Redefining Failure

“Living Safely is Dangerous”
Nietzsche

What is your relationship to success and failure? I have been reflecting these recent weeks about how I respond to “failure” – when things do not turn out as I hoped or wished.

The video below shares my thinking about a better way of approaching failure in our lives.

How I let failures derail me…

I let small failures easily put me in a state of frustration and stop me making progress (and then checking social media and seeking out other simple distractions).

I take small setbacks incredibly personally.

I’ve been reflecting on why I let these small failure events have such an effect on me.

I realised that I was telling myself that all setbacks are bad.

This is not a great story to tell myself. A new story is that failures are a sign that I am working towards important goals. A lack of setbacks would be a demonstration that I am only working towards easy, unimportant goals that don’t push me to grow as a person.

Essential Meaning of failure: (from Merriam-Webster dictionary)

a lack of success in some effort
a situation or occurrence in which something does not work as it should
an occurrence in which someone does not do something that should be done

On this Saint Patrick’s Day…

Happy Saint Patrick’s day.

There is an old Irish toast that I find poetic and moving. I’m sharing it here today on the occasion of Saint Patrick’s day.

It is all the more touching given that we have travelled few roads and met few distant friends in the last 12 months due to the Covid pandemic.

May the Road Rise Up to Meet You

May the road rise up to meet you.
May the wind be always at your back.
May the sun shine warm upon your face;
the rains fall soft upon your fields and until we meet again,
may God hold you in the palm of His hand.

The Origins and Meaning of the Poem

Celtic literature contains a strong connection between spirit and nature. The wind, the sun and the rain are important images in celtic story. I like the idea that spirituality is not abstract but deeply connected with the earth and nature and our surroundings. In my life, looking at high mountains and looking at sunrise or sunset over the sea are some of the most spiritually uplifting experiences.

In Irish, the first line is “Go n-éirí an bóthar leat”. It is more literally correct to translate as “May you succeed on the road”, the French equivalent of which is “bon voyage.”

Dealing with Coronavirus/COVID-19 Quarantine in Barcelona

Happy Saint Patrick’s Day

We are living quarantine in Spain for the last 3 days. This is a strange Saint Patrick’s day… no rivers greeen… no parades. I am at home with family in quarantine.

How are things where you are? Stay safe and stay sane…

Would love to hear from you on how you are handling the Coronavirus… let’s hear from you in the comments below.

Handling Coronavirus as a Business Leader

COVID19/Coronavirus – How can Small Business Leaders respond?

The 3 Excuses

“You can’t free anybody else and you can’t serve anybody else unless you free yourself”
Nelson Mandela

You are not an accident. You are a singular piece in the giant jigsaw puzzle that is this world. This jigsaw puzzle is not a 50 piece puzzle, nor a 250 piece puzzle… it is a 7 billion piece puzzle. I find it frustrating when my daughter and I put together a 50 piece puzzle and find that there are only 49 pieces. We can’t finish the game. The great puzzle needs your piece. Whatever you are given, you need to pass it on with integrity, humility and generosity.

You are not a Cog in a Machine. Photo: iansand

The greatest anger is the anger at ourselves for not living up to what we know we are capable of. Hell is not after death, hell is the moment before death when a human being looks back on all the wasted potential.

“What you can be, you must be” Abraham Maslow.

Honestly expressing yourself.

The greatest gift you can give to those around you is your own shining self belief and glorious sense of meaning in what you do. If you don’t have it, only you can do the work to get it. If you have it, only you can keep doing what it takes to keep it.

The opposite of love is not hate, it is apathy. Love is not easy. Love is hard. Doing the work that needs to get done, overcoming the devil in me that avoids the work is the course of love. Allowing the resistance, the procrastination to win is the course of apathy. Apathy leads to self-hate, which builds to resentment and then is shared with others in bitterness and cruelty.

The 3 Escuses

The Resistance

Stephen Pressfield speaks powerfully about the Resistance. It is a force within each of us that stops us from doing the work that really matters.

The 3 big voices of my personal resistance are:

Comparison
Pointlessness
Fear

The Last 5% is the Hard Part

Starting is easy. There are no prizes for starting the marathon. You get the medal for finishing. Most people I know are good at starting. Few people I know are good at finishing.

The closer you get to the end, the stronger the Resistance grows.

“An artist never finishes a work, he abandons it.”
Pablo Picasso

Here are a few of many ways I bring these voices into my life to procrastinate and avoid finishing important work.

They won’t let me
I am too young
I am too old
I am only one person
I don’t know enough
I am not a guru
This could be embarrassing
This will be embarrassing
This is too touchy-feely
I won’t get paid for this
This isn’t business stuff
I have to finish the things I have already started
Seth Godin has already said it better than I can
I’ll do it tomorrow/later/after this coffee
Who am I to think I know something special about this?
I’ve got plenty of time next week
I’ve got plenty of time this year
I’ll do it this summer
I’ll do it after the summer
I need to do a little bit more research
Who’s going to read this anyway?
[¡¡¡ insert your own excuse here 😉 !!!!]

That’s just 21… I have many, many more…

4 Ways to Stop Self-Sabotaging Your Success

Self Awareness: The Big 5 Personality Traits

Great leaders have high levels of self awareness. One element of self awareness is a good understanding of how human beings differ in terms of personality. The big 5 personality traits can be remembered with the acronym OCEAN.

OCEAN

Trait descriptions and impact on job performance.

Openness, inventive/curious vs. consistent/cautious; Openness is positively related to proactivity at the individual and the organizational levels and is negatively related to team and organizational proficiency.
Conscientiousness, efficient/organised vs. easy-going/careless; Conscientiousness is positively related to all forms of work role performance.
Extroversion, outgoing/energetic vs. solitary/reserved; Extraversion is negatively related to individual task proficiency.
Agreeableness, friendly/compassionate vs. challenging/detached; Agreeableness is negatively related to individual task proactivity.
Neuroticism sensitive/nervous vs. secure/confident; Neuroticism is negatively related to all forms of work role performance.

If you want to get a quick analysis of your own levels on each of these traits, Cambridge University provide a 3 minute test: Mini-IPIP Big 5 Personality Test

Do you want to know what I am?

Conor’s Big 5 Personality Traits

Here are my results from the Cambridge University test taken 2 December 2019.

Understanding Personality: The 12 Jungian Archetypes

What are your Strategic Recipes? (for meeting the 6 Human Emotional Needs)

“Knowing yourself is the beginning of all wisdom” Aristotle

There are few things more important than understanding your own personal strategic recipes for enjoying a positive, fulfilling experience of your own life. What is a Strategic Recipe. Let’s start with what constitutes a “strategy”.

“A Strategy is a system of producing a consistent result”. Tony Robbins

This sentence is deep.

A Strategy:

is a System – repeatable, objective process
of Producing – there is no strategy without action, “producing” implies that something must be done
A Consistent Result – time and time, over and over again you achieve a specific outcome.

I would class these systems as “Recipes”. A Recipe is a specific process and clear starting state (quantities of ingredients, saucepans, oven temperature, time required) that consistently delivers an outcome (delicious, tasty meal that impresses the guests).

Let’s call these effective processes Strategic Recipes.

My Strategic Recipes

Running in Nature – In my case, going for a run is a Strategic Recipe. No matter how crap and aimless that I feel before I start running (and often for the first 15 minutes of the run), by the time I have run for 20 minutes, my mental chatter starts clearing out and I start to be present in the day, in my body. I start to reconnect to what is important for me, to the people that I want to be with today. I have (what feel like at the time) good ideas and clarity on actions that are important for today.

The gym doesn’t work the same way for me… it has to be running outside… I don’t know why this is, but that doesn’t matter… it only matters that I have a Strategic Recipe for turning unmotivated fuzz into disciplined productive action.

Brompton with Daughter – Taking my daughter (the 2 years old one) out on the infant seat on my brompton bicycle and cycling around Barcelona is another Strategic Recipe. It feels like a meaningful activity – and I love the way she shouts “Wheee!” and “Faster Daddy!” as we cycle. We don’t have any real destination, but might stop off at a playground or a Starbucks along the way. It has to be the brompton bicycle… going for a walk to the park doesn’t give me anywhere near the same positive emotion as the brompton (my daughter is also necessary… heading out alone is just a lonely loser on a bike without a destination…)

Drinking Makers Mark bourbon whisky at night is another Strategic Recipe. (I don’t like that it is… but as I reflect I have to accept that it is…). Watching TV without the whisky makes me feel ordinary and boring. Throw in a neat whisky and I feel like some sort of awesome sofisticated TV watcher. Nuts. (I don’t do this every night… we had some alcoholism in my family and I really watch out for any regular habitual daily drinking… and stop immediately if I notice it)

Curious this… I am sat in a Sandwichez coffee shop near my house and trying to think of the Strategic Recipes that I have in my life to achieve a positive mental state as a result… and the recipes that I find are random…

Some other Strategic Recipes that I have:

Write a blog post – like just now… 20 minutes of activity and I feel that I have accomplished something for the day. They often trigger interesting comments or email dialogues with interesting people. This adds a bit of feeling connected and significant to my day.
Networking on LinkedIn – I have a whole bunch of searches set up (I use the paid Sales Navigator version of LinkedIn) and I can identify a number of inspiring people that I reach out to. My business Vistage depends on building deep, trusted relationships with a wide range of high integrity spanish CEOs. LinkedIn is a gold mine for this. (probably because I spent 15 years blogging, 8 years making videos and generally have what is known as a “personal brand”)
Cooking a Meal – I love cooking. Gives me a sense of accomplishment, creativing and completion. I start with raw ingredients, end with a tasty meal… all in 20 to 60 minutes. My current favourite recipes are Thai chicken curry (yellow, green or red), Mexican fajitas or Indian curry (korma or tikka masala). I used to love BBQ, but have lived in places where you can’t BBQ for last 4 years… I do miss that.
Playing Cards with my family – they are very smart and there can be no distraction when I play… or I will be destroyed. Tough to deal with when you are dealing with a 14 year old and an 11 year old. But I always feel connected and intensely present during the games. We currently play Dou-Dhi-Zou, Georgian “Stupid”, Hearts and Gin Rummy. What other good card games are there for 3 or 4 players?
Watching Big Bang Theory with my older Daughter – we are on season 6… got hundreds of episodes to go. Love the inside jokes that she and I can make based on Sheldon and team’s on screen antics.

It would be good to have a set of Strategic Recipes in our armory that allow us to meet the 6 human needs:

Safety (or Certainty)
Risk (or Variety)
Significance
Connection
Growth
Contribution

What are your Strategic Recipes?

I’ve been going through a 2 month period of feeling unmotivated. I had a very busy May, June, July and it put me off balance… I am only now noticing that I am unmotivated and would like to get more clarity and fulfillment back into my days. I’d love your help. What works for you?

I’d love to hear from you. What are your Strategic Recipes? What set of steps systematically lead you to a consistent positive feeling (through meeting in some way some of the 6 human emotional needs)?

Comments below are excellent, but more than happy to hear from you via email.

Finding Balance between Ambition and Peace of Mind, External vs Internal Success

“If someone followed your life and took 24 hours of film of everything you do for a day and they edited that into a one-hour documentary… the editor could decide to make you look like the worst villain ever or the greatest hero ever… it depends on which parts of your day he puts into the documentary” my friend Raul Aguirre over dinner in Buenos Aires

This video is about a Paradox that we must come to terms with in order to live a full human life. I’ve made it in Montevideo, Uruguay on a trip here to teach Leadership Communications at the IEEM Business School (part of the University of Montevideo).

We need to find a balance in our lives between the forces of external and internal success, between intentional, goal-directed living and a sense of peace within. The paradox – is that these are two forces that clash. How do you find the right balance?

I’d welcome your help on Balance between Ambition and Peace

I need your help- how do you find this balance? Do you have this balance? Do you ever lose control to one side or the other… and how do you recognise this and regain the balance in your life? Thanks… trying to regain this balance in my own life…

If you liked this, you might also like to see my recent video on Finding Purpose and Defining a Vision for your Life (an Exercise).

The Simplest Definition of Success

I have worried for too much of my life about whether I am a success or not.

This video shares the simplest and most empowering definition of success that I have found. It comes from Pema Chodron. It is a wonderful reflection for me about how I am living my life.

Am I learning to forgive myself and to be a positive addition when I am with other people?

Thank you for your comments, reflections, shares and likes!

Highly Effective People – Habit #7 “Sharpen the Saw”

This week’s video is about Steven Covey’s 7th Habit of Highly Effective People: Sharpen the Saw.

Life is a marathon, not a sprint.

Burning yourself out is no service to anyone. Running your car without changing the oil will destroy the engine. Running at 100% all day and all night will destroy your own personal engine.

Feeling good doesn’t just happen.

Living a life in balance means taking the necessary time to renew yourself. You know what to do, but do you make the time for renewal?

Sharpen the Saw means taking care of the greatest asset you have: you. Here are some examples of activities:

Physical: Beneficial eating, exercising, and resting
Social: Making social and meaningful connections with others
Mental: Learning, reading, writing, and teaching
Spiritual: Spending time in nature, meditation, music, art

As you renew yourself in each of the four areas, you create growth and change in your life. Without this renewal, the body becomes weak, the mind mechanical, the emotions raw, the spirit insensitive, and the person selfish. Not a good life.

Fear of an Ordinary Life, Part 2

I ran out of battery on my iphone this afternoon while sitting in starbucks. I was waiting for 2 people. I had to stay. It was good that I ran out of battery, because I ended up looking at Tibidabo mountain for 30 minutes and thinking about life.

I was thinking about my post on Fear of an Ordinary Life from yesterday and the responses that it generated.

The Origin of a Fear of Ordinary

Where did this fear of living an ordinary life come from?

I read intensely as a child. I would read anything, but by far my favourite type of novel were the fantasy or science fiction novels where a young unknown hero saves the universe.

From age 7, I watched Star Wars repeatedly. I would watch 10 to 15 minutes each morning during breakfast before going to school. The books are terrible, this was a movie world not a book world.

Starting from age 11, I read fantasy books. My favourite fantasy world of all was Dune. I found Dune aged 12. There are 8 books (I still have them here on my bookshelf) in the series. We follow the life of Paul Muad’ib from his life as an unknown son of a small time aristocrat to his becoming the Divine Emperor of the entire known galaxy, including mystical powers of telling the future and reading other people’s minds. I fancied myself as a version of Paul. I tried the mental skills that he was taught in the book. Never did work.

Didn’t stop me imagining. As a teenager, I read the Dune books twice; from start to finish. Each time, it was a 6 month journey. (I have only ever read 3 books twice: Dune, Lord of the Rings and Steinbeck’s East of Eden.)

I remember the first time I finished the Dune books, I searched everywhere to see if there might be a ninth book. There was no google, no amazon – only my local library and local bookshops. When I realised that it was over, that there was no more adventure to be had in the fantasy world of Dune (and that Frank Herbert had passed away… the final book was finished by someone else) I was devastated.

Real life never felt as intense or as alive as the experiences that I was living in these book-based worlds of fantasy.

In the real world, I went to school (boring), did my homework (boring), climbed trees (fun), ate breakfast, lunch and dinner (alway enough and healthy).

I think it is this immersion in these fantasy worlds for much of my childhood that shaped my fear of living a life that is ordinary.

Is this a good thing or a bad thing?

The Fantasy Worlds I Lived In

The Author’s & series that I loved during the ages of 10-15 (in order of preference):

Frank Herbert – Dune Series
Isaac Asimov – The Foundation Series
Terry Brooks – Sword of Shannara
Orson Scott Card – Ender’s Game
Tolkien – Lord of the Rings
Stephen Donaldson – Chronicles of Thomas Covenant
Arthur C Clarke – 2001 Space Odyssey