Navigating OUR 'In Between'

History points to significant events where there was chaos that preceded a calm.

D Day in our modern history refers to what happened on 6th June 1944 - the day on which the Battle of Normandy began. It was a huge effort involving months of secret preparations. Thousands of Allied troops landed on the beaches of Normandy, and countless lives were sacrificed as hell broke loose to win their fight against the Axis powers. It was a dark time of significant unknowns.

If you asked people at the time what would be the outcome, I am sure you would have heard a familiar “I have no idea.” The world was caught in an ‘in between’ time in history. A place of overwhelming unknown, feeling stuck with little security until V Day was announced.

V Day represented the day Germany surrendered in the early afternoon of 7 May 1945. Huge headlines hit the papers as Winston Churchill officially announced the peace. 

We live now in our own ‘in between.’ If we look to the circumstances and the economy for answers, we could surmise with a resounding ‘I have no idea”. It is not a time of ordinary, it is not a time of safe and many of us are feeling downcast and confused about tomorrow.

My thinking would say the importance of life right now is to live according to the future with a goal that shapes our ‘in between.’ This is represented by the strategies you put in place both personally and commercially to see your own outcome in this time. We may feel like the we are trapped in a desert feeling dry, confused and wondering. Those deserts are an ok place to visit but not to reside in. It is important that the goals shaping our ‘in between’ lead us through our personal deserts.

Here are three considerations that may help you through your ‘In Between’…

1 Stay intimately connected to what you hold most dear- For some of us this may be a faith in something larger than us, for others it may be our deeply held set of values that connect us to our goals. It may include realigning yourself with your purpose found in the thing that gets you up in the morning and causes you to stay on track. Whatever it is, I would say the kick starter in this time is don’t lose sight of your personal anchor. Before every day begins and ends, I would encourage you to keep clear sight of the people and prospects you hold most dear – your anchors!

2 Look at what you have – It would be very easy right now to get global on everything that is wrong in our lives. It’s super easy to focus on becoming politicians and economists spouting how we can fix the world. However, if we bring it all back to something we CAN do, ask yourself ‘what do you have in your hand’? Consider what you have and NOT what you don’t have! Be confident in who you are, what you bring to your relationships, your colleagues and your community and use what you have. Shift your strategic process to fit with what you have.

3 Identify somebody who will be there for you – I will put up my hand first and say we all need a friend in this time. Don’t navigate this time we are living in alone. The good part is you don’t need 20,000 online friends, you just need one real life person. If you don’t have somebody right now, invest some time in finding a person you can walk with. This might mean joining a club, going to an event or doing something that might feel uncomfortable with but it may result in a relationship that may just make all the difference. You could discover a person or group you can be honest with and open with. They will support you in your ‘in between’.

In summary, I believe the answer to navigating this ‘in between’ time is found in these three things. Staying intimately connected to what you hold most dear, looking at what you have and discovering that one friend you can be open and honest with.

This may feel like D Day but your V Day will come again. History has proven it

Selah - How do I make the most of my Time on Earth?

All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.” – Gandalf

It’s true really. We only have so long on the planet and we have been given the freedom of decision as to what to do with the time that has been given to us. We have an allotted time on the planet to grow up, mature, learn stuff, relate to others, find someone to share the journey with and slow down to the cadence of our last heartbeat. Life becomes quite simple when we consider our time like this. Time is my decision and the steps I take are mine. There is obviously a lot more to it than that, but in essence we are given years if we are fortunate, to populate with memories before our hearts tick their last. My mum says we are all filling in time between now and when we die. That is also true. The gap between our birth and death is often considered as the dash on our tombstones. Our dash symbolises everything that we will set our minds and hearts to that will make the meaning of our stories. The challenge then becomes to fill in our time well. Looking at that ‘dash’ of time, it becomes a choice to ladle in all that is good, meaningful and that which will hopefully leave a story for others to tell.

You can always tell if a movie is great or not at the end when the credits roll around. If it’s an okay move you just get up and walk out. However, if it has deeply affected you, you pause and sit and watch those end credits rolling around. There is a silence in the theatre as everyone just lets what just happened soak in. The emotion you experience is a sense of gratitude. It’s not necessarily gratitude for the actors or the effects. It’s a sense of gratitude that helps you to be grateful that you are alive because the story you have just seen demonstrated that life can in fact be better, deeper and more meaningful than you thought. You experience a pause. If I consider legacy, I think there is a part in all of us which hopes in the future for people to listen to our stories at our funeral because our life gave people a pause that caused them to ask ‘how can I be like them’? I want my life to show my children and friends that life meant something and I showed others that they can in fact be better, deeper and more meaningful than they thought. This I think, would be a gift I was able to pass on….

The content of Ecclesiastes reflects someone looking back on a life that was long on experience but short on answers. This book is important to us because of its raw and honest vision of life. The book kicks off with a statement saying "Everything is meaningless, completely meaningless!". Humorously I exclaim, wow, that’s so encouraging! The Teacher narrates their personal experience of journey and tries to find meaning in a series of examples by having wealth, wisdom, popularity, and pleasure. As the teacher tells his story he denied himself no pleasure. He devoted himself to having great wisdom. He acquired great wealth, and yet all of these things lead to disappointment. He lived his life experiencing all the vanities in life, yet he looks back in his life with regret. Everything became meaningless, like chasing the wind. In some ways, it is like my Mums story of filling in time before you die but finally expressed in deep disappointment. It’s a sad conclusion.

Leading one's existence with the sole reason to acquire the vanities in life - wealth, wisdom, popularity, pleasure- ultimately leads to disappointment. When I break this sentence down the words ‘sole reason’ are key to understanding purpose in life. If our sole reason for living this life is devoted to a vanity, everything becomes fleeting and flippant with no real lasting value. So what matters in life and how do we derive meaning?

Ecclesiastes speaks to the pain and frustration brought on by a life devoted to the distortions and inequities which define much of the world we live in. A devotion to the uselessness of human ambition, and the limitations of worldly wisdom and a lack of standing up for what is ultimately right. In many ways the whole book can be seen as a bit of a downer unless we are able to consider the purpose the author had in writing it. Qohelet ( a Hebrew word meaning preacher)  warns us against a life caught in the pursuit of absurd and empty pleasures that have no lasting value. 

The deep learning is a life without God is pointless. Ecclesiastes teaches us to enjoy the life we have here on Earth and at the same time, it teaches us to not only pursue the vain things (wealth, popularity, pleasure) - but to reflect, and to always remember our Creator. When people live to be very old, let them rejoice in every day of life. So how does one rejoice?

Even in the writer's desperate search for meaning and purpose in life - God appears as the reliable, satisfying and remaining presence. The writer states that "there is nothing better than to enjoy food and drink and to find satisfaction in work. Then they also discover that these pleasures are from the hand of God" (Ecc 2:24). It is a relationship that can be formed with God that I believe is the defining reason for our existence on the planet. It is his love found in the human heart that is both transformational and redemptive and enables us all to rise above our humanity to something of a higher purpose and calling. Viktor Frankl is a man amply qualified to write of such things as he survived the trauma and harrowing effects of a concentration camp to discover five vital discoveries to being fully human. One of them is as he writes a thought which transfixes him. I saw the truth as it is set into song by so many poets, proclaimed as the final wisdom by so many thinkers. The truth – that love is the ultimate and the highest goal to which man can aspire. Then I grasped the greatest secret that human poetry and human belief have to impart: The salvation of man is through love and in love. Frankl refers several times to the words of Nietzsche: “He who has a ‘why’ to live for can bear almost any how.” And the Bible states - Also, even if there are injustices in life, we can trust Him and follow Him. "In due season, God will judge everyone, both good and bad, for all their deeds" (Ecc 3:17). We see in the sacrifice of Jesus that there is no greater love than a man who would lay down his life for his friends. And who are his friends? The greatest discovery is to find that all of us are friends of God, his beloved children.

Ultimately, the great truth that we can learn from Ecclesiastes is that the acknowledgment of God's presence will determine our true meaning in our lives whether we are in despair or success. Knowing God is not defined as an unknown quantity or a distant relative or neighbour from the suburbs. That definition fails to satisfy an acknowledgement that a relationship exists. I can say I know of God but lives miles from where he is or I can say I know God because he has visited me and I have begun through my prayers and reading of him to know him more deeply. He is near to me. As another preacher states I can be out on the lake in my boat listening to Jesus speak but am I in the same boat as him? Meaning and purpose are about proximity and so I deduce from all of this that my posture and proximity to my saviour will determine to a large extent my peace of mind and knowing whether I provided my family and friends with a good pause…or not.

Paul De Jong, my pastor says when God comes into your life and comes into the centre of every season, the hardest and the greatest, there is a realisation that you are not alone and you are able to weather any storm or mountain. You don’t have to overreact. You can be true and vulnerable with your humanity and yet you can be real to say ‘God, you are leading me’….We serve God with the best that we can do. We are not perfect but we give it our best shot! You discover meaning to life.

We are all called to have faith in God and that is faith that says God holds every part of the equation of life. I conclude with the place from where I began - All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.” – Gandalf

i see God in symmetry.
i see God in our make-believe.
i see God in our grand attempts
to make something beautiful
before life ends.

i see God in irony,
in fragile heirlooms within children’s reach.
i see God in our damaged good,
but you see God in ways i wish i could.
you see God in ways i wish i could

without instruction
without obstruction,
you believe.
without container,
or dualistic framework,
you see the Holy Ghost in broad daylight
and i see the reflection in your eyes.

i see God in healing bones,
in the sanctuary of our homes.
i see God in the wilderness,
in our magnetism to recklessness.

black or white or vivid colour,
after a while, it all runs together.
our stained-glass means nothing without light.

i see God in our damaged good,
but you see God in ways i wish i could.
you see God in ways i wish i could

without assurance,
without insurance,
you believe.
without condition
or the promise of heaven,
you see the Holy Ghost in broad daylight.
and i see the reflection in your eyes.
i see the reflection in your eyes. – Ryan o Neal (Sleeping at Last)

Captain Kirk Did It

Captain's log – today in fact

Ninety year old William Shatner (Captain Kirk) returned from his 10 minute sojourn to the outer limits of the earth’s atmosphere aboard Jeff Bezos Blue Origin spaceship and uttered these words. "What you have given me is the most profound experience, I am so filled with emotion, just extraordinary," a visibly overcome Shatner told Bezos, immediately after emerging from the capsule. "I hope I never recover from this. I hope that I can maintain what I feel now." I found myself so deeply moved by these words and it caused me to consider my life on this planet. Shatner made the mention of the difference between earth’s atmosphere and space and what holds us here as the thin veneer of air that holds us in our existence. Air being the thin space between life and our ability to survive. He alluded that here on earth is our life and out there in space is our death. If we venture out of the earth's orbit to space we will surely stop breathing and so we are held here by such a thin wafer of oxygen. 

As I marvel at our ability to fly into space and think about life on the ground, this thread of thought crossed the galaxy of my mind. I want to think every day like William Shatner. "I hope I never recover from this. I hope that I can maintain what I feel now." Even though I might never be hurtled out into space, I want to be able to remember things. I want to capture and maintain the grandness of my normality. It then occurred to me that  I hope that this cup of coffee I sip, this conversation I have, this hand I hold and this music I listen to…I always recollect?

In my time so far and as I watched Captain Kirk disappear and then reappear there is a lesson I believe that I have learned….

There is ecstasy in our every day

There is brilliance in our boredom

There is Merriment in our melancholy moments

There is joy in our everyday journeying

There is creativity in our contemplation

There is delight in our drudgery

There is treasure in all our time

ENGAGE

"I hope I never recover from this. I hope that I can maintain what I feel now." - Kirk out.

An Encouragement to Advance

This morning as I was walking, I had the repeated word ‘Advancement’ ringing in my ears and I wanted to encourage you with some thinking around this.

To advance is to ‘move forward in a purposeful way’ and I am reminded that as we move forward, we leave the past or our current situations behind us. An old friend of mine said to me once “Andrew, stop looking in the rear-view mirror, that view is not for you”. During these uncertain times it’s easy to get stuck in the now or the past, however the thought to move forward in purpose is what encourages me.

Therefore, I encourage you this day towards advancement….

May you advance into the story that has yet to be written about your life making intentional steps that will lead to your betterment. You are your own master story teller, so begin today by telling yourself good things about where you see your story developing.

May you advance into deeper and more quality relationships by surrounding yourself with individuals who add to your thinking and align with your values system. These people may even challenge you, wrestle with you and help you come to clarity as you begin to trust them. Significant living requires a support crew therefore it’s important NOT to do life independent or Isolated.

May you advance into setting goals, creating values and redefining what is truly important to you as you ‘move forward with purpose’. 

You might read this and say to yourself that’s all very nice and aspirational but lacks the practical how to? Therefore, in short, my encouragement is to physically step away from anything that is opposed to the above encouragements. It may be removing yourself from unhealthy work or personal relationships, creating a fitness of mind and spirit regime or developing new and deep, trusting relationships with others who will bring out your best and you in them.

So, in closing let’s rise from our locked down couches and step into our tomorrow so that the things in front of us become our NOW and our present. 

Be encouraged, it’s time to advance!!

The Fine Art of Inclusion

Most of us, most of the time, feel left out- misfits. We don’t belong. Others seem to be so confident, so sure of themselves, “insiders” who know the ropes, old hands in a club from which we are excluded.

One of the ways we have of responding to this is to form our own club, or join one that will have us. Here is at least one place where we are “in” and the others “out”. The club’s range informal to formal in gatherings that are variously political, social, cultural and economic. But the one thing they have in common is the principle of exclusion. Identity or worth is achieved by excluding all but the chosen. The terrible price we pay for keeping all. Those other people out so that we can savour the sweetness of being insiders is a reduction of reality, a shrinkage of life – Eugene Peterson

In my work and personal experience, it has always been a strong internal drive of mine to be part of a culture that breaks down the walls of exclusion. The term Eugene Peterson uses of “a shrinkage of life” couldn’t be more relevant to today. We often feel our worlds shrink inwards when we don’t feel we are a valid part of something in the workplace or at home. It saps us of our energy, robs us of our commitment to betterment and leaves us feeling alone.

At times and in situations like these I’m reminded of the theme song of Cheers. Wouldn’t you like to go to a place where everybody knows your name? And they’re always glad you came? You want to know that you can go where people are all the same. You want to go where everybody knows your name. Recognition and acceptance are two of the main reasons why people stay in work and in relationships. It also doesn’t require much of any of us to step out of our place where we have excluded others. I wonder whose name we could say, who we could recognise today and who we could open the doors to our club?

Go SMALL

Often in life we are encouraged to think BIG, to multi task and to spread ourselves over a number of projects. However, I have found a great deal of focus and enjoyment in ‘going small’. 

Going small” is ignoring all the things you could do and doing what you should do. It’s that old adage of making the main thing, the main thing! Rather than spreading myself thin I have found myself more energised by focusing on one project at a time. It’s recognising that not all things matter equally and finding the things that matter most. It’s a tighter way to connect what you do with what you want. It’s realising that extraordinary results are directly determined by how narrow you can make your focus.

Do you Have a Thin Strand of Barbed Wire?

I saw the movie RAMS this week. Without going for the big plot reveal, two brothers, Les and Col live right next door to each other across the thin strand of barbed wire that exists between them. For forty years neither have spoken to each other. 

At this point I reflected on my own life and situations where a thin strand of barbed wire exists between me and someone else. The interesting thing is that you get to a point in your life where you find yourself asking “what was that even about’? The animosities, the jealousies , the feuds all dissipate into an uneasy feeling that ‘something is wrong’ but you just cant determine what it is.

This gem of a film reminded me of the simple truth that it’s a good thing to let go of stuff. Greatness gets shut up behind the little things. How we process our problems, our offences and our hurts is tied up in the home or work environment from where we come from. If you and I want more in the 2nd half of our lives, we are going to have to let the first half go. They may not have paid you but let it go, you may not have had the promotion but let it go, you might be thinking he or she is wrong and I am right but let it go…..

Let it go and cut your thin strand of barbed wire and go greet that person or problem you have been avoiding…

You Can’t Teach a Sneetch….(Or Can You?)

One of my favourite stories when I was a little fella was The Sneetches by Dr. Seuss. This wonderful tale is an insightful observation of discrimination, prejudice and how we all behave so foolishly in the way we treat each other. I remember as a child thinking at first it was just an entertaining story, however later in life I came to embrace it as one of the most insightful observations of our humanity.

In the book, some of the bright yellow creatures called Sneetches have green stars on their bellies while others do not. When the Star-Bellied Sneetches and the Plain-Bellied Sneetches treat one another disrespectfully because of simple stars on their bellies, we have to pause and consider how stupid their behaviour really is. The prejudice in the story causes the reader to ask who is better….. the ones with Stars or ‘none upon thars’?. The Sneetches with stars discriminate against and turn away from those without a green star upon their belly. Does this situation sound familiar?

The story gets interesting when a travelling salesman called Sylvester McMonkey McBean (the Fix-It-Up Chappie) appears and offers the Sneetches without stars the chance to get stars on their tummies with his Star-On machine. They get this wonderful service for only three dollars. The star stamping machine is at first a winner, but this upsets the original star-bellied Sneetches, as they are in danger of losing their special status. McBean then sells them the virtues of his Star-Off machine (sounds like tattoo removal), costing ten dollars! You can see where this madness is going right?

The Sneetches who originally ‘had stars upon thars’ happily pay the money to have them removed in order to remain unique. However, McBean doesn’t care about the uniqueness of The Sneetches and is only interested in sales. All chaos reigns and he shunts the recently starred Sneetches through his machine making even more cash. As the insanity mounts we see the Sneetches running from one machine to the next...

"...until neither the Plain nor the Star-Bellies knew whether this one was that one... or that one was this one... or which one was what one... or what one was who."

As the story comes to an end we see McBean driving off as a rich man, amused by the Sneetches crazed behaviour. He says to himself "you can't teach a Sneetch".

However, the Sneetches do take to heart a life lesson and learn from this experience that neither plain-belly nor star-belly Sneetches are superior. They make a choice to get along and become friends.

The Sneetches is a sounding gong in our deaf world. We get the message Dr Suess, however the question we have to ask ourselves is will we learn to celebrate our differences and become friends? It’s a good question to pause and ask ourselves….

It’s time to Bounce Back

Despite the frustrations and difficulties the globe is currently facing, we all have an opportunity to bounce back in our realities and take whatever may seem a debilitating outcome and turn it around.

I’ve missed more than 9,000 shots in my career. I’ve lost almost 300 games. Twenty-six times I’ve been trusted to take the game-winning shot and missed. I’ve failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed. - Michael Jordan. 

Michael Jordan was someone who mastered the art of a bounce back life. He did this because he was somebody who was able to see beyond his current circumstance.

Vision is the ability to see a focused outcome with an unfocused reality. I love this because we are all living in a very unfocused reality at present.  The skill is to be able to focus our outcomes on our futures not where we find ourselves today. There is great hope in this. Vision is an attitude and an altitude. Vision is the altitude to be able to operate our lives from a future oriented perspective above what we currently are facing.

I know fear is an obstacle for some people, but it is an illusion to me . . . Failure always made me try harder next time. – Michael Jordan

Follow Your Instincts

On a safari in Africa, the Zoologist and the Zulu will provide you with quite different perspectives. The Zoologist will tell you all about the cheetah but the Zulu will quietly stand up and say “the cheetah is over there”.

Intellect can describe it but only instinct can find it. If you position yourself between intellect and instinct and know when to yield to which one, it will be a deciding factor in your life. That next big thing when there is a wild cat, a marriage, a family to be had or a business challenge, it is simply ‘over there’ if you follow your instincts.

Life is about STOPPING

Mitch Albom has sold over 39 million books. His career began as a sports writer but he is best known for his series of inspirational books which began with ‘Tuesdays with Morrie”. The inspiring book is about a series of visits he made to his former sociology professor Morrie Schwartz, as Schwartz gradually dies of ALS. They speak of life’s most important lessons together.

I listened to Mitch in an interview and he said prior to writing the book that he was always on the run with his life and his job. He would be running through an airport and people would call to him “whose gonna win the game” and he would yell out a team name as he rushed past and keep moving in his non-stop life.

After writing the book and spending time with his teacher and friend, he discovered people would stop him and tell him their personal stories. They would show him photos of their life influences explaining “this is my Morrie” and he realised he had to stop and take time with them to hear their stories too. We all have an influence who has touched us and their story will be worthy of sharing.

He came to the realisation that life is not about running, it’s about stopping! Its about taking that moment with another person.

Who are you slowing down for today and who are those that bring about the ‘stops’ in your life?

The Second Half of Your Life

Part 5

In this final blog on crushing and soaring I want to consider the chicken and the eagle. Put simply, when you have been conditioned to think like a chicken,  you can’t fly like an eagle. You can get the degree and the office and the job like an (BIG person) eagle but if you think like a chicken (SMALL person) you will always mess it up and fall back down because you don’t have the attitude to complete tasks and see it through. 

The chicken – eats off the ground and in the direction of their vision. They peck at sticks , corn and even their own waste. You know when you’re in a job that you’re eating your own waste you are in a bad place! You can’t eat stuff you should have released (let go) and still be able to fly on the level you need to fly. It’s a lifestyle that is consumed by looking down, eating down, flapping hard but not going anywhere. Chickens flap up a mess trying to fly but they can never leave the proximity of where they eat. They go up , they go down but they never go anywhere. Can you relate to that? They make all sorts of promises to themselves which they can never complete. We get used to operating with less, running in deficiency and it’s like our hearts having blocked arteries. Here’s a learning for us all - Don’t operate from a deficiency. 

 In order to change YOU, you have to be prepared to let it go.

You are looking down and eating down and flapping down but not going anywhere. Don’t you think that chickens don’t try to fly? They do but they can never quite leave the proximity of where they eat. They get up for a minute but they go down. 

Take a moment to think about your life over the last few years. Every new year you say to yourself things are going to get better but you always go back to where you have been eating. When 70 % of your blood flow doesn’t reach your heart, your arteries clog with the small things. There is no sudden heart attack. We just get used to operating with less and the doctor will say you’ve got to get the little things out of your life so we can get your heart going again. Greatness gets shut up behind the little things. Do you want to embrace your destiny or flutter on the ground in your history? That’s the lifestyle of the chicken and I recommend you start looking up….

Eagles don’t eat waste, they don’t eat faeces, they FLY to the top of the mountain. As long as you eat what you should have released, you will never learn to fly at the level you should have learned to fly. You might have an eagle position but you might have a chicken mentality.

Eagles make love in the air. They spiral and embrace and fall and turn as they make love in the air. It was designed that way so that they would not inadvertently make love to a chicken. You have to get out of the arms of the chickens and fly in the sky with the eagles.

The reason that we are tied up like we are is that we are carrying stuff from where we came from. How we process our problems, our offenses and our hurts is tied up in the home or work environment from where we came from. We do stuff from the place we came from. If you want more in the 2nd half of your life, you are going to have to let the first half go. They may not have paid you but let it go, you may not have had the promotion but let it go.

I hope after reading this series you feel ready to take the promotion to the office of the eagle? You deserve it and all you have to do is be prepared to let stuff go that you are not fit to carry.

Thanks for reading

Cheers Andrew

BIG and small People

Part 4

I want to talk about BIG and SMALL  people for a moment, however, my reference is not about your size in dimensions. If you are a really big person you won’t or don’t act small. There is a characteristic amongst great people (BIG)  that other people (SMALL) don’t know about or live. Big people can argue in a boardroom, fight over a principle and slam the table and then when they are done they can look at each other and say “well Joe, its 12 o clock I think it’s time for lunch.” In a situation like this you look at them and say they have been fighting and swearing and wrestling stuff out and now they’re going to eat? I would be scared to eat that food cause I thought the food would be poisoned. However in life, Big people get paid big bucks to solve big problems.

Small people don’t think like big people. They are always worrying about stuff they can’t fix and they get caught up in every petty problem rather than seeing the big picture. They are the ones who whinge and moan about their salary package and the people they work with. They are always asking for something else despite the fact that they have everything they need to be productive. Their personal and work situations begin to look like this - Everybody brings their problems to them. They wake up tired, they go to bed tired, they were not designed to carry the level of stress they are carrying. They are small people and they get bound and held captive by their negative thinking.

Here is the key to shifting from the place of feeling crushed and being bound by negative thoughts. You need to recognise that you are not designed to be a dumpsite for everyone’s waste. At home and at work you are not designed to be a dumpsite for everyone’s issue. In order to go to the next level and shift you have to start saying to yourself I don’t need that, I don’t need this and I don’t need the other. Simply let go of the toxicity you carry at home and at work. You have gone as far as you can go with the load you are under. It’s time!

Big people don’t let petty problems prevent them from seeing the greater picture of what they’re supposed to do and the person they are bound to be. Bigness pushes its way through small thinking. Bigness overcomes every adversity life is going to throw at it and overcomes it and lets it go. I would encourage you to take some time to consider where your thinking is small and shift your life to being able to take on more and more BIG. Finally and most importantly we all need to be able to let things go. Here it is, GET READY - You can’t hold on to your history and have your hands reached out for your destiny.

I encourage you today to allow your BIGness to push its way through your small thinking and let stuff go.

That Thing That Happened to you was an Incident

Part 3

So much of the crushing we experience in life takes place in our mind. We either experience or imagine our future and it begins to affect us in a similar way to the eaglet falling down the cliff. Research indicates that the average person speaks to themselves 50,000 times per day and 80% of that is self-talk and most of that is negative. It’s an incredibly high statistic that I have tried and tested many times in my own life. The times I find myself having an inner dialogue are incredibly high.  How you treat YOU is important. You have more conversations with yourself than anyone else. The level of self-image we have is set by our own barometer in our thought life and inner dialogues. If we see ourselves more highly, we lower our expectation to the barometer level. If we see ourselves lowlier, we raise ourselves to that barometer level.

You can have a $100,000 body and a 25cent spirit in the way your mind and thoughts treat you. As an example, you might experience what I call a malnourished mind. You will say stuff to yourself like, “I can’t figure out why I’m not successful, I don’t know why I’m doing no good.” What kind of conversation are you having with yourself? Does it feel powerless or powerful?  Sometimes you can feel low but you actually don’t know why you feel that way because your mind has been in control for so long. It’s almost like an ecosystem and it begins to crush you. “I’m jealous of people who are succeeding, all rich people are selfish, we build cases against people of colour, of gender. I don’t know why I don’t like them? I just don’t!” There is no rational reason for these thoughts because you have allowed your mind to control you for so long. 

Here is the learning that takes place in this crushing in our minds. Something terrible may have happened to you but it hasn’t been your lifestyle. That was an ‘incident’ not a lifestyle. These incidents don’t need to be the basis of all your thinking. They were only moments!

Your Crushing is a Stage not a destination! Some people take on the level of their pain to the extent that they make the crushing their address and they live in what should have been a stage. It doesn’t matter what you do, you cannot pull them out of it because pain becomes their normal. They will provoke you till you fight them; they will push you away until you reject them. 

Your life looks like this. You are fighting yourself and have become so accustomed to pain that it has become your place of residence. The way out of this sort of negative pattern is to shatter your way out of your pain, break your way out. The crushing you are going through is NOT the end. Don’t get stuck in a stage deteriorating and rotting and giving up on your dreams. As many writers have said your attitude has everything to do with your altitude. Take some time to consider how you can break free from your thinking.

Take in what’s good, throw out what’s bad and keep on moving! Eat the meat, spit out the bones and keep on moving. In the next blog I want to talk about the ability to rise above your circumstance by living like a BIG person. What does that entail?

The Value of Pain

Part 2

The value of going through a crushing or painful experience is to be able to explain to people not to be confused or kicked about when the crushing precedes the soaring. The hard times can push in on us all and I am sure that over the last few months you have experienced many testing situations. Negative thought patterns, situations of work hardship, relationship difficulties and a poor past can all crush us internally. However, this is where the value of pain kicks in. When your mother pushes you off a cliff to go and get food, you should be turning to thank her as you plummet down the side getting ready to discover your wings. Here is why.

The times that you experience crushing in your life is the process you are going through and soaring is the person you were always meant to be. You cannot become the person you always wanted to be without going through the process to become that person. The process you venture through will always precede the person you are destined to become.

The reality with people (young and old) today is that they desire a success that they have not been groomed for. Success that you have not been groomed for is like a premature birth. You want to skip the process and go straight to the person you believe you are entitled to be. However, the chances of survival and longevity at this stage are minimal. We don’t want anything before its time. There is age old wisdom that says ‘there is a time and purpose and season for everything under heaven’. In a drive through society we can’t unfortunately pick up a version of ourselves we wish to be without going through the process. There is pain or a crushing involved. It always precedes the person you are destined to be.

I can imagine if you are like me that the thought of falling off a cliff even if it is figurative right now might terrify some of you? The key is don’t allow your fear hold you back from your destiny. The same part of the brain that processes physical pain processes emotional pain. Therefore, my brain doesn’t know whether my heart is broken or if you just stabbed me in the leg. So, when we suffer emotionally, we may be in trauma but there is no medic present because we are not bleeding on the outside. We can be crushed by failed expectations, that I don’t have a job, my marriage didn’t work, that I’m older now and not further down the road, the list is endless. Being crushed can affect you like feeling stabbed. It is a different kind of trauma. It is the trauma of the heart and the soul. The secret crushing’s that life allows us to go through are inescapable. However, the good news for all of us is that crushing is not the end.

 In my next blog I will encourage you to see the difficulties you face as ‘a moment’ and not something that determine your lifestyle.

I Got Pushed Off a Cliff by my Mother and said Thank You

Part 1

The curtain on the new landscape for work and home life has been pulled back and the stage view changes daily. Something that is becoming more and more apparent to me is that those who possess the willingness to traverse difficulty will come out of this with greatest strength and success. A lot of the personal change and possibilities we experience will come from the times when the things that are placing pressure on us ultimately turn out to be the moments that give us power and possibility. The performance we give on our individual stages will be dependent on our resilience and our love of people. I am already seeing the businesses that truly care about their customers and have a solid proposition are pulling clients back in their droves.

 Lockdown and isolation have been pure bliss for some and agony for others. On one hand you have those who loved the solace of a good book, a quiet movie and a walk in the sun. They were in heaven whilst those pondering their financial future and living up close to people they didn’t really like unpacked a terrifying reality. It has been a place of significant contrast and has brought out many learnings in all of us.

 There are those of us who have experienced the sober reality of a ‘crushing’ in their lives and others who have skipped into the elation of ‘soaring’ to new heights. The discovery I have realised with Crushing and Soaring is that one is not opposed to the other. If you consider the animal kingdom for a moment, we can see with the eagle it is about flying. However, for the eaglet as it considers its first moves from the family home and security it is about falling.

 Let’s pause and consider the future of the eaglet for a moment. As we know from every documentary, the eaglet is pushed out of the nest by the mother eagle.  They are sent out to get food because their food supply is now cut off and they are pushed off the side of the cliff to survive by their mothers. Can you imagine your mother pushing you off a cliff and as you plummet to your death? This act is later going to be considered as one of your greatest learnings. You may even find yourself as the stunned eaglet one day expressing your thanks to her? The life lesson for us all is revealed in the eaglet falling to the ground and hysterically flapping its wings. The learning experience is that it is the thing that causes the eaglet to be crushed will become the thing that causes it to soar. It is the parallel opposite of how most of us desire to run our lives today.

 My next blog will be all around the value of going through a process of crushing

The Inches You Need...

In Any Given Sunday The Miami Sharks, a once great team, are struggling to make the playoffs. They are coached by thirty-year veteran Tony D'Amato (Al Pacino) , who has fallen out of favour with the team and its owners. As the team prepares to go on to the field Pacino delivers my favourite motivational speech of the movies.

 “You know, when you get old, in life, things get taken from you. I mean, that's... that's... that's a part of life. But, you only learn that when you start losin' stuff. You find out life's this game of inches, so is football. Because in either game - life or football - the margin for error is so small. I mean, one half a step too late or too early and you don't quite make it. One half second too slow, too fast and you don't quite catch it. The inches we need are everywhere around us. They're in every break of the game, every minute, every second”. 

It’s not the huge gains we need right now….it’s the inches. My key learning from this speech is that in both business and life it is not the significant things that we do that make the difference. It’s the day to day small things that bring significance, deliver results and ultimately change the game. If I look in the mirror I recognise I am a lifetime of small refinements. Whilst there may be big things that have impacted all of our calendars through time, it’s the small day to day things that mould and shape us.

My encouragement to you is to plan and look forward to implementing these inches you can gain to discover winning habits and a lifestyle that accompanies it. Remember they are all around you so all you have to do is look for them.

Modelling Resilience to Your Team

I am no psychologist and I make that clear from the outset, however there are some simple learnings here that I think every leader can truly benefit from. As you consider YOUR return to work 95 % of your teams NOW is going to be dependent on their well-being and feeling good at work. Therefore as a leader the key to your behaviour will be set around modelling a healthy resilience in front of the team.

Part of healthy resilience  will be considering the way your speak by engaging in encouraging dialogue in front of your team. Visible action at work will be about making the moment about work but also caring for them in the downtimes. This is found in ensuring you can engage them in fun conversations and talk about them and their interests. As an aside, it is also important for you to allow them to do the same for you. Building resilience is reciprocal!

I have come to realise that well-being in our brains is dependent on how well we control our emotions.Thinking simply about the brain there are several questions we will all consider as we return to work. Is my future secure? Will I still be getting paid? Will I be safe at work? These and many other questions reside in the survival part of the brain.  Our brains will focus on survival until we feel these questions and feelings of insecurity are put to rest.

However when our well-being is taken care of then the survival part of the brain won’t come online and actually goes to rest. Our minds can be like a set of scales and essentially the set of scales need to be in favour of the wellness brain.  It is as simple as this, our survival brain at work needs to be saying all is well at work, I have my job security, I am being paid  and the team are happy . If you are  modelling resilient behaviour and are able to answer these types of questions, it produces that lovely feeling of ahhhhh or soothe in our well-being brain. Our scale is brought into favour of the well-being brain and you will have a team prepared to work and function to the fullest capacity. In short, your well-being and your teams is all about your well-being brain being able to calm the survival brain.

Communicating the NEW Business Landscape

In this time of new normal, where am I, what is happening….. here are 8 useful techniques for communicating the new business landscape with your team

1.     Don’t panic – you can’t lead a team when you’re in panic mode. The other reassuring factor I draw from this is every colleague worldwide is going through what you are right now. We are in this together. Worrying or panic will not expediate your situation.

2.   Turn up, face to face, with your team – right now everyone needs to know you are ok and they are ok. Their greatest need at present is your calm reassurance right now. If you are good at interpreting peoples personalities then speak to them in the way they like to be considered and can ‘hear’ you best. For more on this you can read chapter 10 of my new book ‘Belief – The Great Exchange’

3.     Be realistic with the challenges facing the business in this season and share information freely. Your planning and information is the lifeblood of your organisation.

4.     Help your team see why any change is necessary. During times of change, getting and disseminating information is critical to operating effectively, flexibly, and quickly. The communication process of the change is the most important part. Read your teams faces, get a sense of how they are feeling and share the need for change with sensitivity.

5.     Encourage participation within your team. Allow others to make informed decisions, rather than imposing your own. This will increase employee autonomy and empower your team members to do their best work. Give those you may not have entrusted before the opportunity to rise and shine. It is a perfect time to take some of the workload off your shoulders as you may require that energy for something else?

6.     Make communication a two-way process. Ensure that when you share direction and your heart for the business that you create spaces to hear everyone also. Talk but also listen, especially to people who are resistant to change. 

7.     Get into the trenches with frontline employees to better understand the day-to-day issues they face. Your team will appreciate you getting alongside them to further understand how they are thinking and feeling at this time.

8.     Give people practice in collaborative work between functions by tackling problems and assigning projects through cross-functional teams. Generally everyone enjoys the process much more when you work together. This is a time for togetherness!

Three Factors That will Define your Business Readiness

Your success will be found in your ability to really talk through with your colleagues how you are honestly feeling around returning to work. Part of the success you will uncover moving forward is shifting from a place of fear and anxiety to developing a clear path forward for your business and personal lives. 

 If we consider a coin, we often think there are only two sides – heads and tails. Heads we win and tails we lose. However, there is a third side to every coin, which is its edge. The edge can represent your perspective on getting ready for work again - that changes everything. Going back to heads and tails, we know in our lives that there will be challenges and wins. There are times when you feel we are on top of everything, and other times when you feel everything is crashing down around you. The edge of the coin is the place which exists in between heads and tails. Living on the edge of the coin is the place of balance between the extremes of your situation. The edge of the coin enables it to roll forward after it has been flipped. You might have felt like your life and business has been flipped recently, however I encourage you to find your ‘edge’ and allow yourself to move forward. The ‘move forward’ will be partly based on the following three factors…

 First, effective leadership. Ensure that effective leadership is in place at all levels in your team or organisation. Your business may have excellent pay, benefits, and employee-friendly policies, however if incompetent leaders are in place, your team will not be motivated to adapt and change. As you ‘get ready’ appoint or invite the ‘right’ people to step up and take charge.

 Second, your people are personally motivated to change. Change happens when your team are sufficiently dissatisfied with the status quo and are willing to make the effort and accept the risks involved in doing something new. Empower someone who maybe has taken a back seat in the past and watch them rise to the occasion. This could be the very thing that lifts them and the surrounding team.

 Third, your company culture is accustomed to collaboration. Business readiness requires collaboration between willing and motivated parties. Ask for participation and let your team know that you need them. People enjoy being part of a rallying cry. Remember Simba’s presentation in The Lion King? Everyone ‘shows up’ when they sense something important is happening.

 So in short, discover YOUR edge, appoint the right people in the right place, provide empowerment and collaborate on everything important. These 3 factors will glue you all together with purpose and energy!

 Cheers Andrew