Some Days!

It's August, this month has frustrated me every year since I started the business, difficult to get work, difficult to get paid, difficult to contact people.

After my first August in this business I swore that I would create a situation where I could take the entire month off and enjoy myself, but it has not happened yet!

The problem is stuck in the middle, i'm neither at work or not at work right now, I have a lot of work lined up for September, but no one wants to see me for the next few weeks.

That sums me up right now.. stuck in the middle.

The only thing that gets me going when I feel like this is deliberately focussing on the good things, the things in my life that make it wonderful, family, friends, sport, fun, and the knowledge that this vacant somewhat gloomy phase will drift by, like it's always drifted by before... there's so much to appreciate and so much to look forward to.

Self awareness (self obsession)

It's mad really, that Socrates lad (or was it Aristotle) reckoned the unexamined life is not worth living, and yet these days the whole world is unhappy because everyone spends massive amounts of time staring at their navels and concluding that yes indeed they are too fat, poor, busy, neurotic, lazy, unhealthy, old, useless or some other bloody thing that can only be corrected by weightwatchers, Tony Robbins, Deepak Chopra, Garnier or Dr. Bobs mental agility training.

Maybe people should live a bit more and have a bit more craic instead of constantly looking for artificial holes that can only be filled by (expensive) miracle cures.

Them lads Aristotle and Socrates might have been better off having a few pints rather than starting off this obsession lark.

The wonder of google and youtube!

It's unbelievable, the sun is actually shining in Sligo, and we are told it may even shine tomorrow as well.

We threw a big outdoor party yesterday and had tons of friends round, it was great fun and i think everyone had a great time. The weird thing is that google has the potential to feck up that staple of all parties, the lively debate (we would never call them arguments.

Yesterday both Google and Youtube amazed a few people with thier capabilities, the conversation was about olympics when two of the lads had a difference over what race Dave Wottle won at the Munich Olympics in 1972.. there was no agreement so inside for the computer, a quick google and we had the Wikipedia entry for the bould Dave, which proved that TJ was right.. then he asked was there any pictures of Wootle on the net.. a quick youtube later and i was able to say..."i'll do better than that... would you like to see the race?" and so there were a load of people sitting on the patio watching the 1972 800 metres final.

the world is changing pretty rapid.

Saints and sinners!

That's just the way we like it.... serve it to us fast and quick please....

Delighted for Harrington.... the fact that he cracked and choked on the 18th when he had it in his grasp will barely be remembered... he's now officially a saint.... despite his inperfections.

And what about Joe O'Reilly.. the fact that he murdered his wife will never be forgotten... he's now officially a demon ... despite his apparent successes in life and the emails that show him as a concerned father.

Ah well.....Saints and Sinners...... that's apparently the way we like it....

I'm glad something like the Sopranos came along and challenged even in a small way this type of thinking... my experience of life is that one thing makes you neither either way... one act of evil does not make you a demon... and one big prize does not make you transcendant.

What a strange trade!

There are many things in this life that i have no understanding of, international currency markets, sex trafficking and certainly the drug trade.

Having never touched the white powder i've often wondered what is so special about it that normal people will consume it in massive quantities, but in my maddest imagination i had no idea it was this big... is it possible that someone can be transporting €200 Million of the stuff round for the Irish market, i mean, if a couple of lines costs €20, and that's enough to get one person high, then €200 Million is enough to get 10 million people coked up, this is a better business that selling burgers at closing time, except that we don't have 10 million people so some folks will have to do it twice.

Maybe we should just legitimise the stuff, if it was taxed like drink and cigarettes then the street value would be over a billion euro, we could do wonders with the revenue, i mean if the end users are going to do it anyway, and it appears they are, it would be better to spend the money on new sports pitches for the community rather than equestrian centers and villas in alicante for Gilligan and his likes.

I can hardly believe i'm going to say this, but i'll do it anyway..... I agree with former minister for justice McDowell on this one...... the end users have impunity, and while they do people will always traffic.... a better way of stopping this is to damage the middle class demand (the 10 million)...

A few well timed and very public armed raids on the dinner parties and venues where the social drug is consumed would have a far greater effect than trying to take on the criminal gangs.... cos the middle classes understand shame, and it's one of their greatest fears.

Let's get a few SWAT teams into Rathfarnham or wherever the intelligence tells them they have to be, let's have a few high proflle convictions for possession and use.... then maybe we'll put the traffickers out of business, cos everybody know's the main reason businesses fail (even criminal businesses) it's when there's little or no demand for the product.... and if the spoilt classes want to continue to indulge their habit, let's make sure there are consequences.

I gotta love Ricky Hatton

Never knew much about this lad, but he appears to be a rock of sense.

"Hatton then spoke about the relationship between himself and Wayne Rooney, a fact that astonished many observers given Hatton's frequently stated love for Manchester City.

"Wayne and me go back a long time, as he is from a family of boxers. I fought his cousin David who boxed for the Croxteth club and Wayne saw the fight, since then he has followed my career with great interest. He is a great lad and we don't have none of that stupid hatred that you get between certain clubs. Wayne could have actually been good at the boxing if he had chosen to go that way instead of football."

Hatton was touched by the level of support that he received in Las Vegas, among whom were Rio Ferdinand, Joe Cole and Wes Browne. Did he see any blurring between the sports of football and boxing?

"I have a lot of mates who are footballers, Robbie (Fowler) and Joey )Barton) took me up to watch Rangers as they are big fans, but to be honest I really didn't enjoy the atmosphere at all. It might seem strange coming from me ,but the atmosphere was aggressive without being hard if that makes sense. I really didn't understand them at all. I then went with Wayne and Roy a few years back to watch Celtic and it was magic. Their fans were passionate and supportive and gave us a great welcome without getting in our faces all the time. Celtic has a lot in common with City in that they are the people's team of their city (sorry Wayne!) and they haven't forgot their roots, a real working class team which does credit to the city they represent".

The same may be said of Ricky Hatton a man who has brought great distinction to his city without compromising his background or his working class values"

Lost.

Had a lovely weekend, but feel totally lost for the last day or so, went down yesterday to visit Ger's family and I have so much going on in my head since.

I have hundreds of questions, but the most important one is "why Ger and not me?", and the randomness of it all makes me very angry, actually that's not what makes me angry, what really angers me is the people who try to explain... who try to explain it through religion mostly, I can understand how we can tell children stories to make them feel better and understand, a bit like Santa Claus, but as adults surely we can accept that parts of life are completely random and can't be controlled no matter what you do.

Two things.

1. Yesterday afternoon the limerick manager Richie Bennis was interviewed after a match and he put the win down to the fact that he attended a novena in limerick during the week, and described the win as "our lady's first miracle for limerick" I mean FOR FUCK'S SAKE" did the Tipperary people not pray hard enough or something, it's bloody ridiculous that we laugh at native americans doing rain dances and new guineans putting bones through their noses, but we believe this shit... maybe if Ger had prayed harder... well that's your reasoning Richie....I give up.

2. Actually i can't be bothered about the second thing.... still angry but think the rant has helped me a little bit... the thing about life is that there's no grand plan lads... it's a combination of personal choices and random chance... looking to the heavens, or doing a dance, or putting the bone through your nose in an futile attempt to believe that we can guide the chance bit is just delusional, maybe it helps some people to deflect responsibility for just living as big and as free and as strong as they can, but I'll take my chances thanks very much.

Why i love 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.

PS. Have a match tonight that i'm just bigtime looking forward too, it's funny how quickly we get over our disappointments.

I hate blogger so much.

I noticed today that the post i spent half an hour writing last night and published 3 times has vanished into the ether and it looks like i never update my blog.... again.

I'll be starting a new business blog today over at www.newton.ie and I really have to keep adding to it, my biggest downfall in life is that i'm not always the most disciplined, sure i can do it if the stakes are high enough, but sometimes i'm not convinced that they are and that's when i let it go for a while without doing anything about it.

The really important things in my life i have no bothered being dedicated to and disciplined about... it's important that i see this new site and new blog as really important... that's what will help me make a success of it..

wish me luck and call over to see it.

now i wonder will this publish?

Grab it.

My friend Ger died yesterday.

I'm more convinced than ever that I need to live life as big as possible.
Cancer is an equal opportunities employer, it does not discriminate on who it strikes and takes, and there simply is no reason for some stuff, we all try so hard to find meaning and reasons for everything, maybe there is none? maybe many things iin life are just completely cosmically random.... think of the fluke meeting you had with your now best friend, maybe you were put sitting beside them in school, or sat beside them in a dressing room, or were in a Q at the same time in Tesco.

It's the same with our partners, we just happened to be in a certain place at a certain time, i know that my life was dictated and directed by a draw from a hat in 1985, there were six people in training and six national offices to send them too, there was Sligo, Tralee, Mullingar, Dublin, Galway and Kilkenny. My name came out beside Sligo, it's been wonderful for me but the truth is i'll never know what it would have been like if i'd got Tralee, or Kilkenny but i do know it would have been different, chances are i'd be working at something different, married to someone different, have a different circle of friends and worst of all my children could have Kerry accents.

I think there's a lot to be said for poker, there's no control over the cards you get dealt, the best players are the ones who know how to make the best out of them.... Ger certainly played his well...

Pressure!

The one thing that creates great businesses, the one thing that creates great performances, the one thing that develops great managers.... the pressure!

It's a gift really, but sometimes it's impossible to see that.

We rarely get to do anything wonderful or creative in the absence of some stimulus, and one of the best stimuli is a bit of pressure, i feel under a bit at the moment, but it's one thing that really gets me going, so therefore i should really be glad of it.

We certainly should not universally see pressure as a bad thing.

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.

The human footprint

I chanced across the most amazing programme on Channel 4 last night, it was called the human footprint and i believe (although they don't support macs) that you can watch it again for the next week on

http://www.channel4.com/watch_online/?hpos=Watch-Online

The programme which is beautifully shot and narrated, calculates the footprint or experience of an average British person (we'd be similar except maybe more drink) over their lifetime of 78.5 years.

Some facts amazed me and i was wondering watching the programme how I'd fit into their statistics

I've used up 1,325,721,609 seconds of my allotted 2,475,576,000 so on average i should have got through the following, however not being average i shall give my own observations.

40,000 cups of tea (definately less i love coffee)
2.4 cows (definately more, i love steak)
Shed 64 pints of tears (not sure)
Spent over a million pounds sterling (well i haven't saved much)
Smoked 53,341 cigarettes (about right i was a late starter)
Drank 4,113 pints of beer (someone's avin a laff)
Used 63 million words (unquestionably more, i never shut up)
Had sex 1,606 times (is that a year?)
and produced 515kg's of poo (lovely)

The most interesting part for me was the human aspect, the programme reckons we will "get to know" about 1,700 hundred people over our lifetimes, and they visually represented this beautifully, of these 1,700. 305 will die of heart disease, 179 of stroke, 99 of lung cancer (one is being buried today). There will be 10 suicides, 9 will be killed in car accidents and 1 will die in a fire.

Only 1 in 3 of us will know someone who is murdered (not yet thank whatever)

Now i'm heading outside to make it 53,342.

Agendas.

This wexford thing has me a bit would up today.

There's a mass of publicity and finger pointing now... i wonder how much of it is about preventing such a thing happening as easily in the future (it's not so much will such things happen, of course they will, it's more about can we console ourselves that we did all we could and it's not our fault)

Instead of the finger pointing to prevent it happening

Newspapers are finger pointing to get more readers
Radio Stations are finger pointing to get more listeners.
and Politicians are finger pointing to get more votes (or keep the ones they have).

To be honest i don't think many people give a flying hoot about the Dunne family, as long as i'm all right Jack.

Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr.

That silent scream!

Like the rest of the country i'm appalled at the tragedy that unfolded in Wexford over the weekend.

It's really got me thinking about life and society and I have to say it does not inspire me that we are travelling in the right direction. My thoughts on this are not exactly conventional and I speak as someone who has very little experience of suicide, but I am disturbed by the prevelence of it in society today and have my own opinion on how we have gotten to this point.

There's a device on the market currently which apparently gives out a sound on a frequency that only under 25's can hear, there's a silent scream that people who are in terrible pain give out too, but there are very few people who are attuned to hear it, maybe if we faced up to some recent cases we might try a bit harder.


1. Everybody hurts.
The REM song, like many pieces of art, works because people can silently identify with how it reflects thier own lives. How come as a society we regard hurting as a weakness rather than as a normal part of life? How come we invent millions of things to medicate the pain as the cure to something "wrong" with people?

2. Everybody denies it.
How have we evolved into a society where it's not ok to say we hurt? How have we gone down a road where depression is seen as a fault, where feeling pain is regarded as softness, where feeling fear has to be covered up in case it reflects negatively on us? For men particularly, how come we use sport or politics or property prices as our core conversations to cover up how we really feel about the challenges we face in a rapidly changing society?

3. We avoid rather than listen
Must everything be either judged or deflected? How come our listening skills are so bad? How come no-one can pick up on the pain until it's too late? How have people become so oblivious to the pain in others? Is it because if we never understand the pain in others that we then don't have to acknowledge our own?
Is it so we can convince ourselves that we're ok? Are we attempting to create the illusion that life is constantly great? If it's true then why the hell do thing like this happen? It's not great all the time, but it's definately not ok to say that?

4. How can we change our outlook?
Why is the pursuit of happiness such an important concept? I can understand the pursuit of pleasure, or the pursuit of a better life.. but the pursuit of happiness? All of literature, all of philosophy, all of psychology tell us that constant happiness is not a real or sustainable state, but we are constantly told, get this book and you'll be happy, gain that degree and you'll be happy, get that boyfriend and you'll be happy, take this drug and you'll be happy, buy that dress/car/apartment and you'll be happy. We know it's not true, but still we irrationally believe it.

5. Can we hear the scream and help?
Yes i believe we can if we choose to, I feel we have lost the art of listening, the skills of listening to understand. We have no time to listen, and sometimes by listening to others we may have to confront the pain in ourselves. There is just not enough emphasis on listening, it's not a panacea to solve all ills, but so many people wade through life feeling that nobody understands who they really are. I'm not talking about therapy here, although increased access to therapy would be a wonderful thing, i'm talking about friendship, and how we as friends can help to cut through the BS position of "everything's wonderful" and "sure I'm as happy as Larry".

6. Can we drop the illusion?
I'm not sure, i think it may be too powerfully ingrained, the connection that "if i'm not wonderfully happy, then i'm inadaquate and there's something wrong with me and i better hide it" is very deeply entrenched.
There are too many guru's, too many vested interests. I think the best we can do is develop the ability to listen to and support people and let them know just because they feel unhappy does not make them unique, does not make them inadaquate, does not make them failures...... IT JUST MAKES THEM HUMAN!

The "thrills" of becoming a new manager.

There’s one thing a bit more scary than your first day as a sales manager, it’s your first day as sales manager with the team you were a part of last Friday.

I spent some time at the weekend with a friend who has just been promoted to sales manager within the company he has been selling with for the last 7 years. We spoke about the challenges, the fears, the aspirations and what might be the tricky bits over the next few weeks and months.

His biggest concern was having to carve it all out himself, if you’ve spent the last 7 years on a pre-defined route where people could set thier watch by you, it’s not that easy to be suddenly faced with a huge blank sheet of paper and the freedom to decide how to best do the job.

Apart from the fact that this is one of the very reasons coaching exists, it’s not in his company’s vision to hire people to help with this, therefore all we could have was that friendly chat and see what emerges.

I think the hardest thing for new managers to accept is that cloning is not a refined enough science yet, most managers who have been successful salespeople simply want to reproduce themselves, thier style, thier traits, thier approach. In this style thier salespeople pick up points for everything they do that is like the managers style, eg always be closing, and they lose points for whatever differs eg, spending a long time with a customer.
After a while the manager has a long list of “faults” with some salespeople, faults in this instance meaning ” things they don’t do like me” and what do you do with a fault…. you try to fix it, so the salesperson finds themselves being moulded into something they’re not.. and frustration begins to fester.

And what’s the best piece of advice i could give my friend having been in this exact position all of 8 years ago… well establish the groundrules… the things that are non arbitary, things like customer calls, how they present themselves at work, reporting structures et al…. establish them hard and early and stick to them, and outside of those basic fundamentals help the salepeople to grow in thier own style.

The basis of sales has always been getting what you want by helping others to get what they want, this holds true for sales managers as well, you succeed by by helping your salespeople to succeed, establish the ground quickly and then help them to prosper and develop between those ditches

And enjoy it... you actually can make a difference.

Don't let "some idiot" write it

We forget that each new day is a blank page, we think that because we’ve lived 30 or 40 or 50 years that we can’t change, we tell ourselves that the blackboard of our lives is already well cluttered with stuff, habits, experiences, achievements, fears etc and that we can never find space to write anything new or valuable into our futures.
But we can, the book is only half finished, someday it will snap shut forever and that will be the legacy, the story of our lives.

We have the ability to write this story ourselves, but we often don’t, we’ll often let “some gobshite” write it for us.

I had a bad day today because “some idiot” cut me off in traffic!
I’m really angry because “some idiot” at work gave out to me!
We lost the game because “some idiot” of a referee…. ah you know what i mean.

We write the book ourselves when we realise that a life is made of of two things, the first one is the millions of tiny choices, right or left, do or don’t, call or ignore, that we make every hour, every day of our lives.

The other thing is pure randomness, the element of pure chance that is built into life, a lion looks at two wilderbeest and just picks one, nothing to do with the wilderbeest, just bloody pure random chance.

Trying to live our lives purely by the choice angle makes us control freaks, and makes us angry at everything when thing’s don’t work out. The opposite is to live like nothing matters, that it’s all pure random chance, and that whatever we do counts for nothing anyway.

Philisophers have been arguing aver these two approaches to life for thousands of years, and they still are.

Take responsibility, but for your efforts, your actions, doing your best, making the right choices and always remember shit happens so understand that luck plays a part.

Write your own story, do what you really want to do, create what you really want to create, there will always be “some gobshite” just don’t let him / her be the authors of the rest of your lifestory.

Welcome to Navan!

Really interesting Prime Time special during the week about the declining “quality of life” people are experiencing in Ireland over the last number of years, the common thread was that we have far more money than we used to but far less time. I have no idea what people are complaining about, that’s just the trade off…. you can’t have it every way.. if you want more time..then take it.. if you want more money.. then make it.. we’ve produced a strange society where people feel thier choices are totally restricted and they are forced by society to live in Navan.
Here’s the thing right… if the commute is to hard from Navan. and the property prices to high… MOVE!
There was a guy on who get’s up at 6, get’s home at 9 and actually said that he does not see his children awake from Monday to Friday.. and apparently this would all be solved if the Government hurried up and built a trainline.
Sorry Buddy… by the time the train arrives, the children will have grown up and moved out.. and hopefully they won’t be such selfish silly parents as to deny thier children a parent all week because Bertie won’t play Thomas the tank engine.
To paraphrase my favourite scene from Fr Ted (where they always seemed to have loads of time)
I hear your a victim now father? what’s the official church line on victimology father? have we all to be victims now father?

Beginning the business blog!

Ok.... the new website is currently under construction, the design is not nearly finished, we have a heap of work to do to make it look better, but right now what's important is to get the right material up on the site, you can have a look at the 10% finished article over at http://81.17.252.85/~paulnewton/

Please let me know if you have any suggestions/advice on how we can make this better and more effective, and don't mention the design ~ we're not even really started on that.

I'll probably be blogging a bit less on this, but the emphasis will change to even more ranting i'd guess.

Doing the groundwork...

In my business it's becoming so much rarer that anyone pays full rate for anything anymore. All training in the ROI seems to be subsidised now.... between FAS, Skillnets, Accel programmes and several other layers, there is no such thing as a company paying a rate for a job anymore.

The problem with this is that everything has now become homogenised, it's difficult to stand apart, a sales programme is a sales programme. The key business priority has switched from providing quality training and coaching to companies, towards developing good relationships with the funding agencies.

I can either complain or adapt.... and think i should focus on the latter.

Later.

Listening to the Cricket....

Just drove down from Dublin listening to Test Match Special all the way, it's one of those strange acquired pleasures that would drive most of my mates round the twist, but i love it.

That Shakespeare fella had it right when he said "one mans bulmers is another man's poison" or whatever it was.

Staying real!

A most interesting conversation today about happiness, brainwashing, how life works and several other things.

I have to say that my most important value is personal freedom, the capacity to do what I like when I like. I'm not claiming this is for everyone, but it seems to be incredibly important to me. I am not sure about the term happiness, it seems to have got mixed up somewhere along the line with "pleasure" if i had to use one word to describe what happiness means to me it would be "real"

So when it's real, sometimes it's pleasureable, sometimes it's painful, somtimes it's a bit mad, sometimes it's really quiet and reflective. I simply can't wrap my head around being happy all the time, it makes no sense to me.

There are many sources of bliss out there, the frontal lobotomy, heroin, religion, alcohol, hypnosis, 12 step recovery programmes, but feck it to me they all seem to be artificial, they all seem to be a cheating way of getting your highs by avoiding any lows life has to chuck at us.

In my life i am lucky to get lots of highs, but i know the other side has to exist too, that if there are highs there has to be lows, if we get the freedom to make choices, we will always know doubt, if we hand over the choices to someone else, we will have lost our freedom.

The reality for me is that life is about choices and chance, that we have the freedom to make our own choices, that life cannot be a straight happy line (and christ do we try to medicate it to make it so, with prozac and lithium and god knows what else)

It won't always be happy, but it will always be real, and that's happiness enough for me.

So what exactly is management about then?

it's not easy being a sports manager, it's management in the public eye, which is a very dangerous place to manage anything.

There are also thousands of Joe Soaps with endless opinions, which you will hear ad finitum if the manager fails but will be buried deeper than a brookside character if he succeeds.

So what really is the managers job, well as you may know I run lots of management development programmes and I try to listen to to find out what makes some managers effective and some others fired.

The factors of success are...

1. Understanding how you affect / influence others.

This is a vital place to start, it's about having the respect of the individuals involved, some managers bring this with them and some create it as they go along, but any manager who does not have this gravitas, who cannot get the ears of his team is doomed from the start. Some managers use fear to create this, which is fine if you have endless resources, but for most manager they need to earn that respect.

2. Creating the vision.

No team has any chance unless they are pulling together, there has to be a common goal that everybody is pulling towards, this process of helping people to seperate the professional team goal from thier own personal goal is vital to success as a manager, although it is not a guarantee of getting there.

3. Creating the environment.

It's the managers role to create an atmosphere where staff find it easier and more enjoyable to operate than it used to be. A manager with good organisational skills who makes life easier and disassembles the obstacles in the way of his staff will gain the favour and respect of his players. They might still fail (which is sooo frustrating) but they have a better chance of you take care of the small stuff.

4. Communication skills.

The key thing here is to define what each staff member needs to do, and if they are not doing it, to find out what's in the way! If a manager can't discover and solve what's stopping team members doing their job, then it's totally impossble to improve that performance, and the manager will be judged on the collective performances of all the team members.

5. Exercising democratic authority.

You have to reserve the nuclear option, staff must know that you are "tough but fair" in otherwords, you will stretch people to the best of thier performance, but if after many efforts to improve that performance it's still not working out, managers must be able to be assertive and decisive in changing the team member because the managers job is to create the best team possible to deliver the best possible results.

6. Dealing with setbacks.

It's simply a fact of life that there will be setbacks, in fact it's the most difficult thing for many managers to accept, as a worker you are simply being judged from above and supported by your peers. As a manager you can get attacked from anywhere, staff, peers and senior management, as it becomes more high profile it can even be the media and anyone who can blog or get through to a radio show. The mental fortitude to keep going, to be tough, to see it through, even if half the country disagrees with you is necessary to be a good manager, but then is knowing when it's time to change... it's about how you deal with stress really, as the man said hundreds of years ago. "if you can keep your head while all others are losing thiers"

7. Keep developing and ressetting the vision.

A dedication to continual improvement is the only was to keep managers and teams fresh, whatever can be done can be done better, and although recovery, rest, and relaxation are absolutely vital, it's terribly important that teams are not allowed to sit back on thier achievments (it's the easiest thing in the world to happen, human nature and all that) so teams must be kept fairly on thier toes at all times.

8. Be lucky!

Waiting around!

In a previous life i was a "salesman", in fact i rang people who did not really want to see me and went to thier houses to sell them products that they did not really want to buy, and then i went to work the next day and did the whole thing all over again.

Not the most invigorating existence possible but sure it paid the bills and did'nt paddy kavanagh call insurance the last refuge of failed priests and poor scholars, or maybe it was poor priests and failed scholars.

one of the interesting things for me upon leaving the "sales" business is that i actually managed to convince myself that i was not a salesman anymore... the death of a salesman if you like, but i was dropping the name with all it's inferences. So for the last few years all those people who have not seen me in a while, who ask, "are you still in sales?" or "are you still in insurance?" are met with a very smug "no i work for myself now actually"

The truth is though i'm still in sales, in a funny way i was not running away from an occupation, just a label. through all the years of working as a salesman i never managed to shake of thinking of myself as Del Trotter or worse Jack lemmon from glengarry glenross (Gil from the Simpsons).

So this morning when i was all set and had the shirt ironed from my first appointment of the day, they phoned and cancelled and suddenly every feeling i ever had as a salesman came flooding back into my head..

They don't really want to see you, the product is useless, they'll never buy, you're no good..... one after another they whoosed through my brain, with me powerless to stop them...then i remembered i'm not that kind of salesman now...and that words are all about perception.

So if someone sees sales as gil from the simpsons, second hand car shyster, lying estate agent and they can't change thier perception, then they are far better off out of sales.. they'll always feel inadequate

However someone who see's sales as a positive helpful useful life enhancing occupation will not necessarily be better at it, but wow will they feel a hundred times better about themselves when they are working.

We are all in sales, whether we like it or not, solicitors, doctors, trainers, coaches, parents, sports people, it's just that some people don't connect it with the Arthur Miller "death of a saleman" stereotype...

for me..... i see it differently now...and i have to head into another meeting now....but if your man had not cancelled i would never have gotten to write this blog...but as time goes by i'm getting a bigger and better insight into the pure power of perception.

Cricket, Soccer, GAA, Basketball and Rugby.

Went to the soccer in Croke park on Saturday, and must now finally make an admission. i don't bloody like it...in fact i don't really enjoy watching soccer anymore, it's just boring.

I don't say this lightly, in the last two weeks i've been to two huge games, Celtic in the San Siro and Ireland in Croke park, which means i've shared the experience with almost 150,000 people and the truth is the emperor has no clothes, he's buck naked... secretly i bet loads of people find soccer boring but just can't say it because the entire populace is brainwashed by sky.

that's it for me.... the very odd celtic game perhaps, but just for auld times sake.

there was a very interesting sober discussion as the the merits of the above games before the game saturday, it seems that sport is a analogy for sex and that an affection for the various sports can tell a lot about one's preferences in the bedroom... here's a brief synopsis of the conclusions.

Soccer...... a lot of pointless pasing round the middle, when the action starts it tends to be very brief and only takes one or two passes to reach nirvana.

Basketball... relentless scoring... however it does tend to become boring after a while as most scores become fairly easy and routine, the only real excitement is in the last few minutes when it seems that despite all the scoring it might be ultimately pointless and meaningless.

Rugby.... a huge amount of huffing and puffing.... lots of build up to most scores... which take effort and committment to set up, wonderful sense of climax when finally the try is scored, possible over reliance on set plays in the modern game but overall a satisfying experience.

Cricket.... the ultimate in delaying gratification.... sometimes nothing happens for days... the opposite of basketball in the the big moments come very infrequently....a bit like fishing... but sometimes all that hanging around waiting for something to happen only heightens the satisfaction when it does.

GAA. ....A very physical game with lots of contact but more scores than rugby.... very little boedom involved, constant action but not always rewarded... good mix between build up and scoring rate...

Thye conclusion was that in cricket there's too much foreplay and very little action.... the tantric sport.

Basketball has far too much scoring and little or no build up... the Britney sport...sometimes exciting but ultimately empty..

GAA and Rugby have the mix about right..reasonable scoring rate and ultimate satisfaction when it all comes together.

and soccer....as i told you earlier....soccer is just plain boring.

Stephen Fry.

Totally fascinating documentary on BBC last night with the actor Stephen Fry bringing us on a journey through manic depression and bi polar disorder.

His main point seemed to be that his fear of the remedy (lithium) was greater than his fear of the depressions he goes through, and that he would not swap his mania for anything ...not all the tea in China was his exact phrase.

He was talking about the highs and lows of life, there are drugs that take away your ability to feel, but for him this "zombie" state would be a fate worse than death (and he's checked that out at close quarters a few times too)

I am in agreement with him here, although i am fortunate not to suffer with those illnesses, i do have some identification when he talks about the highs and lows of life, a guy once told me the secret to life was balance, calm, no highs or lows, just a serene calm that you felt on the inside.

I distinctly remember thinking.... how bloody boring...i'd hate a life like that, but until watching last night i actually had no idea why.... life is supposed to be highs and lows,... you can't feel one without the other... people who pretend otherwise are liars, so the feel good all the time merchants are just as buggered as the feel miserable all the time ones... the thing is... once we accept this, we can begin to work on it, we're dealing with reality now rather than some form of denial.

Some days life will feel wonderful

Some days life will feel desperate.

Otherwise it will just be plain boring.

Selfish - To be concerned with one's own interests.

Watched the new Adam Curtis documentary "the trap" last night on BBC2. He make's the case that modern society is predicated on the assumption that people are intrinsically selfish, this strikes me as the same theory that Richard Dawkins attempts to prove in the God Delusion.

I'm happy to go with the idea that people are basically selfish, but that does not mean that people are bad, the connection between selfish and bad is driven into us at a very early age, i remember telling my own children not to be selfish and that sharing is caring (ok maybe that was Barney) and still in the modern world we see grown up's constantly behaving in a selfish way.

But selfish is not necessarily bad!

There are 3 types of selfishness........

1. Stupid selfish.... you are a means to an end... if i had to i would kill you and eat you... i have no interest in you as a person at all... and this is explicit.

2. Smart selfish... you are still a means to an end... but i am prepared to forego the small stuff and co-operate with you in the hope that you will reciprocate and we can both win by this co-operation.

3. Rarely if ever seen... you are an end in yourself and i will help you even though it's not in my interest or may even be detrimental to me.

I think we have a lot of baggage with the word "selfish" therefore we act this way while dressing it up in all sorts of terms.... like advising..or helping out...or brownie points.

The truth (for me) is that we are all selfish, but that the world would be a better place if we were smart selfish...rather than either being ignorant selfish... or dressing it up to appear altruistic...

Most of the people who shaft us dress it up to make us believe it's for our own good.... watch QVC.

Blogging!

Following an interesting spat today on sarah carey's blog, i felt compelled to contribute on the responsibilities of bloggers... in fairness Sarah has a reasonable understanding of the issues but then this guy mark shows up and links critical comments on one's blog to "inviting someone into your living room and then having them crap on the carpet"

How can bloggers be arrogant enough to believe they can say what they like, about anything or anybody without entertaining the corrosponding responsibilities?

And i don't know about the bould mark...but i keep my living room fairly private... now when i put it in the middle of O'Connell St and allow anyone in the whole world to come in and have a look (while hoping they comment and tell me "oh what a lovely living room" ) then i'll undertand his point... until then i think it's tosh and rubbish.

Bloggers have huge responsibilities to ensure others are not libelled or slandered, there must be recourse for people who feel they have been hard done by... otherwise a weblog is a private fifedom where the blogger is crown prince and any edict may flow regardless of the consequences.

as for the anonymous bloggers.... i have no respect at all for thier views...if you can't put your name to it... don't bother publishing it...some of them can be funny...but that's about it...please don't expect us to take your political or social commentary seriously

well was it?

life is just full of turning points, stuff you get or stuff you don't get, and sometimes it's a bit random and it seems the gods don't like ya.

Other stuff is largely in our own hands, what we do, how hard we try, where we focus our energies, which tactics to employ, who to pick to be our allies.

And the outcome is never guaranteed either way, but what we do know is our responsibility to deliver the best of ourselves in spite of the lack of certainty, to give our everything regardless, and to do whatever we feel needs to be done to give ourselves the chance.... and then maybe the gods will look down and give us a wee smile.

The price of "right"

In his 1937 book "how to win friends and influence people" Dale Carnagie opens by explaining how most people are never wrong, how people's pride and self respect will rarely allow them to be wrong. One of the problems with accepting that our opinion may be "wrong" is that we can rarely ever see it ourselves, that we don't want to give in to others who think they are right.

I think part of the problem stems from our lack of ability to differenciate between fact and opinion. A fact is something that is scientifically verifiable, such as, "I am 6'6' tall, or I was born in County Roscommon".

Opinions on the other hand are what i think, or believe, or feel about myself or someone, or something, and opinions can be changed, usually by education and exposure, it's true that up to 150 years ago men did not think that women should hold property, and up until 90 years ago men were convinced women were too stupid to vote... these were opinions, it was also a pretty universal opinion that the planets moved around the earth and the world was flat..but these opinions faded in the light of education, exposure and understanding.

What does all this mean? I havent thought it out that well yet, but it appears (opinion) to me that opinions can be changed mentally, in order to change our opinion of ourselves we must "think" or "believe" something differently, wheras to change a fact we must take a certain action, it's a fact that i currently weigh 17st'8lbs... now if i want that to change i need to eat less and exercise more.

The truth is that all opinions are just that... opinions...and there is no absolute right or wrong involved, we only have helpful or unhelpful opinions... for example.. i want to get a ticket to a big game...i have two opinions i can choose from... i think i have little chance and it's hardly worth trying...or i am sure one will turn up so i'll contact absolutely everyone i know about it... only one of these gives us a good chance of getting one...

so (and i'm rambling now) we can change our beliefs, most of them are not ours anyway, they we're handed out like Sweets by people who knew feck all either....and we never take the time to look at them in the cold light of day... today i'm going to have a look at a few of mine... you could do a lot worse...

tomorow i'm heading to italy for the first time...it will be interesting to discover if italians are all suave, stunning, sleek creatures, who are good at football and fashion.... i have me doubts

Too much wondering!

A really interesting conversation with an old work colleague this morning threw up the age old question... are we better off not dreaming?

I'm not nearly as sure as i used to be on this one, my view a few years ago was that to stop dreaming was to stop growing and to stop living, but i am coming round to the view that you can overdo anything, and that this view is very cosy, but sets us up for a life of constant disapointment.

I had a conversation with my teenage daughter the other day that was about always wanting more, she'd like a bigger house, and a bigger car, and a bigger everything, and we chatted about how there will always be someone with a bigger one than you....and that brought me back to Alain De Button's book "status anxiety" and why people are suffering because of this incessant societal pressure for bigger, better, more. De Button's philosophical effort is miles ahead of Oliver James's "affluenza" which attempts to take on this issue from a psychological and sociological viewpoint.

Too many big words........ the deal is that we are worried all the time about keeping on the treadmill and how well we are doing, and the only solution we are presented with is to sell up and buy a cottage in Leitrim, grow our own nettles and drop out of society..... this way you have to either be a rat in the rat race or if you leave you have to renounce all rats and become self sufficient.

Surely to God there's more to it than that.....there has to be a middle ground...a place where we can participate in life without the constant nagging fear that we are not enough, without having to move to a place outside Mohill..... oh it's not easy being a wonderer!

New Chariot Driver

Great to see us growing up as a nation in so many ways, but still, don't you just hanker a wee bit for the days of ginger mcloughlin and a try at twickenham followed by a mini pitch invasion of fellas from belmullet who had not been home in 20 years marvelling at how wee ireland could occassionally slay the entire empire...

yeah we've moved on alright....in the words of the great harry enfield.... "we is considerably richer than you" and as a nation i often wonder is it a good thing or not... anyone in Croker on Sat night would certainly see that we no longer tug the forlock...but we have also lost our humility...i hope we manage to retain the sense of humour...although i'm not sure.

Personally i'm glad to see the back of Febuary..... it was a difficult month in many ways and i loudly welcome the Ides of March..... my self belief is strong and i think it's going to be a brilliant year...i just need to get a bit fitter and a bit (constructively) busier and i'll be sorted

Just checking in....

a whole feckin month again.,,,,maybe i'm not as good at the discipline of blogging as i thought i was... all is well in Newtondom.... lots going on...am happy... but lots and lots of creases to iron out...

Kill Kill Kill

Ok...short post.... in the morning i may well be done for murder, went to dentist (who never explains anything) today and he started root canal treatment,....and never even gave me a bloody painkiller... i have been in total agony all evening.... think head is going to burst...on top of this i have a bad cold.... am wondering how many paracetemol you need to get OD'ed... if i get through this night the dentist may die....

Happy New Year!

God finally i find this bloody thing working, have tried to blog 3 times over the holidays and each time after typing the feckin thing, i find that it won't publish, i was seriously thinking of sending them a right stinking letter.

Today i heard a wonderful quote from a guy called Gibson, he said

"the future has already arrived, it's just not very well distributed yet.

It's a silly thing, but why do we keep looking for the "ultimate" idea all the time, when there are fantastic ideas in what we already have, and there are thousands of people who have never heard of the most basic coaching ideas, surely it would make more sense to spread these "ideas" and get well paid for it rather than killing ourselves trying to think of amazing and unique ways to improve the process.

I have had enough sales meeting so far this year to realise that the word "coaching" had now become de rigeur throughout the corporate world, this however does not mean that most of them have a clue as to what "coaching" actually is, i think most of them want to continue the command and control method of preaching, teaching or telling employees what to do, i have heard precious little about "developing potential" " getting committment" or "drawing the best out of people"

This new year, 2007, is the most wonderful opportunity for people in the coaching business, we have the opportunity to help some individuls and companies put real "coaching cultures" in place in their organisations, thier is certainly a hunger and acceptance of the "concept" of coaching now, it's up to us coaches to make sure that real coaching occurs in these companies, if those of us who try to do it right, who really care about what we do and how we do it, if we don;t fill this vacuum, then there is no doubt someone will fly in from the UK, sell thier concept to the corporates, do the work and fly off again with the money.

so if we know how it's done, if we care about doing it, if we BELIEVE in it, then this year we MUST get out there and sell it, we must get in around the business world, who now know two things.

!. There is a thing called coaching
2. They hear very good things about it, so maybe it works.

it's up to us to ride this wave, coaching has been around long enough now to have passed the "fad" stage, and it seems it's going to be around a lot longer, there's a huge appetite out there now waiting to be satisfied.

Now is the time!

it's a funny time Christmas!

I suppose the most important things about Christmas from a parent's viewpoint is that the children enjoy it, that it's not too stressful. that we don't get into any major arguments and that we feel happy and OK about ourselves as partners, parents and family members.

From that perspective i've had a lovely one, the girls got lovely stuff and have been consumed by them since, so it's been fairly quiet, which was important as my mum spent Christmas with us, it was not easy for her as Dad is only dead ten weeks and the wounds and lonesomeness are never far from her. She got through it and has just returned home, it's a bit difficult because the rest of us have moved on somewhat and begun to settle back into our lives, it's almost impossible for mum as Dad was her life and now that he's gone she feels helpless and everything seems a bit poiintless.

I had a great Christmas eve, we whizzed round the shops with very little to buy, and had a lovely time just meeting people and generally doing very little, in the evening Enda and I went to town and had great fun for a few hours before getting home to put stuff together and wrap for Ireland.

Christmas day was a lovely breakfast, mass, the Christmas day swim (i only raised €345 but then i only got bloody cards on Christmas eve) which was great fun and exhilarating, and then home for present opening (i got really great gifts this year) Cooking dinner was a blast and it was lovely, we rounded off the night with one of my favourite movies (which Cathy bought me on DVD) "Life is beautiful" and then we laughed and cried before traipsing off to bed.

The only downside was the re-emergence of that bloody toothache, but i got over that and today was better from that perspective.

today we all got up late, i went to curry's and got €100 off the beautiful klipsch igroove, brought it home and have been doodling and fluting since. expect tonight to bring more of the same.

have now started "The God Delusion' by Richard dawkins..... wonder what effect that's going to have!

what's the difference?

The last week or two has been amazing for me.... have had so many ideas springing up that sometimes i can't keep up, this post is a attempt to figure out another one.

our biggest fear, doubt, insecurity is being found out, of people discovering what we feel we are "really like" we think that if people could really see us, if we were exposed, that people might be shocked, and we might be laughed at, humiliated, ridiculed or ostracised.

the space between the person we show to others, and how we think we really are is a massive determinant of how safe and secire we feel in our lives. this has a lot to do with how much "pretending" we do and how we "really" feel about ourselves.

when that gap is narrow, either by lowering our pretending or by feeling better about ourselves, we feel safe and confident.

but when it's a big GAP, either by us feeling terrible about ourselves, or by expecting huge amounts from ourselves, then we feel insecure, doubtful, worried and plain bloody terrified about ourselves.

success is not about cars, or bars or even stars!

confidence and success is about believing, really believing who the we are..... and being brave enough to authentically present that to the world.... there will always be a difference, but we have the choice of whether it's a small difference, or a gaping chasm... if it's one of those then all the recognition, awards, material stuff and crap in the world won't make a blind feckin bit of difference.

be brave

Just a notch or two!

Seems like bloody years since i updated this blog, am in Cork, was in Dublin all last week, am in Galway later this week, and then my friends it's Christmas, and during Christmas, i fully intend to do sweet FA.

I'm hugely enjoying my work at the moment, coaching (which i had sometimes began to doubt) is an amazing process, and the insights and tweaks we are getting are just wonderful.

I've also discovered something amazing, i'm currently calling it the "polar oposite defence" and i think it's the most important thing i have dicovered since i began coaching seriously 4 years ago. The polar opposite defence basically means running to the very opposite of the behaviour challenged in order to defer or avoid making the necessary changes.

For example, if it emerges that the issue someone has centres around the fact that they are over protective of information, the coachee will often say.. "oh i suppose i should be running around the place letting everyone know what's going on like some kind of town crier"

This constant running to the very opposite of the behaviour in order to avoid taking the necessary action to move a notch or two in that direction is used as a justification of the current behaviour and keeps the person stuck with the same challenges they presented with, so someone who's issue is a desire to control everything will say... "oh so i should let them all run riot then should i?" when what might work is giving them a bit more freedom and then seeing how it al works out... but it's easier to justify the current position and do nothing.

i'm going to use some time at christmas to develop this idea and discover how people can move things a notch or two and continue with experimentation all life long rather than taking a strong position and justifying it.

so much for sweet FA.

Happy Christmas.

postitioning the proposition

Just had a couple of brilliant days, yesterday i had a new group and the day before i had a new client and the same issue sprang up, how do we position our proposition, do we go in as the experts, or is it better to seek peoples input in a collobrative approach.

yesterday i positioned my work to a group better than i ever have before, it came naturally, however like baking the perfect loaf, i'm buggered if i can remember the exact ingredients, or the exact order, but i know it turned out superb

i think there were two key points

me being here does not mean there is something wrong with you
and
I'm not here to change or manipulate you, who you are, your personality, or your perceptions.

what i can do is help you to gain awareness, and maybe tweak one or two things, with your agreement, that will lead you to better results


sorry i'm scribbling here in a rush.....

Wiped

Another group gone home happy, either because they got something out of the programme or maybe just because they are gone home, but it's the end of another 5 day management development programme for this particular group. We got through a lot of work and i find i often feel a bit drained when the course is over.

i'm a person who usually has a good deal of energy, and it's never a problem when the group is there and i'm getting my energy from interacting with them, but always when they leave i get this sudden wipeout and feel totally zonked.

i wonder what it would take for me to be able to energise myself? is it as simple as getting up and doing something else? Do i actually need the zonked period to recover? or should i just ball in with another group as soon as humanly possible.

this year is the first year i can remember when i will be flat to the boards right up until Christmas, it's always been a busy time, but nothing like this, i'm wondering how i will handle it all, the problem is i am on the road and when i'm finished dealing with the people, there is just an empty room for the evening.

Maybe i should buy three brilliant boooks, two business and one fiction and try to read them in tamdem, the alternative is to call everyone i know in dublin and cork and arrange nights out, dinners etc, but i doubt that will increase my effectiveness for the work.

anyway, it will be an interesting time for me.... am looking forward to Christmas when i think about it, but in contrast to other years, i have hardly thought about it... in fact i was amazed in the Kilmore hotel in Cavan yesterday to be confronted with a huge Christmas tree inside the front door, i thought they had gone mad or something until i realised that it's only four weeks, anyway this is a lot better than whiling and wishing my life away.

strange week,

it's been a strange random kinda week, the highlight being Celtic beating United, the lowlight being the news that my friend has cancer, and 600 things in between.

I am having the website redesigned and refitted to have a blog there and so that's where most of my ramblings shall be in future, but i might keep the odd bit here for old times sake...

i complained about the heating in this office complex for 3 days in a row, and they have finally done something about it, the sonthing is to turn it up to full blast and leave it on all day.... slight overcompensation, can't decide if it's intentional or not... i asked a guy to redesign the website this week and (i won't name him) this is the response i got... i have read it 50 times and i still can't believe anyone in business would have an attitude like this... but let him off.... enjoy it

It's was entitled "reservations"

"Paul

I am just sending a brief message in reference to our telephone
conversation earlier today -

The reason for this message is because I wanted to explain my current
position in case it influences your decision to wait until February
for me to redesign your website.

I have taken a look over your website, skimming and reading the
content, and I am a little confused as to what it is about.

I am assuming that the content will be rewritten for the new site to
be more simple and accessible, as web users are skimmers themselves,
but I have a few reservations about taking on this sort of job so I
think you will have to sell it to me.

The irony of this is not lost on me.

As a rule I do not work on a job by job basis, but instead have a
limited client list. For me, as a designer, it is important for me to
be behind a product or service in order for me to do my job properly,
and with my current schedule I don't have time to do any less than 100%.

I hope that I am not coming across as rude, as I am quite no-nonsense
and straightforward, but at first sight Newton Performance Coaching
doesn't seem to fall into step with XXXXXXX, and I am not sure how
well that would work out.

If I have got the wrong impression and you would like to clarify
this, please do not hesitate to contact me, and I hope that my
frankness is received in the manner it is intended.

Regards
XXXXXXXXXX
Mixed Media Designer"

jaysus lads it's a wonderful wonderful world......

If i had one minute!

was wondering, if i had one minute to blog before the computer expired, this is real i have about 30 secs of battery life left, what would i write about, i'd write about the randomness of the world, while one friend has cancer, while i and the rest of us are fine, why chance plays such a vital role in our lives, and trying to examine what co-incidence means?

mostly i'd write neither about the fairness nor unfairness of the world, but the pure bloody ramdomness of it.

is there a future for compromise rules?

The masters games were played in a wonderful spirit, the over 40's of Ireland and the Australian over 35's served up two very enjoyable games and a brilliant experience for all involved.

The seniors was something totally different, something ugly that i've seen before and that is greatly admired in Irish (and Australian) society but which CANNOT possibly contribute to society in a positive way.

Sportspeople are now being motivated and coached to believing in themselves and thier causes to the entext that they no longer believe that the normal laws and mores of society apply to them. I've had many opportunities to personally observe the behaviour of elite athletes, and there is no doubt in my mind, that the word "special" often goes to thier head and can be grotesquely mis-interpreted to allow athletes to believe they are above the law.

While the violence at yesterdays game was not as outrageous as the press would apear to hysterically indicate, and certainly not as bad as two club GAA incidents that i have been part of, it still would appear that the reason ireland did not win is not that they were not prepared to win at all costs, it's just that they were not as good at "winning at all costs" as the Australians were.

The major point of all this is that we were always conditioned to believe that participation in sport was an excellent preperation for life and that it passed along values of fairness, competitiveness, courage and discipline. The descent from those olympian ideals has been stark, so to be an elite athlete nowadays often involves cheating, drugs, violence, singlemindedness and an obsession to win.... i'm not so sure anymore if sport offers a healthy route.

In the 19th and 20th centuries the Military was the place to prove your might, your prowess, your patriotism, the fact that this involved sacrifice, discipline and official hyprocisy that occassionally led to brutality, rape, and murder was overlooked for the cause. I have a feeling that todays elite sportspeople are being brainwashed in the same way and motivated to believe that the occassional bit of violence, roasting, cheating or thuggery is ok, after all, haven't they shown the sacrifice and discipline needed.

Unless they can control this game, they should stop the series, but society must further realise that it's not the game that's at fault here, it's the mentality that is being driven into young men and women. We don't need the compromise rules to show us that, all we have to do is see the Galway hurling final.

There is something rotten in the state of Denmark.