Tag: Inspiration

You’re a brand, like it or not, make it count!

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We hear a lot about online influencers and personal brands these days. As a brand thinker, I’m a little sceptical about whether these personal brands are good. Unless you’re scrupulously honest, the brand, oops, of course, I mean person, simply becomes a construct. A facsimile of someone designed to highlight the heroic and park the problematic. It offers a polished facade with no apparent flaws. A title with no story. A standard of perfection that the rest of us can aspire to but never reach.

I want what she’s got!

Influencer brands are carefully curated to make us want stuff. By the way, anyone else noticed that we no longer just design or make things; curating them implies much more finesse and we live in a time when more is … er … more, so curating it is. Anyway, influencers seemingly live the dream—they inhabit perfect lifestyles, surrounded by perfect people, played out in a series of perfect locations. Sounds a bit like Barbie’s world and its inhabitants in the recent movie, come to think of it.

If the influencer is flawless, the implication is that by walking a mile in their shoes, you can be just like them. By following their wellness regime, you too will be rampagingly healthy and desirable. Going to the places they go or at least recommend, you’ll be too cool for school … like them. Forking out on all the stuff they’re peddling on behalf of consumer brands who milk FOMO for all it’s worth, you’ll be the envy of everyone in your orbit.

Absent better options, we find our heroes wherever and however we can. Where’s the harm?

But who am I to judge? It were ever thus. Absent a better option, why shouldn’t my new deity be an online influencer flogging over-priced skincare or exotic travel? Spirituality even. What’s the big difference between that and a medieval priest peddling indulgences? In any case, being a follower makes me feel like I am part of something bigger and that I matter. A like on my post worshipping at the (TikTok or Insta) shrine of the demi-goddess I’m following puts me on top of the moon. Who am I hurting?

But, going for perpetual perfection is paralysingly pointless. We all know that no one is. Even Barbie figured that out in the movie. On the surface, there’s a compelling and colourful story. But when you scratch the surface, the story lacks depth and nuance. The facade cracks faster than you can say “Lululemon”. Worse, by wanting what they’ve got, you risk trashing or trivialising what you have—your precious individuality and identity.

Seeing yourself through a branding lens

I recently published a new book—Never Succumb to Beige & Other Tiips for a Colourful Life. It has attracted a lot of publicity, which is cool, not least in converting to the number of books sold. But there was another, wholly unexpected benefit. The interviewers loved the title, and the questions they asked me were playfully provocative and opened up some interesting discussions. This process made me think long and hard about what I value and believe in at this stage in my life. What genuinely matters to me and how I want to present to the world.

A recurring theme from the interviews was how one does it. Stay visible, that is. After much navel-gazing, I figured I could best answer that question by swopping my ostrich feathered, bling-encrusted personal hat of many colours for my slightly less ostentatious professional hat as a brand development specialist. Think about the questions in terms of my brand.

Personal brands are not just something for the young and trendy

The most successful brands know what they’re about and who they’re for. However flippant my opening paragraphs, I like the idea of thinking about who we are through a brand lens. It’s a helpful framework to define and review our evolving selves, particularly as we age. People are as multi-faceted as the eyes of a dragonfly and just as complicated, so we need to tap into deep self-awareness to see through to our essence.

I always thought the complications would diminish with age. Instead, they seem to multiply by the day, perhaps due to experience hammering home the fact that instead of the arrogant assumption that we know what we don’t know, we finally get that we don’t know what we don’t know. There’s a gap the breadth of the Milky Way between those two sets of understanding.

Writing your story and controlling the narrative

All good brands have defining stories. These change and evolve as the brand matures and their operating environment changes. Quite by accident, I came across a great way to define my story. The concept of Never Succumb to Beige started as a challenge about what I would call my autobiography at a dinner party one night. It was a fun evening. At the time, I think I went for something a bit lame like Frankie’s Follies (my friends at that time all knew me as Frankie and seemed to see me as a cross between Virginia Woolf and Barbarella so this was really pandering to their perceptions rather than mine).

Over the years, I’ve come up with a range of options, at least one of which will feature as a chapter title in my next book, so I won’t do a spoiler alert here. But I stuck with Never Succumb to Beige, which I used as the title of my blog and now the book, because it captures my philosophy of being true to yourself and who you are. This philosophy hasn’t fundamentally changed since. Never succumbing to beige has become the central theme of my brand. It’s my pole star that helps me safely navigate life’s jagged reefs. My guiding light that shines a light on the path I should follow.

It’s not a pose. I love living in a rainbow of glorious and colourful attitude that allow me be seen and counted. It’s important to me to stand and deliver in how I present, what I say and write, how I am with others, and what I bring to the world. I’d like to matter … in a good way. That doesn’t mean I aspire to perfection. Far from it, but I do aspire to perfect the qualities that make me unique and set me apart from everyone else. After all, if I don’t control the narrative and tell my story my way, in this online era, Google and the other apps will do it for me. Who wants that? It’s also a vision of who I can be as I get older and allows room for life-long curiosity and adventure.

Leave the cloak of invisibility on a hook by your door

I’m saddened by how many people I’ve encountered who feel invisible, marginalised or useless as they grow older. They tell me it’s inevitable—I fundamentally don’t believe that it has to be. We don’t need to allow society’s judgement to push us into the railway siding of invisibility. If we don’t give ourselves licence to stay on the main line, no one else will. 

Perhaps that’s easy for me to say. I was born with a sunny, outgoing nature and insane corkscrew hair—I’ve had a love/hate relationship with the latter throughout my life. Still, it has the merit of giving me a head start in the non-invisibility games. Likely, it also played a part in developing a deep-rooted commitment to my individuality and sense of self.

Despite this, I’ve worked hard to fight feelings of inadequacy and low self-esteem. I’ve also faced down that lurking menace known as Imposter Sydrome on more occasions than I can count. My brand, my recidivist disinclination to be anything other than wholly and colourfully myself, helps me feel the fear, do it anyway and bounce back when the going gets tough.

Strike the pose, there’s nothing to it

My last post was about being scammed — Scammed, Slammed and Hung Out to Dry — written solidarity with all the many others who’ve experienced this morally bankrupt contemporary blight. Not succumbing to beige clearly has little to do with colour and lots to do with attitude. How you deal with setbacks like this, which rock you to your core. I’ve had to dig deep to cauterise the wound it left. The scars are still vivid, but they get paler by the day and I certainly won’t get fooled again. It would be easy at such times to retreat inwards. Having a strong brand like m non-beige one, gives us the confidence, mandate even, to move forward without losing ourselves.

I’d love to inspire people heading towards their older years to believe that invisibility isn’t a given. To blaze a trail for younger women that shows ageing isn’t a long, lonely, greying road to oblivion. In modern parlance, I’d like to be an influencer. But not one that postures at caring whilst peddling endless products, destinations or wellness miracles for affiliate brands’ marketing programmes. I want to use whatever influence I can muster to find joy and commonality in our shared and, at times, very bizarre humanity. To lighten the mood and bring people together.

Successful brands are built on insight not wishful thinking

It’s said that personal branding begins the moment you discover yourself. Knowing what you’re about and who you’re for requires deep self-understanding. Defining and living by a set of firmly held values. Making a promise about what you bring to the world and sticking to that. It raises self-awareness and honesty above self-interest and greed. For your brand to succeed means being consistently you wherever you are, whoever you’re with or whatever you’re doing and holding yourself to the highest standards. Not giving yourself a pass when it’s inconvenient or difficult.

Successful brands are not flim-flam.They don’t get blown about in the wind like so much tumbleweed in a Western ghost town. At the end of the day, whatever our brand, we’re actually still people, with all the frailties and idiosyncrasies that entails. Even the best brands get it wrong sometimes, but the ones that last, don’t go down in a fiery bonfire of blamestorming and bruised egos. Their managers recognise what’s happened and find a better way. On a personal level, when we lapse or stuff up, our inner brand manager should cut us some slack and understand that there are times when we just step out of character, flare up in the moment about something stupid. Ultimately we are people not brands. Seeing ourselves through a branding lens just helps us be the best we can be.

Be yourself — everybody else is already taken

So said the peerless Oscar Wild who know a thing or two about being an influencer and icon. As American actor Graham Brown (Malcolm X, The Muppets Take Manhattan) said, “Life is about choices. Some we regret, some we’re proud of. Some will haunt us forever. The message: we are what we chose to be”. We might as well choose to be something special and gloriously original.

I don’t know about you but, given my “druthers”, I wouldn’t choose to be a Barbie Girl living in the Barbie World, however superficially enticing it appears. Life in plastic is only fantastic if you’re a doll.

When life gives you lemons, make lemonade?

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I’ve recently heard at least three people trot out the old trope that when life gives you lemons, make lemonade. It’s such an easy-to-understand metaphor for staying optimistic in difficult times and turning the tables on what life deals to you. It’s the lemony version of playing the cards you’ve been dealt.

The expression first appeared in print in an obituary written and published in 1909 by the  American writer, publisher and artist Elbert Hubbard in the Literary Digest. In his opinion, “A genius is a man who takes the lemons that Fate hands him and starts a lemonade stand with them.”

It’s more often attributed to Mr Win-Friends-and-Influence-People, the king of self-improvement, Dale Carnegie. Carnegie used it in his 1948 book How to Stop Worrying and Start Living: “If you have a lemon, make a lemonade.”

However, others used it between the Hubbard and Carnegie instances. I particularly like this one in a poem published in a 1940 edition of The Optimist by Clarence Edwin Flynn:

Life handed him a lemon,
As Life sometimes will do.
His friends looked on in pity,
Assuming he was through.
They came upon him later,
Reclining in the shade
In calm contentment, drinking
A glass of lemonade.

A good metaphor, a bad rap for lemons

I like lemons. What would lemon tea be without the lemon flavouring? There’s no obvious substitute. Mandarin tea, anyone? I don’t think so. Gin and Tonic—unthinkable without a zesty zing of a slice or two of lemon. Okay, some people prefer lime. But the purists still choose lemon—the cynic in me thinks this could be due to the price difference, but that could be … well … cynical. The adventurous might even go for a taste bomb by adding a slice of both. I salute their inventiveness. Worse than a lemonless G&T, imagine a gorgeous white fish fillet slathered in herbs, garlic and butter without the blissful finishing tartness of a twist of lemon.

The lemon dissing even carries over into song. Harry Belafonte, the singer and actor who popularised Calypso and fathered Halle Berry, released Lemon Tree in the fifties. Lemon tree very pretty, and the lemon flower is sweet, but the fruit of the poor lemon is impossible to eat.[1] Duuuuude—come on. We all know you don’t eat lemons like other fruit. They’re garnish. Ingredients. You’d have to be desperate to peel and chow down an entire lemon au natural like an orange. But … lemon meringue pie … lemon cake …. lemon souffle … lemon mouse. I love the flavour of lemon in pretty much any guise. Ironically, except for lemonade, which I can’t see the point of and wouldn’t give you beans for.

Putting a positive spin on your lemon mountain

Anyway, there is a point to this meandering story. Like most people who have lived any length of time and taken the odd risk, life has lobbed a fair swag of lemons at me. But I’m not bitter, unlike those sour little yellow suckers. I tend to see my lemon mountain as an acknowledgement of an adventurous spirit prepared to try new stuff and push the envelope a bit. My adventures haven’t been at the extreme end of the spectrum. E.g., journeying to the centre of the earth-type adventures. I haven’t (yet) been embroiled in a space odyssey, even a minor one or been part of any pioneering expeditions to find world-changing places like the Northwest Passage. I haven’t even climbed any mountains of note. But I’ve most definitely taken the road less travelled at regular intervals.

AND Why stop at lemonade?

Back in 2010, in addition to becoming co-owner of a creative agency, I was co-founder of a pioneering event app, and I could see the dramatic impact smartphones would have on our lives. The ramifications were mind-boggling and made me think long and hard about the future of branding and design. This resulted, in 2012, in a short business plan in infographic form—we are a design studio, after all—setting out a blueprint for a digital transformation of our business. Not exactly messianic. All creative sector businesses worth their salt could see the writing on the (digital) wall and the need for reinvention to stay relevant.

But my thinking was a little different. I didn’t just want to make lemonade, as in shifting from a print worldview to a digital one— we had to do that anyway. No, I wanted to do something entirely different. To shift the paradigm (as we were so fond of saying then). I understood that our value wasn’t so much in our team’s undoubted skills and expertise or our quality of work and service model. Print-led or digital, any pivoting in the business-as-usual sense would be about survival and continued competitiveness rather than systemic change.

Our primary value was (and still is) in the IP around our brand development process, which we have amassed over many years. You’ve heard about software as a service. My thinking—couldn’t we create a branding-as-a-service offer. I.e, take our IP online and enable people to learn the nuts and bolts of developing and managing a standout brand, drawing on our years of intel, insight and innovation?

An idea whose moment has come

It was a great idea, but in 2012, it would have required us to build a complex (aka hugely expensive) bespoke web portal. We didn’t have access to template-driven websites like this WordPress one I use, with all the widgets and plugins that enable almost any interaction with users at affordable prices. There are even subscription-based learning platforms that host video courses, learning resources and offer community building tools. Everything you could want at a tiny (miniscule) fraction of the cost of building from scratch. Better still, it’s on them to keep adding features and functionality and support the system. My 2012 aspirations were ahead of the curve—the idea wouldn’t have succeeded even if we’d had the funding to make it happen. But the times and tools they have achanged.

Catalysed by the latest tsunami of lemons delivered to small businesses like mine in the COVID aftermath, supported by the seismic shift to online everything, I am finally making it happen. I love working with ambitious early-stage businesses, but our conventional pricing structure makes that hard. My online learning platform will allow anyone to access high-calibre brand thinking without the fancy agency price tag. I published the programme’s flagship Brands with Moxie — Eight Steps to a Winning Brand late last year. This book sets out to help entrepreneurs, small business owners, and early career marketing and comms managers understand and leverage the full power of their brands. That used up quite a lot of lemons. I’m now converting the remainder of the lemon mountain into video training courses and other resources, and I’m poised to launch the first of these by the end of the year.

Like most things, it all comes down to attitude

I’ve wanted to throw in the towel many times over the last few years. Go into hibernation mode as I talked about in a previous post. Admit defeat and walk away. Give up on years of business development and find something less challenging. But I decided to, as the saying goes, keep calm and carry on. Whether your bag is lemonade or lemon soufflé , with the right attitude, you’ll always be able to find something to do with the lemons life lobs at you. I’m not out of the woods yet. My new take on my business still has a long way to go to earn its and my keep, but I’m hopeful.

I feel proud of myself. Every time life has given me lemons, I’ve come back with a burst of extraordinary creativity, bringing a lot of personal growth. Everything is risky. There’s no such thing as a wrong decision. There’s just a different destination. I’m saying this as much to shore up my resolve as to convince anyone else. Bitterness is seductive. The drama of disappointment is too easy to get derailed by. Making disappointment a defining characteristic is diminishing and a massive turnoff to other people. Life increasingly becomes a dark place where ‘they’ are out to get you, and perspective disappears.

So, I say, whilst raising my G&T with its extravagant two slices, Slàinte Mhath—cheers—fellow adventurers. When life gives you lemons, don’t just make lemonade. Get creative. Make something new and exciting. Step away from your comfort zone. What’s the worst that can happen? You get more lemons and try a different recipe.

[1] YouTube failed me and I couldn’t find a recording, but here’s one of his most loved songs from that era Island in the Sun.

There's nothing like a good cry.

Not a dry eye in the house? There’s nothing like a good cry.

Published on by francesmanwaring.com4 Comments

OK, so full disclosure: I’m a crier. I snivel at the drop of a happy or a sad ending. I tear up at feats of astonishing human achievement, bravery, loyalty, courage, against-the-odds survival, redemption, etc. Thinking about it, I tear up at astonishing feats of animal bravery, loyalty, courage, and against-the-odds survival. Not sure if redemption is a thing for animals, although there are some fantastic stories of animals that have gone feral and been rehabilitated, which have the same effect.

Perhaps a better way of putting it is that I am easily moved. I hope that means I’m healthily plugged into my emotions, not just at the mercy of a heap of repressed crap that gets triggered by the stuff I see, read and listen to. In any case, our experiences, good and bad, shape our responses, whether they bring smiles, laughter, tears or even a whopping great punch-up—some are just more in more socially acceptable than others. I’ve written a lot about the benefits smiling and laughing with, or even at, others, but a good cry is up there in the feel good stakes too.

According to Dr Thomas Dixon, in a recent book where he examines the history of British Crying — Weeping Britannia: Portrait of a Nation in Tears (don’t you love the title?), “Weeping is an intellectual activity, and yet it is also a bodily function like vomiting or sweating, or farting.” Tears seem to fulfil a higher function than just a vulgar bodily emission, but I guess they’re all forms of purging. When you think about it, crying’s not just an eruption of our emotional geysers, they’re also a way of protecting our eyes from spoilers like onions, billowing smoke, and particles carried in the wind by washing them out.

Whatever. There’s nothing like a good cry, or, as my Scottish compatriots would say, “a guid greet”. We have a rich vocabulary around crying. Snivelling, tearful, blubbing, wailing, sobbing, weeping, howling, bawling, to name the ones that instantly spring to mind. Bit like Miss Smilla and all those words for snow. Given how essential it is to our wellbeing, it’s a pity that publicly crying is one of the last taboos of our era. It’s almost up there with PDA (public displays of affection) on the pantheon of awful. We make fun of outsize emotions. God help the celeb caught crying a river over a broken relationship — paps have a field day, and it’s nirvana for the wits of the world who conjure meme magic to the schadenfreudistic (is that a word?) delight of all.

It hasn’t always been like this. We’re much more buttoned up than we used to be. From the earliest of times, tears have been associated with mourning rituals that included extreme acting out—prostration, excessive crying, tearing the hair, ripping clothes, smearing ashes on your face, for example. I’m glad that style of mourning has … er … died a death. But we’re far from it being considered good form to break down sobbing if our cappuccino is delivered cold.

In the medieval and Tudor world, histrionics were all the rage. People regularly gave their lachrymal glands a workout. Think big beefy Henry VIII (in his later years) projectile crying and generally carrying on like a toddler in full view of his court when something didn’t go his way. Up to comparatively recently, crying and emoting bit time were social norms. In the grip of high Romanticism, the early Victorian ear was awash … literally. It wasn’t until Albert died, leaving Victoria a grieving widow, that the vibe changed and emotional exuberance exited stage left. In it’s place came the stuffy, straight-laced, stiff-upper-lipped society we associate with the later era (at least on the surface). And it happened in only a couple of decades. Thanks for your legacy, late Victorians!

Subsequent generations copped all those repressive sentiments like “big boys don’t cry” and “I’ll give you something to cry about”. Even now, with much more relaxed standards and our buy into the concept of emotional intelligence, we’re not performative in our grief like our forebears.

The Tearjerker movie was a genius invention in a world with so little tolerance for adult tears. Tearjerkers allowed us a legitimate release valve. We could snivel up a storm in a dark auditorium where the tear police’s writ didn’t run. Of course, penance for this self-indulgence came in that ghastly moment when you had to exit your local Odeon clutching a wad of soggy tissues with bloodshot, morning-after panda eyes, and mascara-streaked cheeks. A blobby red nose and puffed-up, swollen lips completed the wrung-out look. The fact that everyone emerged the same did nothing to diminish the cringe factor of being seen having given in to an emotional storm. You could even hear the most blokey blokes coughing manfully, trying to camouflage this heinous crime. No one met anyone else’s eyes. It was wonderful and embarrassing and deeply cathartic. There is nothing like a good cry.

Credit: skynesher

I read an article this week about the absence of tearjerkers from our screens over the last couple of decades. Perhaps, with the advent of streaming services, we no longer saw the attraction of collective emoting in the dark. It’s just not the same sitting at home blubbing to yourself, your family and / or your companion animals.

Although tearjerkers have been Hollywood’s secret sauce since the earliest “I want to be alone” Garbo movies, their heyday is considered to be the seventies and eighties. This time saw a plethora of cryfests like Terms of Endearment, The Way We Were, Love Story, Kramer vs Kramer, Field of Dreams, ET, Top Gun, Beaches, Watership Down, and A Star is Born (the Streisand/ Kristoffersen version) and many more, hit our screens. We cried. And cried. And cried some more. It was magnificent. Not a dry eye in any house. Then peak tears arrived in 1997 with the titan of them all, the blockbuster Titanic, and we gave our tear ducts a rest. However, it seems there are stirrings in the wind that it might just be crying again[1]. Oh yeah, baby, yeah.  

The article got me pondering my all-time, guaranteed to open the emotional floodgates films. I blubbed my way through all of the above and many more. But if I want to cry without resorting to watching a movie— if I were an actor getting myself into the zone—there are two standouts. Curiously, both are children’s films, and both are about animals. So … drum roll … at the pinnacle of my all-time weepies? The 1994 film of Black Beauty. Specifically, the bit when Beauty sees Ginger for the last time alive.

“As if by magic, there she was, my beautiful Ginger. She was skin and bones. What had they done to her?”

From the 1994 film Black Beauty

They stand next to each other in a cab rank for a moment, and Beauty remembers when she was young and beautiful and all their happy ‘before times’ when men were kind. The next time he sees her, she is being hauled away, lifeless, on a cart. Tearing up as I write.

Black Beauty was my favourite book as a horse-mad little girl, which likely underpins my response to the film. I still have a copy. The last time I read it, I cried from about half way through, ending in convulsive sobbing at the bittersweet end . Luckily, it’s not a long book—I don’t think my internal waterworks could have coped.

Next? The ever-green Disney classic, Bambi. Specifically, the bit when a hunter shoots Bambi’s mother, and he’s left all alone. Gets me every time. In third place, Bambi again — when we realise his father is watching out for him. Now I’m crying as I write. It’s amazing that this 1942 movie still tears the heartstrings in a way many more recent ones don’t.

What are your favourites when you want a good cry? Here are a couple of handy top compilations of films, songs and books to get your give your tear ducts a workout. I don’t always agree with the selections, but each to their tearful own.

Films I Songs I Books

Anyway, must run. Off to my local cinema to catch Freud’s Last Interview. With a title like that, it’s bound to be a tearjerker!

[1] If films don’t do it for you, try this this gravelly Ray Charles, version of It’s Crying Time Again.

Serendipity rewards the prepared

Published on by francesmanwaring.com2 Comments

When’s the last time you thought I just had one of the best days of my life? It’s easy when we look back to overload the scales with the things we’re not proud of or might do differently. Things that have caused us distress, harm or sorrow. Missed opportunities. Resolutions that didn’t make it to the end of January. The self-pitying seduction of the might-have-been is powerful.  

Everyone around me was weary in the run-up to the holidays this year. Not unhappy, just a bit over it. By it, I mean 2023. There seemed to be a sort of collective consciousness willing the year away—a profound desire to close the door behind us on a confused, conflicted and curiously flat year and move on to the undoubted sunlit uplands[1] of 2024. 

Human psychology is an interesting beast. Nothing changes with a new year. The seasons come and go; time moves inexorably on. A year is simply a construct designed to enable us to plan, record and be productive. There’s no alchemy about it. But the transition from one to the next has a symbolic importance that’s hard to ignore. It offers a valuable ‘moment’ for reflection and re-calibration. A holiday-induced pause (for those lucky enough to have them) to take stock and re-set, sometimes even take the extreme option of reverting to factory settings. 

Ringing in the new with a resolution or two is as engrained in humans as chewing slippers is in puppies. The Babylonians were the first people recorded as celebrating each new year through a twelve-day festival, Akitu, marking the start of the spring planting season. Akitu included making resolutions to their gods, like loyalty to the king, paying debts and giving stuff they’d borrowed back to their rightful owners. You’d have to think they might also have included the usual suspects. Stop killing so many ‘fatted calves’ so they could shed a few sheckles (Babylonian kilos). Spend more quality time with the family. Read a few of those papyrus scrolls gathering dust in the study. Re-gild and polish the chariot and get back into the racing circuit. 

New Year’s resolutions have been around since Adam was a boy. While they undoubtedly are an excellent option for some, I don’t go big on them because I’m a planner and a natural goal-setter. I enjoy the reflective time over the holidays, the headspace to go deep. I also like the feeling of optimism that is triggered by a New Year, which reinforces my commitment to pushing further.

But whether you’re a resolver or not, planning and resolutions only take you so far. Sticking rigidly to the programme shuts down the random twists and turns that become our tales of the unexpected. Those thrilling, surprising convergences when a heap of seemingly unrelated stuff coalesces as if by magic and makes something incredible happen. The times when you are looking for one thing and find something else entirely along the way. Being open to the unexpected.

At the end of October, I published a professional book—Brands with Moxie: Eight Steps to A Winning Brand. I was beyond delighted as this was the culmination of two years of commitment and hard work, which, at times, felt like a black hole sucking every fibre of my being into its relentless vacuum. It certainly hoovered up all my spare time. But it finally got done, and when the first copies arrived, I felt as proud as any new parent of my creation. I then, not unpredictably, got sick—or maybe I was just exhausted—and had some enforced time to ponder life’s big questions. This episode of navel-gazing confirmed what I’d always known. I want to write. More than anything. It’s my thing. I have a lot to say. I like entertaining people. I’m an essayist at heart. But the bonus was that I realised I had most of the content for another book comprising a non-fiction collection of opinion pieces in the style of and named after this blog—Never Succumb to Beige and Other Rules for a Colourful Life. It’s opinion meets autobiography meets history in a tongue-and-cheek way. It draws heavily on my not-uncolourful life experiences. I then worked like a demented being to finish it before the end of the year. 

This somewhat accidental book triggered a sequence of serendipity that makes me smile as I write. Serendipity is, of course, the beneficial occurrences and developments that happen by chance. Or, as American crime writer Lawrence Block said, “Serendipity is when you look for something, find something else, and realise that what you’ve found is more suited to your needs than what you thought you were looking for”.  

I decided early on to go the ‘indie publisher’ route and quickly realised success with the brand book would need coalitions of the able and willing. In this mindset, I amazingly unearthed a printer I didn’t know about in my own backyard with a business division supporting indies like me. I set up a meeting to discuss my brand book, but decided to also show the person I met my Beige manuscript. Her response blew me away—she loved it and thought it had broad appeal. She was also a fountain of knowledge about book publishing. From this one contact, others have flowed. I now have an editor and a top publicist who has agreed to work with me towards an April/May launch. I’ve also found new, like-minded people prepared to swop insights and discoveries. The happy dance goes on and on. 

Although this happened quickly, it’s not as accidental as it seems. I have been writing for years, but not in a particularly joined-up way. I’ve ghosted a book on sales success, co-written a column—Sects in the City—reviewing business networking events and how to get the most out of them and clocked up several other decent notches on my writer’s headboard. But I’ve always seen writing as a ‘side hustle’. While I don’t intend to give up my day job any time soon, I’ve now got a way to elevate writing and content production to a central role in my business practice, and I have at least two other books ready to roll after Beige.

I’ve wished on many stars over the years but often struggled with the self-belief to reach up and grab one. Serendipity walks hand in hand with risk and trust. Without taking risks, you won’t grow; you don’t take risks without trust. Without either, the beautiful possibilities of the unimaginable remain in the wings, and you risk missing out on all sorts of good things. When I look back, the highlights are often the unplanned events and people that seem to have landed in my path out of the blue. Luck, you might say. Maybe. But serendipity has also been described as intention unmasked. I like that concept. This most recent demonstration of serendipity in my life is a long-standing intention finally unmasked. 

It’s also said that serendipity rewards the prepared. A bit like fortune favouring the bold. Fate is more likely to step in when you’ve already put yourself in its path. I was prepared for my brand book to be the change I wanted to see, and it’s doing everything I envisaged, particularly as the foundation for a new direction for my business. I was rewarded with so very much more.

So, I’m excited about what the New Year will bring. I’m moving forward with optimism and confidence in my plans. But I hope there will also be serendipitous twists and turns I haven’t planned for. Like the late Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Mary Oliver, I’m keeping some room in my heart for the unimaginable.

Best wishes for a 2024 journey that includes surprise, serendipity and adventure.

[1] Winston Churchill used the phrase “sunlit uplands” in his “their finest hour” speech delivered in the House of Commons on 18 June 1940, a month after he took over as Prime Minister leading an all-party coalition sketching a picture of an idealised or longed-for future time of happiness, prosperity, good fortune, etc.

So, you want to write a professional book?

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Every seasoned professional should have their book, right? I read that in Forbes Magazine article back in the mists of 2016. For a moment, I was tempted to give it a go, but it wasn’t the right moment, and I wasn’t very filled with get-up, let alone go at the time, so I filed the idea in my rainy-day basket and got on with my life.

Fast forward to a couple of years ago. My get-up gene was flexing its muscles, and I was ready to have a go at something new. I have always loved writing — I’m an essayist at heart — this blog has provided the perfect vehicle for a bit of wry self-expression. I’ve written a swag of other stuff over the years, some of which has been published, some not. I had one of those ‘aha moments’ in this go-getting Renaissance.If life gives you lemons, make lemonade,I thought, closely followed by I’m a writer and know a thing or two about branding, why don’t I write a book about brand development? 

By way of background, as co-owner of boutique creative agency for nearly 15 years, I’ve worked with people and organisations of every type — start-ups, small businesses, corporates, leading charities, local and national government entities, and social enterprises — to help them create and manage standout, impactful brands.

I’ve also been on the other side of the equation. At the start of my career, I worked for two dynamic start-ups that became global brands. Their trajectory instilled a deep understanding of the role of a strong brand as a springboard to success. I’ve experienced first-hand the competitive advantage standout brands bring and the value at each stage, from business planning and development, capital raising and growth, to exit.

Combining this with my writing and comms skills, I figured I had the chops to give it a go. These combined lemons would surely make a lot of lemonade. My vision was to take what I know and create a practical, hands-on resource to help people shape their brand thinking and maximise their brand’s value.

I tried the book idea out on a few clever people, including my business partner and a trusted adviser. Not only did they encourage this rush of blood to the head, but Paul (adviser) with a love of brands and a lot of experience in developing them, offered to help review and shape the content. I also identified and tested the concept with target audiences, who seemed to think this could fill a gap in the market. Game on! In a tsunami of creative energy and determination, supported by a how-hard-can-this-be approach, I started scoping the structure of this new creation.

 Seriously, you start with a proven brand development process that’s worked for people and organisations of all sorts and you re-tread that into book format. A walk in the park you’d think. Think again. In some ways it was easy because I already had a structure for the book from the steps in our process. I’ve done loads of brand workshops in my time and a lot of reading around the subject so I wasn’t starting from ground zero. Despite my initial confidence and my starting knowledge base, it was remarkably difficult to take that and make it into a book. In my agency’s branding work, we do all the heavy lifting, whereas the book had the different focus of supporting people to do it themselves.  

Although I thought I had a lot of content, when it came down to it, there wasn’t much. At least not much that was usable — I couldn’t ethically include client case studies, so I had to find relevant examples that fit the narrative through the book. Luckily, I was able to draw on my experiences with branding the start-ups I’ve co-founded as examples and my varied career has kicked up a wealth of anecdotes and insights. Creating meaningful exercises that would push people’s thinking was a whole new world of pain, although once I got into my stride, I enjoyed compiling them.

Even for someone who enjoys writing, this was a beast. I struggled big time with the opening and rewrote that entirely many times. Paul was a rock throughout, reviewing each chapter as we went along — his feedback was on the money every time and kept me putting one word in front of another. I had some other very useful feedback from a couple of other people who offered to be ‘tame readers’.

Two years on, what can I say? It was hard. There were days when I viscerally understood the old maxim: the only way out is through. I bled time. Thinking about it, sometimes I just bled. I stalled a couple of times when I realised the latest rewrite didn’t cut it. But I come from a long line of brace-up and get on with it types, so I braced-up, got on with it, and the result is Brands with Moxie: Eight Steps to a Winning Brand. I was and still am thrilled to have finished the writing — it was one of the biggest challenges of my life, but in terms of my own standards, I nailed it.

 Writing it, of course, wasn’t the end of the story. It needed to be professionally proof read, designed and laid out. How convenient to have a creative team in my orbit! Even so, we had to find a creative direction for the design and overall look and feel of the book. Ultimately we went with a complex option which included a hand-painted illustration style. Nothing like making a rod for your own creative back.

Then there were other BIG decisions to be made. The first — and it was a doozie — was whether to go it alone or try and find a publisher. I did a lot of research into the pros and cons of each. Getting a name publisher to take you on has its appeal in terms of third-party endorsement and overall credibility. Publishers take many practical issues away but also take away a fair amount of control and earning potential. Many publishers also expect the authors they take on to have an ‘author platform’ — i.e. a ready-made, online following to boost the marketing.

These days, ‘Going Indie’ doesn’t have the stigma it used to — many leading authors self-publish, and no one is shrieking ‘vanity’ at them. Self-publishing on Amazon and or the other platforms is seductive. You’re instantly in the publishing business once you’ve got a complete manuscript in the proper format. The downside is that all the promotion and marketing is on you. Theoretically, you do better financially from any sales, but it’s not a level playing field.

Ultimately, what tipped me into the Indie camp was time. I don’t have much of it at this stage in my career, and waiting a further, possibly three years or more, after the two I’ve already sunk into writing and production, just seemed ludicrous in these days of convenience and instant everything—that’s if you even get accepted at all. It seems so random and a game with rules known only to insiders. So, Indie it was.

That decision made, I had to consider which platform to go with. I decided to launch on Amazon’s Kindle Direct Publishing, which is still the biggest and then add others once I’d got the hang of it. Next, what format was going to work best? Kindle only? Kindle and paperback? Hardback as well? Coming out of a creative studio, the book needed to be visually exciting, so a paperback version was a ‘must have’. I also opted for a simpler Kindle version. It’s ended up at 280-pages, so I ruled out a hardback version as it would have been too big and too expensive. Kindle and paperback are quite different propositions, which meant creating the book in two formats because the designerly paperback wouldn’t work in the Kindle world of ePub and the need to be responsive to different reading devices — each one needed discrete sets of skills to produce.

Then how would I sell it? Another curve ball and another war chest to find. I got help and took on experts to set up the launch campaign on Google and social media because these aren’t my bag.

Even with help, a lot of the publicity and promotional activities are on me. Shameless self-promotion doesn’t come naturally to everyone. I’m no exception. The brace-up conditioning I mentioned earlier walked hand in hand with the self-deprecating British thing. But for the Indie Publisher, it’s just part of the deal and I accepted that I would have to move out of my comfort zone and into this competitive arena to succeed. It’s also another time sink hole. 

What else? Well, for anyone who believes they have a book in them, here are my outtakes.

1.     If you know your stuff, you can write a book. Even if you don’t think you have anything special to say, you likely know more than you think, and your thinking and insights are different to anyone else’s.

2.     Although challenging, writing a book is a great way of reinforcing what you know and building confidence and self-belief. If you’ve ever suffered from Imposter Syndrome — I certainly have on occasion — it’s a great antidote.

3.     The first draft of anything is generally sh1t … so are the next xxxx … but digging deep gets results, and the satisfaction from finally landing it is immense.

4.     The ability to ‘slash and burn’ will become a top skill worthy of inclusion in your CV.

5.     However long you estimate it will take, quadruple it, then quadruple it again and don’t expect to have a life as your new obsession takes it over.

6.     It’s like living through a lengthy illness — you don’t realise how sick you are until you’re not, and it’s done.

7.     Procrastination doesn’t qualify as writer’s block. I dedicated a two-hour block early each morning and great chunks of my weekends to keeping my book moving. That worked for me because I’ve long been an early bird, and I could get stuck in before my colleagues arrived, and the business day took over my headspace. It really is a question of JFDI, baby!

8.     Loading a fancy paperback book into the Kindle Direct Publishing portal might make you lose the will to live. We’re experts at producing high-quality print publications, and it took us about six stressful attempts over a week to crack it.

9.     You need a great team around you and understanding friends and relation. Without expert help it would be a la big mountain to climb and I am eternally in debt to my team of understanding cheer leaders who offered unconditional support no matter what.

10.  When your new ‘baby’ is finally born — the Amazon stork delivered mine yesterday — all the stresses and sacrifice melt in a surge of love and awe at the achievement. My colleague Katie Williams , who created the gorgeous design, and I were the proudest parents on the block, I can tell you. 

Seriously, it was an amazing voyage of discovery, growth, and affirmation and I’m so glad I stuck with it. It’s opened fresh thinking and reinforced the best of the old. If that weren’t enough, according to the Forbes article I referenced at the beginning, having a book makes you more cool at cocktail parties. That, of course, makes all the difference. 

Bouncing is what Tiggers do best

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I haven’t posted a blog for a year. It’s not that I lack ideas, but when I get into any of them, I find myself curiously bewildered about what I want to say in this polarising world where every precious word can be someone’s micro-aggression, trigger, or unsafety. 

I don’t have a global following, so what I write isn’t likely to get serious oxygen, but it’s still depressing because I’m a Tigger type — it’s in my DNA. Remember AA Milne’s excellent Winnie-the-Pooh stories? (Are we still allowed to talk about these?) Pooh fans will know that Tigger is one of the animal characters in these stories who get up to all sorts of adventures and misadventures together. Tigger — unsurprisingly a tiger — is notable for his love of bouncing, which occasionally lands him in trouble with his friends or stuck up a tree he can’t get down from without help.

As a kid, my family used to joke about my Tigger tendencies as I bounced through each day — a happy little unit with a decidedly sunny nature who sang away to herself most days on waking. Like the unfortunate Elephant’s Child in Kipling’s Just So Stories (apologies if Kipling is no longer kosher either), I have “‘satiable curiosity” and am fond of shiny new things. I strongly lean towards seeing the good side of people and situations. Somewhat irritating qualities to the less Tiggerish in demeanour it has to be said. 

My Tigger gene has generally carried me through life with the wide-eyed expectations of a child in a sweet shop, helped by a succession of stylish rose-tinted glasses. Over the last few years, though, I seem to have acquired tinges of Tigger’s perennially pessimistic, gloomy and depressed friend, Eeyore the donkey. My vivid orange Tigger stripes faded like furniture left in the sun for too long. My bounce became more of a plod, and my enthusiasm for … well … pretty much everything, like my childhood dawn chorus, muted. 

It’s easy to blame everything on COVID, but that’s a bit of a cop-out. For sure, the COVID era has felt like a plague of locusts descending on the planet, consuming everything good and decent and leaving a miasma of misery, myopia and malice in its wake. It’s been a tough time on many levels, not least for owners of small businesses like me. The ‘global pause’ also saw the cancellation of so many rites of passage that bring humans together with some degree of harmony. Time has felt one-dimensional without them. We managed to flatten the curve of chronology even though we failed with the epidemiological one — COVID remains a Spectre at our feast, and chronology for a while morphed into one of Dali’s dripping clocks. 

I can’t blame COVID for everything. I can’t blame COVID for the results of my choices, tempting though it is. I can’t blame COVID for the gap the loss of my parents has left in my heart. Equally, I can’t give COVID credit for the good things that have happened — there have been a lot of those, and I’m grateful. I also am not prepared to give COVID credit for the decision a couple of years ago to adopt my sister’s favourite mantra, “Nothing changes if nothing changes”. Working on that basis, I made changes. I took back control and stopped being victimised by the times. My mantra has long been, “If your ship doesn’t come in, swim out to it”. I realised I’d been merely treading water and started to strike out again with renewed determination towards my treasure laden ship.

The treasure I was swimming towards was purpose. The determination to re-invent my business. It was hard-hit during the pandemic and living on life support trying to sustain an outdated business model. It needed fresh thinking, so we defined an inspiring vision that would allow our Phoenix to rise in glittering splendour from the ashes of its previous incarnation. Nearly two years to the day, this vision is becoming a reality. I’m beyond excited and proud of the way it’s all coming together. I’ve written a book drawing on my professional expertise in brand development, which is being published next month, followed by the launch of an online learning platform by the end of the year. In my high-octane quest to re-calibrate and take our business into pastures new, I’ve been gobbling up apps and digital tools like the pursuers of wellness swallow Multivits. I’ve been at the edge of my comfort zone so many times mastering a heap of stuff, but l’m loving the journey.

Nothing’s easy, but it’s much easier when your gut agrees with your choices, and my gut is entirely in sync with this direction. It will allow me to focus on the stuff I want to do and not be a hostage to the place and time demands conventional businesses traditionally dictate. I’m not getting any younger, so this is a genuine need. It’s one thing I can unconditionally thank COVID for — we’ve all learned how to do things differently, and the pandemic accelerated the shift online by at least a decade, opening new ways of working and managing work. That feels a bit like freedom to me.

So, I’m happy to say Tigger’s back, bouncing around like a young grasshopper. The world once more feels like my oyster. Time has stopped dripping away. It’s not that I don’t care about what’s going on ‘out there’; I’ve just decided to stop letting the gloom darken my little corner of it. Our species has navigated into turbulent waters, but that doesn’t mean we must drown in the maelstrom. Life with purpose has always been a higher path. It always will be. Purpose gives our lives meaning. Purpose sees off pessimism. Purpose will get us through. My current purpose will keep me bouncing forward rather than up random trees I can’t get down from. 

I’m imagining the eye rolls of my family and the people I’ve lived with as I write. But hey, if I want to sing in the morning, I’ll sing. OK???

Illustrations from Winnie-the-Pooh books by E H Shepard. These are in the public domain.

May we not live in interesting times

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I’m sure you know the expression “may you live in interesting times”. This is sometimes referred to as ‘the Chinese Curse’. On the surface, it seems to be a positive wish, it’s typically used ironically with the “interesting” bit referring to moments when there is disorder and conflict rather than peace and stability. I should point out here that the cultural appropriation appears to be … er … not cultural … as there is apparently no known equivalent translation in Chinese.

Anyway, I’d say we’re certainly living in interesting times. In fact, you could likely put up an argument these are the most interesting times ever. In the proverbial sense, it doesn’t get much more interesting than the prospect of cataclysmic climate change that we’re facing, not to mention the seismic shifts going on in politics around the world.

In this sense, my last couple of months could also be described as “interesting”. I’ve been to three conferences focussed on sustainability and social justice issues, joined 40,000 others who marched to our Parliament building in Wellington’s Climate Strike, learned a useful new word,  Zweckpessimismus, and sung in a big production of Carl Orff’s immortal and highly bawdy Carmina Burana. You might struggle to see the connections, but ‘bear with’ …

With the exception of singing Carmina, which was tremendous, the common denominator linking the other threads was how easy it would be to get cynical and lose hope in the face of all the issues. For sure, the various conferences dished up some inspiring instances of people who clearly give a lot of damns doing amazing things, they also underscored a few home truths. While a lot of it was stuff I already knew, such as the awful state of our oceans with all that plastic choking the life out of everything in them and the shame of places like the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, it’s still shocking to listen to researchers who’ve seen these horrors up close and personal and measured the impact. I knew it was bad, but the scale is staggering. And that’s just the oceans!

I was a bit depressed at the end of this run of events, wondering if it really is possible for us to get the lid back on the Pandora’s Box we’ve opened. Wondering why so many people are still in denial that it actually exists, let alone has been opened? Then I came across the concept of Zweckpessimismus which helped me understand why so many of us seem transfixed like  deer in the headlights, unable to pull their heads out of the sand.

Zweckpessimismus is one of those complicated German compounds which translates as something like pessimism on purpose. In other words, the attitude of expecting the worst in order to feel relief when the worst doesn’t happen. This is undoubtedly one way of coping in a very uncertain world, but it seems like the sort of self-fulfilling prophecy that we should avoid like the plague.  Surely, we should be going hard out for the opposite — what can go right will go right?

Zweckpessimists, with their doomsday thinking are actually dangerous in these super-intersting times when we need hope and optimism above everything else. While it might be a wonderful feeling when you have expected the worst and it doesn’t happen, it is pushing out a form of negative energy that infects others with alarm and fear. Instead, let’s pool all the good vibes we can call forth to create an unstoppable wave of positivity to inspire our Simian ingenuity and creativity to find solutions. Perhaps then, the tipping point we seem to be reaching, will skew in the direction of a world we would like to see. Let’s opt for uninteresting times and be bored in perpetuity by the serenity of global peace and ecological abundance rather than the dystopian alternative that is the other option.

Coming back to performing Carmina Burana. It was a true celebration of what people can achieve in harmony.  Without blowing my own trumpet (both puns intended), it was a great night. Close to 2,000 people — audience and all the performers — left the concert on a high. This high — a palpable energy buzzing around the auditorium connecting us all — stayed with me long after the strains of the music were done. I hope that is true for others who were there. If we could always feel this way, how amazing would our lives be? Imagine the transformation that would follow if every Zweckpessimist out there expected the best instead of the worst. Someone should coin a word for that!

 

Ride on the peace train!

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I’ve been crying lately thinking about the world as it is. Why must we go on hating, why can’t we live in bliss?

New Zealand was  rocked to its core by the shootings at two Christchurch mosques two weeks ago leaving  50 Muslim men, women and children dead and many others injured. Our Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern, managed the impossible and found words of comfort, solidarity and strength that have resonated around the world as we collectively examine our consciences and belief structures, and come to terms with some fundamental truths about what we are a nation.

This has been a very emotional time in this small country of 4.9 million. I’ve cried a lot in the days since the massacre. Cried for monstrous waste of those precious lives and for the inspirational example of forgiveness offered by the families. Cried for a moment in time that has shone a light on the best and worst of us humans. Cried for all the people who experience racism and hate on a daily basis in large and small ways and who continue to turn the other cheek.. Jacinda’s words opened up a wellspring of grief for all the things we’re not. But they also opened up a wellspring of hope that the terrible price these victims of hate have paid will not be in vain. That our collective and visceral horror that this could happen here will open our eyes and hearts to what we can and should be. It’s been humbling to see the outpourings of love and support, not just from New Zealand, but from all around the world.

There was a national memorial on Friday at Christchurch which was streamed around the country. I cried some more when I watched the coverage, particularly when Yusuf Islam — Cat Stevens as was who was such a loved musician during my teens  — took the stage and sang Peace Train. It’s nearly 50 years since this song was released in 1971 at a time when Flower Power was still holding sway as a symbol of non-violent protest. The term was coined by American poet Allen Ginsberg in 1965 as a way of transforming protests against the Vietnam War into peaceful affirmative spectacles where protesters wore clothes embroidered with flowers and vibrant colour, wore flower in their hair and gave flowers to the public and on-duty police officers. The ‘flower children” or hippies and the counterculture that sprang to life around them — drugs, psychedelic music and art and social permissiveness — changed the world for ever. The “love and peace” mantra of the time seems touchingly naïve in our current reality with its social media echo chambers which enable so much awfulness to be spewed out, fuelling extremism of all sorts.

While the Flower Power movement now seems like an icon of a distant and more progressive era, the symbolism of flowers remains as potent as ever. Flowers with messages of love and support were laid in drifts at mosques around this country in the aftermath of the shootings. The universal language of flowers seem to be the best vocabulary we have to express our feelings of sorrow and grief, hope and love, not just in the aftermath of  this home grown atrocity, but also as in the wider context of world events.

The giving or laying of flowers has been one immediate and simple act we have been able to  take as individuals to affirm  Jacinda’s heartfelt “you are us” and make a commitment to ourselves to be better and not give in to bigotry and despair. We can create our own version of Flower Power, ride the peace train and harness all this good will to create a better world.

Now I’ve been smiling lately, Dreaming about the world as one 
And I believe it could be, Someday it’s going to come
‘Cause I’m on the edge of darkness, There ride the Peace Train
 Peace Train take this country, Come take me home again

 

 

 

Statements of the bleeding obvious #201: Nice doctors really do make a difference!

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It’s amazing how many times what’s billed as breakthrough new research really just confirms what we already understand from experience. Stuff like the fact that singing is good for us and can prolong our lives. That dogs and other animals lift the spirits of long-term hospital patients … as well as mostly everyone else. That laughter is infectious. That lovesickness is a genuine state.

OK, so we’re in an era where it’s possible and considered desirable to research esoteric and non-fundamental subjects. I’m cool with that — non-fundamental subjects like these actually make a lot of difference to our daily lives bringing cheer and happiness, often in dark times. So providing evidence that they really do achieve what  we intuitively feel they do is fab … even if the headlines they provoke seem more like statements of the bleeding obvious than radical insights into the  human psyche.

It most definitely is good to know that singing regularly could prolong my life — I do enough of it after all. It’s a bonus to know that, as well as the immediate buzz from   opening your larynx and letting rip, it’s a gift that keeps on giving in the all-of-life context. Also great to know empirically that my love of animals — near obsession it has to be said — is healthy. That bringing animals into hospitals is genuinely therapeutic and can bring comfort to people in pain or despair. Who hasn’t ever listened to a friend break out into a great belly laugh and  been been compelled to laugh too? Laugh and the world laughs with you, cry and you cry alone … so true. And love sickness? Well, it’s been a while since Apollo fired an arrow into my tender  heart and catalysed all the turbulent symptoms I described in an earlier blog You Make Me Sick! But I haven’t forgotten the visceralality of it all — there’s no question in my mind, it’s a lurg just as debilitating as a fluey cold.

At the weekend, I read another about one of these completely unsurprising research findings. Can A Nice Doctor Make Treatments More Effective? Well dear reader, if you were in any doubt on this count, according to new research by Stamford University in the US, having a doctor who is warm and reassuring actually improves your health. REALLY? Who knew? Most of us I would have thought. I found this astonishing non-news in weekly round up of good news from the New York Times. It’s full of great stories and I love it.

Last week comes Romeo the Sehuencas water frog to my inbox. Romeo is a very rare creature. He was thought to be the last of his type. No Juliet to be found anywhere, let alone on ‘yonder balcony’. Day after endless day, sad Romeo croaked out “Juliet, Juliet, wherefore art thou Juliet?” from his home in a Bolivian museum. Actually what he said was, “ribbet, ribbet, ribbet …” but where’s the poetry in that? Cutting to the chase, biologists had pretty much given up their search in the remote and inaccessible areas of Bolivia where said Juliet might have been found. Then behold! There she was. Juliet the miracle frog — a potential mate for our lonesome hero. Being the only two Sequencas water frogs in existence, it was set to be a fine romance and I’d love to be able to say, “and they both lived happily ever after”. But even for a frog with only one possible mate, the chemistry still has to be right. Imagine the pressure! Without mincing words, would you be prepared to shag some random stranger to preserve our species? Fine if it’s George Clooney.  Not so fine if … well, the list is endless. But then again, unlike Romeo, no one I know is faced with the decision to take one for the future of our species and it’s easy to be precious when we’re in no imminent danger of extinction … unless we keep  messing with our natural habitat that is. All joking aside, a lot is riding on our precious frog prince. Let’s hope the chemistry is there and they soon start producing copious numbers of wee froglets to perpetrate their froggy line.

But back to nice doctors. Apparently the simple things a doctor says to you can have an impact on your health outcomes. Even a brief reassurance can relieve symptoms faster. The reassurance is more efficacious when it’s said in a kindly manner rather than barked out as a “you’ll be fine” afterthought when you leave the surgery. You can’t quite get away from the fact that the doctor has to be skilled and competent as well as nice. However, most of us have been on the receiving end of one of those grumpy types whose you mistake me for someone who cares demeanour is more likely to cause you to lose the will to live altogether than get well. Their cool indifference renders you as articulate as … well .. a frog .. when you try to describe the pain that was giving you hell until it magically disappeared nano-seconds after you made the appointment..

Anyway, the conclusion of the research was that doctors who don’t connect with their patients my risk undermining a treatment’s success. Apparently doctor-patient rapport is much more than the sum of it’s feel good parts. It’s a important aspect of medical care that significantly affects a patient’s physical health. Are you kidding me? It really does feel like a statement of the bleeding obvious that someone who is kind and sympathetic as well as good at their job is likely to achieve a better result.

The article ended by questioning what this means in the brave new world of artificial intelligence. AI opens the possibility of not having to go to the doctor for minor health issues. If interacting with a human being and hearing words of encouragement is part of the cure, this begs the wider question of whether our increasing isolation is actively bad for our health. As the opportunities and need for actually connecting with a fellow human in many aspects of our lives become progressively fewer, what collateral damage are we setting ourselves up for. Romeo the frog couldn’t help his plight. We can, and yet we continue to write people out of the script of our lives. When us humans humans actually get together face-to-face is, we open up the possibility for  laughter and  love. For conviviality and banter. We get to share the good and help each other through the bad times. You don’t need to be a Stamford luminary  to recognise that gentle and kind connections with other people — Doctors and the rest — are seriously good for our health and unkind, cruel ones are not. Comforting to know this is now “proven by scientists”.

 

Riding the kindness wave

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Don’t know about you, but I’m sick of the barrage of negativity that bombards us from all the news channels. I want to feel uplifted not besmirched when I think about our species and what we’re capable of. That doesn’t mean I’m for buying my head in the sand — I’m not hermit material, nor do I want to retire to an ashram and … er … I’m not actually an ostrich. In any case, as part of the ‘global village’ it’s my duty to be at least a bit informed about current events and geopolitics and form opinions and be part of the whole thing.

Yet there is just so much vileness, violence and vitriol splattered around these days, it’s easy to get cynical and despairing. Caring detachment is apparently the answer. But it’s hard to stay above the tantalising awfulising that vomits forth from so many channels. It’s all so ‘dialled up’ and following every sensational utterance of the Trumps of the world has become a new sport, if not religion. All that’s needed is an internet connection and a screen of some sort and hey presto, you’re plugged in and the ‘interwebs’ pedalling the good, bad and the ugly is your oyster. Lies, damn lies and fake news abound. We get trapped in our echo-chambers. For us liberals, it’s hard to ignore feeling that the barbarians are at the gates and our legacy to future generations could all too easily be a burned-out world with a broken eco-system.

So what can an individual do that really makes a difference worth a damn … other than vote of course! Well, lots to be honest. The possibilities are endless, but one option that’s really taken off is the concept of creating waves of energy to achieve positive reinforcement. Literally, spreading good vibes. Think about it — we plant trees to offset carbon emissions. Why not apply that thinking to offset hate, bigotry, misogyny, racism and all the other isms that have re-reared their ugly heads so forcefully around the world in this era of uncivility? The idea is that kindness — appreciation and caring for one another — in deed, in word, in thought or intent  — changes individual lives. Collectively, it can transform the world.

Clearly, orchestrated action is not a new concept. We apply it in all sorts of practical ways like several people lifting a heavy object on the count of three.. A rapidly growing number of people believe that this type of concerted approach can lift the world. Waves of Kindness is a movement where people take a moment at 8am and 8pm daily to form a complete and tangible wave ring around the world coming from a conscious state of unified kindness.

If that all sounds a bit ‘woo woo’ then perhaps a more accessible option is World Kindness Day that’s coming up on November 13. WKD aims to highlight good deeds in the community focusing on the positive power and the common thread of kindness which binds us. It’s intended to be a day that encourages individuals to overlook boundaries, race and religion and celebrate commonalities. Two thousand and eighteen is the movement’s 20th anniversary — it was initiated in 1998 by a coalition of kindness NGOs around the world and is now observed in a number of countries including Australia, Canada, Italy, India, Japan, Nigeria, UAE, Singapore and the UK.

Embarrassing that New Zealand isn’t yet on this list — shame on us! Having said that our inspiring Prime Minister Jacinda Adern included this sort of thinking in a speech at the UN a few weeks ago, and my home town  — NZ’s capital city Wellington — is celebrating its inaugural GKD this year. Better late than never!

People observe WKD in all sorts of ways. In Australia for example, it’s made it onto the school calendar of 9,000 schools and there are “It’s Cool To Be Kind Awards”. Activities include handing out kindness cards, staging flashmobs and concerts. WKD is also on the radar of individual non-profits such as Life Vest in the US and there’s clearly a big appetite for finding the international kindness taproot. Life Vest’s film Kindness Boomerang went viral, receiving more than 100 million views and coverage in serious media outlets such as TED, NBC, CBS and Adweek.

If you’re leaning towards joining the kindness wave, you might also consider becoming a Raktivist — the random acts of kindness movement might be more your thing. Much more of a JFDI individual approach without all the group hugging and collaborative stuff. According to the site, Raktivists are kindness ambassadors who live and breathe kindness, share knowledge and lead by example. Apparently you can tell where they’ve been because they leave a trail of ‘warm fuzzies’ in their wake.

I subscribe to a number of international media. One of them actually has a Week In Good News that you can sign up for and it’s great. Last week, from this and other sources, I learned that lavender is being mooted as providing a natural alternative to chemical anti-depressants, that Chinese workers has managed to save an old bear that had fallen into a reservoir and was close to drowning by scooping him out using an industrial digger, a woman who had been saved from a house fire by her cat and how a blind climber conquered Everest and went on to co-found a non profit to teach outdoor skills to others with physical challenges.

There are plenty of genuinely moving, uplifting, inspirational things going on every moment of every day, everywhere. I strongly believe positivity breeds positivity and the only way we’ll make change happen is if we believe we can and infect others in our orbit with this belief. Positive energy is infectious and it’s a virus we should be keen to share. Hope really can triumph over experience if we let it. Where we are now it seriously needs to! They used to say you need to be cruel to be kind. I’d say it’s more a case of you need to be kind to be kind.

 

 

A good man and true

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My father died two months ago. He was 89, a sick old man and it wasn’t unexpected. In many ways our little family was glad he didn’t linger on because the last few weeks of his life were not the best of times. He was so very fragile and there was little left of our big proud Scotsman who always had a song in his heart. Despite this, when it comes down to that final good bye, I don’t think you’re ever really prepared. There’s really no way to pre-empt the emotions that are triggered when you realise one of the mainstays of your life is gone. I miss him deeply.

Dad died early on a Tuesday morning and we had the funeral three days later. It was small, intimate affair and a fitting tribute to the man. It truly was a celebration, full of joy and love and laughter. My sister and I gave the eulogies. Preparing these, we reviewed our family story at length and laughed and cried in equal measure while we pondered his life and what he’d meant to us. We discussed how lucky we were to be born to parents who gave us a wonderful and safe childhood. Parents who fed our ‘satiable curiosity’ and opened our minds to how much the world has to offer. They encouraged us to be the unique, creative individuals all human beings should be able to be. Most of all, they gave us the security to grow and experiment with our lives, knowing we could escape from whatever mess we could land ourselves in because there was always a safety net at home. We lived without the taint of violence or intimidation that is the awful reality for so many women and girls.

Of course, we had our ‘moments’ — what family doesn’t? It would also be misleading to sanctify his memory, he wasn’t’ a saint. But how many kids never experience the wonder of a kind, loving father who cares deeply for them and protects them? How many still live in terror as a drunken monster rampages round the house hitting out at anything or anyone who gets in his way? How many go hungry or have their lives and health ruined by their crack- or p-addicted parents? How many orphans simply don’t ever get to know their parents? How many have their dreams and confidence beaten out of them dashed on the rocks of ignorance and cruelty? How many kids are damaged beyond repair by toxic, Wars of the Roses style divorces?

My father was a man of high principles. An honest-to God, good man who loved and respected the women in his life and believed we could be anything we wanted to be.  In these #metoo times, we could do with more people like him. While we surely need to ‘out’ the bad apples and find ways of stopping the violence and inequality, it’s important to remember that there are lots of good guys like him around too.

Painting in feature image: William (Bill) Paterson by Joseph Guilford c 2016

 

Smile … an everlasting smile

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I smile a lot. You might even say I’m a positive little joy germ … I’ve even been known to sing first thing in the morning. I see this as a great way to greet the day, others find it annoying. But I can’t help it, it’s just how I am. My rellies call me Tigger after the irrepressible bouncing tiger in the AA Milne’s wonderful Winnie the Pooh stories. Hopefully you get the picture? I’m one of nature’s smilers. Or at least I used to be. Life kind of got in the way for a while there and it felt as if Tigger had bounced up one tree too many and got stuck. Happily — smilingly — Tigger’s back bouncing around on the ground searching for adventure.

But my point? Other than smiling, walking is one of my great joys in life. When I walk I think, I process, I solve problems and dream up ideas. Some people smile while they dial. Me, I smile while I walk. Weird you might say, but why not? Walking makes me feel great, all I have to do is leave my house to do it. I usually walk in glorious places which make my heart sing and, even better, it’s usually free. What’s not to smile about? So what if I look like some scary humanoid version of the Cheshire Cat to the rest of the world?

But I think smiling’s great and an encounter I had a couple of weeks ago is a perfect example of why. Picture the scene. I was striding happily along the waterfront near my home, inhaling the beauty of a glorious day and enjoying the antics of the canines on parade. I’m wearing scabby old exercise clothes, but I figure glam shades, some violent red lippy make up for that … and the beaming smile. Of course, most people scuttle away when this apparition goes past. A few manage a muted ‘Hi’ in response to my breezy greeting — usually this comes with all the enthusiasm that you might put into acknowledging a slimy thing that’s just crawled out from under a stone. Sad … as he who should not be named would say.

Why are people so afraid? That a smile is the façade for an out of control lunatic? That they might somehow get caught up in my life if they smile back? That I’m on the make?Makes me think I need to carry a placard, “Really it’s OK. I’m smiling at you because I’m having a Zip-A-De-Doo-Dah day. I’m high on the sun, the sparkly sea, all those wonderful dogs, the way the rhythms of walking make my body feel and, by the way, I would like to share my joy with you.” Don’t other people feel the same?

Imagine my surprise  when I find a kindred spirit in amongst all the avoidance — another happy smiling face. I see her dog first. I love dogs (in case you missed that) but there are some breeds I particularly like and hers happens to be one of them. Patrocles (as I find out he’s called) is a liver spotted Dalmatian that would have given the leads in 101 Dalmationsa run for their money in terms of street appeal. I turn to compliment the women on the gorgeousness which is her dog and ask if I can pat him. That’s when I really clock her. She’s staring out over the water with a radiant smile that would make Julia Robert’s best look dim. I take it she’s as intoxicated by the day as I am. She turns to answer my question … our eyes meet … and we share a ‘moment’ as we acknowledge that we both get it. That whatever else is going on in our lives (and it’s not been a good year on a number of counts in mine) we’re smiling because right now, in this moment, the world is a wonderful place. Even Patrocles is smiling!

Anyway, after mouthing platitudes about dogs and the loveliness of the day, we have that conversation about why people look away when you smile at them. Then, a little reluctantly it has to be said, I walk on. But somehow, I can’t let the moment pass and turn back because I want to tell her she’s made my day with her beautiful energy. It’s the same for her she says. I pat the pooch again and continue on my walk feeling good at having had such a random and uplifting encounter.

It really did make my day and I’m still smiling thinking about it. Was such a good reminder of how much we can influence our world through the energy we bring and the simple gift of an open and genuine smile. So smile people, because nothing shakes the smiling heart and remember that happiness looks gorgeous on you. As Chris Hart said, “All the statistics in the world can’t measure the warmth of a smile.”

So get your smiley face on and dazzle everyone you meet. Tough shit if some people think you’re deranged. You’ll have a great day and hopefully also make those of of the people you cross paths with.

Happy World Smile Day!

(5 October 2018)

 

 

 

Thrift — the new black?

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I read a great article the other day about a trending topic, ‘The Cult of Thrift’. The gods of this cult are minimalisation, debt-free living, frugality, decluttering and zero waste, gods I’ve been progressively bending the knee to over the last few months. In fact, it was so similar to my own experience, the article felt as if it had been written by a doppelgänger. Hadn’t realised I was part of a new wave — how advanced of me!

The main difference between us was that the writer has consciously embraced the thrift ethos whereas I’ve kind of blundered into it in a necessity being the mother of invention sort of way. In fact, after a couple of financially disappointing business investments, I’ve really had no option other than to pull my belt in big time. Thinking about it, said tightenign of belt was purely metaphorical. As the funds ran out like beer from a leaky barrel, epic levels of comfort eating kicked in meaning that I actually would have had to let out the  belt a few notches … if I’d wanted to wear one that is. During this nadir, I pretty much stopped wearing belts or any other clothes with shape given the results of all the snout in trough stuff. However, I’m sure you’ll be as uplifted as I am by the knowledge that not only have I started wearing belts again, I’ve actually clawed back one of the lost belt holes and have confidence a normal waistline is in sight!

So much for metaphor! In any case, what started out as necessity quite quickly morphed into choice and I appear to be well on my way to becoming a paid-up Thrifter and feeling more virtuous by the moment.

So what has given me the keys to the Thriftdom? Unsurprisingly, given the above, a fair amount of it revolves round food and eating habits. For starters, bargain food hunting has become an obsession, if not actually a new sport. This has led to the dark art of cooking proper meals again instead of giving in to the Siren call of endless takeaways after too many stressful and long days at work. Sometimes the new me even cooks a casserole or soup or similar at weekends to stretch over several weekday meals.

I finally get the joy of auction sites like eBay and Trademe although I continue to try and buy as ethically as possible. I can’t exactly claim that Upcycle has become my middle name, but I have looked at a few things and had an ‘aha moment’ about refurb rather than trash. ‘Pre-loved’ clothing shops are very much on my radar. Having moved into a much smaller apartment, I no longer get small space envy whenever I watch a George C Clarke TV programme and I feel positively virtuous for the level of de-cluttering that’s resulted. I can thoroughly recommend this tactic to wannabee Thrifties. When you have limited space, it makes you think long and hard about what stuff you actually want to shackle yourself to. Choices have to be made people! It won’t all fit! In the spirit of transparency, I have to fess up to the fact that I haven’t yet been able to get myself to offload the many boxes of books I’ve been trailing around as I’ve moved into successively smaller homes to a second-hand book seller or book fair, so my sister’s enormous garage is currently multi-tasking as my library.

Limited closet space is also a great incentive to apply some of the anti- clothes-hoarding rules. You know — if you  haven’t worn it in the last two years, it’s toast. If you buy a new garment, something must be consigned to the outer darkness of the clothing bin to make room for it. If it doesn’t work with something you’ve already got, put it back on the rack. And how many pairs of shoes does anyone not called Imelda need?

In all seriousness, after the initial trauma, de-cluttering is a very liberating activity. It’s not just stuff I’ve been getting rid of either. The thrift thing can be applied across all the facets of life. I’ve shed one business and stepped back from a couple of other professional involvements so I can concentrate fully on doing one role well. I’m also training myself to say no to all those ‘should dos’ that my inner crowd pleaser sees as obligatory.

Although thrifty has been a virtue since Adam was a boy (actually since around 1300 if you read dictionaries), the Thrift evangelists are out in numbers these days. You’d have to think that’s a direct result of the all the inconvenient truths we’re facing as a society and the fear the we might be going to Hell in a handbasket sometime soon if we can’t get the lid back on our contemporary Pandora’s box. Among the evils unleashed on the world when some fool opened it in this is the spend-thriftery (extravagant, irresponsible spending) that has come to define our consumerist western lifestyle.

But how could it be otherwise? We’re literally bombarded with subliminal and not-so-subliminal messaging carefully crafted to make us dissatisfied and want more, bigger and better everything. But don’t worry, if you can’t afford it, someone will lend you the money, up your credit card limit or provide ‘interest free credit’ so you can keep on consuming and owe a bit more of your soul to the company store. It’s unsustainable on so many levels — personal, community wide and for our equally stressed planet.

Actually, it’s obscene. Or at least in my rapidly de-cluttering life, it seems so. The concept of retail therapy — when the going gets tough the tough go shopping — sits at the centre of the problem. Particularly when the results are growing mountains of recycling that can’t (yet) be re-cycled, oceans stuffed with plastic and other toxic detritus and all the rest. Maybe we should create a new mantra; when the going gets tough, the tough go … on a peace march?

Shopping as our primary leisure time activity is particularly ironic given that we humans have so much innate creativity. Less time spent shopping leaves time for things that so often go on the back boiler. I love writing this blog as it helps me sort out my priorities, worldview and values. But when I get stressed and my life and mind get cluttered, I can’t write. There’s just no headspace to think about anything other than whatever is causing the stress, and I have sometimes gone for weeks without writing anything.

It has to be noted that the cult of thrift is not a judgement on the genuinely poor for whom thrift is not a virtue but potentially a life sentence. Rather, it is being held out as an alternative for people with means who want to get off the consumer treadmill and start living within them, taking responsibility for how their actions affect the present and future. It’s not about austerity, just changing our personal values and thinking more deeply about how we live.

Taking my own recent experiences, while I’m as keen to have the good things in life as the next person, I’ve found a lot of joy in appreciating what is instead of lusting after what isn’t. In this context, less is most definitely more. Getting my thrift on has become a highly creative and engaging new way operating which ironically becomes a much more sure-fired way of being able to afford to do the things I would like to. I feel up-lifted by the challenge not deprived. There’s certainly more time to smell the roses.

 

 

 

 

Those little joy things

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Late on Friday night I decided to do something I should have done months ago and put an end to a situation that’s been causing me anguish. This has been a trap largely of my own making and one which my sense of obligation has held me hostage to way beyond the call of duty. A number of small things combined as the straw that broke this camels back and forced me to finally take action.  Nothing changes if nothing changes!

After this liberating decision, I’d love to say I then slept like a baby. I didn’t! Had one of those terrible, wakeful nights full of churned up thoughts that went nowhere. Eventually drifted off near dawn and slept fitfully for a couple of hours. Late in the afternoon, I took myself out for a walk along the waterfront. The sea was as still as serenity and sparkling like silver-dust. On my way back, in the gloaming, the last of the sun glimmered with such beauty on the mountains at the back of the harbour I stopped to drink it in. A tiny grey warbler landed on a bush next to me, closely followed by a chittering fantail. I stood transfixed for long minutes smiling at the antics of these two little creatures. It was delightful and I finished my walk with renewed spring in my step and warmth in my heart despite the encroaching chill of evening.

Earlier in the day, someone close to me, understanding my distress and the dichotomies involved, reminded me to look for the little joy things when life feels bleak. So true. I slept like a baby for 10 wonderful hours that night.

Thanks to the New Zealand birds website for the stunning cover photo.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Carpe Diem Baby!

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Sometimes I feel that my life is shrinking before my eyes. I’m nearly sixty — how on earth did that happen? I don’t feel old and we live in the world where 60 is the new forty don’t we? So, clearly I’m not. In any case, my soul or whatever you want to call the internal entity that feels like some sort of mini-me remains obstinately and happily oblivious to the passing of the years. Seems there’s a reason why they’re referred to as our ‘inner children’! I think of mine as my inner-Barbie because — like Peter Pan, she seems to inhabit some sort of Neverland where she is forever young. However, unlike the redoubtable Pan who remained a child, my Barbie seems to have cleverly arrested her growth at that beguiling mid-thirties stage. That wonderful place where chronology hasn’t yet won, the body is still beautiful and the spirit is beyond the myopic self-obsession of earlier ages and stages.

Just for the record, I do know I’m not stuck in a time warp circa 1995. I kind of get that every time I’m called to the dark side and consider buying a pair of flat shoes. (Instead of the gorgeously impractical and increasingly hard to walk in high-heeled varieties I have been seduced by all my life.) In recent years two schoolmates and a couple of dear friends have died, among them my first love. That’s certainly chucked a bucket of very cold water in Barbie’s youthful smiley face I can tell you, and accounted for a fair amount of the feelings of shrinkage. But I’m now also facing that old clichéé where time is speeding up. When you’re young the minutes pass like hours and there is a constant feeling of boredom because time stretches out to infinity. Now, I’ve got to that place the young can’t understand where the hours, days, weeks, months and years speed by like the counter in HG Wells’ Time Machine.

Time to carpe diem I say. Grab each day firmly by the throat and make it count. So much better than being subsumed in a myopic obsession about some much desired future state. Whether this state is a new job, a palatial home, a more exciting partner, a super-yacht, some publisher discovering you, winning a career changing award, the in vitro treatment delivering the longed-for and almost given up on baby, running away to live on an Ashram or joining the crew of the Sea Shepherd, putting everything else on hold until some new state arrives seems to be just plain dumb. Let’s face it, scenarios like the current Trump’s/Jong-un brinksmanship play merry Hell with all of our aspirations. But I’m still loving that it’s a gorgeous winter’s day and I’m free to sift through the Op-eds and indulge myself in writing this post. No fires to fight, no ferryman to pay. The future can go hang. I’m happy in my moment. After all, WTF can I do about the mine’s bigger than yours thing that’s going on between those two equally unappealing and childish so-called men?

The carpe diem aphorism comes from Book 1 of the Roman poet Horace’s work Odes written in 23 BC. Carpe diem has long been used as a standalone phrase which people like me think of in terms of living in the now. But the context from Horace is carpe diem, quam minimum credula poster — “Seize the day, put very little trust in tomorrow (the future)”. Horace’s point being we can’t see what the future will bring, but we should do everything we can today to stack the odds. Not to trust that everything will randomly fall into place.

When I thought about it, the gnarly problem of retirement planning sprang to mind. This is something of a sensitive topic for me at the moment as I’ve taken some significant risks with my financial future by treading the path of an entrepreneurial wannabe. The pot of gold at the end of this rainbow has yet to materialise and was looking frighteningly empty for a while. Putting all your financial eggs in the startup basket is a genius strategy if your name happens to be Bill Gates, but not so flash if you’re a John DeLorean and the expected high returns turn out to be little more than surf breaking on the rocks of hubris and self-delusion. While my investments are currently looking a bit healthier than they were a few months ago for a number of reasons, I still have anxiety dreams about becoming an ageing bag lady wheeling my few possessions round in a shopping trolley — pretty certain that the amount I’ve paid into my pension fund won’t cut it on it’s own.

In all likelihood, Horace’s contemporaries weren’t agonizing about whether their KiwiSaver contributions would see the distance. In those days, apparently if a baby made it through its first year, it could expect to live to the ripe old age of 34. Reaching your fifth year delivered the heady possibility of making relatively ‘old bones’ at 48. That’s a total of 17,520 diems to carpe if you want to get granular. Just as an aside, I wonder what went wrong between the Old Testament expectations of three score years and ten and Roman times? Must have been something to do with all that endless wandering around in the dessert as opposed to stagnating in the stews of Rome. Of course there’s also the thing about being God’s chosen people…

Anyway, in Ancient Rome, it’s thought that less than 5% of the population at any one time would be over 65. What a sensible arrangement!  All those lovely younger generations oozing tax denarii into the exchequer leaving no question about the state’s ability to provide for its aged and infirm. Not that Rome was exactly a trailblazer in the realm of social welfare, so this line of thinking is somewhat pointless. But the Roman equations are interesting in comparison to our ageing ‘Boomer’ reality, which is leaving many people angsting about their financial futures. The upside is that this is a temporary blip. Assuming that the militaristic fat boys step away from their nukes and stand down from the standoff, with the rate at which birth rates are levelling off of or falling in the west, we’ll be back to the healthy Roman proportions of youth to age before you can say “climate change is killing us”.

All joking aside, there’s a balance between living in the moment and leaving the future to chance. In the context of financial planning, for sure there are many variables such as how long we’ll live, how much money will be needed to achieve the twilight years lifestyle we aspire to and what environmental factors will kick in to derail it all, not to mention the whole Pandora’s Box of our health. But that doesn’t means there’s no point. Yay, this is where I get to use all those cliches like failing to plan is planning to fail (Alan Lakein after Churchill and Franklin).  Like, if one does not know to which port one is sailing, no wind is favourable (Seneca the Younger — and didn’t those ancient Greeks knew a thing or two BTW? Bet their life expectancy was higher than the Romans). Then there’s, it does not do to leave a live dragon out of your calculations if you live near him (Tolkien). For decades business gurus have been preaching the gospel of vision, mission and values as the foundation to success. Rightly so. Businesses are much more likely to achieve more, do better, make their shareholders wealthier, trade ethically etc. if they have some inkling of what they’re aiming for. It’s no different for us as individuals. Visualising what we want is much more likely to deliver than chasing a series of shiny new things down rabbit holes.

I used to have a friend who was obsessed with spontaneity. She didn’t like being tied into commitments or rules and regulations, preferring instead to live her life on ad hoc terms. We often used to argue a lot about this. Apart from anything else, it was deeply irritating that her need to be spontaneous resulted in her total inability to get anywhere on time. This fed my position which was that I don’t think you can actually be spontaneous unless you live within a structure from which you can break out. If spontaneity is your life mission it’s got to lead to chaos because nothing can ever be achieved. In a similar way, having no life plan invites chaos in. Seizing the day is not only  about visualising and working towards a desired future but also about enjoying the journey no matter what the outcome. As Robert Burns knew so well, “the best laid plans of mice and men gang aft agley.’ Pity to get to where they’ve gone agley and there’s only disappointment and a black hole which sucked in time passed in waiting. The best bit is that with a vision, the whole concept of retirement planning becomes moot because we already know which port we’re sailing to. That we want our days to end in a Disney Castle or an Indian ashram or somewhere in between. Clearly circumstances do frequently rain on this planning parade, requiring regular recalibration, but to me that offers better odds than relying on a Lotto win.

In terms of feeling that my life is shrinking before my eyes, I’m determined to make better use this precious and diminishing time resource that once seemed a commodity. Stop bleeding out on things that don’t matter. Letting time slip away like Dali’s Melting Watch in the featured image. For sure, I need to do what it takes to get some decent returns from all the time I’ve invested in my businesses so the ageing bag lady scenario remains simply a bad dream. But I’m visualising as I write and my scenario always includes enough money to see me out in style and allow me to do all the other things I have factored in.

In this vision, when the bell tolls for me, I plan for it to interrupt something amazing. To continue the annoying references, I will be living my days rather than counting my years. Go to India and Antarctica. Take the sentimental journey home to Scotland and write my memoirs en route. Get therapy for the rampaging arachnophobia that makes any attempt at gardening feel like a journey to Mount Doom! Actually turn up at my orchestra having done more than one cursory run through of the music. Or better, stop beating myself up if I don’t! You get the picture I’m sure? Carpe diem indeed!