I’ve always been interested in the power of having a positive mindset and we have all seen some amazing examples of people overcoming, sometimes insurmountable odds. I’ve been aware of the down side to not being able to think positively and how this can cause us to spiral out of control.
Most people know about the placebo effect and my guess is that there is a fairly low awareness around the powerful effects from nocebo.

Here’s an article from the New Scientist which helps us see just how much of an impact can have on our WellBeing.

When western anthropologists first heard reports of witch doctors who could issue deadly curses, they quickly found rational explanations. The families of the cursed often felt there was no point wasting food on the “walking dead”, for example. That’s why many of the cursed would die: simple starvation.

However, other case histories have come to light that defy attempts to explain them. In the 1970s, for example, doctors diagnosed a man with end-stage liver cancer, and told him he had just a few months to live. Though the patient died in the predicted time, an autopsy showed the doctors had been mistaken. There was a tiny tumour, but it had not spread. It seemed the doctors’ prognosis had been a death curse.

Though the mechanism remains a mystery, but at least now this kind of phenomenon has a name. The “nocebo effect” is the lesser-known opposite number of the placebo effect, and describes any case where putting someone in a negative frame of mind has an adverse effect on their health or well-being. Tell people a medical procedure will be extremely painful, for example, and they will experience more pain than if you had kept the bad news to yourself. Similarly, experiences of side effects within the placebo groups of drug trials have shown that a doctor’s warning about the possible side effects of a medicine makes it much more likely that the patient will report experiencing those effects.

This is not just in the mind: it is also about physical effects. The stress created by the nocebo effect can have a long-lasting impact on the heart, for example – perhaps serious enough to cause fatal damage.

The race is on to understand the precise mechanisms behind nocebo. Medical researchers are hoping that such an understanding will help to make the world a less stressful place. “It is a good way to understand anxiety, and to find methods to prevent it,” says Fabrizio Benedetti of the University of Turin, Italy.

This article backs up all of the work that was shared in the powerful docu-film “What the Bleep do we Know” Showing us what happens when we have a thought and the chemical cascade that occurs and the long term effects it can have on our bodies.

If you’ve not had the chance to see this clip from the Fast Show it shows us just how quickly we can fall into this Nocebo thinking. It puts a little fun into this post.

I had the pleasure of having a really powerful conversation with a close friend last weekend, she also happens to be my chiropractor and has been part of my support team for 2 of my solo races across America.
We were discussing how easy it is for couples to trample all over each others values, of course most of the time it’s out of awareness.

When someone visits a therapist for treatment it’s usually because something is misaligned and it’s causing pain, it could be a sore knee or shoulder. The conversation became very interesting when she shared her observation of what % of the total body that pain related to, in essence the sore shoulder only represents less than 1% of the body but it takes up almost all of our thinking. It directs our attention on to all of the things that are difficult to do because of the pain.

That simple conversation made me realise just how easy it is for any couple to end up getting stuck when their values aren’t being met. Let me explain, my highest value is Love, all hell could break loose and as long as this value is being met I’d be able to conquer anything.
If that value isn’t met, it has the potential to cause me stress and I don’t feel great, which then drives my thinking, so much so that I become completely consumed by this, and it has the ability to derail me and I could easily spiral downward into a very dark place.
This pattern can show up in any relationship for any number of values not being met, things like only being secure if you have enough money in your bank account, the house being completely tidy, having time for yourself, the list is endless and shows up at work too! If you don’t get the feedback for work you’ve carried out or you’re not recognised for other aspects of your contribution.

The point that is important to highlight here, is that we all get caught out by allowing our feeling about something to then drive our thinking, as opposed to the other way around.

Here’s an example:- Say you’ve decided to get fit as one of your goals for 2011, just say that as part of this new goal you’ve decided to get to the gym 3 times a week before work. Now we all know that this will require changing what time you get out of bed etc. This is how feeling ends up driving your thinking, you’ve set your alarm to wake at 5.30am so you can get to the gym and when the alarm goes off, you still feel tired and don’t want to get up, you probably just missed the point. You see, you’ve just allowed your feeling to drive your thinking, you feel tired and then you start thinking that maybe the new training plan can start tomorrow or next week.

The pattern should always be thinking driving how you feel, I know this is very subtle but it makes a big difference to the results that show up and what action you take. It’s easy to be paralysed to anything else that you have got going for you when you are in pain of any sort, whether it’s a physical pain or an emotional one, the result is the same, we can get completely and utterly trapped and blocked in that thought.

It can stop you from seeing all the other amazing aspects that you have in your life right now. Most of that comes from thinking that there’s not enough resources available, not enough time, not enough money. A much more powerful space to hold is one of sufficiency, the thought that there is always just enough to go around.

I’ve talked mainly about how this can effect relationships when values are not being met, but this absolutely applies to personal negative feelings that can direct your thinking in the same pattern. You end up in the same place of being stuck and not able to see all of the good stuff that is abundant in your life right now.

Every thought has a chemical cascade, positive thoughts are obviously going to support a healthy body, whereas negative thoughts can over a period of time have a massive impact on your health and wellbeing.

I hope this helps shed some light on a very subtle and yet a very powerful sneaky trap we can find ourselves, I hope this creates a heightened awareness so that you use it to your advantage.

Ever wondered why you showed up?

Or asked yourself what’s it all about?

What am I here to do?

Or ultimately, what is my purpose?

I’m hoping that you have pondered these questions a number of times throughout your life and for some of you, you may well have found your life’s calling, for those of you who are still searching or perhaps have just got fed up with this tricky question, I believe there is hope.

In terms of feeling great about yourself and being totally fulfilled, there seems to be such a greater return when you are giving to or supporting others to achieve their goals. This is especially true when you do it from a space of non-attachment to expecting anything in return.

In Eckhart Tolle’s book A New Earth he explains your purpose very simply.

At the moment you are reading this blog and in this moment, that is your purpose until you are not reading this and you go off doing something else, which then becomes your purpose, his point is to focus on how you are being from moment to moment throughout your life.

For most of us purpose means having an overall aim in life, something big and significant that gives meaning to what you do, something that makes a difference. Eckhart talks about how within the dimension of time we are deceived and any meaning we find on that level is true only relatively and temporarily.

Here are a couple of his examples, if caring for your child gives meaning to your life, what happens when they don’t need you anymore or don’t listen to you anymore? If helping others gives you meaning then you are relying on others to be worse off than yourself so that your life can continue to be meaningful and you feel good about yourself.
If you get meaning from excelling at this or that activity, what happens if you never win or your winning streak comes to an end?

Eckhart talks about the outer purpose being aligned with your primary or your inner purpose, he doesn’t suggest that helping others or caring for your children or excelling in whatever field are not worthwhile things to do but if you rely on your outer purpose, sooner or later it will lead to suffering.
If you ignore your inner purpose, no matter what you do, even if it looks spiritual, the ego will creep into how you do it, and so the means will corrupt the end.

Our minds get caught up in seeking the fullness of life in the future, you’ll be happy when the mortgage is paid off or happy when you’ve lost the weight or when you can run the marathon in under 4 hours or be at the top of the sales team, Eckhart says that the mind’s habit of seeking the fullness of life in the future where it cannot be found and ignoring the only point of access to it: the present moment is where we get tripped up.

When you look upon what you do or where you are as the main purpose of your life, you negate time. This he says this is enormously empowering.

So the key is to link your inner purpose (how you are being) with your outer purpose (when you are doing the doing).
It’s not what you do, but how you do what you do that determines whether you are fulfilling your destiny. And how you do what you do is determined by your state of consciousness.

Our lives are made up of moments or chunks of time and it’s in those small moments that your greatness is formed, all great achievements have been made up of a collection of these and have come through a conscious choice of how that person was being in that moment.

I hope that some of Eckhart’s wisdom has been useful and I look forward to your comments.

It’s not often that we think very deeply about where our beliefs come from, we have a view of the world and what is possible for us in life and most of us just get on with it, almost living out the life that we have been conditioned to live. Our beliefs have been shaped and sculpted by a whole host of things including:- parents, teachers, friends, peers, media, life experiences, trial and error, even our imagination plays a role in our beliefs.

It’s no coincidence the word “lie” sits in the middle of the word belief and most of the time our belief about what is possible is a lie and yet we hold on to these beliefs that have stuck to us throughout of lives.
Now I’m not suggesting that you get rid of all of your beliefs, just the ones that are holding you back from being able to do more, have more and be more in your life, by all means please do keep hold of the beliefs that have served you well and helped you achieve great results.

How often have you sat and thought about what impact a single thought has on you?
How many times have you wondered where a certain belief has come from and whether it is still true for you now?

When you boil it down, a thought is a series of chemical cascades which over time will have an impact on your results that show up in your life both internally and externally.

By internally, I mean your fitness, health (including diseases) your wellbeing ie. whether you are stressed and worry about stuff. More and more data is available about genetics and it seems to be responsible for about 2-4% of diseases (Biology of Beliefs by Bruce Lipton), the rest is made up of our thinking, exercise (or lack of) and our diet!

What shows up externally are things like how much you have in your bank account, the car you drive, the house you live in, the quality of your relationships with people at work and your loved ones along with all of the things you can physically measure outside of yourself.

Ultimately, it is your thinking that drives your beliefs. The big challenge for all of us is to be able to slow down enough to spend some time to pick through the beliefs that are still useful and then have a clear out of the ones that are useless, a de-cluttering to make room for you to bring some new thinking into your life.

To make it easy, beliefs come in 2 sizes, you either have Limiting beliefs or Empowering beliefs! Your beliefs will drive every decision you make in your life so it’s probably worth checking them out every now and then.

I dived into a shop to get a sandwich and as I was checking out the young lady asked whether I had a loyalty card which I said no to, she then asked whether I needed a bag and I also said no. I then lost eye contact with her when she said something which I didn’t hear, I caught myself not being fully aware and asked what she had said and with a big beaming smile she said that she had just asked if I would marry her!
She said that I had already said no twice and was just checking whether I was really awake and was messing with me. We had a laugh and it was a pleasant little interaction, one which reminded me of the fact that we are usually running at such a pace that we do have the potential to miss so much. Little bits of conversation are missed because we are in a rush to get to the next thing!

Businesses obviously recognise that people do business with people but I think that it gets lost in the hustle bustle of every day corporate life and the focus on KPI’s and the next quarterly results, so it’s no wonder that there is little focus on developing presence.
This is not a process thing, it’s all about the complexed nature of human beings and understanding what makes us tick and how we differ from one another. Being present is about shutting out everything else that’s going on in your head and the ability to focus your attention on the person or group of people you are with at that time. I’m not saying this is easy, it takes a lot of awareness or mindfulness.

A good example is how you feel when someone doesn’t give you their full attention! The impact is very powerful and it could be the difference that clinches the next deal or helps open up lines of communication.

Every interaction we have does leave a finger print, the difference between the sort of finger print someone might leave who is present compared to someone who is in a rush and completely unaware is massive.

For centuries now it has been about the relationships people are able to forge with one another but now more than ever it has become the key to success in any business.

The RAPPORT Model

RAPPORT

The “R” is in fact Rapport as I believe that this is one of the most important things you need to gain in front of a group of complete strangers. If you were speaking to friends or business colleagues, you’ll be given a little breathing space but an audience that doesn’t know you will be judging you as soon as you walk up to start.

There are a number of ways to gain quick Rapport, one of the best ways is to tell a story about yourself that the audience can relate to, something as simple as talking about you arriving late for an appointment and feeling really bad about it, most people in the audience will be sat there thinking yeah, I’ve done that a couple of times! What you are looking for, is to create as many “ME TOO” moments within the first minute or so, or at least one really powerful story that they can connect with.
Once you’ve gained their Rapport, you’ll need to continue to keep their attention throughout your speech, so you’ll need to sprinkle more of those type of inclusive stories.
Telling a joke or a funny story, is another way of gaining Rapport, you just need to make sure that you know the punch line and that it won’t offend anyone!

ATTENTION

Now that you’ve gained their rapport, you will need to be able keep their ATTENTION, usually this would come in the form of your credibility, in your field for example you may be the expert or have come up with something new or innovative. If you were introduced, it might be that you have already gained their Attention because the intro explained who you are and what you are going to be talking about. I’ve certainly seen bad and good examples of introductions, sometimes the safest way is to have your own intro written out in advance of your speech.

For me personally, I use a video clip which I think is powerful, as it says what it does on the tin so to speak.

If you haven’t been introduced or have a video that you can use, it’s worth giving some thought to what your key messages are going to be and how you can use that to gain the audience’s attention. For example, you might be able to weave a national or international news story into your speech and create a clever link to what you’ll be talking about and why it’s so important to focus the next hour or so on your topic.

PURPOSE

The Purpose is more about your Purpose for doing the speech, is it part of your job and expected of you to talk at the company conference or is this one of those development opportunities? In a way, it doesn’t really matter because whatever the reason is for you doing the speech, you’ll want to do a great job.
In a way, your Purpose is really what you stand for, your view of the subject, your opinion and beliefs that you want to share. If you are reporting on the companies financial results at the conference, as much as the content can be boring at times, there’s absolutely no reason for you to be boring with it! Take some pride in what you have been tasked to present on and make it engaging and leave your own personal finger print.

PAYOUT

The Payout is what’s in it for your audience and if you’re really clever you could link it to your Attention grabber. It could be that you are an industry expert and that you have some new strategies to share or that you have a new challenge that needs to be solved and that you need their help to solve it, the payout for them is that they will have been involved and got something from the time they’ve just invested.
In fact, that’s a great way to think about what your payout will be for your audience, think that they are going to be investing their time and that you need to deliver a return on that investment somehow. Listening to your speech will mean that they will walk away with either an amazing experience or some great new bits of information they can use, ideally, both.

OPPORTUNITY

Whenever I get the chance to speak, whether it’s to a local school, a football club or at a company conference, I really do see it as an Opportunity to leave a positive finger print. I really do buy into the idea that we are all connected and that we create a ripple effect with every interaction we have with others.
If speaking isn’t a strength for you yet, then the next speech could be seen as an Opportunity to gauge how much you’ve improved since the last time. It could be that it’s an Opportunity to shine in front of a new team that you’ve just taken over or in front of a new CEO. Whatever the situation, you can always look for the Opportunity that sits within doing the speech and get excited.

REPRESENT

Of course, you are representing yourself first and fore most and on top of that it may well be your company that you are representing at a seminar. I guess my point here is that when I’m speaking, I remind myself who I’m representing and I attempt to put across a great impression on behalf of the groups I Represent, other keynote speakers or cyclists for example.
You Represent your family, local community, the region, your country, the teams you support! The list is long and it’s certainly worth some thought.

TIMING

The Timing is about a few things, firstly being mindful of finishing on time is extremely important, you want your audience being engaged and energised by your speech and not disappointed that they are stuck in traffic or have missed the only night flight home because you ran over on time!
If you do a lot of speeches, you will have found out that there are a number of occasions when your host asks you to cut your speech by 15 minutes or maybe even more because the whole agenda has run over time! This does happen a lot so it’s worth being prepared to drop some slides or some of your points out so you can accommodate your host, in the early days I got caught out by this a couple of times and it’s painful if you are attached to getting all your points across and then run way over.

Timing is also about knowing when to pick the pace of your speech up and also when to slow it down, ideally you want to take your audience on an emotional roller coaster allowing them to really experience what you are speaking about by giving great examples or get them involved and out of their seats. Being aware that if someone has been sat through a previous speaker before you started, they may be fidgety and would benefit from a little movement, getting them to just stand up and stretch or change seats is a good way to re-energise your audience.

It’s recently dawned on me that when I look at the Race Across America and in particular the solo race, there seem to be riders who have shown up to finish what they started.

These people who finish no matter what shows up are people who even if the race or their bodies get the better of them in their first attempt, are the type who will go back and get the job done the following year or have plans to go back and finish what they started, Kerry White is one of those legends along with Janet Christiansen who didn’t finish in her first attempt but went back the following year and finished as an official finisher.

These individuals will take on board the learning that has been gifted to them during this Ultra feast which is truly unlike anything else out there in terms of beasting yourself against everything that is thrown at you over 12 days (men) 13 days (women).

Life Lessons
It’s a great example of what happens to us all on a daily basis, there are loads of curve balls that get thrown during a normal day at work, school or college but the point I’m making here is it’s more about your ability to rebound and pick yourself up from those tricky situations.

I guess I’m talking about just how emotionally resilient are you. Harry Potter has an invisibility cloak that he uses to allow him to sneak around Hogwarts. We all have the option to have a similar cloak which could be used to guard us against all of the interference that can knock us off our feet! Almost like a bullet proof vest this cloak can protect us from negative people and they are out there!
Simple bits of feedback delivered in the wrong way can cause us a period of time out of our day when we’re not as productive. All sorts of stuff has the potential to get in our way of being really focused when we need to be.

We are so chaotic as human beings and we need to understand that there is only one thing we can control in our lives and that’s ourselves!
Most people tend to spend so much time and energy focusing on stuff that is completely out of our control that we have become an anxiety driven society; we’re on edge and can be easily distracted and knocked off from what we should be focusing on.

We can be having an amazing day and then all of a sudden, someone says something that’s maybe not even intended for us but we over hear it and think that they were talking about us and off we go on one! Up til that point we were as happy as Larry and now we’ve lost it. So much time is lost in these sort of curve balls and we lose so much focus on these type of events, of course there are bigger things that also can derail us and ultimately it’s about how we respond to these events that in turn shape us into who we are today.

The Way Forward

The only way to really become emotionally resilient is to expect the curve balls to show up, life has a way of throwing stuff at us to see whether we’ve got it yet or not! Either events or people will come along to test us to see if they still have the power to upset us or not.
I spoke to my daughter a few years ago about this when she was upset about breaking up from her first boyfriend, I mentioned that it was a bit like standing in the sea up to your knees, the waves will come at you constantly, most of them will be gentle and you will enjoy your time in the sea facing the elements. Every now and then however, there will be a wave that comes along and knocks you off your feet, you can almost expect it!
I’m not suggesting that you live a life of expecting to be bowled over at some point so don’t get too happy! On the contrary, I’m suggesting that by being ready for that unexpected wave because that’s what it usually is, you can be ready to dust yourself off and enjoy the rest of your time on the planet.

A boyfriend leaving you might have some big lessons around what you want and more importantly deserve in a new relationship, get that lesson and you’ll be a much happier person. The same can be said about leaving a job and a host of other stuff we think is really big at the time.

When those curve balls get thrown one of the best ways to look at it is to ask:- What can I learn from this? So that it doesn’t show up again!

I’m not saying this is easy and at the same time I am. Choice as usual plays a big role in how long we put ourselves through the mangler!

Choose wise let go and learn as quickly as possible.

With love and energy

We all understand that we eat food to give us energy and the food we choose to eat can have a massive impact on our overall wellbeing, our body is very good at taking out the the nutrients that then nourishes and repairs our body. In the busyness of our working lives, it’s easy to pay little attention to the quality of food we consume and we end up in a pattern of eating a poor diet because it serves a need and allows us to squeeze more out of our working day.

If you get this simple explanation then you will also understand that our being gets bombarded on a daily basis by media, other people, our own thinking and a whole host of other stimuli, most of which is negative and has the potential to dent our soul.

Here are some questions to ponder:-

Do you know what nourishes you?
What makes you feel great on the inside?

Here are some examples of the sort of things I’m talking about:-

A smile from a loved one
The sun on your face
Doing exercise
A happy memory
A beautiful view
Reading a great book
Learning something new
Achieving a tough goal
Making someone else feel great
Seeing someone you care about achieve their goal
The wind in your hair
Walking the dogs
Seeing the cats playing together
An inspirational movie
Looking through old photo albums

Most of them are very simple things and easy to achieve BUT how often are we missing these opportunities to re-energise ourselves and top ourselves up? This can have a massive positive effect on our immune system and thus on our overall wellbeing. Within your busy day it’s easy to sow some of these to ensure your are fully fuelled. Most people would argue that they don’t have enough time, when the reality is that time is all we have! We all have the choice as to how we are going to spend our time.

If you keep a journal, it’s worth keeping a list of these things and the wonderful memories/experiences that you’ve had so that you can reflect on them from time to time. If keeping a journal is not really your thing, then simply store them in your memory bank upstairs.

Cycling 3,000 miles non-stop is fairly tough and there’s a lot of training that goes into being able to finish what is considered to be one of the toughest races on the planet but it would certainly be a massive stretch and very much beyond comprehension without the family support I’ve had.

When I compare this to anyone who works long hours and misses the simple family routinues of eating together at night or taking the children to an after school event, that too requires the understanding of one’s partner and support to allow that pattern to continue. I guess my point here is, to succeed in business there is a certain amount of effort that has to go into achieving your goals, whether it’s the companies goals that you are responsible for of your own personal goals you are chasing for your career.

It reminds me of an old quote from Thomas Edison:-

Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work.

It’s all just Learning

I’m not suggesting that you have to flog yourself to get great results, what I am saying is that you’ll have to put some serious effort in to do well. When I look back at the 3 seperate races and why I was able to continue to go faster each year even though I wasn’t getting any younger! I would have to put it down to being able to look back and reflect on what I’ve learnt from each race and then apply that learning for the next attempt.

Being more specific, I would look at what worked well and ensure that it was taken forward into my next race strategy. Probably where I had my biggest learning experiences from was when things didn’t go as well as expected, most of the time this gets labelled as failure.
This is where so many businesses miss the opportunity to overtake their competitors, there is so much fear of failure that a lot of companies are not even taking measured risks in the fear of any reprisal if something goes wrong or FAILS!

Being able to label these so called failures as learning opportunities is a much healthier way of looking at unravelling the situation, the energy behind the word failure almost has a paralysing effect on people and certainly doesn’t make the people involved feel particularly great either. Focusing on what can we learn from this situation is a much more positive way of moving forward and not getting bogged down into blaming people, it forces you to look at what options are available to find a solution.

The usual knee jerk reaction when something does go wrong in business is to immediately ask why and who’s to blame for it not turning out right! The amazing truth is that when something does go wrong within an organisation 94% of the time it’s not down the staff it’s actually down to the processes that are in place that cause the promblem, or I should say the lack of processes! How many times have you experienced a leader ask what was wrong with the system as their first response?

Roles & Responsibility

This has certainly been a key learn for myself when preparing for such a big race, being able to clearly brief all of the crew in terms of their individual rolls and responsibilities, if this is slightly wrong or misleading it can cause major problems during the race and cause major tension for all concerned and can have a massive impact on performance and motivation.

It’s amazing how these things will always show up if there’s been a lack of clarity, the same applies in any organisation when people aren’t completely clear about the direction the business is going in. Small degrees of seperation over a week or a month of being misaligned can end up meaning being way off target, causing a load of stress for all concerned.

Staying Focused

As the rider, it would be very easy to get distracted as you built your training for the race, there’s a lot of other things that need to happen in the background to ensure that everything runs smoothly for the race. Flights, accomodation, getting crew kit, cycle kit the list is a very long one! Without really good planning and briefing the crew regularly, you wouldn’t make it to the start of Raam. In fact that is a big achievement in itself, getting to the start line, so many people that set their sights on competing in this race as a solo rider don’t make it, usually this is down to 2 things:- A lack of crew or a lack of sponsorship!
Being able to delegate the planning aspect enables me to stay focused on doing the training and juggling the family and business.

Again this is very similar to a company who is attempting to increase their margins year on year, there has to be a very thorough plan in place to allow everyone to stay focused on their tasks that they need to perform on a daily basis. Interestingly, it’s those simple every day things that have to happen that allows you to achieve your goals at an individual, team and organisational level.

I guess this is one of my main points about completing & competing in Raam, it’s the aspect of Just Keep Pedaling, I have to stay on the bike and keep pedaling to achieve my goal, that’s my main task, of course I need to eat and drink and occasionally sleep but on the whole it’s about staying on the bike and pedaling.

Whatever your individual main task is within a company, if you can stay focused and just keep pedaling as it were, my belief is that you’d be more successful. Now here’s the challenge for all of us and it can easily bump you off track! Being able to handle the INTERFERENCE, so much stuff has the potential to take your focus away from the main task that you need to be doing and being able to manage these interferences is the key to staying on track and achieving your goals.

3 Simple Strategies to consider from a book called Gung Ho by Ken Blanchard

The Way of the Squirrel

The way of the squirrel is all about everyone in the organisation doing worthwhile work. Certainly within my crews for Raam everyone knew what their roles were and they all knew that it was critical to the success of the whole team and my success as a rider. There would be no way that we would achieve our goal if one of these roles was not carried out to the best of their ability, simple things like mixing drinks doesn’t sound that big a deal but if you get it slightly wrong, it can have a dramatic effect on my performance.

People in a business need to be made aware of the role they play in the bigger scheme of things, they need to be made aware that what they do does make a difference so they can take pride in what they do and that is at all levels!!

The Way of the Beaver

The way of the beaver is all about team work, when beavers build a dam, they all just get stuck in, they bring small twiggs and large sticks and get the dam built, you don’t ever see them arguing over where the stick gets put. The same applies with the crew for Raam, everyone has their own roles but if something extra has to be done, it just gets done by whoever is the closest person available to do the job so we can move forward.

This is an interesting one in companies, a lot of the time I’ve heard things like:- It’s not my job! I’ve already got too much on, I’m not doing that! there are lots of similar lines that get used which is not really what team work is about. It stands to reason that the more efficent you can be as a team the more success you are going to have.

The Way of the Geese

Have you ever seen a flock of geese fly in formation, it’s usually in a V shape and you usually hear them honking as they fly, the honking is considered to be them celebrating success, they are giving feedback to the one at the front of the formation to say that you are doing a great job. Interestingly, they all take a turn at the front pushing the wind, a great example of team work.

Celebrating success in Raam is probably an area that has been missed in each race, one on the main reasons is that we are all so tired that there’s not a lot of energy left to properly celebrate what we have just achieved as a team. Everyone who has been involved in this amazing event have all mentioned that it was a life experience that will stay with them all of their lives but unfortunately, I/we have still not got this aspect right!

It never ceases to amaze me that a lot of companies fall into this trap of not really celebrating thier successes, I have experienced this on many occasions where senior leaders say that it’s something they don’t do enough of. It seems that once a goal has been achieved, it’s all hands to the deck for the next thing.

I haven’t come across too many companies that can get these 3 simple things right!

My Final Point

I have learnt more than anything from the Race Across America and my role as a coach, that most people on the planet are barely scratching the surface of their own potential. I personally set out and used Raam as an experiment to see just how far I could push myself, I was attracted to the idea that this is meant to be one of the toughest events on the planet, I didn’t know whether I would complete the solo race but I did have an incredible mindset and belief that I would do everything I could to achieve my goal.

I’m in a position as a person where I’m luckly to have no physical limits, I have all of my limbs and sight and am very grateful to be able to do what I do. I continue to be massively inspired by other people around the world who push themselves well beyond normal human limits who have been perhaps involved in an accident or had a disability from birth, it’s their spirit that propells me forward in life. Here’sa link to one such person, I hope you enjoy it.

I look forward to hearing your thoughts.

So without walking around in a morbid state 24/7 how can we ensure we live fully every day?

How often do we stop long enough and think about just how amazing it is that we are able to function and perform such stunning acts as human beings?

It really is remarkable that just to be able to walk down the street and buy a magazine and then go back home and read it, there’s a whole load of stuff happening to enable this simple task to take place but we’ve lost the wonder of just how special that is for us. There is so much that just happens automatically that we forget to pay a little gratitude to our body for doing a great job in taking care of our breathing and digestion and all of the other complexed things it does from moment to moment, it just gets mind boggling when you think about it.

Socrates wrote:- The unexamined life is not worth living.

Socrates also wrote:- Death may be the greatest of all human blessings.

My belief is that most of the people on the planet are sleep walking their way through their lives, including me for most of my waking day. We are sooo unaware and sooo busy that we miss a lot of the special things that happen in our day. It’s not until those little things are taken away that we suddenly pay attention and slow down for a brief period and allow the joy to flow through us and nourish our souls.

It brings me to ask you a series of questions which are worth asking yourself and giving yourself some time to really think about them.

How do you measure a life?

Time, love, friends, what you do, the people you touch, memories, other things you leave behind, smiles, tears, laughter, things you see/experience, how you handle stuff, money?

Have you found JOY in your life?

Have you bought JOY to others?

Do you have an open heart? (Forgiveness)

In the movie Hitch there’s a quote which you’ve probably heard a number of times but I’m going to share it again because I think it fits into this theme:-

“Life is not about how many breathes we take. It’s about the moments that take your breathe away!”

If this is partly true, how can we keep the essence of those memories alive? Maybe by using a journal or keeping an account of those special moments alive by having photo’s all over the walls in your house. Not so long ago it would be kept alive through story telling and sitting around a camp fire and re-telling the stories. How often do we pay attention when one of our children attempts to share their story with us, does it get lost in the busyness of life?

Here’s something I saw on a train it was an advert by Vodafone and I really do believe a lot of our answers are all around us to see but we just don’t see it because we’re too busy!

NOW

It’s the most precious thing in the world.
It only exsists for an instant. It’s there,
then it’s gone. So cherish it. Love it.
Use it to make someone smile. Use it to
tell someone you love them. Discover great things.
Laugh at daft things. Take it in your hands
and stretch it, Elooongate it.
Put it through it’s paces. Make it earn
it’s keep. Fill it to the brim with your
favourite things. Squeeze every drop
of enjoyment out of it. Whatever
you do, make the most of it.

We only ever have NOW that current moment that we are in, the challenge is being present to that moment, we spend so much time either in the past feeling guilty about something or in the future worrying about what might be. We’ve become an anxiety driven society by attempting to control everything! The only thing we have real control over is ourselves, we can’t control the weather, what other people say, the traffic, the share price, whether we’ll have a job for life etc etc…. the list is endless BUT we do attempt to control those things that are out of our control, or we certainly get very stressed by all of these things.

We need to accept that life is chaotic and be OK with What Is, or as Eckhart Toole says :- the Isness of things. Byron Katie says “When we argue with reality, we only ever lose 100% of the time”

So, how can death be used as a positive?

The only way we can look straight at death and be grateful, is to remind us that one day we will pass on and if we were to think of death that way, one day you will be right of course but more importantly, it’s our best reminder to live fully in every moment and be as present as possible.

One of the greatest gifts we can give someone, is to be fully present when with them.

Just remember, your worst days and your best days all have sunsets.