shopping, instead’. Or ‘I don’t have a pen’. Or ‘my laptop’s battery is a bit low and I’ll never make it’. Or ‘just one packet of crisps/pie/cigarette won’t hurt’.

(As I it here considering if/when/how/where to ride my bike I feel that pain.)

The same applies to not doing something (self-denial). If I decide that I will no longer eat chocolate eclairs, then application of the 100% principle means just that – never.

You can set your own rules for applying this principle. You can, if you wish, go ‘never’ – or you can include justified exceptions to ‘never’. You can decide not to eat chocolate eclairs ever again, or you can add an exception – but it must be a specific exception, and it must be observed. In the case of the eclairs you may elect to eat one on a new moon, your birthday, the 1st of the month, or whatever exclusionary rule suits you provided that it does not excuse you. That’s the material distinction. If you have a rule it must be specific and it must not undermine the original intention, nor can it allow for or provide excuses for non-compliance. 99% or less doesn’t cut it.

99% doesn’t work because it allows for mistakes, errors and, most of all, excuses. 100% not only disallows excuse or failure but it also demands creativity, imagination and discipline. If you ‘cannot’ execute on your disciplined objective for some external reason, the 100% rule demands of you that you find a way to overcome that temporary barrier/obstruction. Wayne Dyer, famed writer on metaphysics and life philosophies, overcame a ‘cannot go for a daily run’ when flying by running up and down an aircraft’s aisles. (BTW – not recommended!)

This concept, when fully applied 100% (see what I did there?), covers the appropriate application of both self-discipline AND self-denial. The only caveat I have to add here is this – don’t commit to 100% compliance until you are absolutely certain that you want to. This is because without that commitment you will make excuses the first time you are required to make decision whether to comply or not. And as soon as you make the decision not to comply that ‘one time’, you are already on the path to failure and guilt. It’s already 99%, or even less. And the next time that decision arises it will be even harder to make the right choice and the downward spiral speeds up. Momentum works both ways.

My final piece of advice? If you want to try the 100% Rule – only commit when you are truly ready. If necessary, prepare your environment (fridge and kitchen cupboards?) before you commit.

Then go for it.

 

(*An excerpt from The Three Resolutions book.)