Pain V Pleasure

Pain and Pleasure, The stuff of life.

There’s a really effective advert running on the telly at the moment for Vodafone business, the advert begins just as the champagne is about to be popped, freezes, and then rewinds throught the whole deal, right back through all the stages, back to the initial phonecall.

The advert is good at showing you all the physical things that happened, all the calls, and the meetings and the contracts and the celebration. What it can’t protray however is all the emotions and feelings that accompanied each step of the process, we never get to sense the trepidation with which the first phone call was made, we never get to see the times when the deal looked hopeless, when it appeared it would never come together, the late nights when it all seemed pointless, and yet without that, without the fears, and the prospect of it all going pearshaped, what would there have been to celebrate? What would it have to do with skill and effort and persistance? Nothing!

This year about 80 people will win the national lottery, will this be due to their expertise and diligence and persistance? of course not, It will be down to pure luck, fortune that will ocaasionally smile down on people but which always has two sides.

We need to accept luck whenever we get it, be thankful for it, but lord knows those who decide to depend on it are in for a unfortunate business life, because sitting around waiting for a lucky break in business is the very same as sitting around with a roll of lottery tickets waiting for a miracle to happen, it won’t!

Luck does not work like that, our achievements in life will be caused by our thoughts and actions, what we think and what we do, and not by some imaginative twist of fate, luck will even itself out, it probably already has, remember around 80 people will win the lottery this year, yet over 400 will be killed on the roads, so you have a 5 times better chance of getting killed in a crash, and still they go, “it could be you” don’t make me laugh. It would be more truthful to say hey, your lucky to be alive.

So if we accept that luck is something that evens itself out over most peoples lives, then we have to look at what makes some people successful and has the champagne corks popping, while some just drift on occassionally getting to celebrate somebody elses success. The answer to this question is our understanding and attitude towards pain and pleasure.

There are those who dream of a painless life, where there is constant peace and pleasure and where we never experience fear or doubt or feel unable to cope with it all, and that’s what they are, dreamers! It’s time to get over it, wake up and smell the coffee, everybody experiences pain, everyone experiences doubt, everyone wonders if they will be able to cope. There is no way a life can be pain free, it’s like trying to have day without the night, to have the light without the dark, you cannot experience pleasure unless you have experienced pain, you would not know what it was. The important thing is not to become paralyzed by the pain, to be able to feel it but still keep moving forward, to not let it stop you from doing what you know you have to do in order to move toward pleasure, to solve that problem, or close that deal or sort out that angry angry customer.

The businesses that inspire me have known struggle, just as the lives that inspire me have, they have achieved not despite but because of their hard times, it is the difficult times that have made them great, when teams win the All Ireland they remember the pain, the running up hill, the scarifices, would an All Ireland have value if you could buy it? If you could experience the Joy without have gone through the pain, what would it be worth?

The world is always looking for quick fixes, to attempt to get the results without the pain, and yet all those ab rollers end up in the attic while those who knuckle down and go to the gym twice a week get results. There is no life without pain, it’s often the struggle that becomes the most valuable part, so please remember when the doubts come, when you are wondering whether to pick up the phone or not, that this is a hugely valuable part of the game, this is a hugely important part of life, and then as the NIKE man says…. Just do it.

Springbreak!!!

The Iraqis are fucked now!

NYC (Springbreak)

Those Munsters!

Are myths created out of thin air, or do they have some basis in reality. Congratulations to Munster on thier fine win. The amount of BS and hyperbole it has created is interesting though. According to voices in the media we now have to recognise that there is a superior province, we always knew that we were inferior to Cork, but now it appears to have spread, we also always knew that Tipperarians had a divine right, to be right and to win things... this also appears to have infected the rest of Munster.

Still it's proof that Limerick people really are tougher than the rest,,,,,,,, anybody with an ear to the news over the last couple of years would have known that anyway...... it just makes me wonder, will the children of munster now be brought up to be believe this crap, thier level of innate superiority.

will they be like generations of English people who were brought up to believe they were superior to the wig wogs and nig nogs of other nations, or maybe it's only a bit of harmless fun.

maybe i'm a begrudger, and maybe i just want to see a bit of rationality restored to the whole thing, if ronan o'gara kicks a penalty 500 miles away, does that make you a bigger, better, superior kind of person.... god i don't know... but according to the media contributors over the last few days it appears it does.... munster people have a "special" thing..... this little bit extra....stand up and fight..... sure you're only Irish by birth, you're Munster by the grace of God.

this time last week,

I have been wandering round all weekend thinking.....this time last week i was........ it must be time to get over it,,,, life is littered with highs and lows and none of the can ever last that long....so the trick seems to be....enjoy it all when its there, and then get over it.... leave it go....the good stuff and the bad... ok will take my own advice and realise that no situation can last forever...and that clinging on to memories is not living life.... roll on the next trip

Am I a Craic Addict!

It's been a while, NYC was everything i thought it might be and then a bit more, we had so much fun over the few days, on trips like this you find out a few things about yourself, I found out that

I totally love life
I have fantastic friends that make life so much fun.
I should wear more comfortable shoes.
I enjoy my sister and brother even more than i thought I did.
I can go bloody nowhere without running into people who know me.
I need very little sleep.
People find me "interesting"
I have limits.
I am a craic addict.
I can let others be the centre of attention.
I have no need to entertain the fears i sometimes do.
I totally love life.

We had the most fantastic time, from arriving in Sligo Airport on Thursday morning to arriving back there on Tuesday, the Craic may have lulled occassionally, but it never stopped, I am grateful for each of the 14 hours of sleep i managed during that time.

The bar in the pic is called tonic in times square, great music, fierce bad bubblegum shots, to all those in scruffy's, kevin st james, the iris and gerald b cantor rooftop at Moma, (what a place), Tonic, The rainbow room, gaelic park, the playwright and many others i can't remember the name of ....... thanks.....

there are a few things about new york i will never ever forget, abercrombie and fitch on fifth avenue, that little spanish place in greenwich village, the irish famine memorial, the rooftop bar overlooking central park, riverdance, and the mad mad taxi driver on the last day.

penalties downtown, cricket in yonkers and gun gun (get down) on Park Avenue.

pure mad ted

Neglecting the blog!

life is good, don't feel great today, sore back and stuff, perhaps have been overdoing it the last few weeks, still am really looking forward to new york this day next week, that will give me a great chance for rest and relaxation.

Have had such a good business week, am getting much more assertive at getting decent fees and even collecting them.....

have just read a great book called blink by malcolm gladwell, really good stuff about making good decisions and how important it is not to linger over it, am also doing a good bit of personal coaching which is very interesting and very rewardiing, especialy when the people get great results, makes me remember what got me excited about this business in the first place.

everything else is cool and the gang

The architecture of happiness

my latest read......... about half way through, it's about architecture, it's development and it's affect on us as people.

About what building say to us, what they speak of, what they say about us, how they encapsulate our desires and values and how we identify with some and they make us happy while others grate on us and we hate them.

all very interesting, but havent time to go into it all as i am a lone parent this week and i have children with tougher sporting schedules than Michael Jordan

Holiday hangovers!

am having problems with blogger today..... have just returned from my holidays, it always takes me a while to get my momentum going again once i've had a break for christmas or illness or holidays or whatever.

we all had a really good time, i enjoyed the disney thing although 2 more days of it and i'd have gone mad. It's strange talking to people this morning how everyone has thier down thoughts, was watching the sopranos over the weekend and tony says to ms melfie, "hey, gloom is your business and business is good" i find it strange that everybody has thier pain, i suppose all can appear perfect for a piece of time, you win the lotto, or get great grades, or meet someone new, but it seems to be a fact of life that doubt or pain will inevitably come back and settle in...

I somewhat flippiantly said in my profile that i am happy 51% of the time which is the most anyone can hope for, but today i think that 51% is a bloody good aspiration.

it's very rare that i ever feel 100% happy, maybe fleeting moments looking at sleeping children, or watching a football match or something, where there is no space for any thought other than the happy thought. it's also very rare that i feel 0% totally devestated, therefore i think my life largely vascillates between 49% and 51% and the important thing for me to remember is that no matter how good or bad i feel at any time, i'm only 2% away from the opposite feeling, and that in time that feeling will come to me, or even better maybe there is something i can do about it.

Seligman claims that appreciation is the key to crossing that divide, if you can appreciate the many wonderful things in life rather than focussing on all that's wrong, it will bring about a shift back to the 51% of the equation, so that's the plan for the rest of the day, try to focus on whats well rather than what's broke.

it's good to be back.
it's good that we had a great time
it's good to be working in the business i always wanted to work in
it's good to have this lovely family
it's good to have lots of good friends
it's just good

jaysus i feel better already.......

There's a little bit of pressure on!

I have this thing going on where i am pulled between two forces (a bit like Mr. Burgess) first i want to go out and shake the trees and generate as many ideas and work as possible, on the other hand i am always afraid of taking on too much and then letting people down because of my inability to deliver.

And sometimes i get stuck between both stools and get feck all done either way, and that frustrates the hell out of me too, i have this huge load of presenting coming up, and still have to keep the kettle on the boil around getting new work... and the thing is that two different people have told me today that this feeling will never go away, the feeling of notn quite being sure whether i've done enoguh, planned far enough ahead, covered off all the bases and the paperwork, wondering if in some company somehwere they are saying i did not do exactly what i said on the tin.

and despite all this i still presented for one more big job today, and i have another pitch on monday and 2 on tuesday.... truth is if the four of them say yes then i'm fucked... but then that's a bridge we'll cross as they say.

am addicted to downloading pictures i like on the web, it's so easy on the mac.... i love the mac....the feel of it, the sound of the keys, the way everything is so bloody obvious and simple.,.and i like what it says about me... it's not beige is it.

not waving but drowning

it's always been one of my favourite poems, mainly because i have often had serious identification with it, Stevie Smtih knew what she was talking about here, the whole world thinks you are going fantastic, but you feel overwhelmed and out of your depth. it must be a natural condition, all great literature reflects the true nature of life as a mixture of elation and suffering and still i know so many people who simply can never admit to fraility, to failure, to the possibility that they may be wrong.

Maybe self delusion and deluding everyone else is the way to go, maybe it's always fantastic, maybe every bridge is spannable.... or maybe that type of thinking is what produces wankers like glen hoddle (who famously said that disabled people must have brought it upon themselves in a past life)

I met a woman today who said she was not sending her child on a school bus again, because one crashed yesterday and a child was killed.

perhaps she should never drive again - cos someone died in car crash yesterday too, or never eat meat again, or never go to a festival again, or never wander out the feckin door..... people seem to think they can somehow eliminate risk or luck or chance or fate from thier lives... they seem to think they can control these things.

those people are mad i tell you... mad...mad mad.. these are the people who never fall in love because they may get hurt, who never play the game because they may lose, who never take a chance because they may fail, who never connect with anyone in case they get dissapointed.

thye world needs more chancers, more devils, more people who are willing to explore beyond thier narrow field of experience, because life is about getting too far out, it's about occassionally feeling afraid, it's about trusting madly, it's to do with having a go, taking a chance, giving it a lash, anything else is just death before life... and those gobshites who are always on about a life after death, there the very ones who don't know how to live the one they already have........ looking for some sort of religious insurance policy....anyway... that;s my longest rant for a while... i'll leave you with the text of stevies poem.

Nobody heard him, the dead man,
But still he lay moaning:
I was much further out than you thought
And not waving but drowning.

Poor chap, he always loved larking
And now he's dead
It must have been too cold for him his heart gave way,
They said.

Oh, no no no, it was too cold always
(Still the dead one lay moaning)
I was much too far out all my life
And not waving but drowning.

strange times

It's mad and it's busy, have such a lot happening and coming up, in the last few days i have had talks with FAS, Ocean, Enterprise Ireland, Musgraves, Wyeth and Bank of Ireland.

It's really busy, I have the new courses to run, new courses to sell, off to Paris next week and the mad trip to New York a few weeks later.

I certainly won't be sitting around the house moping!

There's just no bloody time!

There is such a lot going on, and there just is not enough time to try and get everything done, all weekend i have been chasing my tail, although some of it was good fun it was still all scheduled and had to be fitted in. I wonder will i ever be someone who can live life without the possibility of spontaniety. The last few days have been stone feckin crazy, between work and marys and the family and FAS and in the middle of it all John McGahern died, he has written the most beautiful books and i would love to re read "that they may face the rising sun" well i hope he does anyway, his books have been a constant in my life for almost 30 years.

i am looking forward to getting back to work for a rest, but there is so much on this week that there is little hope of that, will go for a lovely long walk on the beach this evening and get my head clear.

We shall not be moved!

Went to see "on the road to lisbon" tonight, it's a play about the 1966/67 Celtic European Cup campaign and the effect it had on people and the impact on their lives, some of the happiest moments i've ever had in my life have been around football, and it was interesting to see this reflected through the fine actors.

there was a line in it about a guy going to lisbon using his engagement ring money, which made me laugh because i was sitting near my pal James who actually "borrowed" the money put aside for his wifes wedding dress so he could go to seville in 2003, but then a wise man once said that when we get older our regrets will be much more about the things we did'nt do rather than what we did.

everyone in my house watches "lost" so i get a full hour just to myself every monday night..it's grrrreat.

My weekend was good, back playing football again so feeling a bit stiff today, but had a great day at work and now i am actually starting to think about france and even NYC.... woohoo....it's going to be a great summer.... i'm not smug am I?

the lovely long lazy saturdays

Am bang in the middle of a lovely day, it's saturday, I had a really good dream (no secrets divulged) last night so i awoke with a smile on my face, got up, went to the farmers orgasmic market, got the car washed, (fuck have i not got the most exciting life?) played basketball with cathy for an hour, read the times, ate a big cherry muffin, and now i'm fucking about surfing stuff and updating this blog yoke.

Was reading a sopranos site and apparently miss melfie has diagnosed tony as a sociopath... they must be everywhere those sociopaths, i did an online test to see if i am one too but dissapointingly i'm just a normal average mick..... it would be exciting to have something like that to describe meself, currently i can be described as man, dad, player, coach, husband, fecker, tosser, gobshite, lunatic, friend, chairman, supporter and many many more, but none of them have as many letters or are as exciting as sociopath.... maybe i should take a different test?

Control what i can!

God it's been a topsy turvy and frustrating week,
I love to be in control and i hate it when I don't have any, I hate it when there's nothing else to do but wait, I bloody have to be at something, and right now i'm not to hot at relaxing!

I get frustrated at myself for never quite figuring out what to call the programmes I deliver, I have various names for the different, but i still feel i'm missing out on creating a "difference" between me and others in the market.

I have to find that uniqueness, that thing that sets me apart, that reason why people will want to deal with me rather than who ever tries to sell to them, what is it that sets me apart, what can i do to empahsise that difference, I'm not the first to deal with sales, management, personal development, goal setting, comunication skills, coaching and the like, but i do have a unique mix and way of putting these things across, i just don't know how to describe it in a way that will set me apart.

That's it now!

There's to be no more Keira Knightly pics uploaded on this site, enough is enough! This started life as a porfessionalish kinda blog thing and has morphed into a wanton Keira appreciation society, ....well it has to stop. The movie "holes" was on last night...honest to god i only sat down to watch it for 2 minutes.... but she draws me in!

Today was just a bloody brilliant day, got so much done, the world is a pretty happy place this evening, have now a vast amount of work to do over the next few months, but i have a week in Paris coming up in 3 weeks, and 3 weeks after that i have 4 nights in New York... so in fairness my life is great at the moment, If i could only get over this Keira Knightly photo thing now i'd be sorted!

designing and building things is class!

this is going to be the new landsdowne road, somebody though it out and drew it, and they go and build it then (overcoming lots of obstacles on the way)

but it will be done and it looks great, i have been wondering exactly what newton performance coaching will look like over the same time period, it definately has the potential, i attended a seminar today and realised that i am a much better coach, trainer, presenter than i had previously given myself credit for...

so i want to finish the design stage (actually it's finished) apply for planning permission from myself and get on with building the thing, while taking care of the knitting on a day to day basis in the meantime.

the business will have about 17 employees, operate in Ireland north and south, deliver fantastic customer experiences, inspire people, operate in the public and private sector, treat it's people superbly, be extremely profitable and work in the areas of mamagement, sales, personal development, communication and whatever evolves over the next 5 year. Well that's what i'm applying for planning permission for!

There will be 3 seperate income streams.

1. Me. The work i do delivering and speaking.
2. 10 trainers / coaches delivering programmes around the country.
3. The sales of products, DVD's, Books, Workbooks, Coaching manuals etc.

This is not going to happen by accident, any more than landsdowne road will, but it will happen.

ear ear!

It's nothing short of astonishing how some people can provide instant analysis on something you have only just begun to explain..... or maybe i'm wrong and the world is full of clairvoyant geniuses after all.