I like rules.
A good rule is easy to follow.
A bad rule is an opportunity for change.
A good rule means we don’t have to think.
A bad rule gives us something to think about.
Some rules are meant to be broken, but there are plenty of ones worth following too.
Many rules were set by others, but maybe the best rules are the ones we set for ourselves…
We all have fears that stop us from moving forward - mine, especially when it comes to my business, are a fear that I’m not good enough, fear of failure, and ironically, fear of success - and I think we are all searching for a magic bullet to eradicate our fears once and for all.
But maybe there is no ‘one big cure’. Maybe it’s just a daily battle with those fears using a few tools that help, like learning from the past, journaling, talking to someone we trust, or developing our missing skills.
A daily battle sounds hard, and maybe it is, but the benefit of a daily battle is that if we don’t win today, there’s always another chance to win tomorrow…
A journal is a safe place where we can explore the ideas that could change our life. A place where the questions we ask are as important as the answers we give. It is a place where we cannot hide, where the answers we give must be true. It is a place where the world can be reduced to a more manageable size, small enough to examine, but big enough to hold everything that we are. It is a place that we can practice being who we really want to be, without fear of failure, judgement or harm. It is a place where we can remember the past, express our gratitude for the present and plan for the future.
It is a world of our own.
When we create a plan for the future, we hope that our life will change to match that plan.
Maybe a better outcome might be that our plan and our life change towards each other - each evolving based on learnings and experiences drawn from the other.
So if life isn’t ‘going to plan’ right now, maybe it’s just that the plan needs to change based on what’s actually happening in our lives…
To make a change :
1. Review where you are
2. Decide what you want to change
3. Make a plan to change it
4. Implement the plan, one step at a time.
Simple.*
* But not easy. Then again, nothing worth having ever is…
When we’re busy rushing from here to there with a To Do list as long as our arm, having the time to do nothing looks like the most attractive thing in the world - time to relax, just what we need to recharge the batteries and reset our priorities.
But after a while, the novelty fades, and before long we’re looking back at those days of doing nothing and realising that we’ve done nothing with them.
It’s great to do nothing, but only for as long as we’re happy that nothing valuable is getting done…
Since starting my business, I’ve had to get pretty good at solving problems. To be fair, many of the problems were of my own making - misunderstandings, lack of knowledge and/or experience, not fully realising the implications, etc - and some were completely out of my control. But I solved them, or came up with a work around that made the original problem irrelevant.
The key, I have learned, is to begin with the belief that every problem has a solution - it might not be clear, it might not be simple, and it might involve skills that we don’t have yet, but know that we can solve any problem, because, after all, we’ve been solving them our whole lives…
We’re going to have bad days.
We’re probably going to have a bad week here and there.
We might even have a rubbish few months from time to time.
But the thing is, to know that a time is ‘bad’, we must have experienced times that are ‘good’, and therefore admit that bad times always have to end at some point.
This may not help if today is one of those days, but it does mean that tomorrow has every chance of being the day that the good times begin again…
Quiet Determination.
Sometimes it’s all we have.
Which is good.
Because sometimes it’s all that we need…
What’s your intention for this coming week ?
Is it to survive, or to thrive ?
Is it to do more of the same, or do something more ?
Have you planned how you’ll grow, or will you go with the flow ?
When next weekend comes, will you be able to share what you achieved, or just explain what happened ?
We can’t stop the next seven days from passing, but we can decide how we want the next seven days to pass…
According to the Stoics, there are three reasons to ‘thoughtfully contemplate the bad things that can happen’.
The first is to develop strategies to prevent those things from happening.
The second is to minimise the results of any bad things that do sneak through - Seneca said “he robs present ills of their power who has perceived their coming beforehand”.
But the third reason is perhaps the most important - to prevent us from taking for granted what we already have.
It’s okay to worry about what might be coming, so long as we make sure we finish with love, joy and gratitude for everything that we already have…
I can’t do that.
I can’t do that yet.
The three-letter difference between a fixed and a growth mindset.
Six points in Scrabble that could multiply your life’s work.
A moment’s pause that could change the next decade.
Yet.
Go on, try it out for size…
If you suddenly found yourself with a free day, what would you do with it?
Would you ‘chill’ ?
Would you catch up on chores ?
Would you get a head start on next week ?
Or would you take a little time to grow ?
To read ?
To write ?
To plan ?
To listen ?
To think ?
And what do you need to do today to make tomorrow that free day…?
OK. So that big challenge in front of us is unlikely to be a journey filled with kittens and marshmallows, but it’s probably not going to be full of sharks and fire pits either.
Most challenges turn out to be a lot easier than we originally thought - but the only way we ever find that out is by rolling up our sleeves and making a start…
We might plan to do 5 important things today, and then something comes up - something urgent and important as Stephen Covey might define it - and suddenly we only have time to get 1 thing done.
And that’s fine because those ‘somethings’ are not the problem.
It’s the time spent on the things that don’t need to be done that kill the day, the ‘nothing’ tasks, the 2 minute jobs that take waaay longer than 2 minutes, and the ‘I’ll just quickly…’ tasks that are anything but quick.
No, something coming up isn’t the problem. Nothing coming up is…
There are times when we lose our mojo.
There are times when big goals are too hard.
There are times when we’re just not feeling it.
There are times when vision isn’t enough.
There are times when ’meh…’ just sums it all up.
These are the times to make a list and then just start at the top. It may not bring instant happiness, but at least we’ll get some stuff done while we wait for our mojo to invariably return…
[Without a grand goal in living]…there is a danger that you will mislive - that despite all your activity, despite all the pleasant diversions you might have enjoyed while alive, you will end up living a bad life. There is, in other words, a danger that when you are on your deathbed, you will look back and realise that you wasted your one chance at living. Instead of spending your life pursuing something genuinely valuable, you squandered it because you allowed yourself to be distracted by the various baubles life has to offer.” - William Irvine
Damn.
I’ll just leave that there, while I go off for a nice long walk to reflect on my own grand goal…
I love the Flywheel idea developed by Jim Collins as a way to explain how and why some businesses become great. (Very) simply, someone starts trying to get the huge, heavy, flywheel of their idea to turn. It takes great effort to even get it to move, and then long, sustained, hard effort to keep it turning, often with little visible progress. But eventually, that big heavy flywheel starts to build its own momentum, needing much less effort to keep it turning, or yielding greater and greater results from that same hard effort….
A great way to build a business.
And a great way to understand why that daily habit we could build will be worth all the effort in the end…
Time goes fast unless we slow down.
Time can be made but not bought.
Time shows us how far we’ve come.
Time, once spent, is gone for ever.
Time is made of moments.
Time is short.
Time heals.
Time…
It’s almost impossible to get lost on the traditional path of school, career and nuclear family - there are signposts (and previous travellers to ask for directions) everywhere.
It is possible to get lost when we make our own path - lots of forks in the road and interesting diversions, but since it’s our path, it’s up to us to decide which way we to go.
But if we’re on the traditional path and it just doesn’t feel right, well that’s something a bit different - that suggests we’re trying to go the way we think we should be going, but it’s not the way we really want to go.
To be clear, no one path is better than another, but whichever one we take, we need to know it’s really the right one for us…
The DECISION to make a change happens in a moment.
It’s the PROCESS of changing that takes time.
In the real world most change takes time, effort, and a few up and downs along the way, so we shouldn’t beat ourselves up if our change is harder or taking longer than we hoped. It was probably never going to be easy, but then again, anything that’s really worth it rarely is….
“The important thing is not what one is born with, but what use one makes of that equipment.” - Alfred Adler
Our past doesn’t define us, it merely reminds us where we’ve been.
Everyone can change.
Everyone can grow.
If we like where we are now, that’s great, but if we don’t, or we want to go even further, then know that we were all born with the equipment to make that change…
I like rules.
I like the way that a rule I believe in makes following it simple, negating the hours of thought, justification and analysis that would otherwise take place.
That doesn’t mean that I don’t stretch or break the rules from time to time, but there has to be a good reason, and a belief that doing so will make things better (which will lead to better rules).
Rules make things simple, and the simpler things are, the better they become…
What if we’re focusing on the wrong thing ?
What if the work we’re doing isn’t the work we should be doing ?
What if we’re meant for something else ?
Something more ?
Something different ?
Or what if that’s the voice of fear and resistance, and it’s scared that we’re already doing what we should be doing, and that as we keep doing it, we’ll start ignoring that voice once and for all…
I used to find it hard to read personal development books - I found them difficult and complex, and I rarely made it through the first few pages. I used to joke that I had the world’s biggest library of half-read books.
Now I love reading them. I love understanding and reflecting on their ideas, and taking those ideas and combining them with what I already know to create my own personal insights.
And the thing that got me from where I was to where I am was simply habit - a habit of reading for 30 minutes, with a coffee, just after I had meditated, and before I began the rest of my day.
It turns out that it wasn’t the reading that was hard, it was just the way I was trying to read…
Things tend to happen by default or through intention.
Positive habits build through intention.
Bad habits happen by default.
Opportunities are taken through intention.
Opportunities are missed by default.
Success happens through intention.
Underachievement comes by default.
Skill builds through intention.
Talent fades by default.
Intention or default. Which will it be…?
Finding our purpose can be difficult . With so many options to choose from - even if it doesn’t always feel like it - it can be hard to be clear on where we want to go and how we want to get there.
One way to make the choice easier is to start by being clear on what we DON’T want to do. Some of the big decisions are easy (e.g. I don’t ever want to work in the corporate world again), and some are more difficult, especially when there’s a choice involved, but by eliminating what we don’t want, we can start building a picture of what we do…
If you had started doing anything two weeks ago, by today you would have been two weeks better at it.” - John Mayer
There are lots of quotes on this theme, including one of my all-time favourites, “The best time to plant a tree is 20 years ago. The second best time is now” and they all share the same message - just get started today.
20 minutes of learning, making the healthier choice, practicing the new skill - whatever we choose, we will be better at it tomorrow than we are today, even if that difference is too small to see with the naked eye.
Change comes one day at a time. But only once we start…
A while ago I was searching for ‘inspiring quotes’, and I came across a page entitled ’10 Inspiring Quotes from Leading Mortgage Experts’, and I’ll be honest, it wasn’t the first group that popped into my head as a source of inspiration….
But it reminded me of three important ideas :
1. Inspiration can come from the unlikeliest of sources.
2. Everyone’s words have value to someone.
3. The narrowest niche, when multiplied by the power of the Internet, can reach across the planet.
It turns out those leading mortgage experts did inspire the thoughts of at least one person. Me…
Back in my corporate days, I managed my life through my work inbox and calendar - everything went in there (including non-work stuff), and it worked pretty well. But the day I left I lost access to it all - all those appointments, tasks and memories, lost forever in a cancelled account on a deleted hard drive.
These days I try to keep my most important stuff on paper. Sure there are gaps, and at times it’s just a collection of pages on a pile or in a draw, but most of it’s there, ready for me to call on if needed…
Some memories are really important, but even the not very important ones are still too important to rely on someone else keeping them safe…