I arrived in Snowdonia on Friday, tired after a long week at work and once the caravan was set up, I flopped down. I knew I should go cycling. I had come here specifically to ride my bike; the weather was overcast but dry, windy but not too cold. But I couldn’t get motivated. I sat there willing myself to go, but still, I didn’t move.
I have been thinking about how I spend my time in a typical hour. In my mind, I spend the full hour working on something concrete, something that will push me towards my goals and dreams. However, I have come to realise the reality is entirely different.If I’m brutally honest with myself, I’m wasting large chunks of the hour on completely unnecessary, mindless activities.
Read more books! Since I was young, this message has been drummed into me. But about ten years ago something changed. I stopped buying books, and on the infrequent times, I did buy. I struggled to read them. I opened them up and found I couldn’t concentrate. Are you struggling in the same way? Are you finding it more difficult if not impossible to read a book or do just one thing at a time?
I spent yesterday afternoon at the Ideal Home Show as we have two stands there. It’s a massive show that fills all the available space at London’s Olympia. Chatting with other stall holders, we discussed our online businesses and the work we had been doing over the winter. The large number of different approaches surprised me.
Life is full of compromises. I remember this during the week when we received an email from a customer asking about a wick that was burning strangely. After burning, it had formed a large mushroom shape at the tip, and the wick was now giving off black soot as the flame flickered around more than normal. What’s gone wrong he asked?
Sometimes truly amazing, unbelievable things happen. We work away, unrecognised and unrewarded and then out of nowhere fortune favours us and we have the most incredible luck. We have just experienced such a moment at Valentte.
If I think back over my life, there are some events that are seared into my memory. I’m not thinking about deaths or accidents but about things that have changed the course of my life. These experiences had a dramatic effect on my confidence and belief in myself. Usually in a negative way. It’s hard to let them go, to move on from them.
Have you had similar experiences, events in your past that haunt and impact you in the present? Are these experiences affecting the decisions you make today? Are they helping? Are they still relevant? Is it time to let them go?
The show world is a strange community of misfits and outcasts. I see the same faces each week in different muddy fields and exhibition halls up and down the country.
I have always struggled with my weight, it yo-yo’s dramatically, and my weight range in my adult life has varied by as much as four stone. Do you face a similar challenge? Would you like to lose some weight and have more energy? I know how hard it is to get motivated and to believe that change is possible. I don’t have any will power. But recently I have lost 1.5 stone and what I have found that worked were the following three things:
