Tag Archives: seven habits

What!!?? It’s MY fault you offended me?

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Years ago, I made a mistake. I sent an email to a small group, and accidentally sent it to the world. The content was accurate, but the world didn’t need to know it. Embarrassed, mea culpa, apologised publicly to the individual, copied in the world who’d read it.

Unfortunately, sometimes instead of mea culpa, people who make that kind of error don’t apologise. They double down like a wronged spouse, who raises every fault the husband (usually) has committed, ever. Their mistake is entirely YOUR FAULT. Everything you ever did (even if you didn’t) caused the offender’s error.

The unfortunate part is that doing this destroys any good will. The party who was publicly stabbed will no longer go the extra mile to serve the offender. Which may have impact on any corporate, commercial or community interest within which that offender works. Where a simple apology, taken in good humour, could have healed all wounds, the doubling down defensiveness adds infection to the mix.

And the really funny part is that people committing this error are usually people who would consider themselves ‘senior leaders’. They may have that title, but do they read the leadership material that espouses humility, integrity, honesty? Evidently not. Years ago, I wanted to be taken to task in bad faith by a certain boss, because he had a copy of Stephen Covey’s ‘Principle Centred Leadership’ on his bookshelf and I would’ve picked the book, turned to the relevant page and shoved it in his face.

(Unfortunately, I never managed to offend that particular chap.)

This is not an attack on any individual. We all make mistakes, and we all have regrets. I have many. And I seem to amass them quite frequently despite all my best efforts to live according to my ‘code of conduct’.

And that leads me to the other dimension of character errors such as blaming the person you’ve offended. If you don’t apologise, how can you be forgiven? Don’t you want good relationships? Do you want to be thought of badly? Is there something wrong with being liked?

My code requires me to apologise when I’m wrong. I made a bad character error on holiday, recently – impatience – and even though it took me a couple of days, I walked up to the person I offended, offered her flowers, apologised twice despite her repeated ‘no needs’, and walked away with a tear in my eye, partly because of her forgiveness but also because of my humility – which sounds backwards but it is really emotionally satisfying when you act as per your personal code of conduct when the potential consequences could be severe – she might have called security, after all!!

So next time you make a complete noodle of yourself, acknowledge your error, apologise (truly, not just say the words) and take whatever comes.

It is soul-affirming.

Buy The Three Resolutions HERE – available in paperback or Kindle

Four Words That Make A Big Difference.

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Jerzy Gregorek is a Polish weightlifter who has won four World Weightlifting Championships and achieved a world record. Since retiring from competitive posing (sic) he has established a brand called ‘The Happy Body’ (https://thehappybody.com) serving his clientele in terms of the provision of nutritional and exercise advice.

But he is mentioned here because of a now famous quote attributed to him, which parallels the First Resolution, and which is the subject of today’s blog. The quote read:

“Hard Choices, Easy Life: Easy choices, Hard Life.” Four words, used twice, and an enormously powerful and profound truth that most of us try to avoid.

We know that eating nutritious food in sufficient quantities is good for us, but the easy choice leads us to the tasty stuff.

We know that exercise is good for us, but we park as close to the office entrance as we possibly can rather than use those dangly things hanging from our hips.

We know that doing an excellent job is the right thing to do, but if we can get away with it, we’ll do a ‘good’ job. But as Stephen Covey espoused and Jerzy agrees, the Good is the Enemy of the Best.

Hard Choices require a disciplined mental approach. They require that we look at our situation, the challenges presented, and consciously us the Gap between that stimulus and our yet-to-be-decided response and decide – what is the best thing to do, now?

Various alternatives will present themselves, and in that moment, the success or failure or ‘just get by’ is decided. To get the success – or at least the longer-term, substantial and irrevocable success – you have to make the Hard Choice.

That may only mean getting out of bed when you really want another five minutes, but that initial personal victory can have surprisingly powerful effect. It may not seem so in the gloom as you stumble for your slippers, but doing it once makes it easier to do again, and suddenly your time is being utilised better, your self-esteem expands, your results improve.

Which leads to the second truism. The Hard Choice rarely has an immediate payoff, whereas (psychologically) the easy choice provides exactly that, an outcome that doesn’t serve us at all. And you know that. You just needed reminding, like me.

What Hard Choices do you need to make, today? You’re already up so that’s one you can’t make again. But how about lunch – jacket potato, salad and beans, or a huge coronation chicken baguette? How about that difficult conversation? How about parking at the far end of the car park (unless it’s raining. I understand the practicalities of wet clothes in an office).

What can you start doing that’s better in the longer term? What can you stop doing that’s convenient but less conscientious? What are you doing that is already good, perhaps so good that you could do more of it?

Make the Hard Choice. It’s a heavy lift, but in the end you know it is the way to success in any area of life. Ask Jerzy.

For more on the subject, buy The Three Resolutions, available HERE at Amazon in paperback or Kindle format.

Or listen to this podcast

Are you an Investment Banker?

26 Thursday Aug 2021

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That title woke you up, didn’t it? But this is a serious question, with serious consequences.

An experiment was conducted by psychologists, and as space prohibits great detail on the hows and whens I will get to the point. The researchers conducted an experiment to identify how ethical a group of investment bankers were at the office and at home. They conducted some tests which required self-reporting on results by the subject bankers, but the tests were designed so that random results could be prevented even though the subjects weren’t being supervised. Basically, they were honesty tests.

The results were interesting. What they found was this: investment bankers lie very easily and quickly in a working environment, but far less so, indeed almost never, in a home environment. Taken across the occupational board, could this mean that we all lie easily at work, but less frequently at home? Are we inclined to be two-faced?

Yes.

Advertisers can’t possibly believe half the tripe they peddle. Politicians are the greatest hypocrites of all. Lawyers have to conceal their own suspicions – even truth – if they are to make an honest (sic) buck. And police officers? “Of course you’ll get bail if you confess.” Ahem.

But lie to their kith and kin? Not if they want an easy life.

To an extent, I understand how dishonesty has become a ‘legitimate’ worklife tool. Ugly as it is, the legal system would collapse if people couldn’t trust their lawyers to at least act in confidence. Some dishonesty – usually of an omission rather than commission type – is required as a means of getting to the truth. If we told criminals about all the evidence held by the coppers, they’d invent excuses to cover it; withholding facts so that the dishonest can be caught out, is a necessity.

But there comes a point when absolute honesty is essential, and as a ‘character’ exponent (no I’m not perfect but I’d like to be), I believe that we all firmly know where the truth line sits.

The question always follows – are we always willing, even dedicated, to staying that one side of the line?

Some people are, some people aren’t. I know that to my own cost. People invent stuff, or they invent consequences of stuff, or they twist stuff. It’s human nature, to make facts fit the Markle – the ‘personal truth’ – in order to get what you want.

But one thing about human nature is that people can choose. They can choose to lie, cheat, steal and exaggerate, or they can choose to

  • Tell the truth whatever the cost;
  • Act in keeping with ethical codes; and
  • Forgive others when they proverbially trespass against those codes.

I know which side of the line I prefer to stand. And I know what I think of those who don’t. even if I do forgive them, eventually.

Bunch of bankers.

For more on this subject, read The Three Resolutions, available HERE from Amazon (paperback and Kindle available)

Accept Your True(st) Service Motive

19 Thursday Aug 2021

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I find some great nuggets of wisdom in the strangest places. I was reading The Happiness Project by Gretchen Rubin, an American attorney who has written some excellent books on subjects relating to better living (in terms of happiness and self-awareness). Her depth of thinking is really intense, psychologically sound, yet profound (easy to ‘get’).

She was quoting a friend, and the quote expresses exactly what I have been trying to communicate when it comes to the Third Resolution and the idea of Service. The quote reads, “…you have to do that kind of work for yourself. If you do it for other people, you end up wanting to acknowledge it and be grateful and to give you credit. If you do it for yourself, you don’t expect other people to react in a particular way.”

His nibs Stephen Covey of 7 Habits fame underpinned that idea years before, when he promoted the idea of ‘anonymous service’, where the recipient of good deeds didn’t even know (and therefore could not acknowledge) your input.

They are both suggesting, if not daring to go the whole hog and so corrupt genuinely generous intent, that providing a service to others can be done with self-interest in mind. This idea is quite subtle, and if you wish you can delve deeper into the specifics , like asking the question “when does serving others become too self-serving?”, for example. “Does a selfish motive corrupt a genuinely provided, even anonymous service?”

No.

In my book, The Three Resolutions, I address that very point. I shan’t reproduce the text here because I want you to research for yourself*, but in brief I defy you to suggest that anyone providing a service does so out of 100% selfless motives. (Particularly charity CEOs, whose selflessness is rewarded by 6-figure salaries. Think about how many ‘£3-per months’ go in their pockets.)

People serve because they want to. The want to because it makes them feel good. Thinking about Rubin’s friend, there comes a poor nexus when providing the service stops being generous and starts becoming selfish. The truth is that there is a continuum between totally selfless and totally selfish. The ideal is to acknowledge that you are unlikely to be at the ‘better’ extreme, but the closer you are to that end, the more noble the motive.

You have to acknowledge the pleasure you get from serving. That’s the foundation to the effort and the competence you put into that service. If you didn’t really care, you wouldn’t try. If it didn’t make you feel good you’d be stupid to be doing it because that emotion would, eventually, poison any service you provided.

Enjoy what you do, do what you enjoy. (Must trademark that.)

You’ll serve – and be – better because of that.

(*Buy the book)

Choose your Role Models: And BE one, too.

12 Thursday Aug 2021

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Giovanni di Pietro di Bernardone, informally named as Francesco, was a 12th century playboy. He was reportedly a good looking young man and he lived the high life; he enjoyed partying and utilised all the trapping of his parents’ wealth. At the age of 20 he enlisted in the army and went to war, was taken prisoner and spent a year in captivity. It is believed he started to question his hitherto profligate lifestyle at this time in his life and started to live the life of a pauper. Later, at the chapel of San Damiano he had a vision where he was told to rebuild God’s church (don’t panic, I’m not going to be espousing religion, here), and although he initially thought this meant funding the rebuilding of San Damiano it is evident that over time his spirituality grew within him and around the year 1208 he established an order of monks – the Franciscan Order, based in the Italian town of Assisi.

Francis of Assisi was on the road to sainthood.

But that is not why I brought him up. The reason he is mentioned at all is because of one quote, attributed to him and which is powerful enough to be a part of my own Personal Mission Statement.

He is quoted as having said: “I preach my philosophy constantly and, where necessary, I use words.”

It cannot be emphasised enough that when it comes to teaching integrity (and most other subjects), the most powerful teaching method is example.

Being seen to act in accordance with your values is more impactive to you and to others than any public declaration or display of the contents of a mission statement. Any public awareness of your stated values does enhance your need to live them, unquestionably. People will, often as much through malice as much as through a desire to help, make you accountable to it.

But when they see you living it, and when they see you stand up for it, and when they see you benefit from living it – then they learn from it. What’s more, Role-modelling your personal values to yourself is as much a teaching tool for you as it is for others. It is time for you, in living Your Way, to influence others. And you can do this through example, explanation and education.

Proof of the benefits and effects – and perils – of role modelling are also found in your own experiences.

You found your personal values by watching and learning from others. That teacher who saw something in you that you didn’t even see in yourself: that professional mentor who guided you and whose example you still follow: even your father’s laugh has impacted the way you laugh. And people on television perpetually answering ‘So..’ and ‘Yeah, no, I mean…’ are further examples of societal conditioning.

Your accent, your speech patterns, your clothing choices – all are the result of influences from others.

Until now, however, those choices may have been unconscious. Imagine deciding, instead, to actively choose your role models rather than just absorbing the ways of those who just happened to be nearby.

This is now an accepted personal development technique, particularly promoted by exponents of Neuro-Linguistic Programming, who follow the advice of their founders Richard Bandler and John Grinder. They suggested that role-modelling is a key route to developing the attributes you desire, not just by adopting fashion ideas and behaviours of the selected model but by going deeper into the model’s way of thinking, acting, behaving, speaking – almost to the point of absolute impersonation.

One of the objectives in my small book ‘The Way: Integrity on Purpose ’is to promote YOUR adoption of the behaviours, beliefs, rules and values of those YOU admire. Not mine. Yours.

I had mine. I chose some, some were inflicted upon me. I am proud when the better ones’ influences shine through on my better days.

Now identify – or choose  – your own.

Two kinds of Character – but not really.

15 Thursday Jul 2021

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I’ve stated before that I like to compare Stephen Covey’s material with that provided by other learned people, and here is another nugget I found.

In his book ‘The Only Way to Win’ (Hyperion, 2012) Author and coach to tennis stars Jim Loehr makes the observation that there are two kinds of character, although when he explains he is talking about two types of characteristics.

He writes about Performance Characteristics, and Moral Characteristics. He provides examples of each, suggesting that Performance Characteristics relate to excellence, resilience, perseverance, self-control, bravery, commitment, positivity and so on. Moral characteristics include truthfulness, kindness, honesty, gratitude, patience, respect and so on.

Next, he proposes that the Performance Characteristics are external – they tend to promote and provide external results, results that are dependant upon others in the sense that doing them requires they be done for others, and they require relationships to make them work. They tend to be ‘doing’ characteristics, in that without visible action they have no meaning.

Moral characteristics are internal – they relate to the value we place upon, and the relationships we have with, ourselves. They tend to be ‘being’ characteristics, where their invisibility doesn’t matter because ‘we know’.

The problem, opines Loehr, is that while society rewards performance character, a lack of moral character underpinning it creates the Madoffs, the Epsteins, the Nixons, and so on. Performers are great, until their corrupt morals muck it up for everyone, including themselves.

The Second Resolution, written about in the early 1970s by Covey, speaks of the desire to overcome pride and pretension using Character and Competence. Isn’t Loehr just repeating what Covey says, but in different words? Performance Characteristics relate to Competence, while Moral Characteristics relate to Character.

I am not saying Loehr poached Covey’s idea! What this reflects is two things – first of all, great minds always come to the same conclusion when independently exploring the same material. And second – it underpins the fact that the findings are correct, universal, external and timeless truths.

Loehr applied his philosophy to developing moral character in his tennis prodigies as much as he ever did their tennis competence. In fact, moral character was his main focus. John Wooden, famed US Football Coach, did the same with the young people he coached. Both created winnners, but winners with a higher purpose than self- aggrandisement.

Are you a winner? If so, great. But if you are a winner at someone else’s expense, shame on you. I’m not saying competition isn’t good – it is. When I suggest ‘someone else’s expense’ I am talking about whether your objective is ‘Me Me Me’ or a genuine effort to be better so that others may be entertained, or so that your greater purpose can be achieved, e.g. teaching others. Andre Agassi ( a Loehr trainee) said that it wasn’t until he decided to use tennis as a means to find efforts to teach others and develop young people, his game was never right. In fact, he credits his resurgence with that realisation – that serving others (moral) was a better motivation than any self-serving goal (performance).

In essence, the Moral (Character) serves the Performance (Competence), but it is the former which matters most of all. If Agassi hadn’t been tennis seed No 1, then his later revelation would still have made him a great teacher.

You don’t have to be famous to be successful. But you really do need to ‘be’ your best, perhaps more than ‘doing’ your best.

For more about The Three Resolutions, listen here:

Or read the book, available from Amazon HERE as a hard copy or HERE in Kindle format.

Win-Win NEEDS the Three Resolutions

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You are familiar with the expression Win-Win, are you not? It’s a management go-to term when you are engaged in some kind of negotiation. Of course, in most negotiations the term is interpreted to mean that ‘I will win most and you will win some’. For example, the nice double-glazing salesman my father played, whose opening gambit for doing our whole house was £10,000, but when he wasn’t getting anywhere with that dropped straight to £6,000, at which my Dad suggested the salesman had (a) just tried to con £4k out of him and (b) better leave while he still could.

Another example – when someone with a purpose on television says ‘we need a debate’ may imply they are seeking a win-win solution to the issue at hand, but what they really mean is they want a debate where the other side does what they want done. My evidence – politicians stating that the other side should ‘show leadership’ by doing what they’re told.

Readers of the classic Seven Habits of Highly Effective People will know that a true Win-Win means that both sides seek out a solution that is better than either of them foresaw when they began the relationship, or they just don’t do the deal. That takes courage and consideration – the courage to stand for what you believe while also being considerate of the other’s needs and perspectives. It’s not surrender – it’s a deeper discussion.

It also means applying all of the Three Resolutions. It takes self-discipline to not blindly default into seeking what you want at the other’s expense, and it means denying yourself your initial victory in preference for consciously seeking a better one. It takes character (knowing what you value and being unwilling to compromise your principles) and competence (specifically the intellectual capacity to negotiate, to understand conceptually within the practices and legalities which cover the matter at hand, and the technical ability to do what is agreed). And it requires that you know your purpose and are willing to serve the other party and their stakeholders as much as you wish to serve your own.

This isn’t just a business related idea. This applies to all interpersonal transactions, from deciding on a family holiday to getting a stubborn teenager to clean her room. (That adjective was redundant, really, wasn’t it? They’re all stubborn.)

It means being proactive. It requires a momentary pause between the stimulus of getting your needs met and starting to demand them, instead using the pause to ask ‘how important is this relationship’? It means deciding that you want to consider your ultimate objective from the broader perspective of a whole-life view and any future dealings. It means giving thought to how you want the project to progress, and whether carrying it through is ethical, and won’t compromise your values and external principles.

Nope. Negotiating from a desire for all involved to benefit is definitely not easy. But it all starts with your being the kind of individual who is conscious of the above principles, and sufficiently proactive as to notice when they need to be applied. Instead of jumping straight to the default ‘win’ programming that we tend to adopt as we grow up – and learn from our ‘betters’.

Next time you want something that involves someone else, ask yourself – “Am I disciplined, congruent, competent and service-orientated enough to take the time to find out how I can be a part of making this a mutually beneficial project?”

If the answer is No, even in the moment, then decide to wait until you are.

The results will be truly extraordinary.

For more on The Three Resolutions, got to Amazon and buy the book.

Advanced Driving Makes Me A Better Grandad.

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Do you put as much into your pastimes as you put into your work? Alternatively – do you put as much into your work as you put into your extra-curricular activities?

The Three Resolutions ethic suggests that you should seek to be equally competent in both, and that the levels of competence you seek should be the highest possible. Note that is use the word ‘seek’ – it would be unfair to suggest that you all have the time and resources to succeed at the highest level, in everything, all of the time. But you should do the best you can with the time and resources available.

Stephen Covey, author of The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, touched on this. He suggested that many people think in silos, not deliberately but because that’s just the way society developed, in that there is a time for work, a time for play, a time for worship, and so on. Each was seen to be separate from the other. But in the 21st century, those boundaries slipped away. Now you have a work AND personal social media strategy to consider, work is a 24-hour focus (you are contactable constantly, and shifts and home-working are common), and self-directed personal and professional development is the norm. and you have to manage it, not your supervisors.

Next Monday, I will be engaging myself in my hobby, advanced driving. Not on the road, but on a racetrack. I’ll be driving my own road car, but I will be unfettered by speed limits. My intention, therefore, is to go as fast as I can and out-drive other people in faster cars. My experience in more controlled conditions has been that there are many folk out there with spectacularly powerful and beautiful motor cars who have no idea how to drive them the way they were intended. In two racetrack experiences, despite being up against Teslas, Jags, Porsches and BMWs, my Ford Focus has been let by and I’ve been passed once, because the instructor told me to let someone by when we were held up by a Tesla.

Yes, I’m clearly boasting. But it illustrates, to me, how some people aren’t seeking, or don’t appear to be seeking, the excellence that their resources will allow them to demonstrate. They’re settling for less than they can be. Yes, there may be other factors at play – I might just be reckless in exploring the outer limits of my ability and they have too much to lose – but as an illustration this example has merit.

How good are you at what you are not being paid for – and could you do it better?

I also write, I am a public speaker, and I am a cyclist, and in all three I try to be as good as I can get within the parameters that life presents.  I also try to be a great grandad and husband. No resources needed there, but ‘me’.

Strive to learn, strive to be your best. Returning to the Covey description, when we exceed expectations and capabilities in one are of our lives we can also improve our abilities and capacities in the other areas. Every improvement in one area creates improvements elsewhere.

But you must take care not to be like the excellent lawyer, who goes home and questions her family, seeking evidence for everything they tell her. Horses for courses – it’s the mental approach to excellence I’m proposing, not the ability to use the wrong tools in the wrong situation!

I do try to be ‘my best’ in everything I do. I frequently disappoint. But by seeking excellence in everything I am easily better than I would have been if I hadn’t even tried.

And another hint – if you teach as you learn, you actually create a personal and social obligation to be better all the time. Which those you serve will love.

Get Better. At Everything You Reasonable Can.

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What are you good at? Outside your profession, that is?

And another question – how good are you at that ‘other thing’? And a final one – How good could you be at that thing?

There is a book out there called ‘The One Thing,’ by authors Gary Keller and Jay Papasan. It’s a fine book, very easy to follow and (one might argue) twice as big as it needs to be to explain its main idea. It promotes the idea that you should focus on your ‘One Thing’ and (to use their words) to do so to the extent that by doing it everything else will be easier or unnecessary. And there’s my issue.

I don’t know anyone who does One Thing.

To be fair, Keller and Papasan are mainly asking you to address the One Thing that will make you successful and most people see that as a professional aim, and therefore seek it out in one area of life – the money-making, success-orientated part. The authors do acknowledge and promote using that question in other life areas, too. Which is where my point in this blog comes in.

First of all, I believe most people have a number of things they want to do, some of which they discover along life’s (DON’T SAY JOURNEY) path. BUT there is a tendency to seek high levels of competence in only one or two. I believe it is possible to have high levels of competence in all of them. Indeed, if you consider some important roles, it is essential to be optimally competent. Do you want to be a ‘passable’ parent? Thought not.

So secondly, I believe that it is a good idea to study, experience and apply yourself to your ‘other interests’ to the highest practical degree. I say ‘practical’ because you can’t work for a living AND study for a degree in every interest you might have. That’s impractical. But you CAN seek out experiences, and practical learning, in your fields of interest. For my part it’s in public speaking and advanced driver instruction. There have been other interests as well (investigator training and writing) which took up time, but time well spent as my competency in each area developed through osmosis. I learned as I ‘did’. That’s not as fast as 100% focus one can apply to a new career, but it is effective. And here’s the thing.

What I learned in every different and distinct role, I have discovered can be applied in all the other roles, too. My legal training helps me deal with life’s challenges because of a forensic, logical approach. My learning the art of manly and sporty lycra-wearing has made me fitter and more able to ‘work’. My studies required and developed my writing ‘ability’ such as it is (your assessment….) My desire to train required I learn to speak in public so I ‘got gooderer’ at that.

There are people in the world who can learn, qualify in and apply some serious disciplines. I’ve known medically-qualified barristers, and that is some time- and mental commitment! I’m jealous of people who can achieve this level of competence but I’m not suggesting we can all do that. But we can find something we like to do and seek out the ability and knowledge required to be the best we can be at whatever that is.

Look at your work and hobbies. Are there things you can do that will make you even better at doing them? Courses, reading, experiences you can have that will make you better at, and therefore enjoy those activities.

Go to it. Maximise your application of The Second Resolution and become a better person on your own terms.

Make the Hard Choices

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When I set out my plan for what is my 60th year, one of the tenets I elected to live by was the expression “Make the Hard Choices.”

What is a hard choice? In a nutshell, a Hard Choice has to be made when, in Three Resolutions terminology, one often has to choose between a short term preference, or a ‘fight or flight’ kind of response, where the immediate temptation is to take the easy option. Or one really thinks about it.

I have made several hard choices over the fairly recent past. Two stand out because the first impacted the latter. In 2019, I was accused in my workplace of some thought crimes. One was a silly joke I made, which in the current climate really was silly. The rest of them – well, let’s just say I dispute either the recollection, or the existence of the event. My Hard Choice was – fight, or flight? During the internal hearing, where the number of pages exceeded the number of days I’d worked, I found myself wondering if the next allegation would be that my striped tie was phallic in nature. I decided that the relationship between the people involved was such that, for the sake of the organisation, I would resign. I didn’t need the money, nice as it was. The organisation didn’t need the bother and, quite frankly, neither did I. So I left.

Two years later, an agency with which I am registered asked me if I wanted a role with that organisation. As I am lockdown-bored, I suggested that if they’d have me, I was willing. The agency said they’d contacted them and they were okay with me, “Would you like an interview?”

I actually panicked. I had the shakes, concerns about ‘them’, concerns about the work.  My blood rushed to my head; I was mentally all akimbo. And then my mantra kicked in – “Make the Hard Choice.” I replied, “Yes.”

During my interview it became clear that my past hadn’t been passed on. So I told the interviewers (as an answer to the question as to whether I’d ever made a difficult choice, ironically enough). No point in hiding what they needed to know, after all.

Those examples represented the making of a ‘hard’, Hard Choice. But I have made another one every morning this week. To get out of bed and exercise first thing, or (weather permitting) to go out on long/hard road cycling expeditions. Some people love doing that – I am less enamoured. But as I lay there in the morning gloom (roll on Summer), I remind myself – Make the Hard Choice, and I rise, dress, set up my tablet and watch Talk Radio and other videos as I use up the calories I will take on later in the day.

You may have a range of Hard Choices to make. Divorce, marry, date, dump. Take or refuse an opportunity. Eat a salad or a cake. Give up a vice or accept the consequences. Write that e-mail, or delete it once drafted.

Of course, some of your hard choices may affect others. Promotion/resignation affects those who rely on you for survival, after all. Facing or escaping a danger may result in the difference between saving a life or making sure you stay around for your loved ones. (I’ve often wondered why, when they DON’T leap into danger, coppers are often criticised. If it’s courageous to throw yourself into a river to save a stranger, it is ‘normal’ and expected NOT to.)

What Hard Choices do you make? If there aren’t any, are you living to your full potential? There is no doubt in my mind that it is the Hard Choices that bring out the best in us. And sometimes, that choice may seem self-centred – but might actually contravene our values in preference to the needs of other people.

Even the ones who tell tales about you.