BlogPositive

The best year yet?

See I don't really believe in being talked down by all those gainsayers out.  It may not be cool or popular to say it but I am going to.......

Are you ready?

I am having my best year yet!!

Yes its completely true.  Exisiting clients are throwing more work at me almost daily. I am getting new clients and I am getting calls from people who want to work with me in a variety of new and different ways. Hey you may think that I'm lucky, that I have some secret formula.  Well let me tell you the secret.

Are you ready?

Its bloody hard work.  All that client work does not fall out of the sky I can tell you. Its about applying yourself, doing the hard graft, not giving up when you get a no the first time round all mixed up with a very healthy amount of always putting the client first, doing a damn good job when you get out there to do your thing and believing that everything will go right, having a sales accumulator graph on the wall in front of me and expecting to be successful.  And yes there are some nights with just a few hours sleep.  Yes there are the days when the public transport system lets you down or the bank seems to be your worst enemy, but thats just real life and no-one ever died from real life.  Above all its  about having a passion and belief in what I'm doing.  For me thats what makes the difference between good and great.

So if I can buck the recession trend so can you.  If you want to have the best year yet for you and your life just decide to make it that way.  Think positve, take action towards those positive goals, give something back and expect the best.  But remember - the secret is taking action, not just thinking about it.  What action can you take today to make this your best year yet?

When would you give up?

I had an interesting day in Thursday. I flew to Bristol to get to a meeting in Devon. After two aborted landings in fog, we got re-routed and I ended up in Birmingham. We sat on the tarmac for ages before the captain made a decision to fly us back to Bristol. I worked out that by the time we had got clearance and actually got back it would too late for me to make it by bus and train to my meeting. I therefore asked to get off the plane. The EasyJet staff were quite shocked by this. Clearly its an irregular request and they didn't really have a procedure. However once I had said I wanted to get off so did 5 other people.

So I got off and hired a car to drive to Devon. Then the M5 was closed. Although I avoided this, thanks to information from my world class PA, the A roads around the diversion were still very congested. I did finally reach my destination about 2 hours late and was able to have my meeting.

However a lot of other people would have given up. How much determination do you have to keep going when the going gets tough? What would it actually take to make you give up? Do you give up too easily? Do you keep going when its hopeless?

Sometimes you have to make apparently foolish decisions in the face of difficult circumstances. But at least you have done something to keep moving forwards. The most frustrating time for me on Thursday was sitting on the tarmac. If you are not moving do something, anything to change the situation..

What's your attitude?

This week I'm zooming around the country picking up some training for some of the trainers in our network who are unable to deliver this week. I just arrived south of Birmingham tonight at about 8.30pm after a 4 hour drive from Cumbria. The hotel receptionist was sympathetic to my very hectic schedule. I told her about the reasons for my trip and then she said, what, to me, seemed a very odd thing. She said "So you got the short straw then, driving down to deliver the training at really short notice". I was stunned by that, as that attitude had never occurred to me, nothing could be further from my mind. I'm really pleased to be able to help out colleagues who are in a fix. I'm happy to have work as I happen to have the time available. I'm interested to meet some different clients and people from different organisations. I'm putting on hold the things that I would be doing because its more important to keep the programmes going and to help out colleagues who need it. There is not a bone in my body that feels put upon, short changed or unhappy to be driving down to deliver these programmes. As I said it had never occurred to me. So what that said to me was that my attitude was a long way from what other people's might have been in that situation. I had a much more positive attitude to the situation than the receptionist was expecting. Now that was a surprise to me because I sometimes potter around in my own little world without really checking what is going on outside. So when you are suddenly brought up against the world outside yourself it can be a surprise. And you don't actually know about that unless you ask or you get some sort of feedback like that. What's your attitude and how does that compare to what people are expecting of you? What will you do with the feedback that you have?

Esmerelda the Angel

On radio 4 this afternoon there was an adaptation of the Hunchback of Notre Dame.  Quasimodo sees Esmerelda as an angel when she brings him water.  Angels do good, they often don't think of themsleves, they ask for no thanks and can disappear into the crowd before you even find out who they are.  We all have angels in our lives, yet often we don't recognize them for what they are.  We may only notice them when they have gone.

So in the lead up to christmas recognise your angels before they slip away and thank them.  Return their gifts of help and become an angel yourself.

Share and share alike

At the weekend I was chatting to someone who was really grateful for some knowledge that I was able to share with them.  Then later on someone passed on some really useful information to me and also I spent some time finding out about logistics, an industry that i know nothing about.  In all of these cases we were sharing stuff.

Before this though, if you had asked any of us about the value of that stuff we would probably all have scoffed and said "well its not worth anything".  This is what happens when you become an expert.  And we are all experts in many things.  Once you are an expert you know loads of "stuff" that other people don't know.  And a lot of that stuff they might find really valuable, although you don't place any value on it yourself.

So I recommend that you write a list headed up "Things I am an expert in"  The stuff on the list does not have to be earth shattering.  Maybe you have a photographic memory for bus times, or you know the best things to do with green tomaotes (might be very handy given the summer we are having).  Perhaps you've tried on all the hats in your local Accessorise or read this months magazine from cover to cover already.  Maybe you are the office expert on making PST files as I once was or perhaps you can just tell when the boss is in a good mood.

Once you have uncovered your expert potential you know what you have to share with everyone.  And if you don't know what you are an expert in just ask any of your friends and colleagues as they will soon tell you. As we are all experts in knowing what other people are experts in.

What are you an expert in?   How will you share that expert knowledge?  What advantages will that expert knowledge give you?

Do me a favour

I took a phone call yesterday from a stressed-out editor. I had agreed to write an article for him, due a couple of weeks. He was phoning to ask if I could write it in the next 24hours. He had been let down by another contributor and he needed something to fill a big hole in his newsletter which will be published on Thursday. It will probably come out a bit early because of the Easter Bank Holiday.  "Of course I can" I said "no problem, when do you need it, what slant do you need?"

Now next week I can ring him and ask him what else I can write for him. He'll probably owe me a favour :-)

However as I've got older I've stopped keeping an account of all of these favours, owed and given. I just feel that if you can help out someone else then you do.  I just know that when you do that the gift comes back to you in some way. If you keep adding up how much good you have done then you'll just get stressed out about how much you feel you are owed. As I've gone through life I have always had repayment come to me, without asking, one way or another.

Another great thing about being older is that there is so much more that I now feel able to help people with. I'm much more able to put things into perspective. Sometimes I can see that this is a really small thing for me to do but it will help them in a really big way. So whenever I can I will help. I thought that everyone was like this but maybe I'm wrong. I answered an email query from another Springboard trainer today and she emailed back telling me that I was  "a really helpful person".

Who can you help today with your vast store of knowledge and experience?

Random acts of poetry

I was on the train yesterday and I was inspired by some people I saw to write a poem.  There have been a lot of poems flowing onto the pages of my workbook ever since I came back from my creativity course, watch out Andrew Motion!  Anyway I wrote and re-crafted this poem in about an hour - about these people who were obviously off on a trip with big suitcases.  I scribbled away in my little notebook and then, as I was getting off before them, I handed it to them as I left the train.

That was a random act of poetry. I don't know what sparked off the ideas in the poem - they just came out of my pencil somehow.

I am not suggesting that you should write poems and and give them to strangers - probably I am the only person mad enough to do that.  However there are plenty of random acts that you can do that would have a positive effect on other people's lives - generally they would be random acts of kindness.

Some things that might be included would be paying it forward - paying the toll for someone in the car in behind you, giving a beggar your chocolate bar instead of your cash, carrying someone's shopping for them when they look like they need it, helping a parent carry their pushchair down some stairs, leaving your once read paper on the train for someone else to read, passing on a part-used car park ticket. And if you don't feel comfortable with this then you can operate closer to home - I once got up in the morning to find my brother had spent hours in the early morning cleaning all the shoes in the house. A few months ago a man had his car stuck in a flood just down the hill and I took him a flask of coffee and some biscuits whilst he waited for recovery.  And sometimes these things can be even better if you, the giver, remain anonymous. As I used to get in very early in my last job I would always fill the photocopier with paper so it was set for at least the first few users.  I never told anyone about this and I would often smile when I heard people wondering who the paper fairy was who seemed to fill the photocopier overnight!

On your journey through life look for random acts of kindness for others. They serve two purposes.  They make you feel good and they are also a positive experience for the receiver.