Peter Fletcher

What would you do if today was to be your last?

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Dark clouds over sand dunes

What would you do if today was to be your last?

In On the shortness of life, Seneca explains that we all have the same amount of time available, but it’s what we do with it that makes us wealthy or poor.

We are not given a short life but we make it short, and we are not ill-supplied but are wasteful of it. Just as when ample and princely wealth falls to a bad owner it is squandered in a moment, but wealth however modest, if entrusted to a good custodian, increases with use, so our lifetime extends amply if you manage it properly.

He contends that we allow others to rob us of our valuable time, and that could come in the form of a slavishness to business, an over-indulgence in our looks, or a love affair with our couch. Each moment we give up to another is a moment we lose to building a life that creates happiness through virtue.

With that in mind I thought about how I would live tomorrow if I knew if it was going to be my last day on earth but I couldn’t tell anyone. Here’s what I came up with.

  1. Get up early.
  2. Go for a run.
  3. Meditate. These first three provide me with a sense that I’m in charge of my life. I’d need that if I was facing death.
  4. Make Rita the best cup of coffee ever. I’d greet her with a smile and give her a hug and tell her I love her.
  5. Phone Mum and thank her for showing me how to face adversity with dignity and with a smile. Tell her I love her.
  6. Call my brothers and tell them how awesome they are.
  7. Call my nieces and nephews and tell them they can do it.
  8. Make sure that Rita knew where to find my will.
  9. Tie up incomplete communications.
  10. Deal with the small pile of paper on my desk – they represent decisions I’ve been avoiding.
  11. Mow the lawns and do the edges. I’d want them to look good for the wake.
  12. Put away the running shirt I’ve left over the back of the kitchen chair.
  13. Get rid of the crap out of the boot of my car. It would leave people scratching their heads.
  14. Tell everyone at work what a great bunch of people they are.
  15. Ensure the team at work knew who was responsible for what. That would take making a couple of small decisions and communicating those to everyone.
  16. Enjoy a glass of red with Rita and cook dinner together.
  17. Write something that will give a fire suit to those who need to walk through the flames.
  18. Leave the TV turned off.

What would you do if today was to be your last day?

Image: Fikret Onal

10 things that always make me smile

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Smiling lady

What’s the one thing that always makes you smile?

When you’re feeling down and the weight of the world is on your shoulders, what’s the one thing that always makes you smile?

Here are a few things that light up my face.

  1. The sound of my wife’s laugh.
  2. My dog wagging her tail and rubbing her back on the floor mat in the lounge room.
  3. The memory of our old dog Gonzo who loved nothing more than hump one of my old school jumpers.
  4. The memory of my mate and I singing Ice Ice Baby on a cruise ship.
  5. My mate Russ’s jokes. He’s always got a new one.
  6. A child’s laughter.
  7. The words “Thank you.”
  8. Another smile.
  9. When a battler achieves something despite the odds.
  10. Good company around the dinner table.

What makes you smile?

Image: Steven Depolo on Flickr

 

What’s your tempo?

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Kebede running in the Paris Marathon

Creating a personal best requires an intimate relationship with pain.

If you want to do a marathon you’ll need to walk, jog, or shuffle 42.195 kilometres. Whatever way you do it, once you’ve crossed the line you’re a marathon finisher. You’ve done it. But most people aren’t satisfied with just completing a marathon.

Once you’ve done your first you have a personal best (PB). The next is about breaking your PB.

So how do you run a faster marathon?

For most weekend runners the answer is to jog further and further and further. Jog 34 ks in training and you’re pretty much guaranteed to complete a marathon in a decent time. Do that often enough and you’ll set a PB.

There’s no doubt that doing long runs at a slow pace is important but other factors are equally so. There’s stride efficiency but there’s also this thing called tempo. 

Most good runners can run at a high tempo for a long period. This is done by improving the runner’s top speed – which is all about strength, flexibility and an efficient technique – and then learning to hold that top speed, or close to it, for longer and longer periods. The longer a runner can run at tempo the better.

But running at tempo isn’t easy. In fact it’s very hard. Not only must you have great technique but you also need to cultivate the ability to lean into the pain, to settle in to the new sensations of burning lungs and jelly legs or whatever it is that you go through during a period of peak performance.

During those moments the voices usually start. That voice that says, “Don’t hurt yourself,” or “Hey, just take it easy today. Do a hard workout tomorrow.” There’s a myriad of these little voices chirping away and each attempt to separate you from your physical experience. But they, too, are part of the peak experience. So, in just the same way as you become one with the pain, become one with the voices. Give them an opportunity to have their say. Don’t fight them but don’t engage with them. Just let them chat away, acknowledge them, then bring your focus back to the physical experience.

Bring it back to your breathing. Feel your breath flow in and out. Feel the tension in your forehead and the back of your neck. Relax your lips and your fingers. Relax the muscles in your face. Relax your toes. Focus on your technique, on your foot strike, on the drive from your arms. Soon, all that will be is your breath and your effort will become relaxed and not strained of forced. In that moment, there’s no struggle and no fear. Just breath and movement.

In these moments we begin to approach our peak. And it’s in these moments that we achieve longer, faster, stronger. Do that often enough and PBs will come your way.

Image: Vick the Viking on Flickr

The Great Pretender

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Steven Bradbury wins gold at the 2002 Winter Olympics

If you feel like a fraud despite your success you may be experiencing Impostor Syndrome. Image Australian Olympic Team Image: https://sochi2014.olympics.com.au/aus-team/aus-winter-history

Do you ever feel like a fraud, that at any moment your success will be exposed as just dumb luck? Perhaps you feel that you’ve tricked the world into thinking your smarter than you really are and that your latest pay rise or promotion was obtained by deception.

If so, you may be suffering from impostor syndrome which is characterised by feelings of inadequacy despite the existence of evidence to the contrary.

Steven Bradbury might easily have dismissed his gold medal success as dumb luck. After all, as the lead skaters came into the final corner, Bradbury was a distant last. And as the four racers in front of him fell over in sight of the line, Bradbury calmly skated to a gold medal and a place in Australian folklore.

But to dismiss his victory as underserved because of the way it occurred would’ve dismissed that he’d competed in three previous Olympic games. It would’ve dismissed the hours, days and years of training and preparation that got him to the Salt Lake games. And it would’ve dismissed that he’d made it to the final and that he deserved his place on the starting line.

Appearances aside, Bradbury’s victory was deserved. Might he have liked to win it through being fitter, faster and stronger than the others? Probably. But the fact is, they fell over. He didn’t. His victory was deserved because he crossed the line first not because he’d skated faster.

In sport, winners are determined by who crossed the line first, not by who trained the hardest or who deserved it more.

So, when you have a win don’t dismiss it as a fluke, as dumb luck or as the work of someone else. Calmly accept the acclaim and recognise your role in what you’ve achieved.

What’s your Number 8?

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You probably know I grew up on a farm. On a farm, farmers use wire. Lots of it. They use it to build fences and gates, to fix machinery and make kids toys.

There’s nothing that can’t be done with pliers and some Number 8 wire.

That’s why I’m writing this post on my iPad. Both my MacBooks, the ones I use to write my blog posts, are doing their best to die.

This iPad has turned into a piece of Number 8.

That’s the way commitment works. We take away the alternatives and the easy route. We find a way through difficulties. We create solutions. We keep moving forward.

But we never give up. Never.

Tomorrow, when your fence breaks, reach for a different tool, reach for your Number 8. Rather than being frustrated and annoyed and upset that something’s not working, go find something that is and use it and make it work for you.

Stay the course, stay committed. It’s the farmer’s way.

What Jack and the Beanstalk can teach you about the value of achieving goals

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Disneyland Paris Jack and the Beanstalk castle

What’s your Jack and the Beanstalk story? Image: Jeremy Thompson http://www.flickr.com/photos/32916425@N04/4480849415/

What’s the value of achieving a goal? If your goal is to walk across the road the answer is probably nothing. 

But big, stretch goals are different.

Stretch goals challenge us. They pull us out of our comfort zone and scream at us like a sergeant major. 

“Get your lazy arse out of bed and move! Now!”

They motivate us to do more.

Achieving a goal can feel amazing. That new car smell, the feel of leather seats, the admiring glances of other motorists. 

Those things are great, but they’re not the true value of achieving a goal.

The true value of achieving goals can be learned from reading Jack and the Beanstalk.

Jack’s story is all about overcoming obstacles.

In the fable, Jack’s life was going along fine. One day the little tripper decides to climb a beanstalk. He knocks  off some treasure from the man-eating giant who chases him down the beanstalk. But Jack’s too quick. Through a super human effort he chops down the beanstalk, kills the giant and saves himself and his family.

They all live happily ever after. The end.

Of course, Jack gets to be rich from all the loot he flogged from the giant so he gets to take care of his family. But the real win is his personal transformation. Now he’s the family provider and heroic protector.

He da man!

The story arc of Jack and the Beanstalk is repeated time and again in fables and fairy tales and stories told around kitchen tables and in books and movies.

Think about it. Forrest Gump, all the Rocky movies, The Da Vinci Code: they all use a similar story arc.

And guess what!

You’ll use the same story arc when you tell people about how you achieved a stretch goal.

It’ll go something like this: My life was going along fine, then I got a calling to achieve something great. At the start I was doing OK but then I was met with impossible obstacles. Just when I thought I’d made it I got knocked down again. And again. And again. But I persisted. After one last Herculean effort I succeeded.

I achieved my goal. I’m a winner!

And right there is the true value of achieving a big goal.

You see, achieving a goal is nothing in itself. What’s important – the real value – is the story that achieving a goal allows you to tell about your struggles to overcome seemingly insurmountable obstacles. 

It’s that story from your past that shapes your present and your future. It’s a story that will help you shape a new you.

So what’s your Jack and the Beanstalk story?

Six ways to keep yourself on track to achieve your goals

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A grindstone

Commitments require us to keep grinding away. Eventually the chisel becomes sharp. Image: Infrogmation of New Orleans http://www.flickr.com/photos/infrogmation/3370682809/

Here are 6 ways I keep myself on track to achieve my long term goals.

  1. Make a commitment. Commitments can become tedious. They mean hard work and nose to the grind stone and mindless, endless repetitions and actions. They take grit and determination and stick-to-itiveness. Know this at the start.
  2. Have a theme. If there’s one theme to my writing it’s commitment. Start something then grind away until it gets done.
  3. Don’t lose heart. Sometimes commitments can feel like your trying to hold back the sea. When you’re feeling down it’s important to just keep on doing what you said you’d do. Like a grindstone on a chisel, eventually the blade becomes sharp.
  4. Make achieving your commitments a habit. The first action I take every morning is to drink a big, cold glass of water. That’s the signal to take the next step, which is to pull on my running shoes. And that’s the trigger to run. And…you get the idea. The commitment is achieved through surrounding it with habits.
  5. Think ahead. But not too far. Thinking too far ahead makes the goal seem unreachable. Think ahead only far enough so that you set yourself up for the next step.
  6. Settle in for the grind. To achieve your commitment means simply doing the next rep, running the next k, or writing the next word. None of this stuff is glamorous but it has to be done so settle in and do what you need to do.

Location

You can find me at Residential Settlements in Burswood.

5/170 Burswood Road
Burswood WA 6100

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