Love Me Do

Yes, it's so overwhelmingly commericialised and syrupy and forced. Yes, people shouldn't need one special day in the year to tell their better half how much they care. Yes, it gives restaurants a good excuse to unnecessarily ramp up their prices for what is often a no better, no worse 'special' meal.

But stripping away all of that, any occasion in our calendar that gets people to at least think and act a bit more positively towards another individual is a good thing.

Happy Belated Valentines Day.

Like A Prayer

At work the other morning I walked past a woman sitting at her desk with her eyes closed. I was a bit curious but just went on my way. A little later, I was doing another lap around the office on the way to the water cooler and there she was again, this time steely-eyed staring at her computer screen.

Curiosity got the better of me and I just had to ask about what I saw earlier. She had been praying. I guess I kind of assumed that might have been the case or possibly meditating. She didn't look like a sleeper to me, anyway. Still, it did get me thinking about stopping, focusing and aligning when the time is right for you - more than just at the beginning or end of the day. Yeah, I like the idea of taking time out on my terms.

The Winner Takes It All

Djokovic. Nadal. Brilliant. Just watching the Australian Open Final got me wishing I'd paid a little more attention in my tennis lessons. Could I have been a contender? No, not a chance. There's no way in hell that my dainty sliced backhand would have got anywhere near the kind of standard these very special athletes have achieved.

Still, there are times I do wonder how good I could have got (or could still get) in certain endeavours - football, darts, tiddly winks and so on. World class? Probably not. But in a way it's probably not the point. It's about beating the competition - and, for me, that "competition" equates to an earlier version of myself. I'll never be the next Nadal or Djokovic but I can be the next version of me - better than last week's version.

Start!

Life is not a spectator sport. Fact. 

I started 2012 in a bit of a funk. A very good Christmas was followed by a great little warm winter break, only to be then followed by that unpleasant kicker of day one back at work. Unlike those that are all guns blazing with New Year's resolutions and targets for the year, I normally am a bit of a slow starter. Dark clouds and hibernation tend to be more my thing for early January. 

Today, however, I decided to take control. Yes, the year starts now. Over the years I've collected books, articles and insights from inspiring luminaries such as Steven Covey, Tony Robbins, Robert Kiyosaki, Jim Rohn, the Barefoot Doctor, Eckhart Tolle and so on. And I've attended so many different types of courses as well - a bit of personal development here, a little spirituality there. Full of goodness. I realised, though, that I've become a bit of a collector - a gatherer of great ideas and outlooks on life, but not actually using them in any coherent or disciplined fashion. Finding balance in the "mind, body, spirit" story is clearly an area of interest for me and I can certainly talk the talk. But I don't walk the walk enough. Yes, in fits and starts, and probably more than the average Joe, but still not enough for what I want to represent. It's great having the pull of awareness but I'll get more value, in my opinion, from the push of initiative. And for this to happen I've got to swallow a bit of manly pride and allow myself to make more mistakes and accept that I don't always have to be right. Scary.

So today I've been trawling through the books, the articles, the insights, noting down some of the key messages and "best bits". It was time to synthesize as it was all getting a bit cluttered. I'm looking for a mix-and-match masterplan that works for me - stuff that I can take into the real world, pushing me forward for this year and beyond rather than just residing in my head. We all go into this New Year's resolution gig with the best intentions. There's no one size fits all and there are no guarantees. We may well fail because of having fuzzy, too many or unrealistic goals, or simply poor planning. It happens. I've got to consider that. But if I do mess up, I don't want it to be because I didn't give it a darn good go. Watch this space.

Step Into Christmas

Well, here we are again. The season of excess and fun and family. Maybe not for everyone but for those of us that were brought up under a certain cultural bias and calendar.

As Christmas ends and the New Year approaches, it's almost impossible not to think ahead in some way. So much hope and expectation, even if we have all been here before.  

Sometimes I wonder whether we have our eye on the wrong prize. When looking at where we are in life we all tend to look up rather than down. We look at things that are missing, that we'd like to have, that we'd like to get done. Yes, it’s important to aspire but looking down can, for want of a better phrase or metaphor, also keep us grounded. There are so, so many people in this world of ours that have far less and could only dream of what we already have in our worlds. Yep, good old fashioned perspective for this time of year.

But at the same time I'm certainly not saying there's anything wrong with looking for a better life. So push on. And come 31 December 2012, what kind of regrets will we be harbouring then? A few hits and a few misses? The thing is what I'm experiencing at this moment is the result of choices and decisions I made in the past; what I'll experience in the future depends on choices and decisions I make now. I can't get all preachy because I'm just as guilty as the next man for that extra double cheeseburger and lack of focus, but deep down we know what we should be doing even if it's so much cosier to take the path of least resistance and all that.

So enjoy the festive season and may all your dreams for 2012 come true - thanks in part to what you're doing towards them now.

Running Up That Hill

Balance. Where are you? I mentioned in my last blog how busy things are getting in my world. Of late, the part-time Masters course has been getting a lot of attention from me. The trouble is, of course, some areas of my existence have been sidelined - I have barely been to the gym or kung fu (admittedly, that's more down to a sore toe though), the blog has been 'resting', I've made less time for friends, and I've barely registered that fast-approaching event called Christmas. I realise some of it is temporary but often what starts out as a short-term distraction can turn into a longer-term concern about the balance of life.

Thankfully, once my mid-term exam is out of the way this weekend I'll be able to reconnect a few of the dots. But it has made me think again about the importance of maintaining discipline and balance. It's not as if we can create more than the 24 hours in a day we're all blessed with so I have to work smarter with what I've been given. In the same way that you can 'leak' money without having a clue as to how it's left your wallet, so too can time be frittered away without any value being added. So it's time for a bit more awareness and to get that routine back on track. Game on!

What A Fool Believes

Those nice people at Inner Space threw up an interesting comment into my inbox:

What is the meaning of life? Why are we here?  What's it all about? Do you try to make sense of it all by trying to understand connections between events and experiences? Maybe the meaning is to be found in our perception - as each one of us has our own unique way of seeing and understanding things. Or maybe it's what we do with our life that ultimately determines the meaning of life.

We could go on ad infinitum searching for answers, getting confused, frustrated or simply debating this forever. Wars have been fought over less. From a purely personal perspective, I find some value in seeing life's meaning as what I can bring to the party rather than purely what the party can bring to me.

That's just part of my belief system and that's just me. You don't have to have this view at all - but I do think it's worth having a view, any view, on it all. If nothing else, it'll help give life some context.

Call Me

Some years back I took a phone call out of the blue from a friend. I say out of the blue as basically she had never phoned me before (or since for that matter). We’d never been overly close but we drifted in the same circles, sent the occasional text, and used Facebook and emails as favoured communications of choice. 

Anyway, she started our chat by saying she was a bit bored so had decided to phone me ("thanks!", I guess). Unbeknown to me she actually had a bit of an interest in me beyond just friendship - she admitted as much at a much later date, around the time her married, two kids, different country status was well established. In hindsight this interest might have been behind some of the line of questioning she used that night:

"So what do you do in your spare time?"

I paused and had a think. "Well, I like socialising."

Her response: "Don't we all? What else?"

Me: "Ermm, I go to the gym."

Her: "Loads of people we know do that. What else?"

I paused again. At that moment in time I couldn't think of anything beyond the banalities of watching TV, going to the cinema and being in the office. I had been playing football socially but that was becoming quite sporadic. I had little of substance. She, meanwhile, had a few months earlier headed to Florida just to go waterskiing for two weeks, had been on a few interesting hikes in various countries, had got involved in a charity and was in the midst of a complete career change. I had nothing as exotic to throw into the mix.

I doubt whether she would ever remember the conversation but I still recall it some 4 or 5 years on. Maybe not all at once but that one chat did spur me on to have a look at things, to try a few new ideas, to have something to say when the proverbial "What have you been up to?" question comes along. That conversation has often come back to me when inertia has taken hold or when I slip back into the humdrum and am not adding value to myself or anyone else. In some ways it was a call to action - or, to use an insight from Stephen Covey in his "7 Habits of Highly Effective People", when you look back on life from your deathbed are you going to wish that you'd spent more time in the office or more time watching TV? I don't think so.

These days I've got a few more things to throw into the mix. If she rang today I could now now say that I've been doing kung fu for the last 3 years, have a side-line life coaching business up and running (albeit extremely inactive), am currently doing an 8-week theatre-based voice and public speaking training course, have just started a part-time Masters course, and when it takes my fancy I have this blog to write.

It's amazing how much impact some conversations can have on other people's lives without you even knowing.