Archives: Challenges

Ever since my transplant, I’ve been telling myself I wanted to take on some major physical challenges, like climbing the 3 Peaks and running a marathon.

The 3 Peaks, as blog readers will know, has now been cancelled twice due to my own poor health, but running a marathon has never really crept onto my radar in any serious way.

At Hope and Abby’s Battlefront event on Saturday, I met a load of other transplant recipients, one of whom immediately challenged me to the Brentwood Half Marathon in March. Without really thinking, I agreed.

Not only that, but the CF Trust have places on the Edinburgh Marathon on May 29th, just 4 days after my 30th birthday. Seems serendipitous to me.

I’ve now committed myself to the mammoth task of learning how to run, getting fit enough to do it and staying motivated enough to not be daunted by the 26.2 miles ahead of me on the start line.

Sometimes all it takes is the smallest of pushes to drive us forward, to take that first small step towards a goal and start building the momentum we need to get us there.

What can you do today to step towards your ultimate goal?

I don’t often go for personal appeals on here, but the CF Trust‘s recent funding crisis has lead me to write something – to do anything – to help in any way I can.

For years the CF Trust have been pioneering key work in the field of gene therapy and have successfully completed the first stages of a clinical trial. However, due to the current climate and all kinds of funding being slashed, they now nned to find £6million before the end of October.

They’re doing amazingly well, but they need to demonstrate the support of the wider CF community to leverage the private donations from the business community they have lined up.

While crowdfunding for your arts projects are all the rage just now, I implore you to dig into you pockets as deeply as you can and donate anything you can to make these trials happen.

I am hugely grateful for the life I have lead and I can honestly say I wouldn’t change any of it; to change my past would change who I am today.  But in the same breath, I would never wish the things I’ve been through on anyone.

That’s why the work of the CF Trust is so important. Babies being born with CF today face a far better prognosis that I did in 1982 and if the gene therapy work comes off, there will be no need for people with CF to ever face some of the stark and scary issues and choices that were placed in front of me.

You’ll get no perks, no T-shirts, badges, producer credits or invites to the premiere. All you will get is the satisfaction in knowing that you’ve helped a great number of people and families to have a better life and a better future.

If that’s not enough, I don’t expect you to donate – I certainly don’t want to make you. But if it’s a choice between an indie blockbuster looking for finishing fund or a chance to change the world, it’s going to be that latter for me every time.

Click here to donate now, whatever you can give gets us one step closer.

Last week’s post about whether mattering really matters or not stirred up a really interesting debate, both on here and also on my friend Chris Jones’ blog after he posted his thoughts in response.

One of my Twitter buddies also lead me down a really interesting thought pattern with his comment. He said

An audience of one is better than none

I totally agree with his point – at least in relation to filmmaking – but I also suggested that I sometimes count myself as an audience of one for my work.

As I’ve reflected over the weekend, it’s occurred to me that using myself is something of a cop out.

I’ve no problem with creating things in a vacuum and keeping them hidden from view – I like having space to experiment with filmmaking, writing, photography or any other artform I choose to challenge myself with – but it’s a lazy way out to say I’ve nade it for an audience of just myself.

One’s own self doesn’t not an audience make, and if I truly wanted to show things to an audience, I need to open myself up to that through wider dissemination of my work and not keeping it all safely tucked away.

I challenge myself to create more and share more with those around me, whether they be small, personal, family audiences, or a wider community of people in both my real and virtual lives.

Or, by contrast, to be happy creating in a vacuum just for me, but without trying to convince myself that it is anything but fear that’s holding me back from sharing it more widely.

How do you share your art? And how have you enabled yourself to open up to the big, scary world of feedback and criticism?

When I used to work as a workshop assistant and, later, as part of several different Youth Theatre companies around my home town, I remember thinking that adults really ought to spend more time learning from children.

The amazing thing about children is the way they prioritise their lives. To a four-year-old child the thing that matters more than anything else in the world is whatever they happen to be doing at any given moment.

Their play isn’t hampered by when they have to stop and go home. The tears that come when told they have to leave come and go in a matter of minutes. The time they spend with a parent is all-encompassing, as is the time they spend with their friends, siblings and others.

We all work busily on different ways to prioristise our days, to keep ahead of the curve and up-to-date on everything that’s going on around us, but maybe we should be more like children.

Instead of constantly worrying about what’s coming next, perhaps we should put more effort into being truly mindful of one thing at a time.

Try it yourself, see how much richer it makes your life and work.

Stop writing an email with Twitter open.

Stop pausing while you review documents to read the updates in your Facebook feed.

Stop thinking about what you need to do next or when you have to be up in the morning while you’re relaxing and cuddling on the sofa with your loved one(s).

Be present, be focussed and be four years old again. It’s remarkable when you make the effort.

This is Jo. She was a very close friend of mine.

She was waiting for a double-lung transplant, just like me.

She died in November 2009.

She is missed.

Sign the Organ Donor Register.

This week I have been engaged in numerous discussions of the organ donation system in the UK, mostly spurred by my appearance on Channel 4’s 4Thought.tv strand which asked, “Should Organ Donation Be Compulsory”.

Over the week, the show has featured a variety of views both for and against presumed consent and organ donation as a whole. One of these was Derek House, a Jehovah’s Witness who believes that all organ donation is fundamentally wrong.

While his views raised ire among the transplant community, it struck me that Mr House isn’t the man we need to be targeting. His religious beliefs preclude him from supporting organ donation: we’re not going to change that.

If we want to see the number of organ donors in this country increase, we need to tackle the vast disparity between the 75% of people who say they would be willing to donate their organs ((the oft-quoted figure of 90% is, infact, the people who support the idea of organ donation; 15% of people support the idea, but say they wouldn’t donate their organs)) and the 26% who have signed the organ donor register. Those people don’t need convincing of the merits, they just need to be drawn out of their apathy.

Focusing our energies on a battle we’re already winning seems like a better use of resources than fighting one we will inevitably lose.

The same goes for any kind of battle you may be facing as an artist or entrepreneur: look at the fights you face and work out which ones are worth your energy.

Picking your battles is not the same as taking the path of least resistance. It’s about using your focus and energies on strategies and tactics that will make a difference, not banging your head against a brick wall.

In yesterday’s post I talked about how mistakes are now open for public consumption thanks to the permanence of the internet.

What does that mean for innovation and leadership?

It means you have to fail bigger. Fail better. Fail publicly.

Too many people see the increased visibility of failure as a reason to go all out to avoid cock-ups.

Au contraire. The bigger, the more significant, the more noticed the fail, the quicker, the stronger, the more good-humoured the recovery, the deeper, the longer, the more profound the admiration will be.

Set an example. Tell the world it’s OK to fail before you get things right.

Following on from yesterday’s post about faking it and how your inner confidence shines out through your actions, today’s post continues on the theme of perception.

I’ve just watched this video from Gary Vaynerchuk ((no, I didn’t really know who he was either until turned onto his stuff by Adam Baker)) and it’s hard to do so without being inspired:

This is a guy who knows how he’s perceived, knows what people expect from him when they first encounter him, but flies in the face of it with wit and confidence.

Knowing how people see you is key to finding your personal – or corporate – brand. I’ve written before about the importance of recognising your place in the market to help drive your growth, but it’s just as important to know not just where you see yourself, but where others see you, too.

Do you really “gotta fake it ’til you make it”?

The truth is, when you put on the façade of confidence to give yourself a boost, you’re not actually faking it at all – you’re accessing your inner confidence and bringing it to the front.

Everyone has confidence. Each of us have something in our lives – even if it’s just one, tiny thing – that we know in our heart of hearts we’re good at. Something that gives us that often-elusive state of flow whenever we are engaged in it.

The process of faking it is, in fact, a process of accessing our inner confidence through physical and emotional triggers that put our minds and bodies into the feeling of that flow state.

The next time you’re finding yourself in a situation where you’re trying to posture yourself into a major confidence boost, remember: you are not faking it, you’re simply accessing and living your inner confidence. Where that confidence takes you is entirely up to you.

Thanks to the great Chris Richards for helping me realise all of this.

You’ll remember that my Lent resolution this year to give up fear, inspired by my Twitter-buddy Jeanne who consistently inspires people with her utter lack of fear and her stubborn unwillingness to give in to it at any point.

Giving up on fear is at once much, much harder than you may first think and much, much easier, too.

–The Easy–

It’s easy to ‘say’ you’re giving up fear. It’s definitely a plus to be able to get the words out and feel emboldened by the commitment you’ve just made.

It’s easy to stop yourself fearing the everyday kind of things that used to bug you – it’s a conscious choice whether you’re going to allow yourself to worry about how you pay the bills or if your energy is better focused on how to generate the income that’s going to cover them. A fact that’s especially true for freelancers like me without a steady paycheque ((or paycheck for our American cousins)).

It’s easy to take advantage of the initial freedom that giving up fear brings you. It’s easy to float yourself away from the day-to-day issues and focus on your fear-free living–for the first week or so.

–The Hard–

It’s hard to genuinely beat your brain into submission when it tries to stir the old fear about those everyday items you shrugged off in the euphoria of your first few days or weeks. The rumbling in your subconscious feels like it’s never going to go away.

It’s hard to tackle the “new-found” fears that crop up without your being able to plan for them. You land a new job and you’re suddenly worried about being “the new guy”. How will you fit in, will you get on with your co-workers, will you be good at your job? All these things that life throws at us are wont to prompt a significant rise in our fear levels that isn’t easy to ignore.

It’s hard knowing that this new way of life is forever. There’s really no point in giving up fear for a few weeks or a month ((or 40 days)) – it’s a lifetime commitment. And that is scary.

–But, But, But–

When you’re successful, when you manage to rise above your fear, to master it, control it and stop it from being the boss of you, it becomes very, very difficult to revert back to your old ways. The idea of being scared becomes almost laughable when you think of your old fear of making that phone call, or attending that networking event on your tod or of introducing yourself to the hottie across the room who’s been making eyes at you all night.

When you truly commit to stepping up to the plate and facing Fear’s most crippling fastball, you can do so in the knowledge that you’ll swing for it, you’ll hit it and you’ll be running for home before you can say “I’m scared of getting my kit dirty”.