The Dreamer’s Fears: Doing What I Want With My Life.

Good Life Project

“Don’t confuse genuine peace of mind with the passing lack of angst that follows the demise of a dream but precedes a mounting wave of regret.”

A job is so appealing because there is very little risk involved. You turn up, fulfil a simple set of predetermined criteria and you definitely have money in your account at the end of the month. No-one belittles you or tells you “you can’t get a job.” It’s also much harder to fail when there is a strict set of guidelines telling you what you can and can not do and a boss who takes responsibility anything outside your defined role and will tell you what to do when unsure.

You are told when to go to work, when to leave, what to do whilst you are there and how to do it. Everything is secure and defined and there is little room for judgement, failure or loss. If you play by the rules well, maybe you’ll be the lucky one and someone can tell you that you can now follow a new set of more esteemed criteria with more money and responsibility as a reward. This may or may not be fine for most people, I’m not going to discuss or judge people’s life choices, we are only responsible for our own and should be free to make them as we please, but the idea of being told what to do, when to do it, how to do it and having to wait for someone else to tell me when I can move a step up a ladder and can earn X amount of money doesn’t appeal to me. I’m in control of my life, the good and the bad and would not swap the freedom of choice in exchange for a steady, limited but reliable amount of money into my account each month. Life really is too short to give someone else control over 40 hours+ of your week in which you must do, in many cases, not all, work you don’t enjoy. Not to mention being told when and when you can or can not go on holiday, how to dress and how you must act. But this is the industrial way. It’s necessary to have a well oiled machine of compliant workers to maximise productivity and minimise costs. The problem for me is that it seems in an unfair exchange:

Humanity, Freedom and the Bulk of your Time for Compliance and steady pay.

Cog In The Machine

I understand the desire for security and to have money coming in now and to have the responsibility of finding what to do and how to do it taken off your shoulders. Someone else tells you what to do, easy.

It is becoming more and more evident that the key to becoming a successful entrepreneur is to develop your mindset. To see things clearly, the whole picture, to make a decision and run with it, not fearlessly, not in the absence of anxiety, instead learning to live with the fear and anxiety and understanding where it comes from and why. When you attempt anything great you will come up against resistance. Resistance from others, resistance from a lack of resources and resistance from people you need to help you create what you’re trying to create but the only fatal resistance, the only resistance that really ever stops you from doing what you want with your life? That’d be your mind and what you allow it to think.

I shouldn’t do this because I feel guilty that it might make my friends and family feel bad that I want to make different life choices than them, they may resent me for wanting to do something outside of the norm, for wanting more.

I shouldn’t do this because It’s selfish, who am I to want, hope and expect more from life?

I shouldn’t do this because I’m not good enough, I don’t know all the people I need to know, I’m too young.

If your family and friends want the best for you, they won’t stop you, if they don’t want the best for you, you shouldn’t waste your time caring for them.

It’s not selfish to want to live a good life. That’s a stick people use to beat you with to keep you in line. It’s not selfish nor greedy. It’s not ‘normal’ to get a job, it’s an industrialised idea that’s around 200 years old. In turbulence you always put on your air supply before you’re children’s. This way you both survive, you can’t help anyone else in your life if you can’t look after your own life properly.

Richard Branson didn’t know everything when he started and still doesn’t now. You don’t have to be great to start, but you do have to start to be great.

These fears, this resistance I personally have seen and conquered. So what are my fears now?

• That our products don’t sell.
• That our story, our USP, doesn’t resonate.
• That we fear being ourselves and instead create something average, safer, that no-one will neither love nor hate.
• That Arya eats the cat shit from the cat litter tray and licks me on the mouth. Seriously, she does eat that nasty shit.

That’s it. No-one likes us so our (great) products don’t sell and I’ve lost all my money, I’m in debt and have to get a job to pay that back before I can ever dream of starting another business again. To be accountable to myself for wanting more and falling flat on my face.

I believe in today’s world, more and more people want to be human again. They want products they care about by companies with a message and story they can relate to. This is far less likely to lead to mass, industrialised, billion pound profits, but will connect with people, will be enjoyable to create and will still, with any luck, make me rich and allow me to live the life I choose, on my own terms.

My dream job isn’t a job at all. I want to create, connect, control and have the freedom to live as I please, enjoy what I do and make enough money to allow me to do that. I want a life of projects, many projects.

The actual point of this post comes from the past week or so of moving the product forward, meeting people in London. Older, experienced people who know a lot more than us and work with famous, huge, established brands. We’re just 2 young dreamers, but it didn’t feel like that at all. For the first time possibly ever, I felt that my actions were in accordance with my views and beliefs. It wasn’t an ecstatic, jumping for joy occasion, it just felt right, peaceful. I no longer internalised everything, I wasn’t inside my head. I was genuinely in a 5 day daze, just doing and being, taking everything in. It’s how I felt during my first trip to Madrid. I felt I was on my the way to becoming the man I wish to be and that felt peaceful, I felt fearless. I had a purpose, my purpose was truly in-line with who I am and what I believe, and it was no longer intimidating to meet experienced people nor did it concern me in the slightest what they thought of the 2 young upstarts. I was doing what I wanted with my life. And that is priceless.

P.S. The Living Creed at the top is from Jonathon Fields Good Life Project which has a lot of great, 45 minutes, deep, beyond the surface, living, learning, loving, fearing, video conversations with people doing great things with their lives. It’s really worth checking out. One can learn and relate a lot.

A Weekend In London: Business & Pleasure

London Shard Skyline at Twilight

Friday 1st of March 10:30am

We had a meeting arranged for 2pm with manufacturers to discuss the production of samples, numbers, what we needed to provide, what they could help us with, see the production line and get to know each other, so I boarded the train at Stowmarket for the 1 hour and 20 minute journey to London Liverpool Street, when my brother rang me to let me know he blew his uni interview at Leeds, his 1st choice uni. 6 years of army life and taking a non-conventional route to uni has knocked his confidence and he went in with a negative mind frame; that he wasn’t good enough for Leeds, which is ridiculous. He’s always been smart, he can write (wants to study literature) has more life experience and really, truly wants to enjoy uni life. It’s not just ‘the next logical step after school,’ it’s something he wants. He was feeling down and, against my advice of staying for the open day to see how wasn’t out of place there, he decided to come home early, possibly sulk, and probably drink.

Matt got on the train at Ipswich and we spent the next hour going through CAD designs and questions we needed answers to. We went directly to Maida Vale to drop off our bags at the flat we AirBnB‘d, ironed our shirts and headed straight out to the meeting. It could not have gone much better. We had a lot of questions answered, they can help us with a lot of the sourcing and we now have an entirely clear and focussed path and time scale from which to work towards. We looked around the production line and the future was laid out before us. We left feeling good.

We went directly to Old Street, to the google campus, for a TEDx talk which was a 90 minute video of the recent TED 2013 conference held last Wednesday. The talks were all interesting but Amanda Palmer’s really struck a chord with me. I’m not going to link it, so youtube it if you wish to see it, it’s worth 15 minutes of your time. At about 8pm we left the campus and headed, unknowingly, towards Liverpool Street (we were just following the gherkin). We had a mojito in a nice, classy 3 story club there and as we entered a girl fell down the stairs and dropped her drink. It was barely 8pm. After work Fridays in the city must be fun. So shocked, she got up before we had the balls to not feel her embarrassment and help her up. I still feel bad about that. One of the waitresses inside can only be described as every man’s dream. Every man’s, in her little black work outfit. Beautiful feminine face, olive skin, thick brunette hair and a great body. Proust said to leave pretty women for men with no imagination. He hadn’t seen this lady.

I’d been wearing a straw fedora type hat all afternoon and an attractive brunette walked over, again in a little black dress, and offered “I’ll let you be in a photo with me if you let me wear your hat in the photo.” It came across as arrogant and not charming. I didn’t like her accent either, but I obliged to the photo, she was attractive after all. Then came the killer blow “why are you wearing your hat inside?” I replied that it was easier to wear than to carry as I had a drink in one hand and my blazer in the other. I don’t know if she just didn’t know what to say, but I didn’t like how this girl spoke; both her words and way of speaking. We finished our drinks, took one more longing look at the pretty waitress and left for Leicester Square.  In leicester Square we had one drink, then another, then 4 more and headed to the penthouse which, as a bar, I love. Good drinks, great 180 degree views of the London skyline towards the city and parliament. As a club however, I do not like it. £20 entry well wasted. We bought a noodle stop, 2 toppings, and took a £20 taxi back to Maida Vale.

Saturday we slept in late and woke up to a good start-up scene conversation with Arun, our host and got to know all about his entrepreneurial background and current work as app developer and mentor for seeders and other groups and organisations. We went for a 4 o’clock breakfast of sushi and Moroccan mint green tea at Toast around Little Venice before tubing it over to Mayfair to check out some clothes around Jermyn Street and Saville Row: a man must aspire to something. Never have I seen so many Bentleys in one place.

Back at Maida Vale we stopped off at an off license to buy Coronas and Magners and I gave the homeless man outside a few pounds and wished him a goodnight and he was appreciative of it.

3 hours of music and beer/ cider later and we took the tube to Covent Garden where Matt’s escapades began. This is what I imagine must have been going through his head: “Is that a girl? Does she have a pulse?”

The first two were women in their early thirties. Not attractive and not particularly interesting to talk to. We ended up going to the a live band underground bar/club place called roadhouse. The boys behind us in the queue were kicked out – ‘mixed crowd entry only.’ Men were not allowed in without female company. We went inside after the girls, left them and headed to the bar and to Mexico; Tequila and Sol. Matt, who doesn’t like tequila, ordered 2 more shots another beer each before bouncing over to the other side where he introduced me to 2 Hungarian girls he had found in the 10 seconds it took him to cross the bar. They were both nice girls, good to talk to, quite interesting but not attractive even after the tequilas. Maybe that hadn’t kicked in yet. I motioned to leave and we moved along and met 3 attractive girls from Surrey: A pretty hat wearing blonde – who is the most similar girl to Jessa from Girls I will ever meet, just like her, only less Daddy issues I’m assuming – an upfront, confusing, but also pretty brunette and an equally pretty but too-tall-for-me brown girl. We paid for an expensive round of drinks but by this time I do not know what they were. 7 hours of beer and tequila shots later, along with shouting over the music for the last hour, or two, I’m really not sure started leaving me with a croaky voice which the brunette picked up on “haha you have a frog in your throat” and she happily pointed it out every time I croaked a little. The girls were nice, we were getting along well, I think. They asked us to dance but Matt declined. This is where his decisions in the night regarding the girls became questionable. I went to dance and the tall one took my hand and we span each other round a few times. I’m not sure how long we danced for but we went back to the bar for another round and my tequila had loosened my tongue. I told the brunette “I don’t know if I love you or hate you.” I imagine this was at the point she asked me if I like blondes. She cheered when I said not particularly, I prefer brunettes, before she then went on to jokingly ,I-tell-myself, insult me again. I could not read this girl. Matt and the hat-wearing-wearing blonde were getting on well by this point and the lights went on. I met a cute blonde at the bar on the way out, half-German half-English but raised in Germany and it turns out she was only 18 so I left that. The brunette asked if my ‘friend’ was coming with us.

We left Roadhouse and the girls wanted to go to a casino in Leicester Square so we all hopped in a taxi and went. It must have been easily 4am by this time.

We’d spent far too much the last 2 nights so I was not gambling. Matt wasn’t either, he stood by the TV watching UFC for some odd reason and I stayed speaking to the blonde and brunette as the tall one sat at a table speaking to some little asian guy. Tall girl turned and told me brunette girl had a Chinese boyfriend. Brunette said it was true, I’m not sure if they were joking or not. At 5am we left for noodles again but it was shut. We’d started to lose the girls by this point, they’d started walking ahead as we were looking for food. I was in no mood atto chase girls with an empty belly at 5am.

We went to the same taxi as the night before but this time they told Matt that they wanted £35 for the journey. I said no, you’ll take £20 or nothing. They took the £20.

We didn’t wake up until around 3pm on Sunday, but not too worse for wear. Matt was annoyed with how he left things, watching UFC and he tried searching for them in photos but neither of us could remember any of their names. You may have been wondering why I referred to them as ‘the blonde,’ ‘the brunette’ and ‘the tall one.’

We went back to Toast, this time for Camomile Citrus tea a sushi pack and Spanish toast with Serrano ham. Perfect, healthy day-after food. I’d love to set up a tea shop. Nice teas and seasonal, tasty food.

We then went to Camden to meet Simon, a video guy currently working on a Fox TV show called Man-Up and has previously worked for Ridley Scott’s production company. The quote for the video was more than we hoped but he knows his stuff and we could create something really amazing and that excites me. Will have to re-jig the finances a little maybe. Camden is a fun place. The first pub was playing metal music so we left and settled in one playing Michael Jackson song and they played 7 or 8 of his songs in a row and that makes me happy.

Sunday transport services out of London to the east are appalling. A long underground journey to Newbury Park followed by a bus to Ingatestone followed by finally an hour long train Journey and I was back. The train journey flew by as I’d paid for the ‘free for a small fee’ Greater Anglian Wifi offered on the train. Free, for a small fee, is not free at all.

As I left the train to walk home, 11pm at night, a cat came from the bushes and I was scared. But it was a nice cat. Cat didn’t attack me, cat wanted affection and I obliged and cat jumped on his hinds legs to get to my hand quicker each time and clawed at my leg to rub cat’s head on my briefcase. 2 minutes of stroking and I left, daydreaming of wanting to set up an animal shelter where all the animals we can fit in live happily, in open spaces and it’s self sustaining, no donations needed and the idea spreads and there is one of these in every county in every country.

I got home and saw Jordan, my brother. He’d had friends round the night before. The kitchen was a mess and beer bottles were left laying around. I was too tired to clear up.

I woke up this morning and my body was tired from the rest after all the walking and dancing done over the previous 3 days.

Today we spoke to our business mentor and have arranged a sit down, spoke to the start-up loans company and the loan will take 3 weeks after final application to have the money in our business account. We spoke to a supplier who is coming down to see us from Yorkshire on Monday and tomorrow we are going back to Mayfair to meet an agent of our principal supplier. Shit’s getting real and that’s exciting. DO-NOT-ASK-YOURSELF-WHAT-IF-THIS-DOESN’T-WORK-BECAUSE-IT-WILL-ONLY-DRIVE-YOU-INSANE-AND-LET-FEAR-RUIN-YOU. That’s a note to self. Sorry for shouting.

This is a marathon post after a week without writing. A splurge. Thank you if you managed to read it all.

P.s – Nathaniel received an offer for Leeds this morning. He didn’t fuck up the interview after all. What a dramatic tosser.

 

 

Marion Cotillard Naked

Man is..

Yes. The title was just a dirty trick to test traffic. Did it work?

*If feline friendliness doesn’t appeal to you, and I understand that it shan’t, skip half way down*

Another cat inspired post? I spend far too much time inside these 4 walls, I have little less for thought. Poppy, the mother cat, the oldest of them all is still alive and going strong. Her son and muscat would bully her to keep her away from the bedrooms and she’d spend most of her time at night under my bed. After graduating nearly 3 years ago I was home for 4 months in-between the July and August I spent in Spain and the move to Madrid in January ’11 to teach English. During this time Poppy became very fond of sleeping on or between my legs, meaning that in my subconscious sleep I’d wake up in the exact same position in the morning as I had left myself at night, albeit slightly stiff. This is something Poppy, or pops as I affectionately call her, hasn’t forgotten. I’m her bedtime bed and pillow. She doesn’t like to go outside much and the combination of freedom from the male felines and my constant indoor presence means she tends to follow me wherever I go. This is nothing new, for at least 6 years now she has followed the dogs on their daily walk, only to stop as we reach the busy road, only to wait for our return. Besides the cat fur on my bed and floor, the only problem is the constant meowing. I show affection and as soon as i withdraw my hand form her head she meows. I walk from my bedroom to the bathroom, back to my magic-whiteboard-lined bedroom, to the kitchen downstairs to the lounge, back upstairs and she is never far from my heels, meowing each time I stop for a second. With each stroke in hope of quieting her, all I succeed in doing is encouraging her to meow more in hope of more affection.

I end up annoyed and begin to raise my voice, “shut the fuck up cat, how many times? are you fucking kidding me?”

I don’t feel a sense of guilt. I spend a lot of time with the animals my mother has deemed worthy of filling our home with for the past 25 years. It does however take a lot of work to look after them all. It’s not so much the feeding and cleaning that bothers me, although restrictive, you can plan for that and form a routine. What bothers me, as it does in most matters of life, is affection. Having a lot of pets requires a lot of attention and care. I firmly believe it is cruel to have for one’s own purposes only to leave them alone for 8-9 hours a day. I love animals, truly. But to be pursued 24 hours a day gets a bit much. Poppy follows me and sleeps on me. Arya moans if she’s left shut inside her warm dog room with her warm dog beds and free roam of ample garden. She’s not a labrador at all. They lied to us. She’s a wolf. She loves to pull; she’d rather die of asphyxiation than stop pulling her way to the lake. She doesn’t care for food in the slightest, unlikes every other lab in the world. She’s fussy, she eats only what she likes. All she longs for is human affection. She jumps up, both paws on my shoulders (she stays there, hugging, until she falls backwards) and tries to lick my face which I half refuse, half accept. She’ll follow me upstairs, sit on my bed and, like poppy, follow me wherever I go.

I love the animals but when I’m trying to read or researching or doing something for the business, it annoying to have to worry about the animals. It’s a big responsibility to look after animals. What would mum do if I wasn’t an ambitious, live-life-on-my-own-terms, kinda guy who dreams of more rather than accept the norm?

I thought this’d be a short post but as often always happens, I’m still incapable of the masculine, mysterious, 1930’s leading man style, brief-worded approach of living and being.

I will one day myself have animals but, like baby arse wiping, not until I’m in a position to spend time with them and have them well looked after without imposing on others.

A constantly hairy house with a food-laden dining room from Ziggy, the messy African grey parrot, is not a reason to reject the idea of pets, but it is when the owner of the house and pets comes home moaning and upset of having to clean so much.

“But Matt, you spend so much time at home, why don’t you do all the cleaning?”

Fair question, keen observer.

Back to my reasoning for this post (I thought to say inspiration but, how clichéd?) Poppy, after all my annoyance of her today, came this evening, as I was skyping my friend and business partner, to place her front paws on my right thigh and rest her head on me, silently, to sleep. Now, she is curled in a tight ball on my unfolded bed covers which means that unless she moves, tonight, only me legs will be warm.

Business. Today we decided to build our own wordpress website against hiring a contractor. It’s a skill worth learning, saves money, still looks quality, and with more and more of the worlds biggest companies joining wordpress, the quality and standard will only increase. What’s more is that this way we can control the whole project and add to it when we desire with no lost time nor extra cost.

I love my new Ashwood leather wallet. It wasn’t even of the those particularly expensive wallets available, but it’s the softest leather I’ve ever felt.

For Whom The Bell Tolls is becoming one of personally favourite novels I have ever read. I’m not sure of which great man said it, but someone did, that every book is a reflection of ourselves. It’s perfectly true. Anna Karenina despite it’s length was my favourite novel. It taught me things that at the time I needed to learn about love and astounded me every single page with it’s observation of people and the human condition. I love Spain and have a fascination with the Franco era although I have little knowledge of it. This book, For Whom The Bell Tolls lays out many of the harsh truths, in fictional terms, which leave me wanting more of the truth. I cried last night reading it in one particular chapter whereby the heroes of the book commit violently unnecessary acts only for the protagonist to reflect upon them unfavourably upon hearing the story first hand. I’m certain that before the end of the novel I will have learnt a lot more of the Spanish civil war, let alone a political education of communism, fascism and otherwise.

Reading the book, I am reminded of Cuéntame Cómo Pasó. It’s a good show highlighting the daily life of the post Franco-era in Spain when la gente madrileña for the first time  were able to go to the beach, with freedom. It would be crazy for the modern day tourist in Spain to think that only 40-50 years ago even the Spanish themselves couldn’t enjoy their coastline unless they lived there.

I worry little of writing style and don’t check over myself, barring typos, but the more I begin to write the more I believe it true Hemingway’s admission that one must learn to write, one is not born with it. It has been a great revelation and relief in my life this is true. We talk of a person’s talents and gifts but personally, such talk deprives others from the belief and opportunity of fulfilling their dreams and doing something they truly care about. We live in the connection age. It’s time this changed. Although now unsuccessful and with no experience to reinforce my beliefs, I will always be honest about how it came to be that I will be a successful man and I will share what I believe with others. That is a key driving force behind my life. I do believe we must care for our own oxygen masks before those of our children, and many forget or ignore this, but I firmly believe my current beliefs will lead me to the life I wish to lead and from there, I will be in a far greater position to help those both near and far to live the life of their choosing also.

Tomorrow we have a football match against the top of the league. We are third but lost the last game and drew the 2 before. Since Christmas we haven’t played well. I myself egoistically combine the drop in form of 3 draws and 1 loss with my play in midfield and the 2 wins prior in which I scored 5 goals in 2 games in my only 2 games in attack. Asking me to play midfield and defensive allows the team to attack us. Playing me up front allows our whole team to attack. Promotion was in our hands 2 weeks ago until the team in second scored a +3 minutes of extra time equaliser. Now it’s unlikely. Barring a miracle win tomorrow against the new team in the league that has won approx. 13 of their first 15 games, we’ll remain in this league. I’ll let you know tomorrow how it goes.

Day 4 – wastefulness

Day 4 in the trenches. Yesterday we lost our feline comrade, today no casualties. Today I learnt, as with anything, that you only consider the main objects and disregard the smaller things as relatively non-significant but they soon add up.

I’m referring to product supply and manufacturing and the cost of the little things. We’re more or less around budget so it’s still ok, and I’m excited. We’re arranging a meeting in London to next week to meet to discuss sampling and manufacturing and we hope to coincide the trip with a meeting with the agent for the main material too and then spend the weekend celebrating in advance in leicester square at the penthouse bar.

We also learnt that we can mix and match colours and quantities at any quantity which is perfect as we can create any range we want now and try and test what works and what doesn’t. This supplier really is a dream come true, so far.

I wasted a lot of time today. Unproductive days, in which I’m too lazy, for me, lead to far too much introspection and the combination of the two never is never favourable in terms of self estimation. Too little effort leads to too much time spent inside ones head and that’s an illness that strikes even the greatest of men.

I dislike business for business sake but we need a purpose each and every day. It’s that which makes life enjoyable, worth living. There can be many a purpose for each person, but purpose there must be.

Milan beat Barcelona, makes for an interesting second leg. If Utd can knock out Madrid and Barcelona falter, barring surprises, Utd and Bayern will be head to head for the Champions League. I like that.

Tomorrow I’ll search for AirBnB places to spend next weekend In London and arrange the business meetings. That’s all for today.

The Worst Case Scenario

Oh to be him.

Human evolution endowed us with a tool. A very useful tool to protect us from mistakes, mistakes with consequences. A mistake that 1000s of years ago could leave you outside the tribe, vulnerable to a fatal sabre-tooth to the testicles. This tool is the Worst Case Scenario Generator. “If I do this, this awful thing might happen..So I probably shouldn’t do it.”

I probably shouldn’t write this because some of my Facebook friends might read it, think Im a stuck-up, arrogant, know-it-all prick and delete me and that cute girl I like might see that I have less FB friends than some other guys and will sleep with them instead of me. I’ll become jealous and depressed, drink myself into stupor and wake up 3 days later in bed with a heroin junkie heffalump and die years later, addicted, bitter and alone. Then I’ll never get to be with Marion Cotillard. (In the immortal words of LFO: “I think I fell for the girl on TV.”) Girl On TV

These scenarios never happen.*

So the problem is that this isn’t very useful to us anymore. Survival is no longer a problem, not for those of us fortunate to be born in the developed world. If we are poor and hungry and have nowhere to live, the state helps. In fact, I’d even bet the opposite. That more retirees die of boredom than people who die from relatively minor risk taking. Thos who take risks, who live a life of their choosing and learn along the way have more to live for and as a result live not only a much fuller life, but also a longer one. If we fall out with friends & family or colleagues, our modern day tribes, we are no longer left alone in a forest at the mercy of predators. If we dare to try something new, something untested, something that we don’t already know all the answers to, what are we really risking? Humiliation, failure & not having as much money as we’d like. So we make excuses for not doing the things we want. For not standing up and saying I’d love this, I’m going to try for it. “I’m too young, I’m not born talented, I’m unlucky, I don’t know all the answers, I’m not intelligent enough, no-one believes in me, no-one is telling me I can do it, I’m not good-looking enough, I don’t know if this is worth it.” etc.

All this stems from the Worst Case Scenario Generator; asking yourself “What if this bad thing happens?”

One of the great things about the Spanish language and something that helps me to better frame age and fear is that in Spanish, you are not an age. You are not fear. In English we say “I am X years old” and “I am afraid.” In Spanish you have an age, you have fear, but that’s not who you are. You can fail, but that doesn’t make you a failure. Failure is something that happens, not something you are.

It’s important to know that the people you admire, the successful people who have what you want, do what you  want, live how you want to live aren’t fearless, they learned to live with the fear and act anyway. They aren’t born with it, they practiced even when they were shit until they got better. They aren’t perfect, they make mistakes and learn from them and don’t dwell on them. And most importantly, they are probably aware of the worst case scenarios but choose instead to focus instead on “What if I do this and it turns out to be great, everything I ever hoped for.”

The risks we face today are far lesser than those we have ever faced at any other period in time whilst the rewards are greater than ever and open to anyone, including me, and including you. It’s a case of choosing yourself, being vulnerable to humiliation and failure and owning it. You own the good and the bad. The risk and the reward. The blame and the credit.

In todays world we get to play poker with a greater chance of success, higher rewards, and a cheaper buy in. But few people still dare to play. They’ll watch it from the outside wishing they could play but making excuses as to why they’re not.

What’s your alternative? Stay in your comfort zone where you never do anything wrong. Where you can never be criticised for wanting more or creating something that anybody can have an opinion about. The downside is that the safety zone is no longer inline with your comfort zone. Staying in line, conforming, not having ideas, not taking ownership of your life or your work no longer has the guarantee of a steady job and steady pay check anymore. There’s little living to be done in conformity. We think we’re safe and smart by standing in line and waiting to be picked and in doing so we blow our chance to matter, to make a difference and live life on our own terms.

We spend so much time consuming, and so little time creating. But it’s the creators who are truly alive. The opportunity is that everyone, anyone can create. It may start off awful, it may fail. But you persist, it gets better, and it creates connections. You feel better for it.

And that worst case scenario you dreamed up? It won’t happen. Even if it did? So what? It’s a risk worth taking. You don’t try once and give up. You create, persist, get better and enjoy the creation for it’s own sake and possibility of the life you dream of coming with it. We just have to accept that the fear of shame and failure are part of it and they aren’t going anywhere. Learn to live with it.

If you don’t have a dream. If you’re not learning anything new. If you’re not open to the risks that take you to where you want to go in life, are you really alive?

Things to be open to:

• Mistakes
• Failure
• Criticism
• Humiliation
• Risk
• Connection
• Success
• Reward
• Appreciation

Those in life that I admire and want to spend my time with are those who try and they learn. The might be afraid. They might be vulnerable. But they try. Sometimes it’s nice to sit in the back seat and be driven. But sometimes it’s nice to drive.

*They sometimes might happen.

Next post: Taking Things Personally.

Why Do You Do What You Do? Learning From Ferrán Adriá.

Ferrán Adriá’s Wired Cover

What do you want to be when you grow up? You spend so much time teaching children to ask themselves this question, asking it to yourself. Is there one right path? What are you passionate about? What is your talent? How do you find out? What were you born to do? What can you do that will change the world and make it a better place?

I think we’ve been asking ourselves the wrong question. How are you supposed to find an answer without ever having been pushed into a certain field, whilst young, that you become passionate about?

Instead, we should be asking ourselves ‘what do I want the outcome of my work to be?’

This is what I aim to get out of my work; I aspire to:

• Be creative
• Be in control of own work and life (be my own boss) and have the freedom and responsibility that comes with that.
• To produce work that connects with others, produces emotions and adds value.
• Be economically comfortable
• To enjoy my work
• To be able to morally justify my work, and its consequences on the world, to myself.

We are not born for any one purpose. I just think it may feel that way once you are on a path that feels right, that you enjoy, that fulfils you. So where does this leave me?

With many options. What will I do? That will be revealed in the coming months.

It’s so easy to find reasons not to do something:

Clothing: fashion is superficial and what matters is inside us.

Writing: too much time observing, not enough time enjoying the moment from inside the bubble and over-analysing things until you become an alcoholic, depressive who shoots themselves in the head with a shotgun.

Movies: encourage needless escapism when people could be using their time more productively.

This is the problem with asking yourself what you want to do as as opposed to why you want to do it. When you know what you want the results of your work to be (this becomes the why you do it) the negative reasons not to do something soon disappear as you know and understand your reasons. It’s much easier to be a critic looking in from the outside than a creator working on the inside, but which would you rather be?

These negative ideas aren’t my views. But they are thoughts I have had. Thoughts that have paralysed me through over-analysis whenever I’ve been close to choosing what I want to do, leaving me feeling like Sylvia Plath before her fig tree.

“I saw my life branching out before me like the green fig tree in the story. From the tip of every branch, like a fat purple fig, a wonderful future beckoned and winked. One fig was a husband and a happy home and children, and another fig was a famous poet and another fig was a brilliant professor, and another fig was Ee Gee, the amazing editor, and another fig was Europe and Africa and South America, and another fig was Constantin and Socrates and Attila and a pack of other lovers with queer names and offbeat professions, and another fig was an Olympic lady crew champion, and beyond and above these figs were many more figs I couldn’t quite make out. I saw myself sitting in the crotch of this fig tree, starving to death, just because I couldn’t make up my mind which of the figs I would choose. I wanted each and every one of them, but choosing one meant losing all the rest, and, as I sat there, unable to decide, the figs began to wrinkle and go black, and, one by one, they plopped to the ground at my feet.”

We are all, every single one of us, so very capable of any number of things. We just have to commit. Commitment to hard work and getting good at your craft or proffession. And commitment becomes so much easier when you understand why you’re doing it.

This leads me to the inspiration for this post…

Having spent this past weekend in London with the purpose of mixing business & pleasure (heavily skewed 90%-10% in favour of pleasure) I was introduced by a certain Lithuanian/American lady friend of mine to a famous American, travel-writer-chef-tv guy: Mr Anthony Bourdain.

Jamie Oliver, Anthony Bourdain & another lover of all things Spanish: Mario Batali

Despite his digs at Jamie Oliver, I like this Bourdain character; a laid back, opinionated man who enjoys a drink; unashamed of his vices and laissez-faire lifestyle with his gonzo-esque, expletive laden views.  He says & does what he wants and seems happy for it, as he travels the world eating great food, drinking a lot and probably getting paid well for the privilege. I admire that. Flicking through the 8 seasons of his TV show ‘No Reservations‘ watching the episodes of the places closest to my heart, notably France & Spain, I came across an episode of the infamous, now-defunct, El Bulli restauraunt in Cala Montjoi, Catalunya, (and at the risk of wrath) Spain, run by Ferrán Adriá.

El Bulli, Cala Montjoi

As an avid reader of Wired magazine (he was front page of the UK edition this autumn), watcher of various Food programmes in Spain and general lover of Spanish gastronomy, I was well aware of Ferrán Adriá, molecular gastronomy, El Bulli and his new project. But in this episode of  No Reservations, set in the last days of El Bulli’s existence, we’re privy not only to the superficial outer-observations of what the man does and how he does it but, more importantly and certainly more interestingly to me, why he does what he does.

Here is a man at the top, the pinnacle of his field, admired globally for his forward thinking approach to food and dining experiences, sharing his own creations with a TV host and writer on the last day of his 27 year El Bulli project, before moving onto even bigger, better things and he is as giddy as a child. He enjoys eating his own food, but more than that, key to everything he had built: he loved watching Mr Bourdain enjoy the food. He truly loved it. He went on to say during this meal, that he doesn’t hope people leave and remember the order of the courses or even exactly what they ate; he only hopes that they take with them forever the memory of the emotions and feeling of happiness the experience gave them. This was his why. Everything else was secondary to him. The food, the years of experiments and trial and error all boiled down to this most important of motives: Human connection. Creating happiness in the act of connecting with another human being.

Ferrán and his brother, Albert, grew up in a poor town called Hospitalitet just outside Barcelona. His father a painter and plasterer. He didn’t hail from a line of famous chefs, nor did he have the money to travel and train under the best chefs in the world and to set up his own restaurant. He went to work in a modest German owned restaurant in Catalunya and from there learnt to cook, and then began to travel over the border to France to learn new techniques, all the while implementing his techniques to a small number of local residents in a small restaurant in the middle of nowhere. He did things his own way. It is that exact same restaurant, in the exact same place, far from any major tourist attraction or large town of note, that decades later became the most popular, renowned restaurant in the world, being named the best restaurant in the world 5 times in 10 years before closing it’s doors in 2011.

Watching the man in action and others enthuse about the effect he has had on their lives (one great chef cried as he recalled how Ferrán had been so generous in sharing so much with aspiring chefs and had given him a soul, a purpose) led me to wonder, enviously, where such passion, dedication, drive, enthusiasm and joy for what one does comes from.

Ferrán Adriá was not born to cook. He loves what he does because he’s become good at it, and is able to express himself and, in doing so, connect and share happiness with others. Being a chef is just his modus operandi. He could have done done it in any number of ways, as we all can.

He succeeds where other forward thinkers have failed not because they lacked, skill or technique, but because they tried to move food forward in order to show how clever they were. Ferrán has always had a much deeper purpose. He moves things forward to find new ways to connect, to surprise and astonish and as a result, he’s happy to share everything he knows, because there is always more for him to learn too. He doesn’t guard his secrets through insecurity and fear of losing the magic. He generously shares and that makes him all the more magical.

As long as you know why  you do what you do, and that purpose makes you happy, everything else is secondary, whether you do it for an audience of ten, ten thousand, or ten million.

In successfully doing this, you’ll find joy in your work and you’ll have your reason for being. A reason that will stave off the negative aspects of life.  In successfully doing this, you provide a service to others and are content in yourself. And that’s enough. This is what we should aspire to. In doing our work in this way, we will touch and inspire others who come into our lives and will leave a positive impact on those around us which will in turn teach them to do the same. There are 7 billion people on earth. There aren’t 7 billion cures for cancer. To make others happy, even for a moment and to enjoy the work you do, is enough. Inspiring others to do the same will make the world a better place. Whether your audience is 10 people, 10,000 people or 10,000,000 people.

The Consequences of Industrialist Propaganda & The Creative Revolution

For clear and coherent writing, scroll to the green picture where you can read a little excerpt from Seth Godin’s new book.

This giant black & white industrial picture is bloody depressing. This needs some colour.

An irrelevantly nice photo. That’s better. Now I’m thirsty. Which is silly because it’s sea water. I read earlier that cat’s are so efficient, at salt removal I guess. that they can actually drink sea water. No idea if that’s true.

This is a post about something I’ve long known and felt, but hadn’t ever put it into words. I’d go as far to say that this topic has been the most important topic in my life in recent years and dominates what I tend to think about, my hopes, dreams and ambitions and the decisions I have made.

We are living in the beginnings of a post-industrial world where the first few people, the leaders and early adopters, the creatives, the artists and the dreamers are forging a new culture that is no longer based on the Industrialist principles we’ve been taught to believe in at a detrimental cost to our lives, careers and ultimately happiness. The internet is changing that. The flow of ideas and communication and lower barriers to entry are changing the landscape of how we earn a living and ushering in a new, more personal, individual, post-industrial age where mass produced crap is replaced by nice products by people who care, for people who care. It may not be Victorian Britain anymore with workhouses and starving, raggedy little Oliver Twists fondling our pockets for change but we are still indoctrinated by industrialists, for now. A knee jerk response to anti-industrial thinkers is often to label them socialists or ‘damn commy bastards’ in an American accent from the ’70s. You can be a capitalist without being an industrialist.

Capitalists often seem to be labelled with the same brush as those corporation-tax-dodging, government-official-bribing arseholes planning how to keep the general proletariat in line. For anyone unsure of the difference between capitalism and industrialism: google it you lazy bastard. Industrialism is the hyper state of capitalism. The extreme end where human’s are kept in line , made to comply, with the dangling carrot and the extra special carrot that will make their numb existence of a boring job they hate, always seeming just around the corner. Where the childish enthusiasm, curiosity  and creativity are stripped from you so you can sacrifice your life and consider yourself so very wise for never taking a risk in your life. Where the risk takers are ridiculed for their failures and those who do break through the glass ceiling and see how the world works are seen as magicians who must have been born with something special. “Their daddy must have been rich.” “Everything was handed to them on a plate.” “They’re lucky.” “They’re ruthless.” Or simply..”they’re an artist, that’s why they’re crazy.” The problem with this is, we teach our kids to act the same and live the same unfulfilling existence full of excuses and rationalisations over experiences and adventures. And the kids grow up to feel guilty for wanting something else, something more. Who are they to say their parent’s lives aren’t good enough for them?

This is why the rich get richer.. whilst the poor and middle classes always struggle. They leverage people and money. They use those who wait in line, are told what to do and how to do it in exchange for a pay check and with the illusion of security and a safe life. Until enough people realise that this life isn’t the only option, that it’s ok to dare for me, will this ever change. And it is changing. As job security goes down, debt goes up, pensions are less secure, people are being forced into new ways of thinking about how they earn their living. What kept people in line before was the lack of other options, the job security and a decent wage with a solid pension at the end of it, is now diminishing. The dangling carrot is a lot further off and much smaller. It’s rotten. Donkey no likey the rotten carrot. The only thing stopping people in this age of connection and information is fear. This fear is the hangover from the industrial age.

In the context of education, the (negative) effect of industrial thinking is brilliantly explained in Ken Robinson‘s engaging, insightful, truthful TED talk, Do schools kill creativity? Which you can watch by clicking the link on Ken’s name. It’s really worth taking the time to watch it if you have any interest in the area or have kids of education age yourself.

This is a passage from Seth Godin’s great new book ‘The Icarus Deception.’ He can explain it more coherently than I can and if any of this lights a spark in you, buy the book.

“Capitalism was refined and condensed and iterated until it became a monster. The industrialist not only wants to make ever more productive trades, driving quality up and costs down, but insists on changing two things that have never been changed at a mammoth, world wide scale before.

Change the Culture. The industrialist is big enough and powerful enough and profitable enough that he can act like royalty. He doesn’t issue decrees by royal fiat; he does it with advertising and lobbying and by offering a huge carrot to anyone who complies.

Thanks to industrialists and the bountiful profits, our definition of success was changed. The very way we spent our time and resources was transformed by mass advertising, mass schooling and mass production.

The industrialist lobbied to build his plant on the river and then filled it with effluent. He opened doors to repetitive jobs and the numbing hierarchy of middle management. He demanded a seat at every table –a voice in how we ran our government, our schools, our science, and our spiritual organisations. But it was all okay, because the productivity he created made us relatively wealthy, fed our children, and delivered medical care as well. Industrialism brought hospitals and CD players and the Egg mcMuffin. What could be bad about that?

The change in culture  went further than most expected. Another change followed…

Change our dreams. The overwhelming impact of more than a century of cultural indoctrination can’t be overstated. We have embraced industrial propaganda with such enthusiasm that we have changed the very nature of our dreams.

Being a human today means more wealth, better health, and the leverage to influence others. But it is also a fundamentally different existence from the one we had for millennia before this.

The industrialist needs you to dream about security and the benefits of compliance. The industrialist works to sell you on a cycle of consumption (which requires more compliance). And the industrialist benefits from our dream of moving ip the corporate ladder, his ladder.

Capitalism is driven by failure, the failure of new ideas to catch on or the failure of the organisation that fails when it is beaten by new competition. Industrialisation is about eliminating the risk of failure, about maintaining the status quo and about cementing power. “too big to fail” is the goal of every industrialist, but “too big to fail” means that the capitalism is no longer functioning.”

We’re not here to live life apathetically. no-one wants that. Where everything and everyone and every thought is standardised. Break the cycle and dare to take control, and personal responsibility for your dreams. Dare to fail, to look a fool. It’s what the best people do; those who are really alive, with a glint in their eyes and a rocket up their arse. Be creative. Don’t overcomplicate it, and don’t make excuses. Dylan got it right:

“A man can consider himself a success when he wakes up in the morning, goes to bed at night and in between did exactly what he wanted.”

It’s as simple as that. As always, the doing is the hard part, but that’s where the adventure lies.

Feel free to leave a comment if you were able to suffer through the whole post. Agree, disagree. Love, hate.

Moving to Barcelona

This one has come out of nowhere. The whole reason behind living at home in England was to pay off my student overdraft and to save a little money, take a start up business loan and start my own company. It’s been almost a year in the making and as it came to apply for the loan, my passport went missing. (I’m 90% sure it was in the coat my brother decided to wear. I never saw it again). So that delayed the process, but never mind. I applied for a new passport so it would only set me back 3 or 4 weeks in total. However, the day it arrived, I was away working with my uncle and our wonderful one year old crazy wolf dog, Arya, managed to get under or over the gate, into the main part of the house and for the first time in her short life, open the mail. Not all the mail. No, no. Not the bills. Not my brothers early birthday cards. one piece of mail. My piece. On the door mat was left a passport largely intact minus two pages. The two main pages with my photo and the numbers. What are the chances? I don’t know.

In the 6 weeks between being ready to apply for the loan and being in the process of applying for yet another passport (my 4th in 18 months..) my business partner & friend decided to delay starting a business in order to travel a little.

Do I believe in signs? Coincidences? I don’t know. Sometimes amazing things happen that at the time can seem awful and unbelievable but always lead you somewhere new. And I’ve never regretted where they have taken me.

I want to do what I love and make a business out of it. Maybe it wasn’t the time. Me losing my 2 passports at the crunch time has led me to here, to now. And now is the sudden plan to go and live and work in Barcelona and start a business from there after summer; minus my current debt and using savings from working rather than a start-up business loan.

I don’t know what I expect from Barcelona. I love the mediterranean. I want to use not lose my Spanish and to live in a great city. I want to live whilst I build a business and living at home with my mum doing nothing just isn’t living. I don’t feel alive. I need to work and earn money and do things and start a small business on the side in my spare time rather than put all my eggs into that one basket and potentially be left in debt and then really be in a difficult situation.

So I’m applying for English teaching jobs and I’ll try to create a good schedule, earn my money, get settled, live a little and then start a business. Once I get a decent job nailed down, I’ll jump on a plane with my one way ticket and go. How long for? I don’t know. And I don’t care. It feels right and time will tell if it is or not. If I feel otherwise, then I’ll know it’s time for a new project.

I love living my the sea. It’s the one thing Madrid really misses. I love Madrid. The city and real. I really don’t like Barça. I might have to keep my mouth shut during the games.

Visca Catalunya. That sounds a little funny. Madrid was my first love. I might grow to love Barcelona. Either way. I’ll be sure to learn a lot and it’ll sure as hell beat the crap out of wasting my life away living here.

Reasons FOR living in Barcelona

1. The sea
2. Earn a good hourly wage with a flexible schedule
3. City living is great
4. Seafood
5. Whilst writing this I forgot I was boiling water and it all evaporated and I just ruined the pan so Mum will want to kill me.
6. Not being a 24 (25 in a few weeks) year old whose sole role in life is cooking his brother dinner and walking the dogs.
7. The weather
8. I prefer Spanish/ Catalan girls
9. Sense of purpose and being responsible for myself
10. Be awesome to live with friends
11. Pay off my student overdraft whilst living and working in a great place without doing a job I hate.
12. Build a business with my own money around my flexible working hours (20 hours a week)
13. Save my mum money
14. Start business with a partner
15. Far more interesting and makes for a better life story than living at home

Reasons AGAINST living in Barcelona

1. No costs or responsibility living here
2. Can give 100% focus on business building with no other concerns
3. Doing a soul destroying job I could pay off my overdraft quicker
4. I think Arya would be really sad if I left ’cause she’s crazy and loves humans and she annoys everyone else too much for them to spend enough time with her.
5. Mum would have to start cooking, feeding and walking the dogs again on top of her 60+ hour a week job.
6. Easier to start a business and get access to finance here than there
7. Could start a business almost immediately rather than wait 7-8 months longer.
8. Start a business alone with higher risk and more debt.
9. Being away from friends & family again.

I’m desperate to start a business asap. But the pros of moving completely outweigh the cons.  It may be delaying the dream for 7 or 8 months more. But those months will be a hell of a lot of fun. And you never regret the times you spend having fun.

What is a life without passion?

Passionately Curious

Passion is one of those buzzwords. A word whose use is so ubiquitous that we become desensitised to it and it loses it’s power and meaning. It’s ironic then, when you consider what passion really means: “A strong, barely controllable emotion.”

Why does this really matter? It’s often said that successful people follow their passion. To be happy we should follow our passions and the rest will fall into place. In the rush to fill our lives with passion. With feeling and emotion, it seems  to me that we haven’t become any more passionate about anything. Instead, what we have done is lowered what it means to be passionate. We’ve confused hobbies for passions. “Well, I like to watch movies, so I guess you could say I’m passionate about cinema.”

There’s no guessing when it comes to passion. You are either passionate or you’re not. If you have to think about it for more than a second, chances are you’re not.

We are at our most alive when we are passionate. What truly matters to us comes to the fore and we become a part of something bigger than ourselves. We lose ourselves and our inhibitions in the best way possible. We feel a true purpose that transcends rational thought and logic. We believe in something with all that we are.

From the outside, the passionate few can often seem crazy. “Why the hell do you care so much about the amazonian two-willied toad?”

The answer doesn’t need justification. It can be justified. But those who don’t understand don’t care. They will only hear what they want to hear and judge you anyway. Find your passion. It might not be easy. Many might think you a fool. Do it anyway. It’ll be worth it. Because that’s the thing about passion. When you have it, you don’t care what others think about it. it transcends personal thoughts and inhibitions. You have a purpose, and it’s bigger than yourself. Those who don’t have a passion won’t understand it. But somewhere inside them they’ll respect and envy you. For being a part of something. For feeling something and fighting. For being alive.

Passion is the only real antidote to apathy. And apathy is the biggest waste of time. You don’t regret passion. You sure do regret the times you felt nothing. It’s a horrible state to be in. Yet I think far too many of us build up walls to protect our modern comforts and in doing so, all we really gain from it is exactly that: apathy. The bored housewife syndrome.

How do you find your passion?

Well it doesn’t come and hit you on the head. Curiosity. Experimentation. It may start with an idea. A spark you feel when you see, hear or read something. Can you be passionate about something without ever doing it? Can you be passionate about film without being a film maker? or having some type of role in the film making process? I don’t think so.

We all probably have a number of ideas about things we’d like to do, or that might be fun to do. If you never do them, you’ll never be passionate about them. To get by, you’ll take a job you don’t even enjoy in the slightest and leave your ideas and hopes and dreams of being a passionate person for ‘one day.’ And wake up at 40 wondering where the time went and why you feel so empty and alone.

I don’t believe in one true soul mate. In the same way, I don’t believe any of us are truly born for one purpose, nor are we limited to one passion. We are capable of numerous great things. Which one should we choose? How do you find out? Without giving it a go, I don’t think you ever can find out. It’s why most passionate people find their passion as a child. When you do what you do for the love of doing it and it grows into a passion. The problem with adults is that we forget to be children. We forget to do things just for the fun of it. We always look first for the empirical reward. A hobby might not be a passion. But then again, it just may well be.

With passion you’ll have the ultimate highs and the ultimate lows. And that sure as hell beats the crap out of apathy.

So be curious and try new things. You just don’t know where they might lead you. And isn’t that a little exciting?

Waiting for perfection: 5 reasons why doing something beats doing nothing.

The ones for me are the mad ones.

I want to do everything. Or at the very least there are a million and one things that I really want to do: To travel freely. To be a benefit to others. To be creative. To earn so much money that I can spend the night on a chartered yacht drinking with my friends, without them paying a single penny, and to wake up in the morning better off than before the night started. To be remembered and respected. I want what I do to be unique, groundbreaking and for it have a genuinely positive impact on the lives of others. I want to jump from 20,000 feet, with a snowboard attached to my feet, land on a mountain with a piste that goes all the way to sea level and land in a clear blue sea and sun bathe, floating with cocktails delivered to me by bikini clad waitresses. I want to meet Marion Cotillard and steal her away from her bastard husband*. I want my own private slice of paradise where I can hang out with my wang out. I want all of this, and I’d really like it now. I’d be happy to wait until tomorrow I guess, but really I’d love it now. Instant success. Also, I want this to be achievable without having to risk a lot of money. Actually. I want no risk. And to own 100% of what I do. Complete control.

I want to be able to combine them all into one nice neat ball. One project. One passion that satisfies my desire to do everything. That fulfills me, but leaves me enough time to do fun things. I can start said project. Let’s call it project: bullshit.

Project: bullshit will change the world for the better. Not just my world. But THE world. The one where other people exist and I’m not the centre of it.

It’s taken me 1 year to this point of planning to create project: bullshit. A project that has been chopped and changed more times that I care to imagine. There was always something missing. Some reason why it wouldn’t work.

Where has this got me? A year of planning, dreaming and scheming and we’re back to square one. With the original idea. A simple idea. A ‘me too’ idea.

I’m fed up of waiting. In this year we could have already created something and be on the way to at least reaching a number of those self-centered ‘I wants.’ And we’d have learnt a lot along the way.

Spending your time dreaming and planning is safe. You can’t fail if you never try at anything. Even if the perfect project: bullshit existed, I’m sure if you only looked at the negatives you could still find reasons why it’s not good enough or why it won’t work.

Starting is the hardest part and it’s a case of stop over-analysing and doing something to MAKE IT WORK.

Taking charge of your life, accepting personal responsibility means that even if it doesn’t lead to everything you want, you are still the master of your own universe and can change and improves things, start new projects until you do get what you want. Until you do get to that point, it’s better to enjoy having something that is your own, that you work your arse off for than to have nothing. And the truth is, until you start, you’ll never really know how you feel about it. it’s better to do something and be wrong than to never try at all.

If whilst on your mission you still feel something is missing, well, just remember that work is only one piece of the puzzle. Creating your own life gives you the freedom to fill those holes left over with hobbies.

Feel guilty about owning a successful business that does little to help others? Volunteer to help a charity.

Want to be creative but your job doesn’t do it for you? Write, draw, take a dance class.

The opportunities we have our endless. There has never been a better time to be alive. (Thank you Midnight in Paris for helping me realise that – Marion Cotillard is a real heartbreaker in that)

Oh yes. This was meant to be a ‘5 reasons’ list. Lists are for organised people. A little organisation might do me good.

5 reasons why doing something, anything, is better than doing nothing. 

You learn nothing whilst sitting on your backside – besides how much better it is to not be sitting on your backside. You’ll never be great if you waste time. Do you want to waste a second more of your time building a life you don’t love? I love this quote and it applies to everything. “It’s none of their business that you have to learn how to write. Let them think you were born that way.”  – Ernest Hemingway

You may just stumble upon what you really do want to do, or at the least tick another thing off the list of things you don’t want. You never know where it may lead. Creating your own project, having the power and control to do it yourself means you can grow it, change it, adapt it to your existing & changing needs.

It gives you purpose, a reason to get out of bed in the morning and go to bed at night. This cannot be undervalued. It is a virtuous cycle. The more you work at something, the better you get, the more you enjoy it, the more passionate you become. Doing so will have a positive impact on every other area of your life too.

Confidence & belief. Key to any bold lifestyle choice. Doing something, no matter how small can give you the self belief and confidence to dare for more. Great people weren’t born great. They had to learn to be great. And that’s a long journey.

Getting over your fears. Maybe what you try will fail. Maybe some people will hate it. By finally doing something, you may well learn that fear and the opinions of others aren’t at all as bad as you had thought. And who knows. Perhaps some people will actually love what you do and you’ll find supporters you never knew you had. Once you fall the first time and get back up, it’s no longer so scary to risk falling a second time. Changing your attitude to fears is huge. But that’s a whole post for another time.

Matt

*Guillaume Canet probably isn’t an actual bastard. He might be. You never know. Best not to judge a bastard before you ever meet him.