Archives: oli lewington

Luck runs out.

In 2007, when I was struggling not just to enjoy but to hold on to life, I inherited what turned out to be a lucky portable oxygen concentrator from my good friend Emily, who had inherited it in turn from another friend.

Shortly after she received her1, Emily got her transplant2 and passed her on to me.

Six months after I adopted Claire, I was blessed with my second chance at life.

In deference to the lives she had touched and the continuing legacy of the lucky little concentrator, I in turn passed her on to my friend Sam.

The thing about luck is, it runs out. As I was celebrating my 26th birthday – a birthday very few, if any, of my family believed I would reach – Sam was slipping away and died shortly afterwards.

We can not – and should not – need to rely on luck to ensure people receive the transplants that will save and transform their lives. Luck should never come into it.

Please sign the organ donor register.

1. the concentrator had been named Claire [↩]
2. double lungs, same as me [↩]

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 organs1 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.

1. 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 [↩]

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 Vaynerchuk1 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.

1. no, I didn’t really know who he was either until turned onto his stuff by Adam Baker [↩]

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.

Although yesterday didn’t see a new post on the blog here from the #Trust30 challenge, I’m still creating. I spent the day working on plans to migrate and upgrade some of the websites I own and run, including this very blog, which the eagle-eyed among you will have noticed isn’t where it used to be.

I’ve also been working on a page to collate everything I do and advertise myself to the widest possible audience. The page should be live in the next couple of days, but here’s a sneaky few peaks:

One of the interesting things about taking on a challenge like #Trust30 is the imperative to create.

Normally, we create out of a desire, out of inspiration that comes in many different forms, whether it be business ideas, marketing concepts or works of art.  By being part of a month-long initiative to create something every day, the onus is switched from inspiration to perspiration – we are forced to work to conjure something to post or begin.

Of course, creation-to-order is nothing new – media and ad agencies1 develop fresh, innovative ideas every day, under pressures from clients only too happy to take their business elsewhere if they’re are unimpressed.

So can creativity be forced? Is it possible to access the hidden banks of ideas in our heads to keep the creativity waterfall flowing, or are the people who do it day-in, day-out simply overwhelmingly talented and in touch with their creative hemisphere in their heads?

Truly creative people are able to create from nothing in an instant. It may not be a polished, finished product or idea, but their brains work in such a way as to always be able to supply something. But I also believe that there’s no such thing as a “non-creative” – everyone is capable of it, one just needs to learn how to harness the creative muscle and make it work for you like anything else.

1. as TinyButMighty is evolving into [↩]

Yesterday I pledged myself to taking part in the Domino Project, Ralph Waldo Emerson-inspired #Trust30 project to create something new everyday.

As I headed to bed this evening, it occurred to me that I hadn’t written anything on the blog today. Sure, I busied myself with updating and catching up on The Indie Film Hub, which had also been hit by my minor health detour last week, but did that qualify under #Trust30 rules?

What is “creation” – how do we define it? How do I define it is probably the more pertinent question; the one thing we can safely say about all art and creativity is that it’s entirely subjective.

For me, this blog represents creation; the Hub represents curation, a very different thing. Even though I create new content to post every day, what I’m actually doing is curating the content I believe to be of value to other filmmakers and people who work in film. The content itself – the lessons, the examples, the information – is all created by the hugely talented people whose blogs, websites and newsletters I read every day.

So what is creation? For me, creation is about intent. Creation is about originating something that serves a purpose. It doesn’t have to be a higher purpose. It doesn’t even have to be a purpose that matters to anyone else. When I first started blogging, I wrote entirely for myself, to motivate me and to explore my life and my feelings. That’s a purpose. That’s creation.

By that definition, I suppose the Hub does represent that. So why doesn’t it feel that way?

What’s your definition of creation? Is it word-count, impact, intention? Or is it more ethereal, more intangible?

After the travails of the last three weeks1, it’s time to get back to the business of blogging and creating top-quality content for all my readers again.

To that end, a very useful little initiative popped up in my Google Reader RSS feed this morning – The Domino Project‘s #Trust30 initiative, based around their new release Self Reliance by Ralph Waldo Emerson.

#Trust30 is a month-long commitment to create something new every day for 30 days, whether it’s blogging, writing, painting, filmmaking or anything in between. The aim is simple to create.

I’m committed, are you? If you’ll be taking part, leave us a link to your site in the comments so we can all help to hold each other accountable.

1. detailed in 3 posts on my Journal Blog here, here and http://www.olilewington.co.uk/smilethroughit/2011/05/31/the-sage-concluded/ [↩]