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.

Takin a mark!

Totally enjoyed the 2 games so far against the Aussies, feels great to be out there playing, the only downside is the bloody shape some of these guys are in, usually i feel ok about the shape i'm in, could be a bit better, but then compared to my mates it's not bad, then I have to line out against some guys who are in feckin brilliant shape and i feel, there's only one word for this....FAT.

So between now and Christmas there is going to be a serious effort to shed the ned.... it's not the biggest ned in the world, but i'd feel a whole lot better if it dissapeared completely.

As for the games so far, Sat was great fun, really hard and tough, Monday night in Cavan was so wet and miserable, that it was hard to savour the experience sometime, still i got to play under superb lights, and i did score a neat goal to finish off the Aussie challenge, did the same Saturday, i may have a knack for getting my scores at the right time.

Busy at work today, have one of them days tomorrow where the day session is followed by an evening programme somewhere else, looking forward to it actually, being on my feet from 9.30 in the morning until 10 at night was once only a pipe dream, now it's a reality, i'm going to enjoy it.

Ok.... better get preparing....

Here we go!!!

Masters (over 40's) compromise rules 1st test

Ireland V Australia

Am looking forward to taking on the Aussies this weekend, and playing for Ireland, the last time i was picked on an Irish team was 1986 and it was in basketball, twenty years on and my life has changed a fair bit but i am really keen on this compromise game, it's very physical and hard to get use to, but i love the contact and the hard hits.

let the games begin.

How did i ever live without one!

Good lord....how did i ever live without a scanner, and how did the world ever cope with not having this photo... such a lovely boy.... the two auld fellas look very dodgy though!

Grappling!

There are some interesting views on the Monaghan crash and the future of road safety in Ireland over at http://www.sarahcarey.ie/ and also at http://www.twentymajor.blogspot.com/

The daft thing is that politicians seem to feel that the behaviour of young people is something that they can control, and then claim credit for, am i the only person in the country who is morbidly amused that the headline on friday "gardai crackdown on road users yeilding results" are invariably followed by saturdays headlines "4 dead in head on collision.

The politicians can at best provide regulation and enforcement to attempt to influence peoples behaviour and fair play to the people who came up with the irish road safety campaigns, it's brilliant and i would imagine has saved lives.

This reminds me of the zero tolerance regime which apparently reduced crime in NYC sucessfully in the late 80's, which the police and mayor claimed all the credit and political kudos for. Malcolm Gladwell in his book "Blink" makes a fairly convincing arguement that the major contributor to the fall in crime was the Roe V Wade (1972) judgement which made abortion legal and ensured that those who would have been the major perpetrators of such crime in the late 80's and early 90's were never born in the first place.

We should be looking to the ling term in our road safety strategy rather than trying to apply sensationalist bandaids everytime there is a particularly horrific tragedy. We need a cultural change, driver education would be a start, proper enforcement, like at the times when the accidents are actually happening as opposed to 7.30 in the morning would help, and proper infrastructure.

you can't control young people, the best you can hope for is to positively influence them, fear does not seem to be working as a deterrent, maybe we should try something else.

The Sunday Indo....

Yesterday the Sunday Independent snuck into my house, Maggie was on the flight into Sligo and they give them away free on the plane, it's been a while since I've seen this quality broadsheet, so I thought I'd have a look to see what quality stories and political insight would be available.

Well page one had a remarkable article of massive consequence by Brendan O'Connor on the life and times of Fr. Brian Darcy..... and a political campaign to end stamp duty...ok i thought...there must be little happening this weekend..so i turned to page three, which after all it is the key page on any broadsheet... wow.. lola cashman still has Bono's trousers... .. quick glance to page two... well would you look...four young men killed in monaghan...where will we hide that Aengus?....oh put it on page two...we have important stories about the lack of Brian D'Arcy's sex life and Bono's trousers for the main news pages... i really don't know what was in the rest of the paper, I have better things to do with me time (like wallpaper the garden fence)

I heard recently that Brendan O'Connor is being groomed as the new editor of the Indo... God help us!

I used to think it was a tabloid dressed up as a broadsheet, it's not, it's just mass market trash..... there's only one real use to which the Sunday Indo should be put, but i find the paper a bit hard and non absorbent!

Shit happens

I really think the world is going daft, there is a major scandal on now because the national childrens hospital did not have the right screening procedures for Hep C in the early 90's, now i can understand a scandal if they had actually caused infections, but the only thing wrong (15 years ago) was a screening procedure.

The child protection bill which is going through the house of commons at the moment requires screening and a licencing system for all those who come in contact with children, either professionally or in a voluntary capacity, in otherwords the Brits have now decided that all grown up's are potential peadophiles and that all children should be scared of them....

all this reminds me of the movie the village, where the elders whip up poisonous fear and hysteria in order to maintain political control and keep everyone in line, if things keep going like this people will be afraid to go out thier front doors, creativity and adventure will be stifled and we'll all be walking round like crash test dummies and behaving like happy little consumers, i'm fecking sick of it anyway.

It used to be almost funny, this stuff about bogey men and pookas, but if this bullshit continues there will be no children out to play anymore, nobody to give blood, nobody to coach the underage sports team, nobody to take a stand on anything....i'm bloody sick of this consistant bad news and scaremongering,,,feckin sick of it.. you'd never notice would ya.

I even have a great idea for reducing road deaths, ban cars.... why do we have to live in a bloody world where people can't realise that "shit happens"? that people will be killed on the roads, that children will die, that mistakes will occassionally be made, i'm all for standards me, but if the level of regulation is strangling the life out of the people, where do we stop, there would be no drunken fights at night if we just imposed a curfew! no accidents without cars.. and no sporting peados if we banned all juvenile sports... sounds like afganistan or disneyland

Stepping forward!

Is it possible to step forward without doubt? I'm heading into a new phase of the business and although i'm confident that i'm doing the right thing i'm also really nervous of myself, a big fear in my life is letting people down, or more accurately causing people to think or speak poorly of me, so with anything new comes the risk that occassionally i won't be able to keep my promises and people will think less of me.

The truth is that how this works out will be directly linked to the effort and work that goes into it, if we acknowledge that doubt, and tear in nonetheless, then i have a feeling that it will be better than fine, the challenge is not to let the doubts rule, to allow them to paralyse and frustrate our efforts.

It's a fairly simple business really, decide on the plan, generate and package the ideas, sell them regularly and establish good relationships, deliver the goods, keep at it..... it's no different really from selling soap, candles, saucepans or shovels.

A friend made me really smile last week when she told me her son has started first year in UCD and he's doing astrophysics, that is rocket science apparently, this should'nt be.

ya lose one, ya gain one

This is my new niece Grace, she's very nice in the way that babys are very nice, if you lined up 7 babies in an identity parade and asked me to pick the same one twice...i would have a one in seven chance of getting it right. they all kinda look the same to me, but it is strange and wierd to look at the very beginning of a life, so quickly after being there for the very end of another.

Life is precious, in our society we certainly think it is, i witnessed enough resources being used to try and keep my father alive and wondered about it, here was a man who lived a smashing life, was now 81 and in serious trouble, and yet the time, drugs and medical expertise invested in his last few days would probably have kept a bombay clinic serviing hundreds open for a week. we certainly cherish the old in western society, i'm not saying that we should'nt by the way, i'm only asking the question,

but back to grace, the changes she will witness, my dad saw the introduction of the motor car and electricity, i saw the introduction of the computer and satalite communications, my daughter was about for the internet and the mobile communication explosing, god only knows what grace will be about for, the cure to cancer?, a muslim v christian world war? we have no idea (except that Fine Gael won't be in Govt much).. but it's exciting and i hope she enjoys it greatly, i'm sure she will, she has great parents (despite the Elvis fixation..lol)

am in a pondery mood

Give me a lever long enough and I'll move the world.

I’m back at work, what someone called the return to normality, things will return to normal, but the normal I knew with my father will never return.

I have not had the opportunity to be on my own and reflect until today, and writing this is an attempt to deal with the numbness and lost feeling I have in the wake of his death, I’ve seen it hundreds of times in books and films, the bond between fathers and sons, the desire to make him proud, the closeness and distance that exists, the acceptance both have of each others achievements and weaknesses.

His passing was a unique experience for me, the sense of peace, the knowledge that he had lived a full and passionate life, the understanding that I had little left to share with him as he moved on, the simplicity of holding his hand and knowing that he was leaving us, not through his choice, but because of the natural movement of life and the passing of time which cannot ever be recovered no matter how we wish it.

If I had one more day with him I could not share anything else, we shared our lives with each other to a huge extent, he saw me at my strongest and proudest, he also experienced me weak and almost beaten, but we never gave in to it, we never let life with all it’s pain and hardships overcome us, we always drove on, usually with his encouragement and I’m still here, emboldened with the courage he vested in me to carry on, to move forward, to live a life that, I can look back on from deaths perspective and feel that I have given it my all, that I have given it my best.

“Straighten yourself up”, that’s what he always said to us, carry yourself well, and face the ball, face the world, take it on and be strong, be strong for those around you, and yet with that strength be gentle, the gentle that carries those who are not so strong safely, my father had a intense dislike of bullies, he lacked respect for those who used their advantages in life to hurt others, he always advised us to take them on, the bully is a coward he said, stand up to him and he will never best you, be strong. He was a giant of a man, all 6”8” of him and yet he was at his best with babies and toddlers, they adored him, his disarming way of showing them true gentleness and fun.

His stories are legendary, I have no intention of going back over them here, the happiest times of my childhood were when we were alone together, either at the bog, down the fields, at a match or driving to Donegal in the old peugeot, with the gear lever on the steering wheel, discussing that nights Eurovision and singing “what’s another year”. They are the times I look back fondly upon, I almost broke his heart with some of my behaviour, but he would always support me, always be there for me. He was my port of last resort, and he would bail me out, we got through those times and grew closer because of them, and when he died I knew I owed him nothing except to keep his values intact, to live a life that gave of my best, that left it out there on the field, a life that would allow me to live at peace with myself.

Everyone leaves a legacy, some people leave millions of pounds, some leave heartache and sorrow, my father left neither of those, he left something far more valuable, he left me the things he valued greatly, the virtue of strength, the importance of gentleness, the necessity for dignity, the power of passion. He used to instill in me that nothing was beyond me if I had the guts and sought the education to go for it, when I was little and out with him digging holes or drains occassionally we would come up against an unmovable rock, an impossible obstacle, and he would examine it, and dig around it and then ask for a crow bar, a few well placed stones, his incredible strenght and a few minutes later the massive rock would begin to shift, as he took it out of the ground he would always say. “give me a lever long enough and I’ll move the world” You did move it big man, you did.

JP Newton 1925 – 2006 RIP Ni bheidh a leitheid aris ann.

Business

Business is like riding a bicycle....if you stop peddling....you're gonna fall off.

Getting back in the swing!

Momentum is so important, especially for me, if i get a break away from things i find it hard to pick up again where i left off.

It's really important that i tear into the work for this spet, oct, now and dec...... there are changes in work that may require me to take on more staff..... there are some big contracts out there waiting to be won and delivered, there are a lot of good and positive things going on and there are a lot of distractions.

There's the football club championship, and all the work that's involved in that.
There's Roscommon being in the all ireland....and all the excitement that goes with that.
There's the champions league, and Celtics fantastic draw of exciting matches.

Without being fundamentalist about it, i have to handle all these things without letting them impinge on the important work i have to do.....i need dsicipline (not always my greatest quality) and it's going to require a big effort.... still i have lots of evidence to show me that i can achieve all of that...

sorry for rambling......it;'s time to get the head down!

A whole bloody month!

oh too long, far too long it's been since i last posted on here, actually i nearly had to figure out how to do it all over again, it's also been too long since i stood in celtic park, my self imposed exile has ended and i'm mad to get back there, looks like the hibs game in spetember, the huns game in october and perhaps the champions league might bring us to some sunny and exotic place as well, my preference right now would be croatia perhaps.

Reading fiction for the first time in about a year, the book seems to throw forward the idea that life and war is not about how much pain you can inflict, but how much you can endure, and of course it set me thinking that the only thing standing between us and whatever we desire in this life is fear, fear of the pain it will cause us to get whatever it is, and that once we decide to have what we want, we have only once question to answer.

Are we willing to endure what has to be endured in order to achieve it?

we know, or we can easily find out what must be done, once we have set our objectives, it does not take an awful lot to figure out the raod that must be traveled, if we want to lose weight we know it is going to take sacrifice and exercise, if we want to be a magician it will take learning and endless practice, if we want a new BMW you have to spend lesss or earn more, earning more will mean doing stuff you don't particularly like, or working harder, it's all pain, and we need to figure how much we can get used too, how much we can endure.

That's why we test and stretch ourselves, a life without any pain is a void, the sort of void that one finds when they are hign on heroin, when they blank the world out with alcohol, when they lie to themselves.


There is no such thing as a world without pain, it would be a non world, that does not mean that we should always welcome it, but we should surely respect it's good side, it makes us stronger, it forces us to learn, it's is not a one dimensional "bad" thing that needs to be relieved as soon as it starts, that would make us a world of spoilt brats who get everything we want to avoid the pain.

what am i really trying to say here, i think that i am saying that pain is neither a good or bad thing, it has two sides, and if we want to grow, if we want to sidestep the void, if we want to satisfy our yearning gnawing hunger, then we can only do it by having the courage to decide to face the pain, but to facing it knowing that we will come through it, that it will paly a valuable role in our lives and that if we want to grow,to become strong, wise, courageous, attractive human beings, the we have to take the hit, we have to endure the pain.... it's not our enemy, it's not our friend, but it is our ally, an ally that we should appreciate and respect.

Things we get used to!

I remember a time when i was delighted to just have a car, but today i got a service and had to drive in a small car, it was horrid and cramped and clunky, but years ago i would have been delighted with it.

My internet connection is really slow this evening, by slow i mean slower than "normal" but in reality it is still ten times faster than the dial up connection i had a year ago, so i've adjusted to a new "normal" and when i don't get that i feel frustrated.

I never had holidays years ago, now if i don't get a few breaks a year theres something wrong, another new normal.

it was announced yesterday that ireland is the second wealthiest nation per capita in the world, when i was growing up our cousins did not have an inside bathroom, now normal means jacuzzis and hottubs.

the problem with all this affluence is the feelings it caused whenever our new heightened expectations are not met, we seem to have more anger and frustration than ever, still we must try to keep a balance on it all.

I try to be grateful for the real things in my life, wonderful friends, healthy children, a good home, and lots and lots of laughter, i hope they never dissapear

Another character leaves the stage!!

Wanted to blog today in the hope that some of my inane ramblings will spark some inspiration and I can finally write that magazine article that i've been struggling with over the last 2 days, deadline is tomorrow so i better get a move on, i've even though of plagerising something although right now i'm thinking of the concept of "flow" or authentic happiness as the next step, i have already written 15 articles for this mag so i don't want to be repeating myself either, i think i'll do authentic happiness, i'm feeling really happy myself these days, i have appreciation, i feel i am doing work thats worthwhile, i'm definately putting something back, and i have a fairly positive view of myself and my world.

it's good!

My friend David died last night, i have been happy and sad all day, happy with the memories and sad that a young vibrant life should just dissapear like that, i met some friends for lunch and we laughed so much with stories and memories. I'm not sure people ever get to see or really believe the appreciation that other have for them, maybe we are as well off, we might get arrogant and conceited, but still every know and again we should be really let people know what they mean to us while they are around to hear it. It's the rare compliment that goes astray, even if it's shrugged off at the time, it will usually be remembered at some quiet moment when it will bring a quiet smile.

The session tomorrow night should be some fun, it will bring together a lot of the ludhers who have been on many trips.

World Cup

It's been really great fun so far, England are crap, Argentina are magical and the supporters are not half bad either, what more could you want.

Great Karoke party on Sat night with the best selection of songs i've ever seen, i gave them a green day trilogy, cathy and I did american idiot and holiday and i did minority on me own, such craic.

Sunday was the Rossies, brilliant first half, dire second half, but still not so long ago we were always dire in both halves, we had a good day out though, all those who were laughing at the raincoat and hat earlier were too bloody wet and grumpy after the game to comment.
the Ocean FM job is going really well, we are making great strides.

I had some real surprises today!

Oedipus, Sophocles, Ajax and the rest of the lads!

A passionate man, who did his country some service, but was unable to control his mercenary side which ultimately lead to his betrayal of this republic and the values it's founding fathers held dearly and led to his disgrace in the eyes of many.

A mercenary man, who did his country some service, but was unable to control his passionate side, which ultimately lead to his betrayal of a nation and it's people in the cause of self justification, and lead to his disgrace in the eyes of many.

Of course have their followers, blind to reason or fallibility, who will continue to misrepresent their legacy, exaggerating their strength and minimise to their weaknesses

History will remember both of them well, like those great Greek heroes who we're ultimately exposed by their weaknesses, it's the basis of all tragedy, this apparent fact that we have all been given feet of clay

I feel an opera coming on!

Lovely and Sleepy

ah yes, i love the feeling of my eyes just beginning to droop, and i know i have to go to be and that I will be deliciously asleep 30 seconds after my head hits the pillow.

lots of interesting stuff going on, played a lot of football last week and made my peace with the roscommon masters team over the dilemma last year, in fairness the 1.3 i scored probably helped, but i really enjoyed it and am delighted with my decision to stick with the primrose and gold.

spent a couple of hours surfing tonight and came across myspace.com, what a weird and wonderful place, they have 24 million members, 24 million, it was set up in 2003 and now it's got 24 million members, that's 6 times the population of the free state, put me thinking about how i had origonally intended the business to have a strong online presence, i really must make it a project now for me to get cracking on..... next week is the busiest week ever, just took on far too much but i'll get through it.

apart from that all is well, my friend Mr. A is wrecking my head with all this analysis, spiritual stuff and how i can live a much better cleaner life and be at one with myself and all that jazz, i am sure he is appalled by my views on love and religion and spirituality, but sure let him off.

Maggie and the girls are well, the girls are getting so grown up and Joy is a real teenager now, oh the tiredness is catching up with me, i have to snuggle down........ night

Nervous!

Ok So the Nigella pic has nothing to do with the blog, who cares?

It's Tuesday morning after a great bank holiday weekend, the sun cracked rocks all weekend and I had a ball, busy with the GAA on Friday and Saturday organising golf classics and flag day, party on Sunday, great party, will be getting feedback from the neighbours on this one i'd say, and monday a lovely chilled out day at the beach, along with the other 10'000 people who chose to go to the same beach. Mind you the scenery was fabulous even if the sea was a bit cold, still had a good swim though, can't be showing hesitancy on front of the girls.

I'm nervous because I am starting a new project tomorrow and it's going to be somewhat new to me, plus i am not entirely sure what is expected of me, i would have liked more detail and structure before starting but hell what can i do, bowl into it and see what emerges, i know i am pretty good at what i do and can make some difference to these guys so i might as well have a crack.... the first job will be to get a good rapport going and get them onside and i know i can do that.

otherwise the head is fairly good, still a bit upsy downsie but i'd expect that anyway, it's not easy getting into a groove after all the fun and enjoyment i've had, still the summer stretches out in front of me and i'm doing my best to look forward rather than back, now the person i was supposed to meet this morning at 10.30 still has not shown up and it's 11.05, so i better make a few phone calls.

Cheers

friday evening, bank holiday weekend

life is good, it's friday evening, tough week workwise, but now it's 3 days of taking it fairly east, as you can see from the pic, the weather is beautiful, it's shorts and a tee shirt.... can't take the tee shirt off anyway after the burning i got in Portugal.

Cathy is gone to the beach with friends, Joy is headin off to a party now, and Maggie gets home from the states tomorrow, i have a flag day still to pull together for tomorrow, and a golf presentation tonight, but otherwise, the lawns are cut, the house is clean, and i have nothin to do, no plans except to take it easy and enjoy the beautiful weather.

life has been really hectic lately, some wonderful times and some rough turbulence, but i hope the captain will be able to turn the seatbelts light off soon.

i'm also in the middle of one of my periodic "ramadans" a case of too much partying, the impending serious football championship season, and most of all, the feeling i had that saturday on fifth avenue. that day i noticed all those people in thier 40's and 50's and it hit home like a hammer how important it is to be in shape. The ones in shape all looked young and vital and vibrant and just great, but all the one's out of shape we slouchy, looked grouchy, heads pointing at the pavement, like life was something that happened to them years ago when they we're young and fit....... and i decided that it was time to cut down on somethings and gear up on others, so i'm back training, off the beer, and smoking very little.... i'm eating carefully and much much less, and the great thing is i can already see the signs, after only two weeks, i look better, my skin is better, i feel really good and my belt had slipped a whole notch.

it would be such a pity to move forward in a slouchy feeling sorry for myself whingy sort of way, it's just not for me, it's time for head up, back straight, chest out and smile!

enjoy the weekend.

20 years on!

This may have been brought on by that show on RTE 1 last night called "20 years on, Ireland 1986 - 2006" but today i have this strange feeling that the world is passing me by quicker than i can keep up, i'm only 41 but i feel like Buster Keeton trying to keep up with the train, desperately hanging on, but knowing full well that no matter what i do it's going to get away from me, and the really strange thing is that lots of my friends are not even net savvy.

This leads me back to a question that has been bothering me for sometime, would a man lead a happier life if he grew up in a little villlage in the west coast, lived all his life there, knew everyone, never left and died there surounded by people he knew and loved. Or would he have lived better if he left at 16, emigrated to England, then went to America, made a fortune, travelled the world, and spent his whole life trying to catch that train that always seems to be going a little bit faster than you are, more knowledge, more travel, more money, more opportunity, more expectations.

I suppose i ask the question as a traveller, in the last month I've been to france, NYC and Portugal, I have "chasing" in my blood, chasing trains, sales, fun, life, but i often wonder, is it better to just live a quiet life in a quiet place?

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