Unleash the Monkey Army

In amongst all the pissing and whinging, it's occasionally easy to lose sight of the fact that I'm actually very lucky. Life is full of petty frustrations. Frustrations? Bullshit to be more exact. Petty? Pretty much! I pay what seems like a lot of tax and get to listen to news that I'm expected to pay more and earn less. But that means that I have a job, and that fact alone can be easy to underappreciate. Every day, similar or different, presents another opportunity to wrestle with yourself and your interaction with the world. I'm getting older, but everybody does. I'm old enough to know that I know very little but still young enough in mind to be excited by that prospect! I've seen a bit (a bit more than I would have liked at times) but I know there's more to see. Thanks to living in a modern, post-industrialised country with access to the resources that provides, I am better placed to find out about and discover those things than any previous generatio...

There is a degree of trending in life - in so much as heightened awareness and confirmation bias mean that we pick up on strands in our existence. I think that's probably born of an evolutionary survival mechanism but that's not the point of today's thought. In both spheres of my "working" life I find myself presented with discussion and implementation of opportunity and fairness. As a coach my passion is to help people realise their potential, as best I can. As a coach my job is to present the best possible opportunity for my charges to develop. The bigger the group, the less tailored to the needs of the individual my interventions can be. That's just an economic approach - getting the most for the most from the dwindling resource. That said, I can scale workouts and exercises to open the door for as many as possible. And here's the thing, I am holding a door open for people. I encourage and occasionally cajole but the step over the threshold is the c...

I get exercised by ropey journalism. OK, so I'm a blogger which means that I'm not even the underclass of a genuine profession but with the greatest respect to the trade, there are some tossers out there giving you boys and girls a bad name! Anyhoo, the point? Oh yes, "Blue Monday", another tagline grabbing nonsense backed by questionable statistical information for the veneer of authority. this is the sort of stuff which give legitimacy to those who do not need it. It grants an excuse for them to open their fat mouth and whine about things which are within their range to control, with ease.  I'm not bashing depression for one minute. Far from it. I have had cause to come into contact with it in personal and professional capacities and it is far from funny. Granted, it takes some getting your head around when you're on the outside but it is there true enough. It is insidious, it is debilitating and it needs watching and addressing but not by wallowing. T...

Resolution season is but a glow in the dieing embers of the new year's festivities. By this point many will have given up on theirs. Many more will be on the threshold of pulling the plug on theirs, ready to go back to "normal" life.  Awaiting them is the security of the usual. The comfort, or at least the familiar discomfort of the day-to-day. We are able to re-programme ourselves to live and to learn but to do so we need to embrace failure and the stultifying fear of it. Without discomfort we have little of substance to respond to, to learn from, to prompt re-wiring in the loft spaces of our minds. But like everything in life it doesn't come cheap and as it is worthwhile it will seldom come easy. And that's where the process loses the majority. "Can you write me a new diet?" "Sure, but that will absolutely have to go." "Oh, I couldn't do that" It's nonsense of course. You can. You just do not want to. And that is fi...