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A man walked into a bar and asked for a glass of water.
The bartender reached under the counter, grabbed a shotgun and fired it in the man’s direction, narrowly missing his head.
The man thanked the bartender and walked out satisfied.
Why?
Photo by PattiFederico via Flickr
As this is a blog written from a life coaching perspective, it’s only natural that I write a lot about goals.
Developing goals, writing them down, making sure that they’re ambitious, yet still achievable.
I love goals and endorse them.
However, one of the criticisms of the personal development movement is that it’s a bit self-indulgent and narcissistic.
What can “I” achieve? What can “I” get out of life? How can “I” feel better about myself?
It’s a fair criticism sometimes.
In recent years, most sports have started to keep track not only of the goal scorers, but of the team-mates who provided them with the chance to score.
It’s called an assist.
In years gone by, when a new trend started up, it would last for months, perhaps even a few years.
Whether it was a new haircut, fashion style, hobby or style of music, someone would start it up and the rest of us would get the chance to catch up.
Times have changed!
Trends these days can last a matter of hours on Twitter.
And then they’re gone. Perhaps never to be seen again.
Very few people will admit it, but we secretly love the fears that hold us back.
We’ve lived with them for so long that they’ve become a part of the family. We are so accustomed to them that we can’t imagine living without them.
We’re afraid of failure, of embarrassing ourselves, of standing out in the crowd, of change and of a range of other things that we’ve rationalised that we can do without.
It holds us back from doing a lot of meaningful things…
and we like it like that because we feel safe.
It’s time to make a change.
photo via flickr
Today is the one year anniversary of this blog.
I can still remember a year ago when, on a Friday night of experimentation on WordPress, I surprisingly found that I had set up this site. It was remarkably easy to get started (WordPress rules!), but the hard work of writing content and finding an audience was still ahead of me.
One year on, there have been over 260 posts written and thousands of readers, with the number of page views going up weekly.
I just want to take the time today to thank everyone who’s taken the time to read, comment or subscribe on this blog. Read the rest of this entry »
Photo by Thomas Hawk via Flickr
This story was originally told by Loren Eiseley in his book “The Star Thrower.”
An elderly man was walking along the beach and noticed in the distance the shape of someone repeatedly bending down to pick something up and then throwing it into the ocean.
As he got closer he saw that it was a young boy who was picking up the starfish that had been washed up by the tides and returning them to the deep.
He walked up to the boy and asked him what he was doing.
Whenever you do something in public, you’ll have a range of opinions on how well you performed.
You may be speaking, blogging or leading a group of people, but when in this situation it can be confusing to discern how well you actually went, especially when you have a range of viewpoints.
Some people will always love your work, no matter how well you did, while others will always find something to pick on.
I really like what they do in high diving competitions.
Sometimes the rhythm of our lives looks something like this:
Go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go… stop!
There’s a lot of activity followed by a sudden halt as we slump exhausted into our recliners to recover our energy before launching into another round of busyness.
Alternatively we could try this:
You don’t just walk into a room and gain credibility.
It takes time, consistency and sustained excellence.
You build credibility brick by brick, year by year, interaction by interaction.
Anthony Robles is one of those remarkable people who come along to remind us that it’s not what we don’t have that matters, it’s what we do with what we have.
Robles was born with only one leg, but from an early age, he was determined to live a normal life.
He threw away his prosthesis at an early age and started to do what most other boys his age were doing. He played football and became a machine at doing push-ups.
Then he started wrestling in the eighth grade and a remarkable journey followed.
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