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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.

IF you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,
Or being hated, don’t give way to hating,
And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise:

If you can dream – and not make dreams your master;
If you can think – and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build ’em up with worn-out tools:

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breathe a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: ‘Hold on!’

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
‘ Or walk with Kings – nor lose the common touch,
if neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,
And – which is more – you’ll be a Man, my son!

— Rudyard Kipling

Nothing sums up the way I’m feeling this morning better than this amazing poem. It’s probably my all-time favourite poem and I try every day to live my life by it.

Around 8am this morning, I anticipated being in the middle of deepest Wales, holed up in a little hotel not far from the foot of Snowdon, enjoying a celebratory breakfast with the 3 Peaks team and our nearest and dearest who were all coming out to join us.

Instead I woke at home, in my own bed, many hundreds of miles from where I wanted to be and feeling pretty rubbish about it, if I’m honest.

But, straight from my Life According To Kipling playbook, I’m off out for a celebratory breakfast with one of the team and their wife, both great friends who’ve been hugely supportive through the whole crazy rollercoaster of the last few weeks.

I am facing disaster and treating is just the same as I would have the triumph of completing the 3 Peaks. By celebrating I’m telling whatever higher power has deemed it necessary to prevent me completing it for the 2nd year in a row that I will not be bowed, I will not be cowed and I will never stop appreciating, loving and making the most of the gift I’ve been given. Wales or Wellingborough, it makes no difference to me.

If this post means anything to you, please share the sign-up link for the organ donor register for the trek – http://www.bit.ly/oli3peaks – by copying and pasting or sharing the link to this post. Help us make sure everyone who needs it gets the second chance I’ve had.

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/ [↩]

I’ve just got back from 3 days in Durham where I was asked to talk at an event for the CF Trust for CF Week this week.

It’s an event I first spoke at 3 years ago when I was just 6 months post transplant and it was great to go back to the lovely ladies lunch and share my story so far as well as my hopes and dreams for the future.

The biggest part of my speech was concerned with helping raise funds for the CF Trust, who work tirelessly year-in, year-out to fund clinical research to improve drug therapies, hospital care and overall outcomes for people with CF across the UK.  My hope – as I expressed to the women at the lunch – was that by helping fund the CF Trust’s research into gene therapy and developing a therapy that prevents the eventually-fatal lung damage from CF we can prevent anyone having to go through what I’ve been through.

Not only have I, obviously, been through the hellish wait on the transplant list not knowing whether my call would come in time or if I would die while I wait, but I’ve also had to watch far too many of my friends die while they waited. And now I’m having to watch Tor (who I wrote about most recently in my previous post) endure over twice the wait I went through and see the life and the hope slip in and out of her eyes each and every day.

By donating to the CF Trust this week (or any week), you can make a huge difference to the lives of children being born with this disease today and prevent them ever having to experience the truly devastating side-effects of a life lived in the shadow of an early death.

This time in 4 weeks I should hopefully be nestled in my bed starting two days of recovery from the 3 Peaks Challenge and right now I’m hopeful, a little fearful and very, very tired.

Training has stepped up a notch, there’s all kinds of logistics to organise, a team-meeting with 5 of apparently the busiest people on the planet and I’ve still got to fit in work, quality time with K and a trip to Durham for a fundraiser for this years’ CF Week in aid of the CF Trust, a cause you’ll all know is close to my heart.

Today, though, that all blurred into fairly frank insignificance following Tor’s latest post on her blog following her seventh false alarm call for transplant.  I’ve written before on here about my false alarms, but also about how Tor inspires me to want to do better, to push myself harder and to achieve everything I can while I’m able.

One quote from her post today stood out for me, when she talks about her fears for the future, post-transplant:

I [am] worried that I … could never live a life that was enough to honour my donor.

This is a fear that lives with me every day. It’s not a fear that overwhelms me, but rather motivates me and gives me my ultimate drive to succeed, whether personally, in business or my personal life.

If my donor is looking down on me now, I want them to be proud of me. I want them to feel that they made the right decision in letting me live after they died. I want them to know just how much I value the gift I’ve been given and how I live each and every day in their honour, under their guidance and with their presence always around me.

That’s why I’ve started chasing the dream of the 3 Peaks and it’s why I want to keep pushing myself to do more.

Many of us have had a taste of success. Some of us dine on it frequently, for others it’s a rare treat. What it does is to help us all feel like we’re doing what we should be in life.

Too often, though, we define ourselves by how we feel. We even decline things by saying, “I just don’t feel like it today” – we put so much stock in feelings that we don’t stop to look at what and who we actually are.

This quote got me thinking:

It’s not about feeling like a filmmaker, it’s about being a filmmaker.

Drake Doremus, The Wrap

Doremus is talking about filmmaking and how it’s better to shoot for a lower target budget in order to be able to make films as opposed to holding out for the mega-budget and never actually making anything. It’s also about how the trappings of a “big” production don’t make the film, it’s the kit, the crew and the cast who make a film what it is.

It’s time for us all to stop chasing the “feel” and start “being” what we want to be – filmmakers, entrepreneurs, writers, artists; we all have goals and we all want to achieve them, but if we set about doing the things we need to do to get there, no matter what, we’ll arrive and find success much quicker than doing all the things that make us “feel” like we think we ought to.

I must apologise for the lack of updates. If I’m honest, it’s been a rough time lately and with all kinds of work pressures and the added physical trial of training full-bore for the first time in my life, I’ve honestly been questioning whether or not this was going to happen at all.

I’m delighted to announce, however, that a major pharmaceutical company have agreed to fully-fund the 3 Peaks trip and that we’ll definitely be headed north to Scotland on Friday 3rd June to begin 24 hours of mountain-climbing, mountain descents and driving in between.

I was recently featured in another article online to promote not just the trip but the amazing support the guys at Topnotch Health Clubs have given me, including invaluable training advice and nutrition tips.

Really, though, there’s only one thing that stands out today, with 7 weeks to go. Today in the gym I ran, comfortably, for the first time in my life.

After a 15 minute session walking at speed on an incline on the treadmill, I spent the final two minutes jogging on the flat and for the first time ever – absolutely literally – I didn’t have to stop from feeling out of breath, sore in the legs or with chest pains1.

If nothing else, I’ve proved to myself and my donor that these new lungs are being used for the very best they can. I’ve never been fitter, never felt better and never been able to take so much on my plate as I have at the moment.

I cannot describe how amazing and brilliant this feels. And I cannot express my gratitude to my donor and their family for giving me the chance to feel like this. If you haven’t already, show your support for me, for the trek and for organ donation by signing-up and/or reTweeting/sharing the dedicated sign-up link from NHSBT, http://bit.ly/oli3peaks

1. not heart-attack chest pains, but I used to get a lot of pain across my scar when I tried to run [↩]