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Why I am writing my autobiography – and you should, too.

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I am currently engaged in writing my autobiography. I am not a person of great public note, but I recently found myself making a speech about my beloved father, who passed away in 2002, and in doing so I realised just how little I knew about him. I knew what we’d done together over the years, of course, but apart from a few stories about his war-time experiences – and I mean a few, as he seldom spoke of them – I didn’t know much about ‘him’. I decided that I would not leave my kids and grandkids wondering who I was and what I did. So I began writing.

I thought I would do about a hundred pages, but owing to having been a police officer I possessed about forty notebooks for work experiences, supported by about twenty years’ worth of planning systems and diaries with associated entries, plus the occasional journal writings. As of today I’m probably well over the 300-page mark, and I’m only up to 2005.

It occurred to me that we all have a story to tell. I bet, when you’re out with your friends, you tell personal stories as a matter of course. Sometimes you’re the trigger for someone else’s stories, and a competition begins over who has the better tale to tell. (Although I do hate it when someone presages their story with ‘the best one was’ and follows that sentence with an utterly uninteresting and badly told fable.)

It would be true to say that I have two intended audiences – my family, and my old colleagues. Those colleagues will all have similar stories to mine – some will be more interesting, too. But the beauty of a biography is that a relatively common experience, properly told, will still be interesting to those who have ‘been there and done that’, because it triggers their own amusing anecdote. They laugh as they think, “Yes I did that, too.” And thus begin their own musings.

Which begs the question: Why aren’t you writing YOUR story?

One of Stephen Covey’s four human needs he identified as Leave a Legacy. Famous people leave public records – but you have a story to leave your descendants. You can’t rely on the BBC to select you for an edition of ‘Who Do You Think You Are?’, and they certainly won’t do the research for you. To be frank, the pre-history they discover is interesting – but not much. I find that is a failing in many biographies – the fluff that is put in to make a relatively short biography bigger. A book about a celebrity who hasn’t done much is often padded out by irrelevant social commentary, describing the council estate in which they grew up – no one cares, and anyone living in a council estate already know.

So my book is going to be a chronological history of who I am and what I did, with anecdotes about the funny, tragic, and occasionally routine things I experienced. It’s as much a tribute to those I did those things with, as it is an attempt to flatter my own ego. I’m writing it mainly because of the funny things that happened to me, in the hope that my descendants will laugh at their ancestor – so that they learn to laugh at themselves. My legacy will be – have fun, laugh at yourself, and seek out what you want.

You are the hero of your own legend, as I am in mine. Start writing now.

On Getting Better When You’re Too Tired

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I’m tired. Not having properly trained on my road bike for this year, I went out last Sunday with friends and rode 56 miles. It was evident fairly early on that I was lagging behind, although in my defence I was following a friend who’d just completed a two-day, 60/40 mile ride up the Marmotte in the Alps. In fairness, then, he was much better prepared for the day than me.

But that was four days ago, and I’m still tired. So what, I hear you ask?

Being tired is no excuse for being lazy. It is tempting to give a task less than you would if you were feeling hale and hearty, but doing that serves no-one. As I sat at my desk preparing to write this blog I was soooo tempted to put it off until I felt better or, failing that, to just look up an old entry and regurgitate that, instead. But you’d have not learned anything new – well, when I say ‘learned’ and ‘new’, perhaps I’m looking more towards providing a new perspective on old learning.

And I wouldn’t have ‘got better’ in the competency sense. Added to that, perhaps my conscience would have screamed at me.

Being tired is only an excuse – nay, reason – for taking longer to do a job. The reality of personal development is that people do get tired, they do lose their sense of motivation, they are affected by moods and circumstances. Neither of which excuse largesse, but they will certainly affect performance.

But how big an effect those influences have on performance, is up to the performer.

Making the proactive choice to put in the effort required to do the better job is key. Deciding to perform at the required level – even at the highest possible level – is the first step to overcoming the drag created by fatigue. It might not be the only step, I admit. If the task to be done is a physical task, then the effect of fatigue will be more obvious and impactive than if the task to be done requires a mental approach more than a muscular one.

But if you’re thinking “I don’t really want to do this,” then the answer is to decide that you will, and to decide that you will do it to the best of your ability even if it takes a little longer than it usually does.

And if you’re experience is the same as the one I’ve just had in writing this blog after thinking about whether or not I can be bothered to do it at all, you may well find that it didn’t take as much time or effort as your brain initially calculated it would.

Because 10 minutes ago I was too tired. Now, my work here is done. Including a review and an edit and posting onto this website. Ten minutes from ‘Not Today’ until ‘Done’.

Do you have days/jobs like that? Days when you just can’t get started because you are tired? Make the decision that YOU are in charge, not your emotions.

And as a bonus, here’s another tip for when you have started but are flagging. It’s one I used when I was trying to keep up with the King of the Mountains.

SEAL Team trainers have discovered that when a candidate has ‘had enough’, the successful candidates can still find another 40% – forty   percent – energy left, if they just dig deep and find it. On my bike, really feeling the fatigue from about 35 miles in and knowing I had 20+ left to go, I just reminded myself that if I wanted it, the energy was there. I knew I’d feel it later, but my body would recover to a better base level afterwards. (Hopefully, soon!)

Maybe that’s the ultimate reward. The reward for applying the First Resolution.

The harder you try to overcome not feeling your best, the better your best becomes.

We ALL Suffer from Velleity.

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Velleity. Ooh. New word. One for Scrabble, minimum 14 points. But also important when defining your goals. Particularly at New Year……

What does it mean? According to Edwin C. Bliss, author of Getting Things Done (that isn’t the David Allen version) and Doing It Now!, it means “wanting something, but not wanting it bad enough to pay the price for it.” Yes, losing weight comes a rampant first place in the list of velleitous goals. (Oh look, I made up a  new word. Yay, me.)

I’m gambling that you, dear reader, like me, have a bucket load (list) of such goals. They’re ‘Like to Dos’ rather than ‘Will do at any costs’. They’re the ones that start with good intentions and usually remain there. Or they do mean something, but every time you consider committing to them – usually when action is actually called for – then you vacillate, meditate, procrastinate, and then change-the-date.

For example, I have a desire to drive the Nurburgring, but when the offer came up recently I put it off until next year. On the one hand, I could drive my car around it gently, but the enthusiast in me would inevitably try hard and risk having to walk the 450 miles back home, red-faced.

The answer? There is one, but even it can be looked at with velleity. The famed climber William H. Murray, leader of the Scottish Himalayan Expedition* in the early 1950s, once wrote an oft-quoted ‘personal development’ paragraph that read,

“Until one is committed, there is hesitancy, the chance to draw back, always ineffectiveness. Concerning all acts of initiative (and creation), there is one elementary truth, the ignorance of which kills countless ideas and splendid plans: that the moment one definitely commits oneself, then Providence moves too. All sorts of things occur to help one that would never otherwise have occurred. A whole stream of events issues from the decision, raising in one’s favour all manner of unforeseen incidents and meetings and material assistance, which no man could have dreamt would have come his way. I learned a deep respect for one of Goethe’s couplets:

Whatever you can do or dream you can, begin it.

Boldness has genius, power and magic in it!”

Velleity in a well-crafted nutshell.

To do something you ‘kinda’ want to do but keep putting off, you have to invest something of yourself, or your cash. One of the least mentioned elements of Murray’s quote is that the ‘commitment’ to which he referred was – wait for it – paying for the boat tickets to Bombay. But as simple and uninspiring as that may seem as a ‘commitment’, popping some cash down when you are financially challenged is a good way to reinforce commitment – once you’ve coughed up cash you struggled to obtain, it’s mentally stressful NOT to come through on your goal.

Another way to overcome velleity is to make non-performance more painful than performance. A famous example is a Jewish gentleman in the USA who publicly swore that if he didn’t come through on a commitment he made, he would donate a four-figure financial sum to the Ku Klux Klan. He came through.

What can you do to, today, to overcome your wanna-do reluctance?

*Still can’t find the Scottish Himalayas on the map.….

Will Shakespeare, Personal Development Trainer.

17 Saturday Mar 2018

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“We are oft to blame in this – ‘tis too much proved – that with devotion’s visage and pious action we do sugar o’er the devil himself.” Bill Shakespeare.

Why is it that when a politician or celebrity ‘fails’, two things happen? First of all, the level of ‘shock’ and ‘fury’ (favourite press words) is influenced by whether we love them, or we don’t. David Beckham cocks up, we are sorry for the poor, vulnerable love. Piers Morgan does the same thing, and everyone goes into hate mode. OK, ‘more hate’ mode.

In either case, ‘we’ point and pontificate, and the epithet “Look what s/he did!” emerges from our mouths. The same accusatory verbiage that emits from our lips when a colleague offends us in some small way. And in the same way, our willingness to forgive the transgression depends on whether or not we like that individual.

In other words, whether we consider them to be people of generally good character, or not.

My reading of Bill’s statement is this; that as long as we live and act in accordance with principles, and in doing so create in ourselves a person of good character (Third Resolution), then others are able to gloss over any temporary failure. It is easy to forgive those we respect and love when the oops isn’t too great.

But there is an insidious counter-thought expressed by some – and we’ve probably all done it at one time or another – and that is the belief that ‘if Mr Perfect or Miss Proper can do that, then so can I’.

Instead of looking at the behaviour, decrying it and (maybe) forgiving the formerly respected offender, we conclude that imperfection is now permissible, even desirable, and drop our own standards accordingly. It is the same psychology people used to start smoking ‘because James Bond did it’ or taking half-naked selfies because Kim and Kylie do it ‘in the name of empowering women’ (while F1 and other sports adopt the exact opposite view. Go figure.).

Many people like to bring others down to their level rather than put the work in to raise their own standards. In my book The Three Resolutions I wrote of a colleague who spent a great deal of time assassinating characters while always making sure that the holder of said character was absent, but never to their faces. My response in the event that he, or someone like him, attacked me like that was, “Are you trying to raise your self-esteem by lowering mine, because that will never work?”

Oh, and if it wasn’t me he was attacking in the subject’s absence, I’d shout to all present “Is X not here today, then?” Eventually, said colleague took the hint!

If someone else fails, it is never an excuse or justification to lower our own standards. We should try to be what we want to be, as much as we can. It’s a struggle, but it’s worth it. It is easier to forgive – and be forgiven – if we can do that, or even if we are seen to be trying to do that.

Go on. Be the best you think you can be.

It’s the foundation of greatness.

Attendance is optional, productivity is not.

20 Wednesday Dec 2017

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Larry Winget, American motivator-with-attitude, says in the introduction to his book, “It’s Called Work for a Reason!”,

“Bye honey, I’m off to work!”

Oh, bull! You aren’t going to work at all. You are going to the place that isn’t home, where you have to dress a little better than you do around the house. You are going to a place that is full of other people who also just lied to their significant others. You are all liars – you AND those people you say you work with. You say you are co-workers, when the truth is you’re only co-goers.”

I admit I chuckled a bit at that. I am in an envious position where I can manage my workload and, getting it done quickly with (slightly imperfect) time management expertise, I have more down time than most. I try to do an excellent job, but am most challenged when I, like you, are trying to do an excellent job when another expectation-of-an-excellent-job rolls up, closely followed by more. It’s hardly surprising that we want a quiet 10 minutes to prepare for more work.

But Larry does have a point. We are paid to do more than turn up, we are (as my first employer actually told us on an induction course) to put in a good hard day and go home pleasantly tired. Unfortunately, the world has changed and that is now harder to do.

I’m not talking about back-breaking manual labour, even though that is ever-so-slightly less back-breaking than even it was.

The world has changed in that our ability to focus on ‘work’ has been severely compromised by our inability to focus properly on anything! Mobile phones pinging, bleeping, ringing or just being in view mean we MUST check them several times an hour – even if only to see why we HAVEN’T heard a ping or a bleep or a ring. Downtime also excuses a quick Facebook/Instagram/Snapchat/WhatsApp session, doesn’t it?

Perhaps this is why we are now providing courses on ‘How to manage millennials’, a concept that confirms surrender to the ‘me’ generation, rather than suggesting, firmly but politely, that they are being paid to benefit the employer, they CAN be replaced if they don’t work hard enough, and the sun does NOT shine out of their baby-smooth bottoms.

You are paid to work, to produce.

Now, a slight counter-proposition, too. If you are not paid ‘just to be there’ as I suggest, then IF your productivity is good/excellent, IF your standards are high, and IF you can be seen to be a worker, THEN liberties can be given and taken.  I recall an amusing story about a CEO who wanted a manager to have a word with an employee who turned up at 8AM, but went home at 12 noon and played golf all afternoon. After some enquiry, the manager told the CEO, “He’s the most productive employee you have! Get him to teach everyone else how to do that and we’ll be rolling in it!”

Work is measured by RESULTS, not merely PRESENCE. But if you can produce the first through maximising the use of the latter without burning out, your job will be safe. Wherever you work.

 

It’s not someone else’s fault. It’s YOURS.

26 Sunday Mar 2017

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Almost every book I have read on personal development suggests that one key method for massive personal success is to get up at stupid-o’clock in the morning, strap on your trainers and go out of the front door to greet the day with a run. The first thing I note about such books is that they are frequently written by Mid- to South-Californians and not the Welsh. I would challenge any Californian to get up in Brecon at 5AM in December, strap on their Magnum boots and go for a skiddy run-fall-snap.

The other thing I note is that early morning for those NOT self-employed, childless and of independent financial means is a time of stress, trying to get ready to comply with the quite reasonable expectations of their employers and children, in whatever order. Bearing in mind that the old 9-5 day became the 8-4 some time ago if you wanted a parking space, and for the same reason the day is quickly becoming a 7-3 if you don’t want to park half a mile from your workplace, a 6AM run would only last 5 minutes anyway.

Yes, I know there ARE people who love that early run but we are not all the same. I tried an early run twice and it was miserable, even in summer. For me. Mid-day, early evening, love it. 6.30AM – shove it.

Hyrum Smith asks, “What do you do for the magic 3 hours from 5AM to 8AM?” To be frank, I usually sleep for the first two.

Which brings me to another reason I hate early morning runs. It’s my wife. When I wake up, the wife does, too. If you’re as lucky as me, when you wake up together you have an opportunity to hold each other for a while before you get up. I am not willing to lose that for an exercise opportunity.

The funny thing was that because of all those books, I started to blame t’wife for my failure to exercise because I didn’t want to deprive her (us) of that cwtch*. I wasn’t running because of her needs. It was her fault I was fat because I don’t run in the dawn gloom.

Blaming other people for our failures to execute in some life areas is easy. It absolves us of responsibility for what we aren’t doing that we know we should be doing. But that is a slippery slope, because one thing all the PD writers say that I absolutely agree with is that We are responsible for our situation, even if that responsibility lies only in how we choose to respond to our situation.

In other words, I am able to choose whether t’wife or an early morning run is the more important thing I need to do (I should rephrase that…).

I am able to decide what job I seek, even if I can’t dictate what I am expected to do when I get that job. I can decide how I respond to an imposition, and do a good job even though I didn’t want that (part of the) job in the first place.

Therefore, let me state quite clearly – I CHOOSE not to exercise in the morning. Just as, at the moment, I am choosing not to exercise at all. Which is a choice I must choose to change, and quickly, because I can’t find a reason not to. Damn it.

Oddly, when I am away from home I routinely go for a half hour on a treadmill at 6AM. Maybe it IS her fault after all………

In life, we are responsible for our decisions. Let’s make good ones but not just because someone promotes something that sounds good – it might not suit our situation and even if it might, what we gain may not be worth what we lose. Like cuddling a warm bum on a winter’s morn.

 

*Look it up, it’s Welsh.

Values-based Time Management Means Achieving the BEST Goals.

19 Sunday Feb 2017

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“If a goal isn’t connected to a deep ‘why,’ it may be good but it usually isn’t best.” Stephen Covey

I hereby truly and solemnly declare and affirm that I want to run a marathon.

That is a true statement. Deep down I want to be able to say that I ran a marathon, that I did it in less than 4 hours, and here’s my medal on display in the cabinet with my bronze swimming certificate.*

Yes, as far as running a marathon is concerned, I really want to run one. But I am not prepared to make the effort.

The reason I am not prepared to is because such a goal is often a dream that is planted by the achievements of others, by a desire to demonstrate a high level of physical fitness when such a level is not necessary for achievement of any of my other goals, and ultimately by ego – I want to brag about it.

Let me emphasise – they would be MY motives, and if you want to do a marathon for truly personal, deeply emotional reasons you go ahead and do it, and good luck. I am not here to tread on your dreams.

The point I am making is that achieving someone else’s goals, or seeking achievement for reasons of ego, probably won’t result in the deep happiness that comes from achievement pursued for truly personal, deeply impassioned motives. On the other hand, if achieving those goals is a means to a better end and not ends in themselves, the passion for those longer-term outcomes will help you achieve the smaller steps on the road to that greater success, the success you really seek. And let’s face it, you’ll be fitter and better able to enjoy that success (provided you haven’t crocked yourself in the process). And the greater success will be the one that serves your values system.

Seeing the goal as something which serves your values is the essence of values-based time management. Selecting a goal that doesn’t dovetail your values system is futile – you won’t do it, or you will detest every moment spent in striving for it, and UN-happiness is not a normal pursuit, is it? (Masochists excepted.)

I suspect that a 10k running ability is ample for most of us who don’t enjoy sport for sport’s sake. If you can run 6 miles in an hour and have a sensible diet you’ll be fit enough for most professions. If you want to get fit enough to achieve your other goals, decide on a sensible level of fitness, pursue that, and spend the rest of the time on the actual objective.

Spend as much of your time as you can on getting the result you seek, and a sensible-but-lesser proportion of time on the ‘side-issues’ that serve that objective. Plan your time so that you maximise the likelihood of achieving the (your) Main Thing, without spending too much time on achieving side-goals that will serve the greater objective but aren’t goals in themselves.

It’s a fine balancing act and using a suitable, personal planning system will help. In that, you put your Mission and Goals to the fore, and plan to spend as much of your time not on ‘shoulds’ or ‘coulds’, but on MUSTS. The other two can be fitted in around them.

And be careful that those ‘shoulds’ and ‘coulds’ don’t become excuses for procrastination! (Next week’s subject.)

*I don’t have one of those, either. I am not a fish and if I am going two miles on water, I know people with boats.

 

For more on Values-Based Time Management, go here, or go to the Books page on this site

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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.

 

Happy New Opportunity

01 Sunday Jan 2017

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Bad news, everyone.

If you are going to have a happy 2017, YOU are going to have to make it happen.

The good news is – Mike Oldfield is bringing out a new album.

The other good news is that you CAN make 2017 a great year regardless of what happens to you IF you follow one rule.

Act in complete congruence with your personal code of conduct – Act with Integrity.

All the time. For every decision. No excuses.

That does not mean being a martyr. It just means deciding that in everything you do, you will act in accordance with your personal value system, unifying principles, credo, mission or code of conduct. You know what your rules are, and you know when you break them.

There will be times when bending them is permissible because of the prevailing circumstances. Remember that while you have no control over outside events, you DO have control over how you respond. Sometimes, the response you must provide may not be the one you would like to execute because the external circumstances simply won’t allow it. When that happens, you are not ‘failing’ to live with Integrity – you are just stuck with having to do something else, something slightly less perfect. Don’t focus on things you can’t do anything about – do the best you can and move on to the next opportunity to act congruently.

This is harder than it sounds because of those external influences on our lives, but each negative event is a chance to pause and decide not to be dictated to by emotion, ideology, your past, or other people’s expectations. It is a chance to decide ‘I choose to act differently’ and then to act on that better choice. Our past, and the lessons we learned are powerful influences over our decision-making but they need not dictate our response. We tend to overlook that it was seeing things differently that made our lives better, whether it was through education, experience or bitter regret. Instead of allowing those bad things to teach us by waiting for them to happen, we can instead prepare for bad things well in advance by deciding, using our self-awareness and imagination, how we will deal with them.

I sometimes wonder why, when my parents passed away, I did not collapse in tears. I loved them both dearly, but as they passed away there was some sense of ‘that’s the way it is’ within me, and with hindsight I think it was my values system and my study of Stephen Covey’s works that meant that what was happening wasn’t disaster, but a natural event that emotional collapse wouldn’t change. I waited until the funerals to shed a tear, yet even then did so quietly. I also suspect that dealing with death in a professional capacity took the edge off dealing with their deaths because ‘death’ wasn’t something unfamiliar. I only hope that those close to me didn’t think it cold – it was just that sadness is less of a curse to me than anger!

(Stop moping.)

2016 was bloody awful. (Outside of all the saintly drug addicts, alcoholics and other celebrities that warranted angst when they passed away.) And one of the reasons that it was awful (for me) is that I allowed myself to lose control, on one occasion so badly that it really sobered me up for weeks afterwards.

I fervently intend that 2017 will be a different lesson – where I truly role model that which I believe in, and teach. Like a comedian who is privately depressed, I feel like the personal development trainer who knows his stuff but manifestly fails to perform it. And I encourage you, dear reader, to do differently.

Every time you know you should be doing something but seek out excuses – decide to do it. Whenever you’re about to do something you know undermines your better intentions – decide NOT to do it. It only takes the time needed to take the reluctant action, or to step away from the event that impedes your success. It can be less than one second. One second that lies between guilt – and higher self-esteem. But execute, then repeat.

Decide on your purpose/mission/unifying principles and work damn hard at making it easy to act in their accord by making your decisions absolutely congruent with what you believe, and accepting those moments when you can’t. That’s my intention for 2017.

Happy New Year.

 

 

You really can’t wait to learn what you need to know now.

23 Sunday Oct 2016

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“As human beings, our greatness lies not so much in being able to remake the world as in being able to remake ourselves.” Mahatma Gandhi

One of the fascinating things I have learned in trying to start a personal development training and coaching business is how many such businesses exist, even in my out-of-the-way, not-quite-rural part of the world. I am somewhat under-whelmed in the levels of interest shown in my own services, but if the proliferation of such businesses is a reflection of a need for such help, it must in turn represent some kind of insidious internal disquiet in people about where they are now, compared to where they want to be. They are willing to pay stupid money to some companies (while resisting inexpensive little me) in order to find something they seem unable to discover for themselves.

On the other side of the scales, however, there are those who absolutely dismiss the potential benefits of training, whether it be for them or for the people they manage, work for, or even live with.

I read a great story that might illustrate what I see to be the benefit of self-leadership training. It concerns a middle aged man, shall we say in his early 50s, who was sat at his father’s bedside as the septuagenarian drew close to death. As the old man ebbed away, he managed to impart one more piece of wisdom to his son. He said, “Don’t do it like I did it, son. I was wrong. Live life better than I did.” Then he sighed, and left.

The son was bereft, partly because his father was gone but, as he disclosed to a confidante, also because he realised something else. To that confidante he said, “I am 55 years old, and my father says I’ve being doing it all wrong. I am half way, if not more through life. What the hell can I do with the knowledge that I’ve been doing it wrong?”

The confidante smiled wisely. He said, “How old is your son?”

“Twenty-five, why?”

“What your father learned by his seventies, you learned in your fifties, and you can teach your son in his twenties. In turn, he can teach his children from the day they are born. 70 years’ wisdom available to a child. That is what you can do.”

The purpose of coaching and training is to provide the student, Oh Padawan, with a short cut to the wisdom that they may find for themselves – but now. So they can use it, now. Not when it is too late.

A coach is not there to tell you what to do. S/he is there to help you discover where to look and to open your eyes to alternatives. The coach’s job is to assist you in your relentless search to be better than you already are. On your own terms and in your own circumstances.

Seek it and use it.

My rates are pretty good………………

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