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.

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.