I listened to Chase Jarvis interview Lewis Howes this week, where he recommends writing a list of your fears as a way to analyse – and potentially overcome – them. I decided to give it a go … My list included everything from my fears of drowning and dancing in public (in private is a different matter…), through to how I feel about ‘success’ and ‘failure’, and appearing ‘weak’ in front of other people. (To
Confidence … something that many of us feel we could do with more of. I’m not talking about brashness here – being loud and ‘confident’ in social situations. I’m not talking about getting your own way because you express your views eloquently and forcefully. I’m talking about the more important type of confidence. The quiet, reassuring belief in yourself that yes, reduces nerves in social situations, and yes, makes you a more effective communicator …
There’s a 1916 poem by Ella Wheeler Wilcox that contains the lines: One ship sails East,And another West,By the self-same winds that blow,‘Tis the set of the sailsAnd not the gales,That tells the way we go. The idea that it is not the direction of the wind, but the set of our sails that determines our destination on the has been popularised in recent years by Jim Rohn. The wind can be blowing favourably, in
In no particular order, my top ten reads from 2018 are: “Tao Te Ching” by Lao Tzu and Ursula Le Guin Ursula Le Guin is one of my absolute favourite writers, and she died in January 2018, so reading her interpretation of this classic made perfect sense to me. It’s important to note this isn’t a ‘translation’, per se. Le Guin’s self-stated task was to capture the original meaning, but also the original poetry of
It’s Christmas, and as we all know, one good way to destroy the happy family atmosphere is with a friendly game of Monopoly! It’s a game with a long history, but what I hadn’t realised until recently was that the original game was designed to warn players about the dangers of a monopoly. Unfortunately, over time the game changed into the ‘winner takes all’ format that we now know. Incredibly, the game’s manufacturers are aware
I seem to have been getting the same message from a few different places this week! I’ve been reading ‘The One Thing’, a practical book about getting things done by focusing on one single task at a time. In order to work out which task we should be doing, authors Gary Keller and Jay Papasan suggest that we need to start by thinking big – good advice that you will hear in virtually every goal
A year ago, I was in South Africa with 15 amazing people working on a project to provide a drop-in centre for vulnerable children in a remote part of the country. It was a life-changing trip, in many, many ways, and I obviously have hundreds of unforgettable memories as a result. One of the first things we did after arriving in Johannesburg was to take a tour of the city, which included a visit to
There is an old Zulu legend about a traveller who gets a thorn stuck in his foot. The wise man plucks it out – the fool leaves it there as a reminder of his journey. A recent car journey made me think of the story again. The driver of our car was complaining that the person behind was tailgating. Even though there were numerous opportunities to pull over and let the other vehicle pass, our
“Integrity is doing the right thing, even when no one is looking.” CS Lewis This quote is one of my favourites, and one that I thought I was trying to live by. However, I’ve been reading the excellent ‘Legacy’ this week, which is a book about what we can all learn from the New Zealand All Blacks. It’s a really good read, with plenty of practical advice, and an inspiring section about what integrity means
Last weekend in Berlin, Eliud Kipchoge set a new world record for the marathon of 2:01:39. He averaged 4:38 per mile, and took an astonishing 78 seconds off the previous record. Kipchoge has trained for years in order to set that world record. For decades he has monitored his diet and sleeping habits, has run hundreds of miles a week and spent countless hours in the gym, all to get his body into the best
Weekly [digital] email to help navigate the [analogue] world …
Weekly [digital] email to help navigate the [analogue] world …
