Category: Life Lessons

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This video is about the 4 seasons of nature, and the 4 seasons of our life.

Farmers understand the seasons – they don’t plant in autumn and try to reap a harvest in winter… they know that spring is for planting, summer is for nurturing and autumn is for reaping.

In our own lives we have these seasons. If you can recognise the seasons of your life, you can keep a better perspective and clarity about what you are seeking to achieve.

Stay strong… and remember: all winters come to an end and spring, the window of opportunity will come again.

I mentioned Brandon Dempsey’s blog post: How to cautiously and successfully reap the rewards of your hard work

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I'd love you to leave a comment and tell me the answer to this question: Who is the most enthusiastic person that you know? 

Thanks, Conor

Last night, I asked a retired inspector of schools: “What makes a great school?”

His answer… “Music.”

He said that infallibly he would find a thriving musical scene in every great school that he had visited.

When you are surrounded by enthusiastic people, you are willing to take risks and learn; brave tries are celebrated. When you are surrounded by cynics and apathetic people you don’t take risks and any effort at bravery is laughed at and mocked.

On Friday I attended the YouTube Creators day in Barcelona. It struck me just how powerful a room full of enthusiastic people can be. There was no cynicism and no apathy. All efforts at Learning, trying and courage to take risks were celebrated.

Making movies #YouTube

A post shared by Conor Neill (@cuchullainn) on

PS My own answer is: Florian Mueck (http://www.florianmueck.com/florian/)

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Here’s a simple idea:

Plan a life you would like to have.

If you love your life now, stick to what is working. If you don’t love your life right now, change something.

Use your Imagination first

Are you aiming at the right thing (or at any thing)?

Start by describing in detail the life you would like to have. How is your health? How is your social life? How are your relationships with family, friends, mentors, colleagues? How are you contributing to the universe? How much are you earning? How are you finding meaning for your life?

I’m not everything I could be and I know it. There is a better way that I could be and act in this world.  I can imagine a better way.  It is best to be inspired by living in your imagination for a while before you decide to give the next 20 to 30 years of your life to pursuing the goals.

Nobody reaches the top of Everest by surprise

Nobody who climbs Everest reaches the summit by accident. It has been a plan in their life for years. They have worked on their fitness, their skills, their finances for years to reach this moment on the summit of the mountain.

It takes disciplined effort to succeed in life. It is hard to find the motivation to maintain disciplined effort (especially when I have netflix, facebook, twitter, newspapers etc to compete for my attention).

Where can I find the motivation to maintain this disciplined effort?

Write your goals down.

That is it.

If you are not excited by these written goals, then they are not your goals. You have written them down in the hope that someone else might be impressed by your goals. There are not your goals and you are a moron to try to live your life in the hope that someone else pays attention and is impressed by what you say you would like to achieve. You will fail.

If you are happy to show your goals to everyone on the internet, they are not your goals. They are written to impress.

If you are embarrassed about your goals, but deeply excited by the tiniest idea that you could actually achieve them – now we are moving towards goals that come from inside of you.

How to begin Writing down your Goals

Who is it that I want to be in 3 years? If you can define this and you really want to be this person, then you are going to find quite a bit of the motivation to maintain disciplined effort.

If you keep your objectives all vague and foggy you can guarantee not to fail in a specific way. A lot of people do not write down specific future goals in a clear way because they are scared of having to actually do the work or face the possibility of clearly failing.

If a game is not fun, do you keep playing?  Are your goals and the process by which you pursue these goals fun?  If yes, keep playing.  If no, change the goals or change the process…  but write down the aims and the rules by which you decide to play.

Start with the Small Things

Start with little things that you can fix.

If your desk isn’t tidy and it is slightly irritating, tidy your desk.  If your computer is dirty and the screen is covered in guck, clean it.  If the room that you are in is a mess, throw out the rubbish.  These little things constitute 50% of your life.  The objects and rooms you interact with every day are important.  Get the rubbish out of the way.

Tell your head: “I’m going to make this place better for 5 minutes”.  Go.

Continue with this line of ideas with Meaningful Contribution or Start with the End in Mind or What do you want? 

PS Thanks for sticking with my rant today…  it was a reflection for myself after spending a day spinning my wheels and avoiding difficult tasks 😉

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I was in Belfast this week to celebrate my father’s birthday and spend some time with our relations in the north of Ireland.

My great uncle Jim is 94 years old. He has always been a great teller of stories. This is a story I remember hearing from Jim years ago. It is about why a barber shop thrived in a street where several brand name hairdressers had been unable to survive.

If you are reading this via email, you can watch the video on the blog here: Success in Business (A Story from my 94 year old Uncle Jim)

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Last week, my 13 year old niece Natia asked me: “what is the most important lesson you have learnt in your life?”

Natia was clearly quite serious (and had thought about her own answer), so I took a few minutes before responding. The video below explains my answer to her question.

How would you answer this question? What’s your lesson?

Leave it in the comments below 😉

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Life is much better today than ever before.  I guess the challenge is that we have improved all of the lower parts of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, but lost a lot of the institutions and connections that helped people explore the higher elements of meaning, connection, significance and self-transcendence.

Check out the improved quality of life over the last 200 years…

  • Extreme Poverty: from 94% to 10%
  • Basic Education: from 17% to 86%
  • Literacy: from 12% to 85%
  • Vaccination: from 0% to 86%
  • Child Mortality: from 43% to 4%

Thanks to my brother for sharing the infographic 😉

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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!

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A Goldfish only grows as large as it needs to. In a small tank, it grows to about 2 inches. The bigger its environment, the more challenges it can face: the larger it can grow. It is the same with each of us as human beings.

Are you in too safe and comfortable an environment? You won’t grow. You might even do like the Sea Squirt and eat your own brain…

This video was filmed on a trip to Tbilisi to celebrate the eightieth birthday of Eka’s father.

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Jack Daly says “you are either practicing in private, or you are practicing in public”.

This video is about Excellence. What is the path to Mastery? What do successful people do differently?

Success is the choice to practice in private. in this video, I also celebrate this week’s milestone: 50,000 subscribers! Thank you to all who subscribe, comment, share and contribute to the community that helps support me as I develop these ideas.

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When I was young, golf was a big part of our family.  This video is about 3 life lessons that I learnt from golf.

When I was 10 my parents bought a summer house 40km from Dublin that was next to a golf course. My brothers and sister all grew up with golf all around us: playing it, watching it, watching my dad acquire new clubs, new machines to transport clubs around the golf course.

This year, my father fulfilled a dream. He travelled to Augusta this year with 3 good friends and spent the first few days on the course with the professionals.  We just watched Sergio Garcia win his first major (after 72 attempts), with a win on the first playoff hole against Justin Rose.

The Augusta Masters is one of the sporting events that I remember watching every year of my life. The last few holes have had some epic wins, and some epic losses. Success in golf, and in life, is less about the brilliance of one shot, and more about the consistent quality of 75 shots.

If you liked this post, you will also like Learning about Deliberate Practice and 17 Daily Personal Habits for a Fulfilling Life.