It’s been a tough week so far, I won’t lie.
I think I picked up a bug over the weekend, and once again the old bod is not firing at 100%. The shivers are not ideal when the extended Cape Town winter has made one more comeback, business pressures are mounting and parenting… well, those people that told us things get easier as they get older, I think they had a different lived experience.
So, it’s not a long story this week. My creative juices are tapped out, I could copy paste in an excerpt from the new book, but it feels like a cop out because it doesn’t reflect what I’m feeling.
What I am feeling, is the gap between knowing and doing.
What was Derek Sivers’s great line? “If knowing was doing we’d all be billionaires with six packs.”
As a leader, as a husband, as a father, as a person who wants to be my best self every single day, I have loads of tactics and strategies. However, knowing what to do and doing it sometimes disconnects, and this week feels like one of those weeks.
I try to remind myself of Jim Collins’s story of the Stockdale Paradox, which is a technique to navigate challenging and ambiguous times by combining the ability to confront the brutal facts of your current reality, even as you maintain unwavering faith that you will prevail in the end, no matter how distant that is. PERSISTING THROUGH PAIN AND UNCERTAINTY.
It's a cornerstone of our current run of sporting successes. It’s a theme that feels very much South African, even if it was coined in the US.
And it remains hard. But then, most things worth doing are hard right?
Doesn’t change the fact that I’d like the rain to stop now. And not just the actual rain, if you get my drift.
So, you know what I’m going to do? Just accept that I’m having a down moment, have it, really lean into it, then when I’m done, pick myself up, dust myself off, and push through. Wishing the rain away isn’t a strategy. Grabbing your rain jacket on the way out, that should have better results.
Stephen Covey calls it the inside-out approach. Let your principles guide your behaviours, not external outputs. The strength of those principles can and should be tested, but if you know what they are and are clear on boundaries, it must help a little. If you force yourself to smile, you’ll eventually feel happier.
I get it. And let’s all keep on trucking… we know summer is coming, just push a little more…
PG’s Pro Tip:
Know thyself, I reckon. If I examine my feelings, I have let myself down through a lack of planning. When I am prepared, when I have aligned, a lot of the things that derail me are negated. And it’s not something I can abdicate, it’s a discipline that stays with me. So, fail to plan properly, and you…
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