Staying With Possibilities
Last week saw 2 interesting things happen with people who are on my mailing list.
First, last week’s email achieved the highest ever open rate in the 15 years I’ve been writing my weekly email.
Author: Shane Cradock
An Opportunity To Start Again
The New Year is a funny time. Often how you see it is very much on where you’re at in your life and how your state of mind is.
There’s Only One Cause Of Unhappiness
When I work with clients in many ways I see myself like an inner explorer – searching for the one belief that is holding them back the most. There’s always something there.
How Much Hope Is Needed
“Hope is the last thing that dies in man;
and though it be exceedingly deceitful, yet it is of this good use to us, that while we are traveling through life it conducts us in an easier and more pleasant way to our journey’s end.”
Francois De La Rochefoucauld
A client, who was very experienced in dramatic business turnarounds, once said this to me:
“I’ve come to realise that while hope may not be a strategy, if it leaves the room it’s game over.”
I wonder do we watch hope as much as we should? Be it sport, business or life.
The Key To Inner Clarity And Control
“Reality leaves a lot to the imagination.” – John Lennon
My wife, TLJ*, is a disaster when it comes to going to a cinema.
She literally gets immersed in the movie, to the extent that she lives and feels everything the characters do on screen.
She will become so engrossed in what’s happening that she has no awareness of being in a cinema or indeed that there is anyone else with her. As far as she’s concerned she is IN the world of the movie characters.
So if there’s any sort of scary scene in the movie, forget about it. TLJ will literally be beside herself and usually screams or shouts at the main character as they are about to enter a dark room where the murderer is… ‘Don’t go in there!!’.
Stand Guard At The Entrance Of Your Mind
“True life is lived when tiny changes occur.” ― Leo Tolstoy
I was up early this morning and went for a walk around Wicklow, a harbour town on the east coast of Ireland.
It was cold and dark but the sound of something familiar but yet, unfamiliar, caught my attention and made me smile.
It was the sound of beer kegs being loaded onto a waiting Guinness truck, parked on the side of the street. My smile must have been evident as the two men doing the loading smiled back, I think almost in silent recognition at their own delight to be back doing their work.
How To Not Change The World
“If you want to change the world, who do you begin with,
yourself or others?”
– Alexander Solzhenitsyn
“I’ve had enough of these tech companies. They all say they’re going to change the world but most are just full of it.”
So said someone to me recently, who’s business is all about dealing with tech companies.
They went on to tell me that many of the tech CEOs they were dealing with all had the same mantra of ‘We’re going to change the world’ – but in their opinion a lot of them would mess up the world if they succeeded and indeed, they were already messing up the people around them with the way they were behaving.
Perhaps they feel the need to ‘big up’ what their company is doing to attract talent or investors. Or maybe it’s their ego.
But just like we’ve all become de-sensitised to cold calling insurance salespeople, it seems to me that we’ve all become de-sensitised to the ‘changing the world’ mantra.
Your Goal In Life
Sometimes it seems as if avoiding blame, for many, is the goal of life.
It seems to naturally start in children, if the fights in our home are anything to go by….:) It certainly turns up everywhere in organisations.
The Last Mile And Winning Olympic Gold
“The last mile is never crowded and that’s the way it does feel sometimes.
The difference is to be able to hold on in there, to keep it going.”
– Kellie Harrington
Over the weekend, the Olympics came to a close but not before a certain Dubliner, Kellie Harrington won a gold medal in the lightweight division of women’s boxing.
Kellie has worked tirelessly for years, with the singular ambition of getting to the top of her sport – and with scant resources when compared with many of the other athletes at the games.
Indeed I must admit to being turned off some of the better known international athletes when their reactions to not winning gold indicated a sense of entitlement and poor sportsmanship.
The Grass Is Greener Here
The grass is greener where you water it the most.” – Wolfgang Puck
I heard the above quote when watching a very interesting documentary on Disney Plus recently about the famous chef (simply titled ‘Wolfgang’).
The now 80 year old makes some very astute observations about his journey to becoming not only a famous chef, but someone who revolutionised many aspects about the way people view food and the food industry today.
