Anxiety

Posted on January 3, 2016 by Chris Barrow

The peak of the highest mountain in the world - Mt. Everest at the sunset.

I don’t know about you but I’ve had enough of alcohol, food, late nights and partying after an exceptional 10 days.

After tonight’s slow-roast lamb and a glass of red I really do need a rest.

I did manage to fracture my wrist but that was falling off a bike and not a bar stool, which I’m going to claim as a victory.

Since my early 30’s I have experienced an annual anxiety attack on the last day of the Xmas and New Year holiday. Tonight promises to be no exception.

I predict a restless night in bed, waking frequently with an imagination full of fears about what might go wrong in the year ahead.

You may well call that a self-fulfilling prophesy. I woke this morning just knowing it will happen and feeling apprehensive at the thought by mid-morning.

Is it just me – or do others have the same feelings?

I don’t have anything  in particular to be worried about. In fact, I could say less to worry about this year than many in recent times.

There are no elephants in the room.

My coaching practice is thriving and ideas are flowing.

There are adventures planned for the future.

Apart from a particularly bad patch of sporting injuries, life at home is healthy, peaceful and content.

Cash flow is manageable, with care. I’m not rolling in money but neither am I busting a freelancing gut to make it.

For the last 2 years I’ve constantly reminded myself of the self-examining question taught by my friend Michael Myerscough:

“is what you are about to do going to increase or decrease the level of confusion and complexity in your life?”

Post survival TV show, I’ve invested hugely in the decrease of both – with significant benefits to health and spiritual wealth.

Last year I ran just under 2,000km (including 2 marathons) before I buggered my knee in August and I’ve ridden over 1,000km since.

In 2015 I read 35 very good books, mainly literature with a smattering of personal and business development.

I took writing and singing lessons with talented mentors.

I ran out of enthusiasm for Paleo nutrition but have kept a stable weight along with good food and drink.

I love my coaching, speaking, writing and my weekends in equal measure.

I’ve written all of the above as a catharsis to reassure myself that everything is OK.

Yet – years of first-world hunting and gathering have fostered within me this feeling that as the sun sets this evening, I’ll be standing at Everest Base Camp, looking up at the summit and thinking, “Oh My God, here we go again, I’ve got to get to the top by the end of the year.”

Just habit I suppose – one that needs replacing but I haven’t figured out with what?

Smaller mountains maybe…

It remains to be seen whether I will sleep any better tonight.

 

Posted in Happiness, Health, Holiday, money | 4 Comments

The Perfect Imperfectionist 2015 in review

Posted on December 30, 2015 by Chris Barrow

The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2015 annual report for my personal blog.

Here’s an excerpt:

A New York City subway train holds 1,200 people. This blog was viewed about 4,300 times in 2015. If it were a NYC subway train, it would take about 4 trips to carry that many people.

Click here to see the complete report.

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Meaningless me

Posted on December 12, 2015 by Chris Barrow

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Last week I posed the question “so what next?” and shared my struggles to find an answer.

This blog exists for personal catharsis but there is something heartwarming about a record number of views and feedback from those who say they have been moved or inspired. Thank you.

Feeling less alone is part of our healing.

This week I had a long conversation with a top (and I mean top) clinician who, approaching age 50, told me dejectedly that he had “missed the boat” and left it too late to make his mark in business.

You can imagine how much I enjoyed responding that, as 62, I was three years into starting again from square one, having the time of my life.

Thomas Leonard suggested that coaches get the clients that they need to meet.

The clinician also commented that his reluctance to push further in business was partly due to the influence of an entrepreneurial father who had made and lost millions on more than one occasion. His own childhood included experiences of extreme wealth and poverty and he didn’t want to expose himself and family to the same risks.

You might wonder why, then, he was asking for my advice on opening a new business?

Well, that’s what we do isn’t it? We come up with all the reasons why and why not and then tie ourselves in knots – just the same as I did here last week.

Twice more this week, male clients have independently mentioned that their own progress in business and life was thwarted or redirected by the death of their father.

 

For the first time in ages I found myself thinking about the death of my own father in 1998 after a short illness and I remembered that this was the unexpected catalyst for 2 years of soul-searching that included Frederic Hudson’s book featured last week.

I’ve come to understand that when a man’s father dies, it’s his first realisation of his own mortality – leading to the question “so what next?”

My current search for meaning has, with hindsight, been initiated by the death of the business I featured in the previous post.

Perhaps we need to experience a major emotional trauma to have the motivation to change?

A close friend who has repeatedly failed to quit cigarettes for a couple of years stopped literally overnight 3 weeks ago after a terrifying experience in A&E following his collapse at home caused by an erratic heart beat.

During the last week I wrote a business blog post about creating a private dental corporate. It’s an idea that isn’t new, that I’ve tried before without success and that I’m now (successfully) helping other people to roll out..

“Why not have a go myself?” was part of my current searching.

I spoke independently to both of my founding partners about it during the week.

Their responses were different.

Tim Caudrelier (early 30’s) listened carefully to my analysis and plans, made some insightful observations and ended with “well if you think it can be done then let’s put the money together.”

Now before I share my other partner’s response, let me take you back about 7 years to a Strategic Coach workshop here in England, covering business and personal planning.

I attended with people from a variety of business backgrounds. My interest was two-fold, to see how the folks at Coach did it and also to do some work on myself.

At the end of the first morning, we took lunch in the sunny gardens of our country hotel and I exchanged thoughts with another delegate.

We had been inundated with vision, mission, roles, goals, time management, organisational structure and a host of other provocative concepts.

My brain was hurting, even though I knew it was good for me and I somewhere in the back of my mind a little voice was reminding me of all the work I would need to catch up on when I returned to Planet Chris.

My colleague and I shared our sense of overwhelm and he commented:

“Sometimes I wonder whether it might be better to just be meaningless for a while?”

We both laughed out out loud (at ourselves) and prepared to re-enter the conference.

Now let’s return to the present and my second conversation about building a dental corporate, this time with my other founding partner, Tim Thackrah (early 50’s).

Tim T listened equally carefully to my analysis and plan, made his own useful observations and then asked:

“but what’s the rush?”

I could have said that time was running out for the business opportunity but I realised that what he really meant was:

“but what’s the rush for you?”

That, I have to say, stopped me in my tracks.

He continued….

“look, 7connections is on course, we have loads going on and doors opening to new opportunity all the time, we probably can’t even see some of the things we might be doing in a few years from now.

Your coaching within 7connections is going really well, you are delivering your unique abilities, your balance is better than it has been for years and there is a growing team of people who have your back covered.

You don’t have to be the top salesman in the company, or the cleverest, or work the longest hours, or anything.

Why don’t you just take some time off the next big quest and simply “BE” for a while?

You are more use to the company “thinking” rather than “doing”.”

One of those lightbulb moments.

Not quite being meaningless for a while but just staying in the cocooning and getting ready phases of Hudson’s cycle for a lot longer than I ever have done before – because I can.

It was as if, in that moment, the pressure was taken away.

Last week I was tied in knots about 2016 being do darned organised that I didn’t feel excited.

My solution – find a quest – quickly!

Tim T’s solution – enjoy the moment – slowly.

You know when you just know that it’s the right advice?

So here’s the elegant conclusion that escaped me in last week’s post.

My quest for 2016 is to not have a quest for 2016.

I’m going to take a year to observe, listen, read, attend and to stop and think.

It will be the first time in my adult life I have ever done that.

I’m excited again.

Posted in business, Happiness | Leave a comment

So what next?

Posted on December 6, 2015 by Chris Barrow

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This post is lengthy and extremely self-indulgent.

Many is the time that I have recommended a book by Frederic Hudson that changed my life in 1998 when I first read it.

Lifelaunch – a passionate guide to the rest of your life

Created as an aid to the Boomer generation who, back then, were approaching age 50 and suffering a monumental mid-life crisis (me included).

In Hudson’s California many of them were being discarded by Corporate America in favour of brighter young Generation X’ers.

Other than the corporate discards, many were selling businesses, realising maturing investments, inheriting wealth from their parents.

They were asking “so what next?” and fearful of being cast onto a societal rubbish heap at a time when medical advances placed them in their prime.

At the time I had a trophy lifestyle, both personally and professionally, that wasn’t feeding me – just eating me. Devouring me seems, on reflection, more accurate.

Lifelaunch remains a classic and last Sunday morning I found myself skimming the pages of my original edition, reading my own handwritten notes from 18 years ago.

(as an aside, perhaps that is where print media has an edge over digital?)

Why was I looking through the book in the first place?

Well – to respond with lethal authenticity I will need to make a confession.

The last 2 working weeks have been spent mainly around home and I’ve invested a lot of time into my 2016 vision, mission, plan and goals.

All the classic coaching stuff I’ve been practicing and preaching for over 25 years.

Unique abilities – done.

2016 Vision mind-map – done.

2016 Calendar (Free, Buffer and Focus days) – done.

2016 Cash flow forecast – done.

Tolerations (things, situations and people) to be removed – done.

Clever me.

In fact, I completed the whole exercise by the 4th of 5 allocated days, sat back and waited for the mild adrenalin rush normally associated with the prospect of “going for it”.

Waited.

Picked up the work I had done to look again.

Kept on waiting.

Another couple of days of immediate busy-ness passed by, during which I occasionally connected with my feelings about the future.

Each time, I experienced an emotional vacuum.

The plan is there, the targets are set, the projects are imagined but I’m not feeling anything other than a numbness that I cannot recall in the past.

The lethal nature of this admission is that I risk a response from my business partners, colleagues or clients along the lines of:

“Oh – so you don’t care then? You aren’t going to be giving us your best?”

But that would miss the point completely.

I regard myself as a person who operates in a professional manner – I have a responsibility and a duty of care to deliver my best work at all times – and I intend to continue in that way.

It’s showtime every day.

What I’m not feeling is a sense of excitement, anticipation, perhaps a little fear around the uncertainty of the future.

It seems that 2016 is a predictable landscape after years of responding to the unpredictable.

Maybe I’m so well organised that I’m bored?

Maybe I’m not cut out for “normal”?

So out came Lifelaunch, as I recalled the version of me from 1998 that didn’t really know what the hell he was doing with his future and wasn’t being nurtured by the life he had created.

(p.s. don’t worry if you are close to me – I’m not contemplating a Reggie Perrin)

I’ve had a further week to marinade in these uncommon (for me) emotions.

I’ve revisited the Tom Morris book on “True Success” and:

  1. I’m doing what I love to do – tick
  2. I’m doing it when I love to do it – tick
  3. I’m doing it with the people I love doing it with – tick

I’ve pondered on whether this lost feeling is connected to my personal life?

My self-esteem is high.

My personal relationships are as good as they have ever been.

Although I’m waiting for the MRI results for my injured knee, I’m smashing it on the road bike and feel in pretty good shape overall.

My nutrition is good. Alcohol is under control and enjoyable.

I’m reading a lot of very good literature, listening to good music and enjoying excellent drama and documentary television.

I’m in control of my less successful addictive behaviours.

In summary then:

  • work is fine and amazingly well-organised
  • personally I’m in a very good place

And I’m composing this blog post to try and gain an insight into why I’m asking myself:

SO WHAT NEXT?

In Lifelaunch, Hudson suggests that many adults in the developed world are at their happiest when they are on a quest to achieve a stretch goal.

It can be an Ironman Triathlon or a barn conversion, a sales target or learning to play the piano well.

We are motivated by the quest, by the challenge, by the unimaginable possibility of failure, by the risk, by the visualisation of success.

The problems start immediately any or each quest is achieved.

Hudson suggests four distinct time periods:

  1. The Doldrums – feeling lost after the achievement of the quest
  2. Cocooning – withdrawal whilst we deal with the loss of the quest and search inside ourselves for some meaning
  3. Getting Ready – the research for the next quest and
  4. Going For It – the campaign (struggle) for the next quest

In the book, the suggestion is made that many of us are only truly happy with ourselves when we are at the fourth stage of “going for it”.

A sentiment I agree with after years of observation with clients.

I’ve worked with people who have sold businesses, passed exams, completed building projects, crossed many finishing lines – only to descend into the barren and becalmed landscape of The Doldrums, then on into Cocooning.

Permission granted to pass through these zones but my advice is always to consider the effect you are having on those around you at that time. How they will interpret your performance and behaviour if you don’t tell them what is going on.

Back, then, to my lack of emotion around my 2016 vision and plan.

I’m clearly Cocooning and the plans for next year that I have invested so much effort into are actually my way of paying the bills and supporting my business partners and clients whilst I’m “marking time” (to use the military expression).

There was an “aha” moment last week when I realised where I was in Hudson’s cycle and I decided to wind the clock back and ask myself (for the first time):

“so what was the Quest that you achieved and where were The Doldrums?”

I think I have an answer to that question.

One that took me a little by surprise.

My Quest was to obtain closure around the failure that occurred in January 2013 when BKH was placed into liquidation by it’s 100% owner with losses of over a million.

I was one of 10 people who lost their jobs that day and became trade creditors for their unpaid wages.

For the last 12 weeks of it’s doomed existence I was a Director of that business and, although the Directors had no practical control of the company’s finances we were (in theory) partly responsible for it’s demise.

I’ve realised that the events before, during and after the scuttling of that ship have been an elephant in my room ever since.

My brave face and total commitment to the present have masked a deep-rooted sense of responsibility associated with the failure of that business, although thankfully few of any importance were harmed financially and those that were could weather the storm.

In the last 3 months I have achieved closure.

My Quest has been to remove the elephant from the room.

Elephant gone and I’ve been in The Doldrums for the last 3 months.

My vision week at home wasn’t actually about planning 2016.

I’m Cocooning because I don’t know what my next Quest will be.

I’m looking at my 2016 vision and, included in the list of new things I want to create are:

  • 3 e-books
  • a full-length business book
  • a regular newspaper column
  • an innovative team training workshop
  • a coaching programme for dental Micro-corporates
  • an online membership site
  • experimentation in a new vertical market
  • an advisory service for those preparing to sell their business
  • development of private equity finance for practice purchase

All of these require considerable resources and are in addition to my existing core coaching, speaking and writing activities.

Not one of them feels like a Quest.

Because I know I can do them.

So perhaps one definition of a Quest is something that you are not 100% sure you can do?

Earlier this year I travelled to Holland to spend a couple of wonderful days with the lovely Frouke van Es. I’ve always wanted to know if I could ever sing decently and began that journey under her expert coaching.

Soon afterwards she challenged me and others to set stretch goals and I responded with the declaration :

Dare to perform and write fiction

The “perform” is to sing in public. The writing is about anything other than business and my personal life.

I’ve done nothing about these goals, subconsciously preoccupied with The Quest.

I didn’t deserve the right to “play” until the elephant was removed.

Even so – I’m staring at the “dare’ and not very much is happening inside me.

Is there something wrong with me? Have I done everything?

Is the fact that I’m finally in a place where there are “no wrecks and nobody drowning” a curse, rather than a blessing, because after all those years I’ve become an expert at crisis management and survival?

I’m reminded of the statement that

The unexamined life is not worth living

Socrates understood that if he were imprisoned and/or banned from his investigation of human nature, then that would be a fate equivalent to death.

Clearly, these observations are a part of the examination that is necessary whilst I Cocoon.

I’ve been slow in publishing because I was waiting for a solution to manifest and provide an elegant ending to this post….

and my next Quest is!…….

But life isn’t that simple.

So if I appear pensive and withdrawn over the days and weeks ahead, please don’t take it personally and don’t think it will in any way affect my performance. The show must go on.

I may be some time.

Posted in Happiness | 6 Comments

My first laptop

Posted on November 28, 2015 by Chris Barrow

Random access memories………

The 250Mb hard drive.

The black screen with flashing green cursor.

The interminable wait whilst the darn thing powered up.

My ignorance of what the letters GUI stood for?

The collection of floppy disks.

The upwardly-mobile financial planner who thought that Apple computers were for arty left-wing drop outs.

The CompuServe account.

The dot-matrix printer.

The only thing I simply cannot remember is what the hell I used my Compaq laptop for?

There’s not a shred of physical evidence left.

Which has me wondering whether I will be saying the same in 25 years?

p.s. here’s the accompanying mobile phone (£1,765 when new)

motorola_9800X_open

 

Posted in business, Gadgets | Tagged | 1 Comment

The Bike Sheds

Posted on November 21, 2015 by Chris Barrow

 

Closeup of Rows of Commuter Bikes at a Train Station

My penultimate year at school was 1968 – an era without mobile phones or the internet.

In the breaks we congregated in the bike sheds at the back of Burnage Grammar School.

We gossiped (along with the occasional Players No6).

Gossip is a conversation about people who are not present.

Our gossip was about how awful our teachers were, about other pupils and especially about the scrotes at Ladybarn School a half-mile away, driven by the knowledge that the two schools would be merged into a new comprehensive.

It was a legacy of the English class system that, as Grammar School pupils, we considered ourselves superior.

(oh – yes – boys versus boys – the idea of a mixed gender school was still in the imagination of liberal educationalists)

Little did we know that all the decent teachers would emigrate and the worldly-wise boys of Ladybarn would establish their supremacy by arriving at our school gates one fateful evening to give all of us budding 6th formers a good beating in those very same sheds.

I ended up in hospital after one of my new “friends” smashed me over the head with a motor-cycle chain.

The ensuing parental outrage and possible police investigation was quickly swept under the carpet by a headmaster keen to secure a smooth transition.

This was the stuff of social integration.

From a subsequently disastrous final year at school I progressed with my 4.5 “O” levels into an insurance company office in Central Manchester and worked my way up from office boy to senior administrator over the following 7 years.

The bike sheds were replaced by the office coffee machine.

Here, we would congregate to talk about how awful the company’s products and managers were, about the more troublesome customers and about the better paid employees of our competitors.

I left corporate life in 1987 and haven’t occupied a bike shed or lingered by a coffee machine since.

In recent decades the dental gossip took place in conference hotel bars late into the night.

But my clients tell me all the time about where the gossip centres are in 2015:

  • the staff room
  • the wine bar after work
  • the telephone in the evening
  • the internet, via smartphones and social media platforms

It’s the last of these that represents the biggest breakthrough in communication and the greatest threat.

The Internet of Things (IoT) allows our gossip to travel instantaneously (you don’t have to wait until a break or after work) and virally (it can be shared).

The level of naivety here is astonishing.

An obvious example is the email I had a from a Female Principal, asking for advice on how to respond to a negative rant about the practice and the patients from one of her employees.

She had read this on her own news feed – because she is an existing Facebook friend of the employee!

My advice was a good disciplinary conversation (face to face), the implementation of a social media policy in her employment contracts and a special employee award for dunce of the year.

More insidious is the instant message, the WhatsApp chat or the closed Facebook Group.

The assumption by those involved is that this gossip is confidential.

Second degree naivety.

I’ve seen “private” posts presented to me by well-wishing moles in dental forums and teams.

There is at least one person in every secret gossip thread who believes in the unfairness of trial without jury – and feels compelled to share outside the group.

You can debate the moral maze of whistle-blowing but you cannot avoid its likelihood.

So a useful assumption is that, in the world of social media gossip, NOTHING is private.

It might take a criminal act to have the Government hacking into your accounts or the police marching off with your hard drive – but simple folks like you and I can simply copy, paste and forward that which we observe with unease.

And we will.

I’ve recounted before the story of a private forum post commenting “how can you trust Chris Barrow when he is a man who has fathered 5 children with 5 different women?”

In the interests of clarity (and before I’m nominated for a Duke of Edinburgh’s Award), my 5 children share the same mother.

The person making this fascinating claim was a dentist who I have never met to this day, have never advised and whose life is a mystery to me, as is his motivation for the comment.

The whistle-blower who shared this post was motivated by a sense of fair play but the founder of the group (a private dental forum of which I have never been a member) simply shrugged when I asked him to moderate and explained (and I quote) “I have to let the children play in their sand pit”.

I’m relieved that the moderator is a dentist and not a Prison Governor.

In the event, I posted on my own social channels that I would be seeking legal advice and the other contributors to the thread spent what must have been a long and furtive night deleting their posts. A bizarrely pointless action, given that I had screen shots.

The original culprit was successfully blocked from all of my channels and (tempting fate here) he seems to have gone quiet on Chris Barrow and redirected his self-loathing to other dental “celebs”.

The internet is a PUBLIC space, no matter what you assume on privacy.

So be careful if you find yourself in a gossiping conversation, even as an innocent participant, because it might come back and hit you over the head like a flailing bike-chain.

 

 

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There at the beginning.

Posted on November 14, 2015 by Chris Barrow

Striscione bandiera partenza, inizio

In conversation with friends over dinner, I was asked to share my involvement in business start-ups.

For years people who have either bought or decided to open new dental practices have asked me to comment on their imagination (in some cases that has been all there is), their business plan and finance proposal or their architect’s drawings.

Frequently, I get the call some months before the ribbon cutting for a sense check on the whole enterprise.

Others have asked me straight after the opening party to add practical systems and management training to their activity.

I’m paradoxically delighted that so many of my clients are now selling their practices and doing very well for themselves in the process.

On a grander scale, I have been asked:

  • to provide customer service training for 47 practices in Boots Dentalcare (a business which failed in dental mythology but not in reality);
  • to synchronise the activities of over 30 practices in the Private and Specialist Division of the corporate formerly known as IDH;
  • to assist the team who founded Centres for Dentistry inside Sainsbury;
  • to add my opinions to the creative team at Smilepod;

Even now, I’m in conversation about a project to open dental practices inside a major UK retailer and working with 3 separate independent private micro-corporates.

As my glittering CV and popularity (?) were explained to my faithful dinner companions, we simultaneously reached that point where the obvious question was:

so what have you got to show for it?

Experientially – a huge amount.

Financially – bugger all.

The fate of the good consultant is to be The Kingmaker (as my friend and Dutch dentist Quoc an Nguyen describes me).

My own business ownership has had mixed results.

Personally I have morphed from The Dental Business School to The Dental Business Club and Coach Barrow – each time generating lots of happy clients and a decent living but ultimately becoming either exhausted and/or commercially lonely, each time with a business capital value of zero.

My last foray into corporate dentistry, BKH, was a catastrophe (I certainly learned how to be there at the death) – perhaps one day the full story will be told but it would be churlish of me not to accept some responsibility for the demise of that debacle.

Thank goodness that 7connections, which I helped to co-create almost 3 years ago, is expanding and innovating beyond business coaching. I am able to enjoy my coaching practice within the 7connections structure (and very well supported by my founding partners and the team), whilst the company moves into new premises, products, services and vertical markets.

At 62 is it getting too late for me to expect future co-ownership of a business with a real capital value?

I think not – the mind, body and spirit are still willing and the opportunities abound.

My partners recently asked my timescale to retirement – my response was to request that the question be resubmitted in 15 years. I’m having too much fun.

At a future dinner however, I’m planning to describe what it felt like to be there at the finish line.

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Dashing into the future

Posted on November 7, 2015 by Chris Barrow

My new iPhone 6s Plus has made my iPad Mini obsolete, along with the accompanying bluetooth keyboard, (Product) Red magnetic cover and Herschel carrying case (we do like to accessorise).

I’ve delayed the purchase of a new Macbook Pro until next Spring, when I hope the new models will be released.

I will have to add an expensive plethora of connections from the USB-C port to my existing external devices but it will be worth it to open a Space Grey clam case on the 06:12 Wilmslow to Euston.

observe my fellow commuters – I am hip, cool and don’t have to wear a suit or report to a boss

I don’t “get” the Apple Watch.

The Apple pencil for the iPad Pro is lovely but hardly innovative (I’m looking forward what Jonny Ive has to say though – “our pencilologists have spent years painstakingly designing the perfect ergonomic aesthetics”).

But all of that is soon to become overshadowed by wearable technology that will connect us to the IoT and each other in a way that changes the game.

Here is a first indication of what that sounds like.

Tomorrow has arrived.

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Failure, fallibility and burn out

Posted on November 1, 2015 by Chris Barrow

Fail, Fail Again, Fail Better

Fail, Fail Again, Fail Better by Pema Chödrön

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I arrived home last Friday evening, completely burned out by October.

A month which included two 6-day weeks (although my sympathy plea for that was quickly rejected yesterday by Paul, our local butcher who, as he wrapped my rashers, respectfully pointed out that he works 6 days every week).

What I didn’t have the energy to say to Paul was that I bet his weekdays didn’t begin at 05:00 and sometimes end at 22:00, nor did he have to travel the length and breadth of the UK and Ireland to deliver (blah, blah – shame for me).

I have been rebuilding my coaching client base since August (largely because so many of my clients have done well enough to sell their practices – Gary Chapman, the acquisitions Director at Portman Healthcare, loves me so much that he has offered to take me out for a Christmas lunch again this year – an ironic steak if ever there was one).

Perhaps the objective of every good business coach is to be fired, because the client is doing so well?

I realised during the summer that my coaching fee income was heading perilously downwards as a number of existing clients fired me (for all the right reasons) and that something had to be done.

So – into marketing and prospecting mode (what Michael Gerber describes as lead generation and lead conversion) and I became a salesman again – using skills I learned during the 1980’s and have never forgotten – not smarmy sales talk but just getting my head in gear, getting off my butt and getting out there.

Combining the prospecting, the delivery to existing clients and the promotion of our other products and services at 7connections has left me totally knackered (not helped by the infamous knee injury – MRI scan due 26th November).

Sobertober was, in hindsight, priceless – goodness knows what state I would have been in without abstinence.

Along the way I’ve been dealing with some heavyweight personal issues – tough decisions have been made, short-term pain absorbed and long-term benefit initiated.

In leadership, we all have to accept failure and fallibility, physically, emotionally and spiritually, whilst showing up every day as an inspiration to our colleagues at work, our extended family, our clients, our audience.

During August I felt a failure because my coaching practice was slowly withering on the vine.

During September I felt a failure because of the elephant that has been sat in the room since the demise of my last business in 2013.

During October I have felt fallible because the accumulation of fatigue made me tired and ill.

My inability to run for three months has magnified each of these feelings in the absence of the meditation of the miles.

But…

I’m almost back to a full practice inside 3 months – I expect to have filled my 2016 coaching client base before Christmas.

The elephant is dead after I administered a lethal injection and the space left by its removal is allowing tranquility and new opportunity into my life.

My schedule from now until Christmas is progressively less hectic.

There is a long journey ahead to my former physical fitness – but the mantra of the marathon runner is “pace not race”.

I know that everyone who reads this will feel a failure about something, will feel fallible and will experience burn out.

The challenge is to lean into the pain (as Pema Chödrön says in her wonderful little book), experience the feeling and then work through to the light.

Posted in Happiness, Health, running | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

Multipotentialites

Posted on October 13, 2015 by Chris Barrow

There is something liberating about this 12:52 TED talk.

The realisation that it is OK to be perfectly imperfect in your multi-tasking and that you don’t need to be anything when you grow up – you can be everything instead.

Watch and enjoy (with thanks to Frouke Van Es).

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