In my experience, when you try to achieve something great or important to you, there is something inside you that rises up.

I call it the ‘Inner Procrastinator’, and it’s usually a deadly quiet assassin of great results and a better life. It’s also incredibly clever and subtle, presenting you with super excuses to avoid what you know, deep down, you want to do.

The reality is that no-one can control how things unfold. And certainly, it seems that the entire world is getting a lesson in this right now.

Things going wrong is another way of saying “I don’t like this”. And because we feel what we think, that is the start of how stress and misery is caused. But, while we can’t control how the world unfolds, we can control our response to it.

I’m lucky in that I’m a fan and practitioner of acting, a love I inherited from my mother. One of my earliest memories as a child is sitting in a theatre hall in Kilkenny, watching her and her fellow actors rehearse their upcoming shows.

6 years ago my mother, Mary, asked myself and my siblings to come to the family home in Kilkenny, without our families.

My father had been ill and had recently endured several operations, so we feared the worst.

When we arrived, they told us that Dad (Jim), had been told to get his affairs in order because he only had a few weeks to live. As you can imagine, that was a very emotional weekend. And the following weeks were challenging as we waited.

Circumstances don’t have to define us. It’s how we respond to circumstances that matters.

This year, you may have had to divert off the road you thought was the best one. You may even be going down a road you never knew existed.

Just remember, that if you really want to get somewhere, there’s always a way.

The key is to never stop believing and to keep taking steps.

– even if means going slowly.

My wife was telling me she’d heard a renowned psychologist, Dr.Edith Eger, talking on the radio last week.

She was a survivor of the Auschwitz concentration camp during the holocaust and had endured severe traumas over her life.

But she had built a successful career as a therapist, speaker and writer in the US, around helping others overcome trauma and making the most of their lives.

I took a week off at the start of July and for the first 3 days I couldn’t get over how much I slept. And it didn’t seem like I had a choice in the matter.

My body just needed rest.

And since then, most of the leaders I’ve spoken with have shared with me that their energy levels have been quite erratic and many of them have been more tired than normal.

I think it’s very understandable.

“There’s a few reasons why I don’t see it happening”

These were the words spoken by a smart woman I was working with a few years ago, in response to me asking if she thought she could ever be a CEO.

She was very convincing in her argument as to why she couldn’t get to the top spot.

But it turned out that despite her comments she actually had a huge desire to get to the role.

What many people don’t realise is that optimism can be learned. And now is the time to step into it. (See ‘Learned Optimism’ by Martin Seligman)

What if you believed a much better future was coming? And that you could help create it?

We need to be in touch with reality. But we also need to be positive shapers of the future.

With every day that passes, industry associations are coming out with recovery plan proposals to influence policy makers and help re-activate economies more quickly around the world.

It’s the right thing to do as no-one person in any government will have the answers and it’s critical that we can collaborate to create the best plans.

But it made me think about us as leaders and people interested in creating better lives, organisations and communities.

What is your plan for yourself and your team/family over the coming weeks/months?

The very first ‘Inspire Me’ weekly email was in October 2008 – when the financial world had collapsed.

During that time, and over the following years I worked with many leaders as they navigated through turbulent waters – and we learned many things together.

But one of the most important take-aways from that time is the value of pain and disruption. There is always something to be gained in such a time, because when we are disrupted, the edge of possibilities available to us opens up.