Category Archives: Thought for the Day

Today is the day

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I hear birds singing. There are blue skies outside. I’m enjoying the world cup. I’m healthy and happy, as is my missus and kids. Life is good. I’m growing, changing, learning. A mountain I decided to climb seemed daunting but, surprisingly, is proving simpler than I thought. Doors open. People are helpful. Things fall into place.

I saw a fox in our front garden yesterday evening, just after the Brazil v Chile game. Small, brown, cheeky, bushy-tailed.

Face your fears. Feel the fear and do it anyway, as Susan Jeffers’ famous book advises. Take a chance. Live from your gut. Do what you were born to do. Like Maradona. Celebrate this day. I can’t believe that the 1990 World Cup is 20 years ago! If feels like yesterday! Time is galloping. Time. Tempus fugit.

Looking back on my life, whenever I made a really good decision, I was often triggered into action by the realisation that time waits for no man. That time is flying. That the time to do what you want to do is today. Tomorrow is the adverb of the defeated. Do today, do now, what you want to do. Seize the day! Enjoy this day. Carpe diem!

Father’s Day

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Being a Dad: the Top 10 Problems and Solutions

By Joe Armstrong

Problem No. 1: Time If you leave home before the kids are up in the morning and crawl home knackered when they’re in bed, it doesn’t take a genius to twig that time is your big problem. Tell me what you spend your time on and I’ll tell you what you love. Spend no time with your kids and you love ‘em? Go figure.

Solution: If you can’t find time for your children, you’re too busy or in the wrong job. The greatest gift you can give them is your time and attention. Make time! They’ll have grown and left the nest before you know it. Now is the time to laugh, relax and do stuff together.

Problem No. 2: Listening Listening is a learned skill. It is different to hearing. With hearing you react to the words. With listening you’re attentive to the person and feelings behind the words. Asking questions isn’t listening! Giving out isn’t listening. Watching telly isn’t listening to your kids!

Solution: Learn to listen. Say ‘You seem upset’, not ‘Why are you upset?’ Watch and feed back to them. If your kid says ‘I’m bored’ reflect it back: ‘You’re bored’ (a statement, not a question or criticism). When you feed back their words, it shows you’re listening and they may feel encouraged to open up more. Show them how they feel is important to you. Learn this skill and use it regularly.

Problem No. 3: Criticizing Criticizing your kids is not how to win friends and influence people! Sure, some of what they do mightn’t be kosher. Licking the plate. Blaring their music. Texting manically. Wearing that. Showering forever. Or not showering. There’s lots you could moan about. But nagging and complaining isn’t the recipe for happy families.

Solution Put a sock in it! Give up criticizing today. Watch how relationships improve when your kids stop expecting you to nark about something they did or failed to do. Self-criticize if you must, but hey! why now give yourself a break too?

The whole article, including the other seven problems and solutions, are published in the current issue (June 21, 2010) of Woman’s Way magazine.

Perfectionism wastes so much time

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I’m staggered by how much time I have lost on a project due to perfectionism! It’s great to be challenged by that book I’ve posted about recently which topples my lifelong assumption that the longer you spend at something the better it will be. Often, the opposite is the case. And all that extra time spent can literally be wasted.

Do it less than perfectly

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As per my last post, it’s a liberation for me to think of the phrase ‘Do it less than perfectly’. When you want to do something perfectly, you put it off because it’ll take so much time.

Another great insight offered in the book Overcoming Perfectionism by Roz Shafran, Sarah Egan and Tracey Wade is the belief of perfectionists that one must spend a lot of time on tasks. They invite perfectionists to do an experiment, spending less time on tasks and they confidently predict that one learns that the outcome is pretty much the same without having to spend forever on a task. And, if we reduce the amount of time we spend doing stuff trying to get it perfect, we’ll have time to live a more balanced lifestyle, taking time for leisure, family, physical exercise, work, sleep etc.

Finally, I love their insight that ‘thorough’ is often the enemy of the good when it comes to perfectionists because we who have this fault waste so much time and energy and end up unable to see the wood for the trees.

Perfectionism

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I’m reading a really good book on perfectionism called Overcoming Perfectionism: a self-help guide using cognitive behavioural techniques. It is excellent. It shows how perfectionism is so inefficient. It shows how perfectionists procrastinate. It shows how they tend to ‘blow the whole thing’ because of their ‘all or nothing thinking’. It’s by Roz Shafran, Sarah Egan and Tracey Wade. It’s packed with helpful exercises and challenging facts aimed at convincing perfectionists of the deficits of perfectionist thinking and behaviours. I wish I’d found this book earlier!

Encouragement

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We could all do with a bit of encouragement at times. Often things aren’t as bad as we think! Recently, I was driving my son for a dental appointment and (a) one tyre seemed so low I wasn’t sure if we’d make it to a garage (b) my fuel gauge showed I was almost empty and (c) my car mechanic told me to check another wheel hadn’t come loose. In fact, I discovered there was plenty of air in what had seemed like a flat tyre – I’d parked it on an incline with the weight of the car bearing down on that wheel, distorting my perception. I’d enough fuel to get my son to the dental appointment and, when I checked the other wheel, it was secure.

So, a little example of three worries that came to nothing. Continuing the theme of the ‘three’, I’ve three chapters written of my new book. I dared to show the first two to my wife and she liked it. I also sent one chapter to my US agent who was delighted to hear from me and was excited I was working on a novel. And I sent the three chapters too to an Irish publisher.

Then I read my third chapter myself. I’m my own worst critic and I could see it wasn’t at nearly the same state of completeness as the first two chapters.  A bit like that day in the car, I felt a bit overawed at the mountain I had to climb to raise it to the standard of the rest of it. But then I started working on it and having fun with it. Sure, it needed improving but my awareness of that catapulted me into a fun time creating satisfying dialogue and moving the story forward. Like with the car, it wasn’t as far off the mark as I’d thought. Things weren’t as bad as I thought. In fact, what I had was a rich draft to work with. I had a good skeleton and now I’m putting the flesh on it, bringing it alive. One character is really growing on me. I was going to give him an early exit but no way is that going to happen now. He’s much too much fun for that!

On the same vane, when I was tweaking chapter two a wonderful new character announced himself. I love this guy. And I very much expect him to stay with me too until the end of the book. I’ve close to a third of the book written. It’s a bit like a mosaic or painting, where you keep working on its texture, adding bits, feeling invited by a character to come this way or try that. And the narrator too is a bit of a trickster. He’s doing stuff in chapter 3 that I really didn’t expect. Now, time for me to get back to it…!

M3 cycle

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I admit it: I cried  just before the start of the M3 Cycle yesterday. What triggered it? They played ‘Human‘ by The Killers. It just got to me. There were something like 1,400 cyclists lined up ready to cycle the as yet unopened M3 motorway from Clonee to Kells. The starting point: the toll near the Dunboyne roundabout.

That song was the one which was the musical theme of my recent jump from a job I was finding unsatisfying, my leap into the unknown. And here they were, one month later, of all the songs they could have played, kicking off the cycling event with that. And I was lined up to do the 55 km (although methinks it was more like 48km).

I did it in less than an hour and three quarters, averaging 28 kph, not bad for a 48-year-old! Myself and two guys (both of whom went on to come first and second) started off well. Until I felt I should play my part in leading for a while! I should’ve accepted I was near the half-century and let them lead. Well done to both of them. Donaha who teaches in Trim and is a serious swimmer to boot. I reckoned when I saw his shirt with Triathlon on it it could be smart to try to keep up with these guys! Their average speed was 31 kph. Thanks too to Joe, teacher in Ratoath, and the other guys I cycled with along the way.

Well done to Aisling Group International (M3 Cycle), P.O. Box 26, Bradan House,  CYWS, Navan, Co. Meath, for organising the once-in-a-lifetime event: the only time we’ll ever get to cycle on the motorway and before cars get to do so! See also www.aislinggroupinternational.ie

Step up to the plate

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Living today as if it might be your last needs to move beyond a cliché. Let us stop suspending what we want to do. There is no tomorrow! This is the day to live your life to the full. It’s May 2010. It seems like a blink of the eye since the turn of the century and here we are a decade into it already. How many years must we waste before we wake up to the transience of life?

Since resigning from a job recently, I have been doing what I’ve wanted to do for ages: writing for a living. It’s what I have done for the past 15 years, but I got sidetracked into a  gig that substantially reduced my writing time. Now, I’m finally completing a book I’ve been writing, on and off, for the past 20 years!

As I wrote in these pages before, realising that my dad had a stroke and a heart attack at my present age has served to focus my attention. Time and mortality have ever been the two things that nudge me to action. If you’re not doing today what you want to be doing, what the blazes are you waiting for?

The fear of daring to believe in yourself can keep us from living the life that’s there for us. Step up to the plate! Accept the personal challenge you face. Take responsibility. Go do what you were born to do! Could you do it? Yes. Would you do it? Yes. When would you do it? Today!

What does your gut say?

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Twice in my life I have been asked by a woman: ‘What does your gut say?’ The first time was when I was about to leave my nine-year path towards the priesthood. My gut said: ‘Leave!’

And I did. Not easily, of course. More recently, another woman asked me precisely the same question, using precisely the same words, regarding a professional decision: ‘What does your gut say?’ I was stunned by the precision, the duplication, the verbatim repetition of those five words.

In my late 20s, faced with what I considered was the first adult decision of my life – to leave my priestly path – it may be appreciated the difficulty of that choice. But now, in my late 40s, I am struck, and humbled, by my facility to duck and weave from my gut. Asked so recently what my gut said, I had no doubt what I should do professionally. And yet I lingered, dallying with the possibility that a solution less messy than going with my gut might work out.

Why is it that we are so willing – at least I confess I am – to trade that for which we were born for the sake of the false god of ‘security’? Why are we willing to give up on that which we believe to be our core mission in life for the sake of a few shekels and the continuity with the familiar – even when we are being beckoned, again, to be true to who we are?

Last week, for the second time in my life, I knew the answer to that question: ‘What does your gut say?’ And yet, days later, I was juggling with all sorts of other possibilities. I’m not proud of it. We have one very short shot at life. Must we be dragged screaming to do that for which we are best suited? Or run out of time – the ticking clock and waning sun ever the catalyst of authentic action. I pray that it may not be said of me at my death that I died without ever having lived.

I have lived and fulfilled much of my life’s purpose. But I have now the gift of time and opportunity and I pray, I intend, to proceed along the uncharted pathway of my gut.

Stroke

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I’m appoaching the age my dad was when he had a stroke. This juxtaposition of my dad’s medical history and the fright of his unexpected stroke and my approach to that same age caught me unawares earlier today. Like a kick in the belly, actually. There was my dad plodding along doing whatever he was doing one day, probably looking forward to his birthday and on that same birthday he had his stoke.

So I ask myself: if I were to have a stroke on my next birthday that left me incapacitated thereafter, what would I want to do between now and then? Happily, my dad’s stroke was a mild one. But still, it sharpens the mind on that old theme of the brevity of life. Life is far, far too short to spend it doing stuff you don’t enjoy. It’s far too short to spend it living in fear. It’s far too short to postpone whatever it is you want to do before you die.

So here it is guys and girls. I’ve fathered my children, I’ve planted my trees, married the love of my life, built a home I love, written some books and, as an commissioning editor, commissioned lots and lots of other people’s books. But the one thing I really, really want to do is to complete a particular book of my own that I’ve been trying to write for the last 20 years. My osteopath – there’s no better way of talking about what’s really going on in your life than when the right professional is working on your back muscles and untying those physical knots – says it’s a book I need to write before I die. And I do. And I am. I’m working on it. It’s taking shape.

That’s the one big thing I really want to do before I have any bolts from the blue. So, what would you do if you were told you’d be having a stroke on your next birthday?