Author: The Fullfilment Project

We don’t often think of how we interact as something to work on or improve. We learn how to communicate with each other during our childhood years and that’s that. However, if we are to make a real difference in the world then we need to master how we interact with each other.

I first came across the concept of the ‘art of interaction’ in Seth Godin’s book Linchpin, where he describes every interaction with a colleague or customer as practicing the art of interaction. It is an integral part of becoming a linchpin within your organisation, someone who is indispensable.

It is also good to practice how to interact with others on a general basis in order to develop good relationships and to uplift others. Treating it as an ‘art’ also means that how you interact with others can be unique to you. It is an art not a science. It is also one of the strings to your bow that are needed in order to have self mastery.

Finding Your Purpose

Purpose is a word loaded with expectations. There is a lot of pressure on those wanting to develop themselves, to find their unique purpose for being born.

My view on finding your purpose is that by the time you are in your 20s you will have a reason behind everything that you do. For some it is to leave things better than they found them. For others it is to generate joy in others. Everyone has a think that makes them tick. This is your purpose.

For me it is helping others to live well, to ultimately have a fulfilling life. It is not one thing that you do, it is the reason behind everything that you do.

Make A Change

Often we feel like we are stuck in a rut or caught in a loop and we just want to be free of it. We want life to improve, so we don’t get the same results that we always get.

The problem is that the results we get in life are largely a result of our actions or lack of action. Repeated results are often caused by repeated behaviours. In fact, it is our beliefs that spark our thoughts, which lead to our behaviours, which in turn produce our results.

As I have said before, the change needs to be in the beliefs we have about what we can do, what our options are and what is possible.

Make a change in your beliefs and you will get different results in life.

Do You Care Enough To Fail

If you work in customer service, as many do, like many you may turn up to work and do what you are told to do and go home again. In other words you serve customers within the boundaries that you feel will avoid you getting into trouble or losing your job. It is the fear of failure that causes the service that many people provide to be average. Not amazing and not poor, just enough to earn a paycheck.

This is the fundamental problem that causes customers to complain about the service they have provided. I work in complaints for a bank and I hear, more often than not, that the Advisor did not show empathy or provide help or that they were rude. Rudeness usually comes from an attitude of that’s not my job or that I need to be quick and get you off the phone because I have to keep calls to 3 minutes and no longer, if you work in a call centre as I do.

On the other hand excellent customer service includes listening to the customer, making a connection, empathising, as well as being efficient. In other words it is a shift in attitude not in time spent on the phone with customers.

This type of customer service takes practice and will involve failing, wishing you had said something different, etc. It is failing small enough to get feedback from a Manager when needed, but not big enough to get fired. The difference is whether you care enough to try and provide excellent service, rather than doing the minimum in order to not get in trouble.

Take It On The Chin

When things go wrong or we make a mistake, often we either blame ourselves and start mentally beating ourselves up or we project blame onto someone else. The first option is clearly self defeating. The second option removes all accountability.

To me taking it on the chin first and foremost means we own up to whatever it is that has gone wrong. We take responsibility. However, we should not just say “it’s my fault.” If we don’t learn from the mistake then we will likely make it again.

I am one for mentally beating myself up, but I believe in being accountable for my actions, so I was often trapped in an anxious cycle of ownership and limiting beliefs. The break through for me has been asking what I can learn from my mistake and what actions I can take to put it right and avoid doing it again.

Taking something on the chin should not be a passive exercise in accountability. It should be an active movement towards self improvement. The only way we can make positive change in the world is if we change ourselves for the better.

Appreciate Where You Are

They say that every season has its purpose. In nature, Autumn bring the falling of leaves which nourish the soil, that then feeds the tree from which the leaves fell. Summer provides lots of sunlight to help plant life to flourish, which helps all life to flourish.

You might feel like you are in a difficult situation that might be likened to the harshness of Winter, but difficulty can help us to develop resilience. If it was like the Summer all of the time then we may not appreciate what we have. Every year Winter shows us what the absence of Summer is like and we appreciate it all the more when it comes around again.

In life we have challenges and we have moments in the Sun. Each has its purpose and we can use them to our advantage, if our mindset is a growth mindset and we look for the opportunities rather than the difficulties.

Read It Yourself

In the 16th Century the Bible started to be translated into European languages from Latin. Previously, Catholic clergy were predominantly the ones who understood Latin and they told their loyal followers what the Bible said. They told their followers what the teachings of the Catholic Church were too.

Once the Bible was available to be read in the common people’s own language, people began to disagree with some of the teachings of the Church. The Reformation began, the understanding of God, Jesus and the Church was reformed into many different viewpoints.

Some say that this is for the better and some for the worse. It is not a debate I intend to start here, and this is not a comment on the teachings of the Catholic Church. My point is that, much like the teachings of the Church at the time, our culture has us believing a number of things that we take for granted; we receive signposts on how to live in a similar way, we are told them. We are told how to be happy, the value of money and what success looks like.

When you read into what actually makes you happy and successful it will likely not match the messages from our culture, because our culture is influenced by those who wish to sell us things. They have an interest in the stories we are told.

So, ask why when our culture tells us to do something. Ask what the purpose is of living how we are expected to live and you will be on the road to a more enlightened way of living, and you will be happier and more successful.

How To Be Creative

Many people will say that they are just not creative, but I disagree. Everyone has been creative at least once in their lives. The difference with those who identify as creative is that they have chosen to be creative on purpose more than once, that’s it. Some people can generate more ideas than others, which is the basis for being creative for a lot of people.

To me, being creative is to take an idea and make something new out of it, it is simply to create. This seems like such a unique talent, because so many people have talked themselves out of being creative and therefore those that talk themselves into it stand out. That’s all it is.

Out of those that identify as creative there are some that will think they have to wait for the Muse to inspire them. Some will say that there is no Muse and you have to work through the bad work before you get to the good work. I kind of think both are true.

When I write poetry the poems seem to come almost fully formed and they flow out of me and if I don’t write them down they will be lost. This feels like the ancient idea of the Muse giving me inspiration, but I don’t wait for a Muse, because I don’t believe there is one. However, when ideas come I grab them and run with them, and appreciate the gift that they are.

When I write my blog, this is more of a practice. I have committed to writing a blog post every day. Some will be below average and some will light a spark that helps someone. I have chosen not to worry if the next blog post will be a hit, I just write and usually it is good, because I have gotten myself out of the way.

I think in order to be creative we need to firstly believe that we can be creative and then go and create, to have the confidence to give it a go again and again. With practice what you produce will get better and better until it is always good.

Sometimes it will feel like the Muse has given you a gem of an idea, but mostly having the practice of consistently creating, on whatever level or medium you choose will tip the balance towards being creatively successful.

Who Should We Listen To

Achieving Goals, Happiness, The Pathway To Fulfilment

When we only listen to the news or social media or friends that agree with us then we are in what is referred to as an echo chambers. However, echo chambers can be used to our benefit, but it depends on who we listen to and this depends on what kind of life we want.

If we listen to the religious teachings of Jesus, the Buddha or Mohammed our lives will likely be happier. If we listen to the advice from Tony Robbins, Seth Godin and Simon Sinek our lives will likely be more successful. If we know what kind of life we want and we wilfully enter the appropriate echo chamber we can tune out the cultural noise that is the opposite of what we want, then this will be help.

However, if we have right wing ideas and we listen to the ramblings of Donald Trump, then we will likely go down into an echo chamber of extremism and violence. Echo chambers have their place, as long as we also make ourselves aware of opposing views too. When we completely close off alternative view then we can become extreme and potentially an extremist.

Because It’s Free

Often in life things are offered to us for free. It might be a marketing strategy to give out cans of a new drink to get people to try it and hopefully to start buying it. It might be your friends offering you a bar of chocolate as a kind gesture. Whatever it is, what we often do is get excited and accept it without question, because it’s free.

If we had to pay for it, we would likely ask more questions about whether it was good for us and whether it would create any value for us. So, why is it different when something is free? I think there is a sense that we have somehow won something or we are grateful for the kindness of others.

When we are offered something for free we could ask, does it serve me? Would I normally pay for it? Does it align with my values? Does it align with my goals?

If you are offered a free chocolate bar and you have made the decision to stop eating chocolate, due to you trying to eat healthier, you shouldn’t take it, because it does not align with your goal and it does not serve you. This applies to anything we are offered for free.

Just because something is free does not mean that it has value.

The Value Of Remembrance

Happiness

Today is a very special day, it is Remembrance Sunday, where churches up and down the country in the UK, and elsewhere, have services that are conducted to remember the fallen from the two world wars and all other wars since.

WE REMEMBER THEM

War is an ugly business and many have died in the pursuit of winning a war, both soldiers and civilians. The purpose of each war is different, due to the different political landscapes and parties with vested interests, but the suffering is the same.

So much is invested in waging war, but little is invested in preventing and ending them it often seems. I don’t know the data on this, but I am confident it is lopsided toward the waging of war.

We have many divisions in our own lives too, small conflicts in comparison to wars between countries, but conflicts never the less. You could argue that even wars between nations began from decisions by individual people, so the best we can each do is to try and resolve our personal conflicts and use forgiveness and respect to move forward.

It is, however, important to remember the fallen soldiers and the civilians who have died in war. It is right to remember them and it helps us to seek peace in our own lives.

WE REMEMBER THEM

Working In Tandem

Achieving Goals, Leadership, Success

I was walking to work yesterday and an elderly couple passed me on a tandem bike and it occurred to me that this is a good metaphor for good leadership.

On a tandem bike the person at the front, the ‘Leader,’ directs the whole ‘team’ in a particular agreed direction and the person at the back, the ‘Worker,’ trusts that the direction they are going is right.

Also, both the Leader and the Worker put in the work to move the whole team forward. Each has their own role, the Leader’s job is to say I am going over there based on their vision and ask the Workers to follow them, but the Workers have to agree to get on the bike and put in the work to move everyone forward. In other words the Workers have to be enrolled in the direct the Leader wants to go.

The Leader has to have the trust of the Workers and, ideally, they should have values that are aligned with each other. We usually follow someone we trust and trust is based on shared values and strong relationships.

So, if you are a leader, make sure you have the back of everyone you lead and take the risk of leading; in other words you own failures and you give away praise to your team for the successes.

Get Out Of Your Own Way

The Resistance is something that effects us all and has been defined by Steven Pressfield as follows. If we try to do anything new, whether creative or not, there is a voice inside our heads that tries to talk us out of it. It says things like “who am I to do this? I don’t have the experience to pull it off” and “I’m too old” or “too young,” and so on.

If being creative or being successful was a film the Resistance would be the villain that needs to be overcome. We all have it and we can all overcome it by just starting and having the discipline to work on what we want to achieve, every day. It is the fear of judgement by others and of failure, this is the Resistance.

If we think of ourselves as amateurs then we will develop habits that allow the Resistance to stop us reaching our full potential. If we think of ourselves as professional then we build in the discipline and the habits to get the work done. When we go to our paid jobs we turn up and work regardless of how we feel, this is being professional.

“Amateurs tweet, Pros get to work.”
– Steven Pressfield

Remembering Peace

Happiness

Today we remember the fallen, those who died in war, the soldiers and the civilians. The red poppy is a symbol of remembrance and it is important to remember them.

War is a savage divider of humanity and I feel we should also strive to avoid future wars and to end current ones. The white poppy is, for me, a good counterpart to the red poppy.

According to the Peace Pledge Union “The white poppy stands for three things. They represent remembrance for all victims of war, a commitment to peace and a challenge to attempts to glamorise or celebrate war…

…We want to remember British military dead, but they are not the only victims of war. We also remember the many civilians who have died or suffered in war, both in the past and today, in Syria, Yemen and many other places around the world. Suffering does not stop at national borders, and nor should remembrance.” (Reference)

WE REMEMBER THEM

Not My Job

Organisation fall or stumble when individuals regularly say “It’s not my job to do that,” and then pass the buck onto someone else or some other department. Organisations thrive when each member of staff has autonomy to make decisions and take ownership of issues. The attitude becomes “that needs doing,” so they do it.

In life seeing things that need doing and getting on with doing them will mean you become a problem solver and a more productive person. Life becomes easier if your focus is on fixing things rather than avoiding things that need to be fixed, because issues are fixed before they become too big to handle. Life also becomes more fulfilling.

So, become a problem solver.

Divisions Create Conflict

There are many divisions in our lives and this week, more than most, we turn our attention to them. On Thursday it will be 11th November, the date the First World War ended and peace was declared. On Sunday churches around the country will be holding Remembrance Services.

World Wars, and armed conflict of any kind are horrific in their nature and take a toll on humanity. We also have smaller more personal conflicts in our own lives which are born out of division. Any time there is an Us and a Them there is a division and there is some form of conflict in every division.

During this time of Remembrance let us strive to heal the divisions in our lives by removing the need for a Them and including everyone as Us. When we see people as human first we are better able to use empathy and resolve issues.

When Nelson Mandela came out of prison where he spent 27 years of his life he realised that if he continued to hate those he incarcerated him he would never be free. He later led his country, as President, to forgive and heal after the atrocities of Apartheid. He was a remarkable man, but we can each try to heal the divisions in our lives and use examples like Nelson Mandela as a beacon of hope, hope that it can be done.

Create Value Not To Win

On 16th July 1945 the first nuclear bomb was tested and one of its creators looked on in horror, regretting what he had done. Robert Oppenheimer said later that a quote from the Bhagavad Gita ran through his mind while he witness the nuclear explosion before him, “Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.”

This quote is often misunderstood, but it highlights the way Robert Oppenheimer was feeling. Presumably, he had not imagined the power of the nuclear bomb and the destruction its use would unfurl on the world while creating it. But once something like this is done it is hard for it to be undone.

In 2006 Aza Raskin invented the infinite scroll that meant social media platforms could be used without hitting a ‘next’ button, new content simply appears when you scroll down. He later said “One of my lessons from infinite scroll: that optimizing something for ease-of-use does not mean best for the user or humanity.”

The amount of time that people now spend on social media, rather than doing other important things like interacting with the people they are with or doing the work they are avoiding has grown a lot due to this feature. Again, presumably Aza Raskin did not think about the impact this feature would have on the world.

It is not necessarily fair to compare these two inventions in terms of their impact, but the common denominator is that the inventors regret their inventions. The lesson, I think, is that the things we create have a direct impact on the world, so they should be there to serve humanity not to hinder it. When we create anything or do anything we must first ask ourselves if it will serve to bring people together and make the world better, and also if it aligns with our values.

When we create or act for a larger organisation we can often find ourselves serving a goal to beat the competition or to make money rather than making people’s live better. And as we see from the example of Aza Raskin, making things easier does not necessarily make things better.

Embrace Your Struggles

Happiness, Success, The Fullfilment Framework

In life we have many struggles, both small and large. There are also struggles that for some are small but for others the same struggle seems insurmountable. This is because, quite clearly, we all see things differently.

There is a way of seeing struggles that is helpful, and that is to see them as opportunities to find and develop strengths. For example, if you were struggling with confrontation you could see this as an opportunity to learn conversational skills that de-escalate situations and turn them around.

Within every struggle there is an opportunity, even if it is to build your resilience to the hardships of life; to bounce back and keep moving forward each and every time.

Suffering Is A Choice

As someone who suffers from chronic pain, I can tell you that our mood and the way we see the pain, makes it worse or better. The pain is still the same, but it feels less intense or more intense depending on our level of focus on it.

I have Fibromyalgia and it causes nerve pain in my joints and muscle across my whole body. Some days are better than others. I’m beginning to master the art of pushing the pain into the background and getting on with my day. It is possible, through practice, for you to do the same.

There is another type of suffering, the psychological kind. We often get attached to things, experiences and people and when we lose them we suffer. It is right to become attached to the people in our lives, but being attached to things like our mobile phone, our car, or our designer wardrobe, means that when they get a tiny amount of damage we suffer.

The none attachment that many eastern religions talk about does not mean that we must get rid of everything we own and live in a monastery, it means we have the things we need, but we avoid becoming too attached to them. It means we own these things and they don’t own us.

We can become attached to pain too, both the physical and the mental kinds. We avoid change and cling on to that which is predictable. Often this is the pain of a broken heart or the judgement of others or simply chronic pain. However, if we freed ourselves and stepped into the future without clinging to such things, then life will be brighter and better than ever before.

The Obstacle Is The Path

Today is referred to as Bonfire Night in the UK to remember the plot to blow up parliament by radical men who wanted to create change in their country. They saw the parliament as an obstacle to the country they wanted to have.

There is a Zen proverb which states “The obstacle is the path.” Guy Faulks and his men, who tried to blow up parliament, may have agreed with this proverb, but taking lives and destroying property is never the right path

What I think the proverb means is that when we face difficulties in our lives, such as writer’s block, overwhelming workloads, or social anxiety then we should lean into the difficulty. Freezing or running from our difficulties will only give them strength.

Make the decision to move towards difficulty and seek support from those around you, as well as upskilling yourself by reading books or accessing online resources. You will grow in confidence and the difficulty that was magnified by your mind becomes something you can break down into small chunks and you can find a way forward. Go, go and be your best self and you will get to the other side.

Means To An End

It is often said that a particular action or actions are a means to an end, usually meaning that the means are unpleasant or undesirable but they will lead to the end result that is wanted.

The problem with this well warn approach is that it is seen by many as an excuse for poor behaviour. There is also the assumption that the means by which we reach the end don’t really matter.

I would argue that the means are more important. We all need something to aim towards, otherwise we can go around in circles and not get anywhere. However, how we act will dictate all of our relationships. If we take take take from those around us, because it is a means to an end, then the relationships we have will break down and trust drops off.

What I am advocating for is what you might call morally right behaviour. It could also be called ‘being a nice person.’ Rather than seeing people as commodities to exploit, see them as human beings.

I am also advocating for you to do work that matters, work that lift others up and makes positive change in the world. It requires an infinite mindset not a finite one. It requires means with excellence.

Disagree More

Often we spend time with those we agree with on the majority of things we have an opinion on. This is good, in that we are spending our time with like minded people, but if we rarely disagree with anyone we can find it difficult to do so and maintain a positive relationship when a disagreement arises.

Social media also does not help with this for two reasons. Firstly, if we disagree with someone that we interact with on social media then we can find it easy to go on a full on rant, as we are not face to face with them, or we can ‘ghost’ them by unfriending and blocking them. An easy solution that does not resolve the disagreement.

Secondly, the content we see on social media is collated to show things similar to what we have liked, commented on and even spoken about within earshot of our device. Google is always listening. This is because the social media companies are selling our attention to the those who pay for it. Our attention is a commodity.

This creates a kind of echo chamber where we only hear our own views reflected back at us in the content we see. This removes the opportunity to develop the skills to disagree with someone respectfully, as many people spend more time online than they do interacting with people face to face.

My advice would be to spend more time interacting with people face to face and to practice disagreeing with them respectfully. Debate topics with people that you trust to be respectful back.

When the opportunity arises to give a different point of view, do it, because what you have to say may well be valuable. We learn more from each other through debate than we do through simply agreeing to avoid conflict. It is not an easy skill to master, but an essential skill to be successful in life.

Don’t Look For A Mentor

Achieving Goals, Happiness, Success

This is something that I picked up from Seth Godin. I have been watching a lot of interviews with him on YouTube and there are many wise insights to be had, and this is just one of them.

A lot of performance coaches and motivational speakers will tell you to go and find a mentor who is doing what you want to do and ask them to mentor you. The point Seth Godin has is that the number of people who could be mentors is small and the number of people who are looking for a mentor is high, so the likelihood of getting a mentor to support you is really low.

It is better to find Heroes. Find someone who is doing what you want to do and use the internet to find out what they had to do to get to where they are and reverse engineer your own success.

It is easier to find a ‘hero,’ or more than one, and the insights that their journey and daily practice can provide are freely available, if you do the research. This is a better approach because it has better odds of succeeding and you can do it today.

Sometimes people will use the excuse of not being able to find a mentor to let themselves off the hook, so they don’t have to do the demanding and scary work of putting themselves and their work out there into the world. Be brave, find a hero and do the work you need to do to move forward.

Being Together

Happiness, The Pathway To Fulfilment

Yesterday we went to a Halloween party as a family. The children played musical statues and musical chairs and everyone ate well, danced and had a great time. It was good to be with other people.

There is something special about coming together for a shared celebration and just having a good time. This is something that left a hole in our lives when such things were banned during the several pandemic lockdowns over last year and this year.

We thrive when we are part of a ‘tribe’ and we celebrate together. The shared experience solidifies relationships and helps us to feel as if we belong. To be happy, successful and ultimately fulfilled in life we need to belong and spend time with those in our tribe, our community.

Spending Time

In the UK between the last Sunday in March and the last Sunday in October Greenwich Mean Time goes forward one hour to take advantage of there being more light in the evening than in the morning during the Summer. Which means the clocks went back one hour today. The aim is to give the like of farmers more time to do their work during the Summer.

This moving of time and the hours of the day are agreed upon to allow us to all work to the same timescale. It is a practical use of the time that we have each day, by dividing it into portions that can be allocated and measured. This is without getting into the physics of relative Spacetime.

This brings up the point of how we allocate our time during each day. Many of us will spend a lot of our time on social media or watchng TV or a streaming service like Netflix, which could be seen as a good use of our time or not. A better question would be, is the quality of how we spend time good?

If you spend most of a weekend binge watching a series on Netflix the hours spent on that is high in quantity but I would argue that it is low in quality. Spending the weekend with friends, you could argue, is higher in quality. It depends on what you value, which is different for each of us.

Doing an audit of how we spend our time and thinking about the benefits of each thing we do can mean we move the arch of our lives towards a more meaningful existence.

Communicating With Others

Happiness, The Pathway To Fulfilment

Recently, Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp stopped working and for many their world suddenly stopped, as they are all owned and operated by Facebook. To be fair it was a shock.

We think of the availability of these apps as a certainty, as if they will always be there, like the air or the sky, but they are just mobile and computer applications and technology does not always work.

There is an argument that we crave other people ‘liking’ or ‘sharing’ one of our posts or someone ‘follows’ us, as if our self worth is tied to it. I think it has more to do with the hit of dopamine we get when we get acknowledgement via a like, share or follow, and how addictive this is.

Many of us use these apps to communicate with others, but often we use social media apps as entertainment or to just sustain our attention, so we can switch off and not have to think.

The problem is that when we get absorbed into the infinite scroll we check out of reality for a while. All sorts could be going on around us but we would have no idea. This is the power of social media.

Communicating with each other is supposed to he done face to face with eye contact and hand shakes and pats on the back. When we spend a lot of time with our eyes down and our attention on a mobile phone we avoid the opportunities to develop the skill of socialising. The ability to make friends and influence people is a skill that is becoming more scarce due to the lack of practice.

I saw the Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp outage as a blessing to unplug and socialise the old fashioned way. It also highlighted our dependency on technology and social media in particular. We need to rebalance ourselves and reduce screen time and increase actual facetime.

Building Trust

Happiness, Leadership, Success, The Pathway To Fulfilment

Technology is supposed to make our lives easier, and often it does. The difficulty comes when technology promises to make your life easier and then it does not deliver. This is kills trust.

I have a pre-payment electicity meter, which is a Smart Meter that is not so smart. I can top it up easily enough on the company’s website using my debit card and the promise is that it will reflect on my Smart Meter in my home within 60 minutes. It never does.

When you search for guidance on how to top up the meter manually, you find a video on the company’s website where a man gives instructions on how to manually top up the meter by entering a twenty digit number, one digit at a time.

Each number requires you to press the button repeatedly; eight times for a number seven and once for a zero, twenty times. The man even suggests, in his mannerisms and words, that this is a common problem.

The point I am making is not to have a moan about this poor service. My point is that the company appears to find it easier, and possibly cheaper, to make a video explaining how to manually top up the meter rather than fixing the problem to allow the meters to top up automatically once they are topped up online. This may benefit the company in the short term but trust is lost with their customers, which may be more costly in the long term.

This is a business relationship between a business and a customer, but the same can be said for personal relationships. A quick fix in the short term will not build a strong relationship. For example, you cannot buy trust, you must trust others and act in ways that allow others to trust you, this takes time and consistency.

As another example, if you said that you gave £10 to a homeless person this morning you might get a vague well done. If you said that you gave up your weekend to help paint a community centre then this will be much more respected. The point is that time spent helping others has more meaning and value than money spent, which is quickly done.

The very definition of money is that you are giving an IOU for someone else to provide goods and service in the future, it states this clearly on all bank notes. In effect you are passing the buck.

The fact that it takes time and energy to build trust is true in all human relationships.

The Power Of Asking

There is a saying, “If you do not ask you will never know.” This, you might say, is old school wisdom, but it is still wisdom.

Yesterday I was at work in a call centre and in the canteen area a lady was stocking up the vending machine. I decided to politely ask why they were not stocking the Hummus crisps and only had the standard potato crisps and chocolate options. They used to stock them but stopped. I asked as potato and chocolate unfortunately do not agree with me, but that is a tale for another time.

The lady said she would arrange to have some sent over from a larger call centre near by to stock the vending machine where I work. I thanked her and went on with my day. This story is not remarkable, but it got me thinking about the power of asking. If you are polite and clear with what you ask for, the person you are asking it from are more likely to say yes, if they can.

This applies in many areas of our lives where we are too scared to ask because of the dreaded word “No.” The world will not end if someone says no, it is simply not an option to get what you wanted from that person, and now you know. You could ask someone else or ask for something else, depending on what you need. It is not necessarily the end.

So, just ask, you never know what blessings you might receive.

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