Unleash the Monkey Army

Put your ego in harm's way. Be in a position where failure is possible but without accepting that as the final position. Be open to the suggestion that what you thought was your limit isn't - even though it does a more than passable impression of it! The growth, the actual development occurs at those outer limits of comfort. Well, in the rest periods afterwards in truth. You take yourself to your limits and stay there for a while, occasionally darting out and returning quickly - like a child at the edge of a pool of darkness, nudging into the gloom and jumping back, heart pumping fast enough to burst out of your chest. Having established that you can make it that far, you go a little further the next time. You take your body out into the dark, introducing it to what you require. Introductions over, you relax and your body, newly aware of expectations sets about readjusting itself, hypercompensating to accommodate new expectations. Until you get comfortable with not being comfor...

When you think about it, apart from alcohol, drugs, cigarettes, sugar and ego-onanism, quitting is easy!   Every day there are only 24 hours. Some are packed to the gunwales, some are padded out with fluff and filler. But every minute of every hour seems to compete for attention (or slip past under the radar, trying desperately not to be noticed!). Your best laid plans gang aglay with terrifying ease and the speed of a pyromaniac cheetah carrying a tank of nitrogen. There are a thousand and one reasons at any moment to not do something - whether it is deliver the difficult message or to avoid training or not order that pizza!   Every reason appears to have merit. Each has a weight and force of its own which will make it seem insurmountable or incontrovertible. In truth though, you only need one reason to do it. One good "why" to set you straight. That's all it need but too often we are blinded by the sandstorm of negativity to pick it out. Maybe...

I went to a gig last week and thoroughly enjoyed myself! I found myself, both before and since, being a little coy about who I went to see. It's almost like it's a dirty little secret but I'm not ashamed of the fact that I really enjoy Iron Maiden, it's more that I wear an ill-fitting mask of moderate behaviour and attitude that saying the name "Iron Maiden" seems to jar with! Anyway, over the last few days I have been boring people silly with the fact that I had a great time. One of my stock answers has been that whether you like their music or not, you must see them perform. Technical ability, energy, passion and intensity. Their age to one side, you have to admire the performance on it's own merits. It occurred to me during one of the latest iterations that actually, these are my main causes for excitement in any field- technical execution, energy, passions and intensity. It's been a relatively consistent theme for me. Interview question to a younge...

I started thinking that the journey home is the worst part of any trip. You have left behind the purpose for the journey and all that brought and you are not yet back in your comfort zone. Actually though, there are a worse things in life. Sure, it's not ideal. You're stuck with the morals of the vendors and how rapacious they are in their sale of refreshments but why should this bit be worse than any other? But it has some parallels with life for many of us. We're too close to look back with fondness on the recent memories, more fixed on the fact that they've come to an end than with the simple joy of having had the experience. And we are too far away from home to feel wholly relaxed, even if that's where we want to be right now. Where are those Star Trek transporters? I have the phone which is capable of more than I ever dreamed possible and lasers are pretty common, so where are the transporters? It is possible that I might feel entirely different if this was a ...

What ever happened to personal identity? This is a strange post for me as the issue of identity appears to have been on the social agenda for most of my adult life. I meandered through some thoughts on group interaction in my last post and, to be honest, for an awful lot of people, the idea of identity appears to begin and end there. Who are you when nobody is looking? We all put on fronts. These are about surviving and thriving with others and can be as simple as acting cheery when you feel threaders, but can be a whole complex new persona. If I am to hope to communicate with others then I need to consider the limitations and adjust my process accordingly - in the same way that for Twitter or a telegram I need to pare my message down! The healthiest among us wear masks that are closest to natural appearance. Even with that in mind, we talk about individuality, about diversity, about variety while all the time plastering labels and constructing pigeon-holes. What does your gender, your...

Perhaps it starts with a recognition that there may be some merit to not getting everything that you want. So you set out those atrophied self-control and self-discipline muscles. How it goes from here depends to a large extent on you. If you fight it you will make this much harder than it needs to be. The process becomes much more about what you are not getting and, sadly, as a focus that is always much stronger than what you are getting. It becomes a battle rather than a journey. It does not make it easy (no apology offered) but it does make it easier. Breaking away from the pack makes you vulnerable - to assault from the other members of your pack as much as anything else. If you start to deviate from the accepted "wisdom" you can expect people to haul you back in. We can see how this is a useful survival instinct, a way of guarding the continuation of the herd, but it has its downsides. The office is, for many of us at least, the modern savannah. Look around you, you spen...

It starts with recognising that it is sometimes a good thing to not get everything that you want. Periodically it is a good thing to go without, to work your willpower like any other muscle. I am not talking about consigning yourself to a hermitage or about donning the sackcloth and taking a scourge to yourself. Rather, have a look, what security blanket do you give yourself? What do you give in to without a murmur? Skipping a training session, the bag of crisps, the toast and butter to tide you over when you get in from work? Or go the whole hog with a paleo challenge. Now set yourself a time. Four weeks, 30 days, 40 days...your call. Now go to it. The ascetics might call it normal, the catholics will be reminded of Lent, the muslims of Ramadan, the military fetishists of Andy McNab's description of hard routine, others just describe it as character building. Whatever helps you get through it, don't label it if you don't need to. It's just something you do. Why? Well,...