Reaching for Glory!

God that was great........the Irish six nations campaign documentary is just over and i so enjoyed it, but more important than that i think i learned something tonight.

Life is generally hard work and mediocrity, but if you stick that out, if you stay at it, then life will be punctuated by beautiful moments, moments when your heart rises with joy and you realise that it's beautiful and precious.

I've had loads of those moments, moments of absolute beauty, Horgans try against England, the birth of my two daughters, the final whistle in the 96 final, my first Christmas morning in our first house, winning a huge contract, a morning in Vienna, a chat this evening with my daughters, a walk on the beach, coming round a corner in Seville, and there are a few that i should not share really, intimate moments of Joy that make life worth living.

There are terrible moments too, the death of my dad, losing contracts, the evening Joy stopped breathing, stuff that would rock me sideways but then i remember that there will be more moments of ectasy in the future.

It's the stuff in the middle i find hard, the boring stuff, the slogging stuff, the fighting through stuff.... but tonight showed me something, it showed me the value of that mediocrity... without that there will be no moments to look forward too, without that investment there will be no reward, I'll be a spectator, and i don't want to be a spectator, i want to be a player, to fight it out, to take the knocks, to persevere and to take the chance of losing as well as the chance of winning....that's the stuff that makes life worth living.

There's a moment in the documentary where all is on the line, where the whistle has not gone, and Ronan O'Gara is lying on the ground unconcious, and at that very moment, when the prize was in sight, when it was almost there, John Hayes forgot about the ball, forgot about the game and went to his friend...and that moment was beautiful, it showed the courage of a man and the real place of sport.

Sport is important because it can bring moments of beauty to a life, like art can, but never ever at all costs.. and that's what i learned tonight, life is precious, sport can make life beautiful, but it's life that's precious.

If you get a chance to see it..... do.

How do you do?

People don’t really say “how do you do?” anymore, but it will be an unusual encounter where you won’t get asked “what do you do?” pretty early on.

I’ve had various answers to this question over the years, most of them fairly accurate like “I’m a clerk in the post office” and some not quite so accurate like “I’m a financial advisor” (which really meant I sold insurance).

In the last four years it’s gotten more tricky, now when I tell people that I help business owners, customer service staff, sales people and managers to exceed targets, they generally look at me like I have four heads and ask the question again.

People want to put us all in boxes, we want to know that Mick is a guard, Kate is a teacher, Johnny sells cars and Mary’s got a good job working for the bank, but the world is changing, and it’s not that easy anymore to pigeonhole people based on their primary occupation. Several years ago in his book “The elephant and the flea” the author Charles Handy spoke of a future where many of us would be what he called “portfolio” workers in that we would derive income from several different sources.

Many of these sources would not be at all visible to the outside world, and most of them would not even be what we traditionally called “work”. As we speak there are neighbours of your’s busy making money trading on ebay, testing computer games or even playing poker with Canadians.

In the past twenty years there have been many changes to what Irish people traditionally called work, a great number of people have become financially successful via property, a great many farmers primary occupation is paperwork and there are more and more people deriving their income through the entertainment industry, whether it’s in ringtones, websites or computer games.

The great thing is that no matter what the work that people do, there will always be a need for entrepreneurs to start it, salespeople to sell it, customer service staff to service the customers and wherever one or more are gathered on a project there will always need to be managers there to manage it, and you better believe that there will always be targets, and then bigger targets, and then even bigger targets.

So whether it be the manafacture of hydraulic equipment, landscape gardening, developing software or running a nightclub, the same basic skillset needs to be there to do it really well, these are the skills of running a business, sales, customer service and management, these are the foundations and after that if you can build better services, make quieter hydraulics, provide a better nightclub or grow better geraniums then you’ll be well on the way.

I help people with the “how” of sales, management, entrepreneurship and customer service so that people can really shine when they do what they do well, it’s not about what they do anymore, it’s about how they do it.

Those who do it brilliantly will be the successes of the future, those who do it poorly will eventually find themselves doing something else, it’s the way Darwin explained the world, the survival of the fittest and it’s no different now than it was all those years ago.

Election 2007

Have been a bit absorbed by this the last few days, and have a ticket to the count in Sligo on Friday, so am looking forward to that. It's been a brilliant last few days of the campaign, here's what i think so far.

FF. Great rally at the end, Cowen definate future leader, Bertie super on live debate, murdered Enda, looking at a solid performance, as you were or slighty down in seat terms.

FG. Exposed over the last few days, Kenny has done a great job as the party leader, but won't be trusted to deliver as country leader. Overall vote up (not hard)

Lab. Murdered in the run in... hanging onto FG's coat tails for dear life, fairly sure there won't be enough without a huge green performance.

Green. Have lost out in the great leadership race, will fall between the stools, should have thrown in thier lot with the alliance for change, will find themselves out in the cold.

PD's Getting a wee bounce from strong FF performance, would have written them off a week ago, will be donw from 8 seats but may still (although i doubt it) retain the disproportionate power they have wielded for the last ten years.

Sinn Fein. Terribly uninspiring and insipid campaign, have missed a great opportunity to move forwards towards 11 or 12 seats. Still it will come down to FF either forming a Govt with the greens and the independents, going to bed with Mary Lou, or heading back to the country....... or we can see Pat Rabbitte doing the country some service by saving them from the terrible shinners.

In Sligo it's Devins (FF) and Perry (FG) as certs, and after that it's going to be fought out by Comiskey (FG) who has the Leitrim advantage, Scanlon (FF) and McManus (SF) I have a sneaking suspicion that Comiskey might sneak it off Leitrim geographical voting with Lab and FG transfers.. cos McGarry and Henry are unlikely to get a quota between them and FF will suffer from not running a third candidate with a Leitrim base.

Still interesting times ahead.

What i love about sport.

So Sligo beat Roscommon at the weekend, as i'm from Roscommon and live in Sligo I've had nothing but notice and slagging since, most of it good natured, with a few spiteful and caustic assholes thrown in for good measure, like the cavemen behind me on Sunday who derived great pleasure at the final whistle from calling me "an ugly Roscommon cnut"and telling me i could "F**K off back to Roscommon", but a lot of the Sligo lads and management are mates of mine and i'm delighted for them.

What i love about it is that it reflects life, we could stay away from all the matches and experience no pain at all, but then how would we enjoy the pleasure when this useless pack of knucks finally surprise us all and win something, so it's simple for me... either participate and take the belts on the chin or give up...and i'm not giving up cos i remember being there in 1974, 1977, 1978, 1980, 90, 91, 2001 and in ennis last year,,,, and on those good days it was made all the sweeter because of the terrible days..... so fair play to Sligo, and roll on the qualifiers..i'll be there.

The inconvenient truth.

I'm no different, I find myself drawn towards the reassuring lie more often.

Right now the inconvenient truth is,

I have made some fairly serious business mistakes over the last year or so.
I have to begin to rebuild with the same energy and enthusiasm that I began the business with.
This is going to take a combination of money, energy and time.

The reassuring lies are

It wasn't my fault.
Everything will be grand if I just keep plodding along.
Something will show up.

Of all the things i've heard, read and coached over the years, the stuff that hits home best with me is the stuff about "getting started" So today is the day for me to get started again, to move away from reassuring lies, to face up to the inconvenient truth that this business which is less than 4 years old will wither unless I get stuck into it with renewed passion.

I've taken a few knocks over the last few months, but now is the time to dust myself off and get stuck in up to my elbows again.

Smoke and Mirrors!

If you look at it for a few seconds, you may discover that things are not always what they seem.
You may further discover that your eyes cannot always be trusted!

Strange.

Let's frighten the bejaysus out of them!

As part of my work I run management programmes and this always involves a module on motivation, which runs through Maslow and Herzberg and shows how in the past the major motivator was fear as in Roman Galleys and Soldiers in WW1 and how we've moved on.

But we haven't moved far have we?

The big bad bogey man is the major player in the election so far, with FF flagging the portents of doom if anyone else is in charge, FG and Lab trying to terrify us with law and order stories, and promising leglislation which will soon lead to mandatory sentences for looking sideways or slightly shifty at anyone in "charge" and the greens promising us that our childrens children will be bushmen of the Kalahari if we vote for anyone but them.

The Eircom Phonewatch guy is trawling the depths looking for reasons why burglars will visit our houses regularly at any time of year, and Rupert is running 24/7 coverage of the Madeline McCann kidnapp case.

Am i being cynical here, or would it suit the Eircoms and Ruperts of this world if we all stayed in our houses behind out high walls and our phonewatch system and watched Sky all day while ordering from Tesco online and growing fat on Ben and Gerry's which of course would cause us to buy weightwatchers special range and eventually lots of prozac and zytloft which would make us feel better about the fact that we've been caught in a trap from which it's almost impossible to escape and worst of all is the realisation that we walked into it voluntarily.....

I'm going to resist for another while, and try to live in the real world. without a phonewatch system, without a skybox, but with a bloody life.

A tenner in 1991?

You know all the lads who bought a house for 40'000 in 1991 and if they sold it today it would be worth half a million?

Well if you'd put a tenner on this in 1991, you deserve to be richer than Bill Gates, anyone would have laughed you out the door for even suggesting it, so fair play to Ian and Jeffery and Peter and even romping Sammy, it's unbelievable for this Island of ours to be able to look forward to intergration, equality, and freedom.

Now most of them won't know what to do with it all for a while, but in time i've no doubt it will be safe for Muslims to walk around Belfast, Ballymena and Portadown without worrying about whether they will be targetted as protestant muslims or catholic muslims.

"it's a fact"

Did you ever wonder about some of the stuff we are asked to believe, or some of the stuff we are told by others who insist that it's a fact.

One of the things I've really developed is the ability to question things, to challenge beliefs especially my own, but some beliefs are really strong, these are often the things that our parents tell us when we are young, and unless we conciously seek out the antidotes to these beliefs we may end up believing some strange things

for example

all fine gaelers are a bit touched.
all priests are great fellas.
all teachers are right.
Guards are never wrong.
the most important thing in life is a good pensionable job in any of the above 3 professions.

Now that i'm a bit older, i've discovered that there are fairly ok people in Fine Gael, that there are also dangerous and nasty priests, even teachers can be wrong... and although there are guards who refuse to believe it, even they sometimes make mistakes.

It just puts me wondering what else in the common belief system is wrong? what else that is trotted out as "a fact" is in fact not a fact at all.

ah i'll keep wondering.

PS. If you could move €10'000'000 from some mega plc bank account to your own, and never get discovered or caught, would ya?

Now i've figured it out.....

Bloody hell, it's taken me two years to figure out how to link stuff to the blog.... now that I can do it... I'll be a right pain in the arse linking stuff just cos i feel like it... starting with this

All we can see is 100 yards ahead.

This living in the past or living in the future stuff is a bit bonkers, i'm only saying this because I slip into it at times, and I'm trying to remind myself of how stupid it is... ok there's a time for planning, for deciding where I want to go and how i'm going to get there, but after that... it's about concentrating on the 100 yards in front.

If i decide to head for Galway tonight, and i figure out the route to take me there, then it's all about just getting on with it and concentrating on the 100 yards in front of me... if i decide to make some money and build a good business through training and coaching, then my job is to concentrate on the job in hand all the time, whether that job is delivering, coaching, selling, creating, whatever it is... what's important is that i focus and concentrate on the task rather than the plan.

i've heard Al Pacino's peace with inches a hundred times, but i never got the meaning of "the six inches in front of your face" until today... aren't I the silly boy?

It's a sense of perspective.

This may all have been prompted by the death on sunday night of a guy i knew who was the same age as me, or maybe not, I'm not sure.

Somedays the voice is there, Monday was one, especially the morning bit, I was useless, no good, life was pointless, and then for some reason i can never put my finger on it brightened up, I felt a lot better and then yesterday morning (Tuesday) I decided to write out all the things in my life that i was grateful for. I found it difficult to get started, family, house, friends, the normal stuff. But then after a minute or two the pen started flying, and i was unstoppable, i'm grateful for my brain, my legs, my ability to sell and keep customers, fun, where i live, the rossies, people who half understand me, long daft chats about life, the gnawing feeling that often keeps me on my toes, writing this daft blog, music, my ipod, my famous right knee, my childhood family, and more and more stuff just kept flying out until i had pages filled with things i'm greatful.

Here's the thing, I often feel down and envious of people who have it solved, those who are so relaxed that nothing is bothering them, but i'm pretty sure nobody has it solved all the time, everybody has doubt, it's part of life, but at the same time life is pretty good, whether we can see that or not.... here's a video that kind of sums it up for me


Somedays i know it's a wonderful world but I can't really see it.