Tag Archives: purpose

Did it all go to plan? Did you HAVE a plan??

31 Tuesday Dec 2019

Posted by in Character and Competence, General, Purpose and Service, Time Management, Uncategorized

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That’s that, then. In a few hours we’ll be celebrating the end of 2019 and the start of a new set of numbers, the Twenties. And some New Year’s Resolutions will begin their Mayfly-long existence of ‘a day’. ‘Twas ever thus.

Recently you will recall I posted about the planning process, which included an Evaluate the Week activity, where you review that past 7 days to identify what went well, what you learned and what you’ll do next time. (It all gels when you look deeply into what Covey wrote about personal planning, productivity and execution instead of decrying it.)
Today, there’s an opportunity to do your Annual Review, looking at the past 365 days to see – well, you know.

What went well? I got a new job and I was learning as I executed, which was fun. I restarted my daily blog. I maintained qualifications and memberships that helped me to serve others, and everyone I served obtained the objectives my service was intended to support. I had fun learning to enhance those abilities, too. I’d say I achieved 60-70% of what I intended.

What did I learn? I learned that some people have more than one face. That I am not perfect but I can stand up and accept my failings. That some things aren’t worth fighting for. I learned that I have some excellent friends, supportive and non-judgmental. And I have learned that I can’t keep pretending that I can start eating and exercising well ‘tomorrow’. I need to start NOW. (Again.)

And what will I do in the future? To be frank, that’s probably what today will be about (as it is for so many), even though some goals have been telegraphed by the lessons I learned in the last months.

This is, of course, the brief version of a review. I propose you use the Review to look at things like your sense of purpose and meaning, your intellectual life, service to others, your finances, your relationships, and anything else which comes to mind. Ask the three evaluation questions and discover for yourself what the next year is going to ask of you.

I’ll be making an Annual Plan of objectives/outcomes/goals that should keep me occupied and productive. All of which, I hope, will make me better in the round. And as I will be inviting my own circle of family and friends to help me in my pursuit of ‘success’ as I define it, I will be doing my best to help them do the same.

I’ll be utilising the time I have – turning 58 and seeing so many famous people croaking at 79 makes you feel time’s a-wasting – and using my time management skills to best effect. I’ve invested enough time and money is developing those skills, after all.

What’s your plan?

And if you haven’t got one, enjoy helping someone else with theirs. You might as well be doing something useful, even if someone else benefits more than you.

Or you could benefit together?

Just a thought……..

All at sea, or well on course? It’s up to you.

19 Thursday Dec 2019

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“We all have some vision of ourselves and our future. And that vision creates consequences. More than any other factor, vision affects the choices we make and the way we spend our time.” Stephen R. Covey

And the corollary of that is a lack of vision also affects the choices we make and the way we spend our time. Which also has consequences, consequences we would not ordinarily choose. I thin Jim Rohn put it best when he opined that people who have no sense of a plan work for people who do.

So why do many people drift about?

First of all, society. Philosophers suggest that we are the average of the 5 people with whom we spend most of our time, which means that what those 5 people think, say, feel and do diffuses into our own souls and creates ‘us’. Which would explain why people spend such a lot of time ‘socialising’ by standing in loud, dark rooms imbibing intoxicants and consider that activity to be ‘creative’. (In my world, every retirement ‘do’ starts in the same pub in Cardiff, 20 miles from where most of the participants live. As if there are no pubs nearer. Weird. And hugely unimaginative.)

In other words, the majority goes along with the majority. They talk the same, think the same – and end up with the same. I love my retired colleagues, but when you go to a meet-up for a chat, it’s allotments and holidays. Like they’ve given up.

Secondly, the belief that talent is something you have or you haven’t. maybe. But the key to progress is the ability and willingness to learn. If you know what you want, learn what you need in order to get it, don’t just bemoan the lack of opportunity. Fortune, they say, favours the prepared mind. Go prepare.

In my own case, years ago I had the opportunity to provide training to others but had no training experience. So I joined a speakers’ club, attended courses and gained a training qualification. It is really not rocket science to learn. (Although school is wasted on the young.)

The third, tragic reason for drifting is – not knowing what you want (or not knowing that you are allowed to seek out what you want). Now that really is a challenge. Floaters (unfortunate term!) go with the flow and end up where the masses collect instead of discovering something wonderful, like the opportunity to contribute beyond oneself.

And finally, simple stubbornness. The number of floaters I have met who refuse to take training in self-development ‘because it’s American/pointless/pop-psychology/mumbo-jumbo’ probably equals the number of people whose retirement won’t be noticed because they just did what was expected and nothing else. And they probably didn’t do what was expected very well, either. Turned up, did the minimum, went home. (Although truth be told we all have days when we feel like that!)

Look, if you haven’t ever done an exercise designed to identify what could make you different, to stand out, to succeed, then go to this page and just take 30 minutes or so to find out. Buy a book from Stephen R. Covey, Tony Robbins, Charles R. Hobbs, Hyrum W. Smith or some-such (me?), and do the exercises and thinking they promote. Find out what you really want from life, then develop the plan that will make it happen. Then execute the plan violently, as Patton would say.

You might just surprise yourself.

Choice keeps the wolf from the door.

28 Sunday Jan 2018

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“Unemployment is a characteristic unique to the human species only. All the other creatures and creations seem to know what they are supposed to do.” This was a quote ascribed to an unnamed economist who I am sure had his tongue half-squished into his cheek, but it is a thought provoker. Of course, the human condition means we can demonstrate compassion to those who have not and who cannot, whereas the animal world rarely shows that (dolphins, whales?).

My question, which might invite challenge, is – should we be so compassionate towards those who will not?

As a police officer, I met people of all three ‘persuasions’. I met the poor, the challenged and the disabled, who to my mind represented the have not and cannot and for whom I had some sympathy. But for too often, and presumably because of the circumstances surrounding the ‘call for service’ that resulted in our meeting, I met those who would not.

Those who would not work in case it made them have to get up in the morning. Those who would not because it involved being subject to supervision and rules. Those who would not because of the inconvenience. They would do one thing – they would go and collect their benefits and then pop next door – and it was next door – to buy their beer. Then they would go out and steal and rob ‘because they needed money to live, Your Worship’.

In a nutshell, there are those who can’t exercise the Three Resolutions,  there are those who don’t know how to exercise them, and there are those who won’t.

And there are those who defend the latter by lumping them in with the former. They make excuses and seek evidence to justify their findings. Instead of giving them a metaphorical slap and showing them how to get a grip, they pander to their failings instead.

Fortunately, there are also those who come half way, giving that metaphorical slap and then helping them to discover a new sense of personal discipline, a new and better sense of character and new competencies. And my experience suggests that those who are helped to achieve and execute those First and Second Resolution ethics frequently go on and execute the Third Resolution in ‘paying forward’ what they were given, to the benefit of all.

I love seeing that. I love seeing people rescued from hopeless and useless to helpful and useful. I remain scathing towards those who are useless and hopeless but who revel in it and demand respect for it.

And I feel that way because, unlike animals, such people – all people – have the ability and capability to do and be better because they have a choice. Animals are usually led by instinct. A dog chases a car but probably doesn’t know why. A human who ‘is’ useless is well capable of choosing better and should be encouraged and helped to do so.

Once. Maybe twice. Maybe even three times. But after that – let the wolves have them. Wolves know what they’re there for.

 

For more, got to Amazon and buy the book on Kindle or  paperback.

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Lift the fog, then you can go much faster.

05 Sunday Feb 2017

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In his audio programme, ‘What Matters Most’, author and speaker Hyrum W Smith describes the following situation. You are in your car, alone, driving along when, without warning because you weren’t paying all that much attention, you find yourself entering a thick fog. It is all-enveloping; like a pilot flying into cloud who loses all sense of up and down or right-way-up, the depth and intensity of the fog means you lose all sense of where you are. You can barely see in front of you despite your summer-time use of fog lights, and you have no reference points ahead, to the side or behind that can help you.

Immediately, you brake but still concern yourself whether what is behind will collide with you. You slow, terrified that something unidentified and ahead of you will threaten your personal safety. You are now in a dead crawl, almost stopped. Your progress is extremely limited, if it exists at all.

Suddenly the fog lifts. Now you can see where you are going, in absolute clarity. The way ahead is clear. You start to accelerate; you make headway and your mind is now free from the clutter of fear. In time, you reach your destination.

Is your life occasionally just like that?

Do you sometimes lose all sense of direction and find yourself slowing to a dead crawl, wondering what you are for, where you are supposed to be going, even convinced that even when you DO know where that is, you are never going to get there? And when the opposite applies, when you really know what you’re heading for and how to get there, doesn’t life feel great, like you have the moon on a stick and nothing can spoil things?

High self-esteem comes from knowing what you want, seeking it and acting in a fashion that is wholly congruent with what you believe. The opposite is an experience many of us have, where what we are doing is absolutely not what we want to be doing, or (worse) the values of those for whom we are expected to do it are in conflict with our own.

I know I have seem people I respect and admire start to follow a ‘political’ path that is wholly out of kilter with how I thought they were, and knowing that they were in conflict with those beliefs meant I was having to spend time challenging my own in order to work for them. Instead of working towards the vision and with the values I thought we both had, they fogged things with ‘political sensitivity’ and our attention and activity were diverted and slowed.

This was a hateful place to be. Situations like this mean you start work for pay instead of passion, when the economic realities of life are the only thing stopping you from telling your employer to stuff their hypocrisy and their job. It’s when work becomes a chore instead of a vocation.

A failure, or environment-imposed inability to act in keeping with your values and personal vision causes the worst, densest, vision-spoiling and therefore dangerous fog that could ever be.

Smith’s example illustrates just how important Vision actually is. The contents of my two books, Effective Time and Life Management and The Three Resolutions, include some serious arguments for developing your own sense of purpose. Or Google values-based time management / mission statements/ values clarification and read more.

Please. I don’t want to collide with you because of your own fog. I have enough challenges dealing with my own.

 

What do you believe in?

03 Sunday Jan 2016

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And what exactly are you doing about it?

The Third Resolution states, “To overcome the Restraining Forces of Aspiration and Ambition, I resolve to dedicate my talents and resources to noble purpose and to provide service to others.” This is achievable at many possible levels, but in the final analysis it is NOT done – and here I am being a tad accusatory – by signing a petition on Facebook, or ‘sharing’ a post which, if you are objective and sit back for a moment, you cannot be certain is real.

(I’ve lost count of pictures of someone/something where the post is circulated to capture someone for something evil they have done. When we have no knowledge if the post is actually true, or us in fact an attempt to destroy someone else’s reputation, or to find someone for evil purposes.)

Service requires something more than just agreeing with someone else’s opinion, more than putting a £1 in a charity tin. It requires positive, meaningful ACTION.

To illustrate, let me show off. I believe in The Seven Habits and associated philosophies. I believe in the professionalism of the investigation industry. So to positively act in respect of the former I funded and provided delivery of 7 Habits for Teens training at a local school and I have recently joined a group of people doing something similar on a national basis. In respect of the investigators I have, with others, produced a training course and oversee its delivery to students interested in becoming investigators.

In respect of both I was a volunteer, but the service provided and the associated experience has led to both now being real and potential sources of income. (Don’t anticipate being a millionaire but every little helps.)

And there is nothing wrong with being paid a reasonable, appropriate return for the provision of noble service to others. It’s how the world works. If you couldn’t earn money serving you’d starve. (David Middleton’s reported £250k pa from a charity seems a bit steep.)

But providing service based on what you believe in is a lot better than just trudging through life counting widgets when widget counting does not float your boat. If your work can’t reflect your beliefs, then volunteer in a way that does. You may find that being in the ‘service’ pond enables you to swim with the bigger fish that’ll take you better places. (Plaices? Sorry.)

And when push comes to shove, if you value only your family, then make sure that the service you provide is the one they want. Take them on holiday where THEY want to go. Buy the things they NEED, not just WANT.

And be there, be present. You don’t serve the family you say you value, by spending all your time earning money to buy the things that take up their attention so they don’t notice your absence.

For more on the Third Resolution, consider purchasing the book HERE.

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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.

Too perfect to get it right.

25 Tuesday Nov 2014

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From the publicity blurb for “The Checklist Manifesto” by Atul Gawande: “The modern world has given us stupendous know-how. Yet avoidable failures continue to plague us in health care, government, the law, the financial industry—in almost every realm of organized activity. And the reason is simple: the volume and complexity of knowledge today has exceeded our ability as individuals to properly deliver it to people—consistently, correctly, safely. We train longer, specialize more, use ever-advancing technologies, and still we fail.”

This reminded me of another story I read, and I cannot recall where (possibly Awaken the Giant Within by Anthony Robbins). It was about a young girl who told her Dad that ‘life’ in her world was so muddled. In seeking an explanation he set out her desk, everything nicely and accurately put in its place. “How is that?” he said. “Fine,” she replied.

He moved a pencil. “Now?” “It’s all muddled!” she responded. He replaced the pencil and moved an eraser. “And now?” “It’s all messy!” she wailed.

“I see the problem,” he patiently explained. “You have one way for everything to be perfect, and hundreds of ways for it to be wrong.”

Is this the case where you are? Has the purpose of your work now become secondary to the process – one of my favourite observations about modern policing and the criminal justice system is that it is all “Process at the expense of Purpose.”

Not only have we learned how to burrow down until each separate task can be quantified and assessed, we now find that we MUST do so – and hold accountable everyone below us in a hierarchy. You see, I’ve also noticed that this accountability rarely reads as quickly upwards as it does down. So when something goes wrong, the investigation focuses upon finding that one thing that wasn’t done right – in among the possibly hundreds that were – and hits the malefactor over the head with it. Like that child.

 

Social Media Posts – Ideologically Rude?

02 Sunday Nov 2014

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I get a lot of Facebook posts from friends with a bee in their bonnet about all sorts of causes – political (annoying) and Green issues (not interested), and I was going to write a blog about how I found this intrusive. Emphasis on WAS. Bear with.

The reason I intended to do that was partly because of my disinterest in their issues, and because my own political views are more often than not either completely opposite to, or certainly less blatantly ideological than theirs. Or at least that’s how it appears to be to me. It’s no secret! Another reason is this. Their objective must surely be to engage me/others in their cause, not necessarily as an evangelist but as a co-thinker. Otherwise there’s no point, is there?

But as I walk around watching people who throw fags from their cars (the ones with ashtrays), drop litter feet from a bin, spit on the floor, use the F-word every second word, follow celeb fashions with a religious fervour, and/or commit any other unsociable, selfish and inconsiderate act, I question whether those with a cause are wasting their time, and then conclude it’s just as well that they DO take up these causes. I told you to bear with.

Stephen Covey once said or quoted, “One man’s mission is another man’s minutiae.” That’s absolutely right. Your cause means much to you, even if it means s*d all to me.

And while I remain absolute in my opposing or less ideological opinion, or in my total disinterest in your views and/or cause, I ABSOLUTELY respect your right to hold those views, I am (sort of) glad that you hold them because it does ultimately make life better for someone, somewhere, somehow, sometimes. Occasionally that will even include me, even if I can’t see that, yet.

You see, I suddenly realised that just because I exercise my noble purpose/service (Third Resolution) because doing so serves me and those I serve, then your execution of the Third Resolution does the same for you and for those who you serve. I paraphrase Voltaire, who said, ““I do not agree with what you have to say, but I’ll defend to the death your right to say it.” I may not go that far, but I respect your right to say it and I applaud your willingness to execute the Third Resolution in doing so.

BTW, Oscar Wilde amended that and said “I may not agree with you, but I will defend to the death your right to make an ass of yourself.” Which I equally endorse.

I may not agree with or support your cause and I reserve the right to delete your posts from ‘my’ Facebook or Twitter page.

But I salute you for caring enough to say it.