We had a great time in Tassie, walking the Overland Track over six days.
All credit to Tasmanian Walking Company for the guides and delivering such a fabulous trip.
Maybe 12 days hiking in New Zealand coming next year…
Friends are important.
Alone, broke, no prospects, and the world will swallow you up faster than you can call for another pizza.
The size of your brain is not equal to the way your life goes.
It’s how you use that brain. It’s about who you hang around. What plans you make. The actions you take.
The people you lift up along the way are a sizeable part of it, too. It ALL matters.
A couple of bad steps can bring this lonely place closer than we would like.
Don’t be this person. Take the skills you have and develop them.
Use your brain, put a plan together, focus on making it work.
Stick to the course. Watch out for the luck we all need (that seems to pop up when you least expect it), get your squad around you, take the chances you get, put the pieces together, and deliver on the plan.
Get help if you need it, but most importantly, do the work. There’s no replacement for that.
Was at a cafe this morning with my wife and the dog. A guy who works in the same industry as my wife showed up, and he began talking about their ‘shared’ challenges.
He complained of a lack of time, about having too many things to do, and that he doesn’t see an end to this in his business. He was complaining about how busy he is while also mentioning his upcoming three week vacation (how fabulous?!) that was stressing him out…
I asked if he has a target to aim for, an end point for his business, and he shrugged his shoulders to express that he doesn’t, while looking at my wife to join him in agreeing this is always the way in their world.
It was a sixty second encounter but it spoke volumes.
Unless he begins to think differently, it will never end. His first world problems were not uncommon to ‘busy professionals’, but his level of relative misery was crying out for company. I’m sure he finds it often.
Surround yourself with people who hold you to a plan. Who lift you rather than drain you. Who you aspire to learn from and spend time with. Who help you get the best out of your life each day and cheerlead for you constantly.
The rest? Move on from them. Don’t get dragged down to their level.
They’re looking for people who agree with their outlook on life. People who validate their way of operating and share the same perceived challenges as they do.
If you’re on a down day, maybe you’ll feel like agreeing with them. Assume this isn’t going to work out well for you over the long term.
You’ll be keeping misery company soon enough, like two alcoholics propping up a bar, and it’ll become harder and harder to show it the door.
When talking about networks and networking, it can be understood as a very general term. Our family networks, small or large, are as valid in a discussion as our wider business connections.
‘Good’ is too broad a term to use, so I’m going to replace it with ‘effective’ – successful in producing a desired or intended result (from the dictionary).
A couple of ways of determining the answer here is to look at its strength and value:
I think an effective network has to have a mixture of these things going on within it.
Not all networks make money and some of them would never fall into this category directly, but there could be cases where a network can bring up a conversation that leads to a meeting or sale further on down the road.
The informal meetups with your friends can also be strong and supportive networks. Sometimes a chat with a trusted friend makes all the difference if you have a difficult decision to make.
It all takes an investment of time and effort (all the good stuff needs both these things). Even if it’s only making a couple of calls and being the organiser to get a few folks together every now and again, it’s worthwhile.
I’m a member of a couple of formal networks where we pay membership fees and attend regular events. These networks are great because everyone involved is well and truly committed to being a part of it and puts in effort to make sure they get value for the fees they are paying.
But being part of a sports team or a club, a yoga studio community, a book club or a music group can have the same effect.
The bottom line, for me, is that you get out of it what you put into it. And the same applies to online communities, too… but I’ll save this discussion for another day.
I’ve been away for a few days after getting married at the end of June. Katherine and I had a wonderful time and every part of our journey – from the night before, meeting up with our friends and family at the venue to coming back home yesterday from our trip – has been amazing and a great start to married life. The time away also cleared our heads after a very busy few months and reminded us of a couple of things that are really important, especially to me, and worth sharing.
We have a very good group of friends and it was so good to celebrate with them all. We both have very busy jobs and also live quite a distance from a lot of our friends and this can be difficult as we would like to be able to see everyone more often and spend more time with them than we do – Facebook can only keep you connected to a degree, of course. The importance of making an effort with your friends – staying in contact, keeping in touch, reaching out in both good times and bad and generally being a good friend – was made very clear at our wedding. I had some great conversations with mates of mine I don’t see all that often but it was like I had only seen them the day before. Being a good friend means a great deal and it is something that takes a lot of effort but it is all worth it.
Being thankful is also something that can be neglected by those with busy lives. Taking some time to say thank you to anyone who helps you or goes out of their way to make your day go a little bit better for any reason is worth acknowledgement. A wedding is a time when you have everyone important in your life together and we got the chance to say thank you to all of our friends and family for everything they do for us, but even if you’re not getting married any time soon, be sure to show your appreciation of those who help you. It can go a very long way.
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Ian Mountford is a Strategy Coach providing motivation and guidance to entrepreneurs, wannabe or fully-fledged. He draws from his own experience of building businesses from the ground up and spending many years helping clients to consistently achieve their goals and aspirations. Ian works with clients face-to-face and internationally.
At dinner a while back I sat next to a very smart professional person who is a friend but not one that I’ve spent a great deal of time with. We got onto the ‘do you/don’t you’ discussion re social media as the night wore on and it turns out that they use no social media tools at all. The actual fear of the tools was huge and the negative things that ‘could’ or ‘might’ happen rolled off their tongue as easily as a shopping list.
I understand and appreciate social media isn’t for everyone and there are also professions where communication of what’s going on in your life, work-wise or otherwise, can be misinterpreted – my friend is a doctor, for example. But there is still a stigma around using the web for things like personal branding and sharing interesting articles using social media and I find this a problem.
Our lives today are very different to the way they were in previous decades and the lives of those in Generation Y will be different by even greater degrees year-on-year from here on in. The way we communicate is different. The way we work is different, too. It does seem that many in my age group (40+) ‘want things they way they were’ but are also very quick to whip out their smartphone and send emails from anywhere when it seems like the right thing to do.
I think it’s even more important to cement your own personal brand online now, no matter who you are and what you do. Embrace technology rather than just knowing about it or trying it out to see if you like it. You don’t need to become so hell-bent on self-promotion that you dilute the quality of your own story, but you have a story and you have the means and power to get it out there in the digital world of today. Your personal circumstances could change in a flash (as they have for many over the last few years of financial turmoil) and the time you need to start to promote yourself could be closer than you can even imagine right now. If you’re also in the market for a new job and you’re ‘digitally invisible’, you are missing out on opportunities and this is a situation that’s easily avoidable.
Those of all ages and backgrounds that I meet that don’t have any kind of social media presence are now standing out as the minority. Most have made a move or are at least taking a watching brief before launching their own new profiles. The tabloid press will always push out horror stories of those who have suffered/caused loss or damage as a result of a facebook post or misguided tweet but no system is perfect and common sense has to always be applied. Please, don’t fall for the negative hype and get yourself moving. Create a profile or two, start following your friends and let us all know who you are.
The next King of space blogging
Get over to Elgin’s site and check out his progress. Trust me, it’s a great read.
Great running blog on the lead up to a first marathon, this year in NYC
Ian Mountford 