Tag Archives: mission

A Kite, to be free, needs an Anchor. So do we.

06 Monday Apr 2020

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Years ago, I was on a needed holiday. I’d arrived in a bad mood – I can’t remember why – but I felt tired, depressed, unmotivated and just completely uninterested, even in the holiday itself.

On the second day of that break, I found myself lying on a warm, grassy playing field. I was basking in warm sunshine, and I held the string of one of those plastic kites you can only seem to buy at the seaside. As I twisted and pulled the string of the kite to make it go hither an’ thither up in the sky in a fashion that I decreed it should, I had a sudden flash of the blinding obvious. You know the sort of thing: that realisation that you actually know something which you already knew, had forgotten, and needed to know right then.

The kite only succeeded if it was firmly anchored at the other end of its string.

If I let go of it, the kite would plummet uncontrollably to the ground. Even if it flew in a heavy wind for a few moments, eventually gravity – a principle – would take command of the situation and force it to clumsily dive into terra firma, and the flimsy toy would probably perish in the process.

He same applies to us, psychologically. Imagine that you’re like the kite. You are capable of whatever it is you have been trained and prepared for. In an ideal world you’ve selected the profession in which you work.

Then you lose some perspective. You forget why you chose that line. Perhaps someone has changed the rules and the values you upheld last week are no longer welcomed. The impositions have increased, but neither the time available nor the compensation have increased to match the added workload. The situation and the dedication that applied yesterday – have gone.

Suddenly, like an un-anchored kite you lose direction. You float where the wind blows but now it’s with no sense of control.

Maybe that’s how you feel in this period of isolation. You can’t do what you’ve been able to do for ever. So you drift, aimlessly. Towards the fridge, like as not.

But there’s a solution.

Rediscover that anchoring point, that ‘other end’ of the piece of string that can refocus you on what was important, and always will be important. Being current, professionally. Being available to family, friends, colleagues and your community. For me, that is a set of written, defined values and a personal mission statement. It could be like that for you, but you may choose other terms or a different route.

But it’s the anchor that lets you fly. Always was, always will be.

Find it, rediscover it, renew it. Perhaps, given the current uncertainty, completely rewrite it.

Whatever you decide is important, get it down in writing (rather than trying to remember it), and then work from it.

Your kite – a metaphor for your life – will fly all the better for that fixed point.

Now, more than ever – Plan Your Future.

13 Friday Mar 2020

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Okay, yesterday I said I’d only do one pandemic post, but circumstances change and so does our approach. Here is take 2. It’s more important than yesterday’s.

Viktor Frankl was a Jewish psychiatrist who was sent to the concentration camps in WWII. Famously, he was academically interested in why some people survived the camps, and others didn’t. notwithstanding the misfortunes of selection and random execution, the ones who weren’t so unfortunate either died, or they did not.

To cut a long story to the chase, Frankl concluded that the ones who lived were those who had a firm vision of their future. For Frankl himself it was a vision that he would teach what he’d learned to students, with a view to it never happening again.

Norman Cousins was a man who, according to Wikipedia, used his mental faculty to overcome a debilitating condition. It is said he made laughter one of his main medicines, along with a personal determination to overcome his personal, physical challenges – and he succeeded.

We live at a time when a virus threatens the existence of those physically unable to fight it. I’ll admit it plays on my mind, as I have what may be one of those pre-existing medical conditions. But it isn’t just about me – I have two beautiful grandchildren, four lovely kids and a beloved wife. I can’t conceive of life without any of them, particularly the young. But that also means if I’m gone, I don’t get to see them grow. So it is me, but it’s them too.

So now, more than ever, I think it is time to consider positivity, laughter, and a firmly envisioned plan for the future that will provide hope for us as individuals and, in the end, for all of us.

I have no doubt that despair does not serve the physical body, and I firmly believe that some people who died did so because they lacked hope, or a sense of purpose. They thought, “I’m done here.” Which in the case of the elderly may, for them, have a been some kind of satisfaction. It’s not cruel or judgemental to say that. If it was, then the person who thought of the term for the dying of ‘Blessed release’ is equally evil. It is just a belief, no more.

Anyway, like Hemingway, I want to die only when I am all used up, and that isn’t yet.

Today is the day I carry out my planning for the week, and part of that plan will be to consider my long term future. What do I want to create in this world, what legacy do I wish to leave for those kids? How am I going to achieve that? Not just in terms of tasks but in terms of the way I conduct myself – hopefully with integrity, with the fullest congruence between my values and my behaviours.

I’ll ask you all to do the same. Design your future as if all will pass as well as it can, for you.

At the same time, I will tie up my camel by ensuring that my immediate family is cared for, provided for, supplied and kept as healthy as they can so that if it does strike, they can be part of the 80% who just get a sniffle. But not, I hope, at the expense of anyone else. I will get enough for our needs, and no more. those who are stockpiling a year’s worth of soap for the 14 days they may have to stay at home are selfish. No question.

Plan a spectacular future. See it in your mind’s eye and start working towards achieving your dream and towards leaving your legacy. Review and recommit to your Mission. Frankl and Cousins need your support. And your health and welfare may depend on it.

And if fate should decide otherwise, let me face it with integrity and set a good example.

What’s the Point?

18 Tuesday Feb 2020

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That was close. This morning I was driving my car to the tip for my umpteenth delivery of packaging from a house re-do, listening to Jack Canfield’s ‘The Success Principles’ (good book) and bemoaning the fact that ‘No-one is reading my posts’, when what was saying struck a chord. He spoke of the obstacles to our success, the benefits of feedback, and what we should do about both.

And it hit home. I was concerned about lack of readers on this blog, and the feedback from an earlier post suggested I wasn’t reaping the benefits for which I fervently hoped, which was leading me to think it wasn’t really worth the effort. Which was an act that was monumentally stupid of me. (It’s a repeating theme, apparently.)

Jack’s chat made me review my paradigm of the situation. My conclusion was that the number of readers was important but it wasn’t the sole benefit of writing a daily blog. (Yesterday I was just plain busy, BTW.)

I am a communicator, a writer, a trainer. I realised that this blog wasn’t ‘just’ there to be read by others. It has another benefit.

It’s practice.

It’s a daily opportunity to think about things, to cogitate, to consider, and to discuss. It’s my 5-times-weekly chance to craft my thinking and writing skills. It’s a time for improved learning on how to express ideas in such a way as to educate, entertain and empower. It’s mission-focused, values-driven and service-oriented.

It’s congruence in action.

I’ve written before about looking for the alternative value that makes a dichotomy easier to resolve (see this post), but on this occasion it was the alternative value that found me. The value that I was focused on was a ‘moving away from’ value – egotism. People didn’t love me so I wouldn’t waste further time on the matter. The value that poked my conscience was a ‘moving towards’ value, and this was Integrity – people don’t have to love me for my stuff to be important enough to put into print.

What is stopping you from achieving something you need or want to complete?

Is that something really true or are you just making an excuse? If the latter I won’t judge you because I feel like that a lot of the time. But occasionally a thought just peeks its head into my mind, or I consciously read my Mission or Values Statements and recognise my need to get it done. Which creates a reinvigorated ‘want’ to get it done.

Whichever works in the moment.

The heading asks, “What’s the Point?”

Don’t ask that question as if you’ve already decided there isn’t one.

Look a bit harder, it’s there.

Who are YOU to Leave a Legacy? Read on…..

24 Saturday Feb 2018

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After a 45-minute spin session on my clothes horse this afternoon, watching Dr Covey training large groups of the wise, I found a YouTube video of a gentlemen in heavy facial tattoos having a go at the book First Things First. (I’ll come to those tattoos and why I mentioned them later.) Of course, I was always going to defend the book, but the focus of this post is one criticism that the vlogger made.

He suggested that the book was great for high-earners and those in powerful positions, but (to paraphrase) ‘the guy struggling to make ends meet is never going to be interested in leaving a legacy’.

How patronising. For a start, why shouldn’t the guy struggling to make ends meet want to leave behind something important when he’s gone ? From something as simple as a loved child, through to some magnificent contribution that changes the lives of millions, why is it that this vlogger thinks that the remit to leave a legacy is only within the power of the wealthy, the super-clever or the unbelievably talented?

A legacy isn’t necessarily a Microsoft, an Apple, a World Cup or other personal title. A legacy is positive contribution that lives in the memory of those left behind, whether it is a stadium-full of happy football fans or the spark of love remaining in the hearts of your children and grandchildren. It exists when a professional remembers a teacher that had faith in them when they doubted themselves. It exists within a charity worker who holds a child until it realises that people love it, and that life is worth pursuing. It exists within an author who writes a book that informs or entertains.

It exists within YOU. But it is only you who can bring it out into physical existence. You can leave a positive legacy, a bad legacy, or none at all. Those who feel they have nothing to offer live homelessly on our streets, abuse alcohol or drugs, or mope from day to day with no concept of meaning. And many die as a direct result of that sense of meaninglessness.

That’s why I promote The Three Resolutions and that is why I wrote the books. I believe that people who live in their accord – knowingly or not – live happy lives of competently executed purpose and service, resulting from a sense of self-discipline and great personal character. And in doing so they will all leave a legacy, similar to those described above. Even if they don’t realise they have done so – they have. I remember teachers, role models, trainers, writers and others that have had faith in me and whose example have made me what I am. (It’s me who hasn’t quite fully capitalised on their faith!) I bet you remember such people, too.

Leave a Legacy. PLAN to leave a legacy. It’s a lot more fun to plan one that leave one by accident.

Anyway, back to the tattooed vlogger.. I don’t like excessive tattoo-ery but those are my values in action. He has every right to have a tattooed visage if he wants one.

The reason I mention it is not to criticise, but to ask this.

If he doesn’t think leaving a legacy is important, why is he vlogging and why is he raising his individuality and sense of self-esteem by painting his face?

To leave a legacy, that’s why.

Bloomin’ hypocrite.

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?

Turn the volume up to 11.

28 Sunday Aug 2016

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“The needle of our conscience is as good a compass as any.” Ruth Wolff

I write about Conscience in some detail in my book The Three Resolutions. I write about how a conscience is developed and how we all have one, even the criminals amongst us. I also write about how, in identifying our most important priorities and values, we can utilise that inner voice to direct us in our daily activities. The conscience is a core ingredient of our character.

When we listen to our conscience, we live lives of peace and productivity. When we ignore it, we feel guilt, angst, and occasionally some confusion.

Yet ignore it we so often do. We actively seek to stifle it when something potentially pleasurable presents itself to us. We don’t want to miss out on that attractive experience, and so we ignore the conscience, or turn its volume down to 1. To add to the stifling effect, we raise the volume on the ‘Why I CAN do/have this’ button, to make sure we can hear what is calling us forward to the psycho-hypocrisy that is about to occur. We find a rational excuse for what we are about to do and lie to ourselves. As Covey put it, we tell ourselves Rational-lies. Then, immediately or soon after we execute on the lie we just told ourselves, we feel that pang of guilt.

Conscience does not go away.

No, I am not a saint and I am as guilty of this as anyone. Perhaps more so, in the sense that as a writer on the subject I find myself doing it when perhaps I ought to be setting an example. I am often extremely conscious of that expression, “Those who can, do. Those who can’t, teach.”

On the plus side, however, this knowledge and understanding arguably presents me with a better opportunity for positive change, eventually. Those who don’t realise what they are doing have no motive to change. They don’t know that they can.

Funny thing is, they will spend a lot of time justifying their poor behaviour. They will argue quite strongly and loudly that the behaviour they are displaying is okay, for some reason or other. (Good examples are smoking and drinking.)

The funniest thing about their shouting is because they know while they are doing it, they (and I quote), “ignore the conscience, or turn its volume down to 1. To add to the stifling effect, they raise the volume on the ‘Why I CAN do/have this’ button, to make sure they and we can hear what is calling them forward to the psycho-hypocrisy that is occurring.”

Now where have I read that, before?

Back to Basics. Best cure possible.

01 Monday Aug 2016

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Please pardon my absence – been hard at it and just completed two weekends away, hence no meaningful opportunity to give lots of thought to this blog. While I was away, however, something happened which I felt worth a good chroniclin’.

I was out with my family, on the first of the two-in-a-row weekend break opportunities that had serendipitously opened up. (The second was a 35th anniversary weekend away that coincidentally happened both temporally and geographically coterminous with some top-level motor-racing, but that was a genuine accident even though my wife doesn’t believe me.)

We had gone out for an evening meal in a busy restaurant and I suddenly felt absolutely miserable. Not wishing to demean ‘real’ depression, but I felt so absolutely and irrationally fed up, all of a sudden, that I could imagine that feeling that way all of the time must be hell. I didn’t like it.

All kinds of emotions welled up, and I decided in a moment of utter pain that I would delete each and every mission statement and values list I had ever written and stored on my computer – and start again. That, I thought, should sort me out.

Well, it didn’t. I did delete all those records, and I did reconsider my values, principles and mission statement. And guess what happened?

Yup, exactly what I should have expected.

Anything I wrote reflected what I had always written. My vales were still what they have been for a long time; my objectives stayed the same; the words got jiggled about but the meaning remained constant.

My discovery?

When you feel down, it isn’t necessarily changing external things that will solve your problem.

Your emotional problems are often solved by reflecting on and returning to a focus upon what you should have been doing in the first place.

My problem wasn’t that my mission statement was wrong; my problem was that I wasn’t properly living it. I wasn’t exercising (hadn’t for a week); my writing wasn’t getting done (too ‘busy’, apparently); some short term plans hadn’t come to fruition and I’d allowed an empty space to develop. But through reviewing my PMS I rediscovered what I am for. The PMS is a reminder of what you/I can be when I/we are at our best. It is a constant that we can rely on.

All that said, there is something I am going to do to my Three Resolutions PMS. And that is I am going to turn it upside down. While development of your compliance with the Three Resolutions starts with self-discipline and develops towards purpose and service, execution of the Three Resolutions should start with Purpose and Service.

Nobly serving others with excellence, in the field you have chosen, or ‘just’ your family and friends.

That’s what’ll make you happy.

Something challenging is coming. So what?

17 Sunday Jul 2016

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“Just when I found out the meaning of life – they changed it.” George Carlin

When things change, we desperately scream about unfairness, the loss of what was, the inconvenience of what is to be, and No, this is not about Brexit even though it could be, just as it applies to any change. The fact is that people are reluctant to change, so create emotional rationales for why it shouldn’t happen, even when logic suggests that some of the things we fear are not actually facts.

For example, I just heard Andrew Marr on the BBC bleat again about how money from Europe funded Universities and now that’s at risk. Well, AM, as it was OUR money before it was THEIR money to hand it out, perhaps WE can fund the Universities ourselves? Ergo – fear IS False Evidence Appearing Real – to the uninformed.

Change, ladies and gentlemen, just IS. It is the only true constant outside maths and physics.

How we respond is usually based on a couple of factors.

  1. Did WE plan it – if so, it is ‘good’.
  2. Did our bosses plan it – if so, it is ‘bad’.
  3. Can we deal with it? If so, good. If not – what the hell is wrong with you?!

If you have an unchangeable set of core values, I suggest that you can cope with absolutely anything that comes to pass. You can use your unifying principles, values, credo, mission statement (whatever you choose to call your life’s philosophy) to deal with change.

  • New job – treat it by applying your mission statement to it.
  • New relationship – treat it by applying your values to it.
  • New home – create it with your values and mission in mind.
  • Tragedy – focus on your values and beliefs and work through it.

In the end, who you are can be the one thing, the only thing you have that need not change. Hold on to what you believe, be willing to accept alternatives if you discover them; but hold on tightly to what you are, and what happens will be easier to endure. Always.

It’s a lot easier, more productive and ultimately a lot less tiresome and noisy than sheer panic.

Take Action – or reap the rewards of inaction.

04 Tuesday Aug 2015

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You MUST execute on your Mission Statement!

The world is full of nearly people. In his book ‘How to Be Brilliant’, Michael Heppell tells the story of a man we’ll call John, who went to school with a friend of his, a good friend, called Richard. As they passed through school Richard was always coming up with weird ideas about projects and always invited John to take part. John was cautious and would initially promise to help but would then find excuses to avoid participation. When they left school Richard would still invite John along, but John would still prevaricate. In the end, Richard Branson became an entrepreneurial billionaire and adventurer. Who is John?

I’m not for one minute suggesting that execution of your plan will make you a billionaire (even though it might). I AM suggesting that inaction will probably keep you where you are, though. And I am assuming that, having purchased or read this book, you don’t like that place. But your situation may get even worse.

If you keep money in a drawer under your bed, interest rate rises and inflation mean that over time your money will buy less, so it actually lessens in value. If you put it in a bank, particularly a safe bank, it will grow, at least in keeping with inflation (okay, probably just under). If you speculate wisely you might make that money increase in value, potentially by some high degree. It is the same with this book. If you put it in a bank….

Sorry to be flippant. What I am saying is this – if you stay where you are, in that uncomfortable place you’ve decided isn’t where you want to be, things will get worse. If you’re fat and do nothing, you’ll get fatter as you get older and it’ll have serious health consequences. Are you planning on having a Stennah Stairlift, to driving around the local shops on an invalid carriage motor-scooter, and to having your bum wiped by a nurse as you dribble over the side of the bed? If you have no job and you do nothing, you’ll probably freeze to death in your seventies because you have no pension to pay the fuel bills. If you are a person of poor character and do nothing, you will likely live a long lonely life before dying alone and unloved because people know what you truly are. If you don’t contribute in some way, even in the meaningful but simple ways suggested, you will be forgotten. If you suffer from all these maladies, you die fat, alone and forgotten after spending a long time in healthcare/nursing home purgatory. That is what will happen if you do nothing about what you’ve read here. (Scared, yet?)

It may not come to that. You may be part way to being a semi-disciplined, healthy, employed person of good character with some community involvement that benefits others – but you want more or you wouldn’t be here, would you?

But you won’t get ‘more’ if you do nothing. ‘More’ requires effort, learning and contribution. It requires that you stop doing what doesn’t serve you, start doing what does, start living with integrity with principles, ensure you’re current in working practices valued by employers, and you purposefully provide some kind of service that benefits others I some way.

It requires compliance with the Three Resolutions.

 

The 4 Human Needs and The Third Resolution.

16 Saturday May 2015

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“The four human needs are to live, to love, to learn, and to leave a legacy.” Stephen R Covey

Contrary to all ex-servicemen and ex-police officers basic instincts I volunteered again this week, to serve an association to which I am, er, associated. Why, I don’t hear you ask.

Humans have four needs, as proposed by Stephen Covey. (Tony Robbins identified 6 but they’re encompassed by Covey’s 4.) When all 4 needs are met, you hit a sweet spot, as illustrated.

4HN

As shown above, the needs are:

  • to live (physical, survival, economic needs),
  • to love (social-emotional, connection needs),
  • to learn (mental, growth needs), and
  • to leave a legacy (meaning need).

Let’s focus on that last one for a moment.

The Third Resolution states “To overcome the restraining forces of unbridled aspiration and ambition, I resolve to dedicate my talents and resources to noble purposes and to provide service to others.”

This isn’t a call to action by someone seeking your blind obedience. If you to choose to accept it, it is your personal declaration of, and commitment to act upon your own conscience-driven acceptance that in order to have some meaning in your life, you have to (and must want to) provide service to others.

It is a spiritual need, a need to not just be good, but to be good for something, something outside of ourselves. While an egotist may be satisfied with a headstone that says, “See, I told you I was great,” the rest of us would like to have been appreciated by someone for having done something that they remember affected them positively. Even the statement, “Beloved father/mother/brother/friend” shows an appreciation for who we were in respect of others, and what we meant to them.

That is why charities exist. They exist so that those involved can serve others. The same applies to professional associations, even to political parties – until they get a bit self-focused, but that’s another blog. Several, in fact. (Oddly, competing charities, parties and associations often exist because of the egos of the competing parties who want the charity run ‘their way’, rather than just serving the other. Why else is Help the Heroes now competing with umpteen other charities?)

So, as conscience-driven commitment to, and in compliance with the Third Resolution, it is our responsibility to find opportunities to serve. My own recommendation is that you serve family first, and then those organisations to which you are connected and which, if you think about it, have already served you. That can mean communities, charities, professional associations, you name it.

Anyway, that’s what I’m doing. Next, I get to find out what I have actually let myself in for.