Happiness, Life, People, Psychology

What I’d spend a $billion on…

There is so much that is shocking about this book; I almost can’t begin…

West Coast life is a million miles from South-East London; but there’s something in the heady mix of crazy diets, dotcom startups and whopping egos which makes Tools of Titans a veritable page turner… albeit I have it on Kindle so no one can see I’m reading it!

In fairness, author Tim Ferriss says right up the front that not all of it is for everyone. But I have to say I’ve picked up five or six things from the lists, watchwords and obsessions of the featured folk which are actually rather transformational.

Five rep weights, Kettlebells, cracking down on carbs, single ‘golden’ rules and (in an otherwise toxic chapter featuring a right old narcissist) a moment of clarity on the thing I’d spend a $billion on – if someone gave me $1bn to change the world… I’d promote Learned Optimism à la Martin Seligman.

Optimism – and crucially the fact you can indeed ‘learn’ it – is perhaps the single most important thing I’ve discovered in my adult life. Shame I didn’t find that out until just under two years ago!

Everything improves with optimism. Well worth remembering given the state of the world in 2017.

So here’s to 2018; a shiny new optimistic year. And thanks to Tim Ferriss for reminding me.

Life, Work

The Lancaster

In years gone by I used to liken one of my old colleagues to a WWII Lancaster bomber.

You could always rely on her to slowly but surely drone towards the required organisational target; drop her bombs all over it, and chug back over the North Sea – usually with a rueful smile, half a wing blown off and one of her engines misfiring.

In that era I fancied myself more the de Havilland Mosquito: fast, accurate – but lightly armoured; the ideal pathfinder.

Now I realise it’s my turn to be the Lancaster pilot.

Thankless (and at times seemingly pointless) long lonely missions; flying through the dark; constant flak and regular strafing; searchlights hunting you down; uneven inexperienced crews – no sooner back from one mission before back in the cockpit again toward another improbable and impregnable target.

But the penny dropped the other week; this is what my kind of job now is. A big operational job is much more Bomber Command than fast reconnaissance and precision bombing with an expert co-pilot.

Resilience, calm under fire, keeping a crew intact and in the sky; and taking it one day at a time are the thing. The Lancaster wasn’t the prettiest machine, but it got the job done.

This footage I found – from the cockpit radio of a Lancaster on two raids in 1943 – is a sobering listen. There’s plenty of tension at 20,000 feet, but spare a thought for the destruction down below.

Makes my modest troubles seem small beer indeed; it took something special to fly a Lancaster.

Ethics, Life, People, Work

Exocets

I texted the person I’m slowly turning into late last night:

“Phew wee – a really stretching week… grievances, gross misconduct, controversial and risky things to land before Xmas and much change being imposed.”

“I suspect like you at a similar stage – I am strangely both deeply affected and also somewhat distant in my reaction to all this – it matters and it affects me; but much of it is not my doing and not in my gift to change.”

“A dawning of a more realistic sense of personal responsibility and the limits thereof?”

Maybe so.

I also have fought off the desire to compete, undermine and fight back in the face of many provocations these last weeks. And this is a lesson well learned…

As I also admitted to my pal:

“One of the bigger lessons of recent years was that firing two Exocets into an adversary’s hull damaged me below the waterline more surely than it did them.”

It has been hard; but I’ve largely managed to let go of a week of days packed without pause with relentless interpersonal aggro.

As I sit here listening to happy tunes in the school carpark (having chosen to save my eldest from a cold walk home from dancing) I have refound my equilibrium, equanimity – and the all important inner peace.

It gets the blood up; but Exocets just aren’t worth firing.

Life, Music, Psychology

Happy Tracks

Sitting in the car singing along, I’m reminded to be eternally grateful for one of Chris Croft’s top tips from the Big Book of Happiness: get yourself a playlist of ‘Happy Tracks’.

Quite simply these are pieces of music which always make you happy. I’ve been building and editing mine for a year; and it’s the gift that keeps on giving.

From Sinatra to Leadbelly, Beyoncé to Chumbawumba, Finlandia to Bach; I’ve got every genre. Some came from the radio, some from Spotify – one I was reminded of over a supermarket tannoy…

But wherever I am: standing crushed by the stairs on a fully loaded bus, schlepping across a windswept Waterloo Bridge or bowling along on a Santander bike; ‘Happy Tracks’ reliably puts me on top of the world.

Happy days.

Dogs, Happiness, Life

Dog tired

He’s a lovely little fella, but phew! As predicted; a puppy is a whole lot of work.

Still it’s a joyful business. And despite finding myself breathing mist: in a bobble hat, an old coat and a pair of crocs; chucking a stuffed squeaky toy for him at 6am this morning (for the tenth day running) it’s nice to have a dog about the house.

Life’s all about choices in the end. The house is a tip; the brief idealistic moment (after we moved two houses) of thinking we might get the place sorted and tidy is almost forgotten.

But a tidy house and a tidy life is a shrinking life – a puppy creates mess and disorder. That’s no bad thing.

A bit more sleep wouldn’t go amiss though!