Tag Archives: self-help

Relationships Fund Dentists, You Know.

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I would love the patient of a saint. It would be a characteristic could be humbly proud of (it is possible), but of late I find that my patience patina is wearing thin. I shan’t go into why, but suffice to say the expression ‘gritted teeth’ comes to mind because – I think I’m gritting my teeth. Nevertheless, I am trying to keep my counsel because of the relationships involved and the potentially negative and expensive consequences of just telling it like it is.

Which raises the question – is it better to be completely open to the point of bluntness (that’s an oxymoron if ever I wrote one), or hold back because one isn’t walking in the shoes of the people who ‘need telling’? The former approach could be said to be the most honest, but the latter the more respectful. A principled decision is called for in every different case.

There is no blanket strategy. You might argue that there is but have you ever opted for a specific approach only to discover that the facts and assessments that led you to use it – were wrong?

The only advice I can give – and which I would dearly love to consistently apply myself – would be to us the space between stimulus and response to really, conscientiously dig deeply into the situation, and act accordingly. Think broadly and deeply – what do you know, what do you think you know and can find out, and what is the situation as seen from the other side. Just asking those questions can truly serve your strategy for dealing with the event.

But there is another assessment I would invite you to consider.

If your selected approach requires careful wording and you can’t think of the words – consider letting it go.

It is easy to think you’re using the right words only to wonder why the other person didn’t hear what you said, but instead heard what they decided you meant and the situation worsened rather than improved.

And here’s the rub – sometimes they won’t tell you what they thought they heard; instead, they’ll go off and report their inaccuracy to someone else, and it all goes Pete Tong. Of course, that ‘someone else’ will be their friend, therefore on their side by default. They rarely go to an objective listener.

This whole idea is a ‘soft skill’ that requires wisdom, considered thinking and occasionally resignation to a situation.

Which means being willing to surrender, to leave things as they are while mitigating the potential risks of staying silent on the matter.

Which is bloody stressful, my teeth can tell you. Ask my dentist.

For more on good Character as a specific, rather than accidental life choice, read The Three Resolutions.

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

23 Thursday Jan 2020

Posted by in Character and Competence, Discipline, Uncategorized

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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……

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

19 Thursday Dec 2019

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

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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.