I was about twenty five when that happened I think; full of passion. I had a dream of how I wanted to live and it wasn’t happening, at all. Actually my life was going backwards and at pace. I had no money, no clients, my friendship circle was getting smaller and any strategy I had to remedy the situation was failing.
My adrenals are still pumping. My day has been one of cutting crisis off at the pass, dealing with difficult people and getting nervous about things I may have missed or forgotten. There is now no risk of any significance yet my adrenalin still has me wired. Scared. Anxious.
What am I scared of? What is this anxiety? Why can’t I switch off and enjoy just being happy?
I try to rationalize it away yet something inside of me, something that should not be ignored, says I am not safe. That at any second this magic moment will be shattered by something unpleasant. I want to switch the angst off but maybe this angst is sending me a message I need to pay attention to. So I keep listening for the message. Read More
Somehow, each year I start off with the best intention but as the year continues my life and diary seems to get more and more complicated.
There are the things that I want to do/create/experience, yet at the end of each day or even month I rarely feel closer to those things. Not as much as I would like anyway.
So during the end of the year Christmas break I mentally log where my time went to understand what the hell has been slowing down my progress? Read More
Recognising when to be brave
My favourite scene in a movie is the moment when a key character realises they can be the hero.
When Adrian finally tells Rocky to ‘win!’. When Frances finally commits to the bloody lift in Dirty Dancing. When Dumbo finally realises he doesn’t need the feather! And in The Blindside when Michael finally uses his strength.
These stir emotions in all of us because deep in side we all hope we are made from similar stuff, that when our moment comes, we will be able to step up to the plate. And in doing so we might inspire and serve those we love. We want the exhilaration of doing something brave and hard.
How To Not Be Crap At Public Speaking
Recently I watched a friend do a presentation that turned into a car crash! He is world class in his field but he lost the audience, big time. People were too polite to leave but the tension in the air was awkward and not a single person in the room had any interest in his message.
Every joke was met with silence. It was painful!
He came to me afterwards and with raised eyebrows that acknowledged he stuffed it. He was no fool. He knew he had bombed. “Where did it go wrong? I must have missed something? What happened?” he asked me.
I probably didn’t realize how much I knew about presenting until I found myself rattling off my observations.
Getting Your Time (Life) Back
When you get your time back you get your life back.
Of course with the responsibilities of kids, businesses, families and similar, it is likely you may only be able to scrape together small pockets of time at first… but this is what to do with those pockets to get more time back:
Your diary is your life’s mirror.
If you want to know how your life is tracking, look at your diary. Your diary is an exact reflection of your life and the decisions you make to create it.
Think about your week ahead. That is not your ‘schedule’ or your ‘week’ or ‘what you have on’. That is your life!
And it is worth retracing your steps to assess what decisions you made that created it?
I don’t recall what triggered it, but I was flat. It was one of those tough patches in life. A time of being super introspective. In hindsight I think I had been comparing myself to bigger fish in my sea. Regularly hanging out with exceptionally talented people had taken its toll. It isn’t always good for your self esteem to be around so many freak talents. I was hurting. “Had I achieved anything in my life at all?” Read More