Tag: Live The Fulfilled Life

How To Be Creative

Achieving Goals, Success

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

Happiness, Success

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

Achieving Goals, Happiness, The Pathway To Fulfilment

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

Happiness, Success

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

Happiness, Success

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

Happiness, Success, The Pathway To Fulfilment

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

Happiness, Success, The Pathway To Fulfilment

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 Pathway To Fulfilment

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

Happiness, Success, The Fullfilment Framework

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

Happiness, Success, The Pathway To Fulfilment

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

Happiness, Success, The Pathway To Fulfilment

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

Happiness, Success

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, Success, 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

Happiness, The Pathway To Fulfilment

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

Happiness, Success

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.

Back To The Office

Happiness, Success

Many of us have been working from home over the last 18 months or so while we found a way through this pandemic. We are still in the midst of the pandemic, but it feels like we are closer to being free from it than we are in the middle of it. Over the past couple of months many of us who were office based before the pandemic are returning to the office, even if it is as part of a hybrid way of working, which means we are still working from home some of the time.

I work in a call centre and at my place of work we are using the hybrid model and yesterday was a day when we were all in the office and it felt claustrophobic and as if my senses were on overload. Going from working in a room on my own at home to being surrounded be people talking to customers and with each other felt like too much.

At the end of the day I wanted to relax and switch off, so I watched a film. The film I chose was the Superman film Man Of Steel. In this film it shows the Superman to be as a boy in school dealing with his hyper sensitive senses, seeing his teacher with x-ray vision, hearing talking and sirens in the distance, hearing the whispers of his class mates, etc. It got so much he ran and hid in a store room.

His solution was to focus on his mother’s voice, when she came to help him. He went on to practice and learn to manage and then master what he focused on. To me, even though it was just a film, to me this was a metaphor for how we can get used to being back in the office. It was initially strange to work from home and now it feels strange to be back in the office.

In the end we have an amazing capability to adjust and adapt, the human body is an adapting machine and this new way of working will become normalised. Think of it as an opportunity to develop your ability to adapt and still be effective at your job, and whatever else you put your mind too.

Re-Centre Yourself

Achieving Goals, Happiness, Success, The Pathway To Fulfilment

Often in life we feel stressed or confused or just out of our comfort zone. In these moments we need to recentre ourselves.

In life we are on one long journey or many short journeys, depending on how you want to think about it. When we get into a primal state of stress or anxiety we need to stop, re-centre ourselves and look at what is ahead of us to decide our next step.

Re-Centre

If you use Google Maps on a mobile phone there is a feature that allows you to tap a symbol on the screen and the app uses the GPS on your mobile phone to bring the map to your exact location. Stopping and re-centring is very much like this, it is being mindful of your present, and moving away from thoughts about what has happened and what may happen.

We live most of our lives thinking about either the past or the future, and these thoughts are more often negative rather than positive. Being mindful and present will solve a lot of our problems and will usually reduce our anxiety.

Opt Out Of Negativity

Google Maps also has a feature where you can choose to avoid motorways or toll road, etc. In life we can also choose what we focus on. We can choose to begin with a new more positive belief about our capabilities or how the world works and opt out of the negative thinking. We can choose to believe that the universe is working for us rather than against us. These beliefs can fundamentally change our world view.

Change Your Beliefs

I heard an example recently of a successful entrepreneur that was out with some movers and shakers and felt that they didn’t belong there. This man was a believer in God and his life coach asked him why God would put him in the wrong place on a Friday night. This man suddenly realised that, to him, this would mean that he belongs everywhere he is. This is a fundamental shift in his world view. He changed a limiting belief to an empowering belief, because he realised that the limiting belief was untrue, more importantly he realised that the opposite was true.

It is almost always the case that our limiting beliefs are untrue. If we look at them and consider what the opposite belief would be and look for evidence of this belief, then we empower ourselves to move forward with confidence.

Don’t Quit, Adjust

Achieving Goals, Happiness, Success, The Pathway To Fulfilment

When a plane sets off from an airport and the wind starts to push it off course the pilot doesn’t turn the plane around and land, so they can try it again. They adjust their altitude and direction to bring the plane back on course. Often in life we quit new ventures before we get very far because we have come across adversity. Here are some of the reasons why and how to keep moving forward.

Perfectionism

Often we feel that new ventures need to be perfect before we begin. Whatever it is that you want to do, the conditions will never be perfect. Sometimes the conditions are a serious hindrance and waiting is the right thing to do, but most of the time the conditions are fair but not ideal.

Hiding behind wanting things to be perfect is a way of avoiding getting started, because we fear failure. The problem is that every success requires failure, and if we build it into our process and we learn from it, failure can be the reason we succeed. So, whatever it is just start, take the plane into the sky and start your journey.

Fixed Mindset

When we come up against adversity, those with a fixed mindset will either keep pushing forward until they crash and burn or they just quit. A fixed mindset is built around believing that you are clever or beautiful or creative or anything permanent. A growth mindset is built around believing that you are hard working or a good problem solver. A growth mindset looks at a problem as an opportunity, a fixed mindset sees a problem as a barrier.

In basketball, when coming up to the basket, defenders will inevitably try to stop you, but once a player has placed both hands on the ball they have to shoot or pass. If a shot is not possible they will pivot, keeping one foot still, and look for another way to get the ball into the basket, they look for and find an opening to another player. When life throws up barriers, see them as an opportunity to find another way and pivot.

Have A Goal

An example that Simon Sinek gave illustrates this well. If you were asked to walk in a straight line and after a few steps I put a chair in front of you then you would likely stop in your tracks. However, if I asked you to walk to the corner of the room and after a few step I put a chair in front of you then you would likely walk around the chair and keep going.

The point is that when we have a clear goal the method we use to get there can be flexible and adversity causes us to rethink our strategy rather than stopping all together. The strategy we use should never be fixed, it should be flexible, and the goal should be fixed.

Integrity Matters

Happiness, Success

There are two types of integrity. The first means that you do what you say you will do, to yourself and to others. This could be seen as just being reliable, but if it is done as a matter of principle, then, for me, it falls into integrity, rather than reliability.

The second is living by your values and beliefs. This is being kind, even to those who treat you badly. It is finishing what you started, because you always do. It is a path less travelled, but an honourable path to walk down. In a social media filtered, fake it til you make it culture, living by your values and beliefs is unusual, but essential.

Be Curious

Success, The Pathway To Fulfilment

George de Mestral, a Swiss engineer, was out hunting in the Jura mountains in the 1940s and he wondered why cockle-burs were sticking to his trousers and his dogs fur. He became curious and took one home to look at under a microscope. He discovered that the cockle-burs had tiny hooks that grabbed hold of the loops in the fabric of his trousers.

He had a light bulb moment and Velcro was the invention that followed. Velcro is taken for granted these days and is used in clothing, bags, tents, travel cots, and the list goes on. All because a man was curious. He could have been angry or frustrated or just found it funny and left it there. When we have a curious mind we make connections, we make inventions and we change the world.

Collaborating With Colleagues

Achieving Goals, Leadership, Success, The Pathway To Fulfilment

If you work in a role that means you attend meetings, then there may be times when you lead a project or need to get colleagues on board. Take the example of starting a project. There will be a temptation to decide how it will work, what the vision is for the project and who will take on which role, etc. Sometimes it is your role to decide this. Sometimes it is not. However, this advice will work either way. It may also be useful if you are pitching an idea to colleagues too.

Plan Together

A good way to get your colleagues invested in the project is to involve them in the planning of it from the very start. Some things will be decided by circumstances outside the project, but there will be things that can be discussed and planned together.

Highlight Strengths

Many of your colleagues will have skills and experience that will benefit the project. Highlighting these strengths will make your colleagues feel respected and valued. You could start a Skills Bank where colleagues share their skills and experience and it all get collated and shared amongst the team, so each will know who to go to for specific advice. This could simply be a Word document made available on a shared drive, by email or uploaded to Microsoft Teams.

Listen Before You Speak

If you explain the project and tell everyone what you think, your colleagues will be less likely to contribute. However, if you hold off from giving your opinion and wait to hear everyone else, then they will feel heard and you get the benefit of their opinion before you give yours.

Empowering Yourself

Happiness, Success, The Pathway To Fulfilment

The idea of karma is something that often divides people, though many in the western world don’t spend the time to consider its implications, as they are more familiar with the monotheistic religions. I personally do believe in karma and I was thinking about it recently and I had a couple of insights that are relevant for everybody.

My understanding of karma is twofold, my present circumstances are a result of my past actions and my response to my current circumstances will result in my future circumstances.

If you find yourself in a good situation, you could think to yourself ‘I earned this.’ If you find yourself in a bad situation, you could think to yourself ‘I earned this.’ Owning your current situation based on your past actions is powerful. Thinking this way about bad situations could be seen as a negative thinking pattern, but not if you apply the second insight.

After considering your current situation, ask yourself ‘what do I do now to make things better?’ This will mean that you respond to the situation rather than reacting to it. You are asking yourself to put together a plan of action, you are empowering yourself to own whatever situation you find yourself in and move forward. This opportunity is always available, no matter what your present circumstances are.

Finding Your Passion

Happiness, Success, The Pathway To Fulfilment

There is a lot of talk, particularly from motivational coaches, around finding your passion. Some will give the advice that you should do what you love. This is advice I am inclined to disagree with because there is a danger that you will turn what you love into work that you hate to do. There are two other ways to think about this.

Find Your Why

Simon Sinek explained this very well in his book Start With Why. The idea is that once you have figured out the ‘Why’ behind all that you do, the DNA of your decision making and how you treat others, then you can apply this to ‘How’ you live or work and ‘What’ you do, based on your ‘Why.’ This will allow you to be more passionate about what you do because it will be aligned with who you are.

Be Passionate About What You Do

Seth Godin suggests that if we choose to be passionate about the work we are already doing we are empowered by the act of choosing and it is better than expecting the work we do to give us passion. We will be doing what we choose to do, not what we have to do. The narrative changes.

We can then put our energy into making a difference and creating things that were not there before we decided to do them, and we will also be more fulfilled than we would by trying to do what we love.

I feel that both of these approaches are valid and some mixture of the two will certainly be better than doing what you love.

Be A Hero Not A Superhero

Happiness, Success

I came across this note I made in my journal some time ago and felt it may resonate with some of you.

I was having a dream that felt like it was happening, but I also knew it was a dream. I was part of a team of superheroes trying to stop bad guys doing something bad, I can’t remember what. I clearly remember a lady I used to work with, who has just had her second child with her husband, appearing in a corridor as I was about to go into ‘battle’.

She said “do you have any milk I could borrow.” I stopped and calmly said, “of course, it’s in the fridge down the corridor on the right.” I then joined the other superheroes to save the world or something. The revelation for me is that when I calmly gave my previous colleague what they needed, this was me being who I am, someone who helps others, not a superhero. This is enough for me.

Also, to help others in simple ways can sometimes make us a hero without intending to be one.