And it all ends

There is nothing quite so rewarding as coming home to an excited family. A special Kilimanjaro cake had even been baked to celebrate this great occasion!

I spent a lot of time thinking on this trip and here are some of the fruits of my labour. Firstly I wanted to share the three reasons why this trip was so wonderful:


1. Climbing this mountain was a challenge that I have entertained for years. To actually be out there surrounded by its incredible beauty was a special reward.
2. Spending time and connecting with my brother after years of little contact was equally special. We got to rebuild a really important relationship.
3. Kilimanjaro is climbed at a snail’s pace. For the first time in my life I have had the opportunity to enjoy every moment! Going so slowly meant that I had all of the time in the world to look around, drink in my surroundings, think deeply, and find a deep peace within!


And yes, I did learn some things out there:


1. I have to slow down! It is only when I do life slowly that it has any meaning at all!
2. The end is not as important as every step along the way. If I get every step right and make the most of it, it actually does not matter where I end up.
3. The timing of my goals is also not important. So long as I keep plodding on towards them, I will achieve them when the time is right. I certainly do not need to achieve everything right now!
4. Life needs to be lived in a state of happiness. I can choose to be happy and cheerful every step of the way.
5. Data coverage on Kilimanjaro is NOT very good, hence I was not able to post in real time!


That is probably enough about the mountain, although I will be back on its side at some time in the future! For now, it is now time for me to do life on my new terms!

At Long Last

My new mental strategy is not to stress about what I am going to do with the rest of my life. I am trying not to worry about how I am going to live a life full of value. Instead my strategy is all about focusing on next week. It is far easier to see what I need to be doing for the next week and how I can add the best value than trying to look forty years into the future.

Value does not have to be defined as what I do with the rest of my working life or how I am going to save all the orphans of the world. Those things are impossible to start as they are just such massive issues. Besides that there is no way to figure out the right answer before one starts. Instead the solution lies in much trial and error and the opportunities that life throws at one. I have been trying to solve my life from the comfort of my armchair yet life needs to be lived rather than solved.

More than that, value is different to everyone. I can add huge value to peoples lives by doing small things with great energy and cheer every day.

My focus last week was the completion of the halfpipe. I really worked hard on it and it is 98% complete. All the tough work has been completed and all that is left are the finishing touches. The kids love it! I am amazed at how fast they learn and improve. My skills are going to fade into insignificance shortly as they will soon be well and truly eclipsed by my children's abilities.

This week, I am focusing on upgrading the content of our new companies website. We are playing with an idea called FREE. Very simply, you give away your electronic capital (all the clever work we have done) for nothing! We shall see if this works!

Next week is still to be determined....

This focus has removed all of the mental anguish that has recently plagued me about my lack of value add. I am now able to enjoy every moment of life as it happens as I am able to fully live and experience it now. So far, my really short term focus has helped me to deliver value that I can live with.

I will keep you updated.

My Year Off

My plans have not gone according to plan this year at all. It has been a wonderful exercise in detailed planning and then completely abandonment. I would hate to go and check out my goals that I set so long ago. Then they all seemed to be achievable and even laudable. Now they are still laudable but achievable only in my dreams. In the end I have achieved more than I could have dreamed of but not in the direction that I wanted to go at all.

Funny that the thing I really excelled at was bringing in an income and yet this is the one thing I did not want to do this year! And the rest of the world is in financial despair...

Don’t get me wrong, I am not complaining, so let me lay it all out here:

· I left the corporate rat race to collect my thoughts and try and build a life that was outside the pursuit for money, power and prestige. I gave myself a year to save the world, connect with my family again, do good and find my path in life. Instead I ended up with half a year off and then four months of consulting night and day away from my family in a foreign country. I reneged on most of my newly acquired social commitments to do good. A clear aim was for a year of money free bliss and ended up with a lucrative income and a fledgling consultancy.
· I started to write a book on money, power and prestige as the forces that could dominate one’s life and the resulting tensions with other aspects of life, mainly family and values. I wrote 14 chapters which after many revisions still needed further work. I only have seven chapters to go but now they all lie on the shelf gathering dust. It should have been a slam dunk to have this book finished, instead I just have a collection of rantings of the mad man.
· My family and I have connected on a different level. This even though I have spent much of four months away. I did learn that I have a hard time being away from my family and that my family needs me. It is fantastic to be needed! This aspect of my year has far exceeded expectations.
· My lifestyle has been out of this world. It has included some surfing although not nearly as much as I would have liked. The main thing about my lifestyle is that I have been able to choose how I wanted to spend my time. There is heaps of freedom in that choice and I have thoroughly enjoyed that.
· I have learnt so much. I thought that I had a good handle on life and business but I have been humbled by how much I did not know I did not know. Starting to fill those gaps has been a voyage of new discoveries. I cannot believe that learning could be such a thrill!
· From a personal point of view, I have grown in huge leaps and bounds. I have become far calmer, more introspective and have a very different point of view to the old me. I feel that I am a far better person for the experience.
It is interesting that I started to write my book with the perspective of this just wounded corporate animal that managed to crawl away from a terrible killing ground. As a result, my writing was filled with some grandiose ideas. The upside of the consulting work is that it has helped me understand how to tie those ideas into reality. I cannot wait to get stuck into my writing again, and yet there seems to be some more work out there for my consultancy. It looks like I will need to leave the dust on the book and the right time will present itself in time to come. This book will be written! I still have a story to tell.....

All in all, my year has not been what I wanted a year ago. On so many levels it has been way better, on other levels I have failed dismally. I have learnt so much though and hopefully armed with this knowledge, I will be able to make the difference that I crave to make.

I will change the world!

There is a story of pumping arms, thousands of pounding hearts and pouring sweat that needs to be told!

My very own One Ocean! The race that has consumed so much of my mental energy and a little of my blog space. I must confess the 21km is really the Once Ocean as one does not get to do both of them on the race. I have always understood that the Two Oceans is one of the more difficult runs out there and I certainly was not disappointed. I have great respect though for all those runners that manage the 56km as that is a long hard haul regardless of whether it happens along two oceans or not.

My first Two Oceans was awesome. I took my hard learnt lessons about smiling and complimenting myself to heart and told myself many, many lies that made me smile. Crowd support was incredible and as a runner, something really appreciated. It seems having these people cheering for me and calling me by name, as it was included on my race number, added an extra couple of springs in my step. I also found that by interacting with the crowd, they got all fired up and we were both able to feed off each other. I was not going to let all of these complete strangers down!

Strangely enough there were also very monosyllabic conversations with other runners that were absolutely awesome. I may have misinterpreted some of their grunts though.... I had a conversation at the end of the race with a runner that I had been following for some time. It was really great as I was tired and needed the mental diversion. If it was not for her, I would not have run the time that I did. In fact, the women runners were incredible and impressed me immensely. I was just trying to keep up with them!!

I tell you all of this as this was the best run of my life. Strange but true as I have not been able to train for it all. I managed to run the 21km in well under an hour and forty five minutes. I look forward to meeting one of my five year goals which is to run two 21km runs in less than a hundred minutes. Bring on the Knysna 21!

And now that you all know about this goal of mine, there is no way that I can let you all down!

I think I ate a very strange curry last night, all on my own – the joy of business travel. This strange curry opened not only nose but also my mind – I must share the address of this place! I spent the whole of dinner drawing pictures on scraps of paper and developing personal goals for my new adventure. I discovered that I am not afraid to set MONSTER goals. I hope there was more rationality involved when helping staff to set their goals in the past!!

I now have 10 very tough goals for the next 5 years! None are not going to be easy to achieve at all, but I suppose that is why one puts goals together in the first place. I have always understood that there is a tiny percentage of the population that have goals and even a smaller percentage that have them written down. This means that very few people actually know what they are aiming for in life. I want to be very clear WHY I am making my choices and I refuse to let life dictate where it will take me. I suppose that when life takes over, most of us end up chasing societies’ dreams and not our own. It is also possibly why so many of us are so unhappy with where we are in life. It is time to take our lives back from the insatiable vulture that is society.

I used to have some pretty good written goals and was well on track to achieving them. I am probably a bit anal in this area and had created an 8 year income statement and balance sheet that planned my financial path that I wanted to achieve. I would then regularly update this fantastic model to ensure that I was fully on track. My unhappiness realization caused me to stop and smell the roses. In the end I have used my financial model to plan my year off concept (who knows perhaps it will become a lifetime off concept). Without this detailed planning, there would have been no way that I ever would have been able to make this happen. It is funny to think that these are techniques that I would have employed daily at work BUT never think to apply in my personal life. If it works for a business why on earth should it not work to manage the exciting, dynamic, amazing and routine business that is my life?

Back to my goals, I have long thought about what I wanted to achieve with my life but last night was the first time that I have put pen to paper and crystallized that thought. It was really liberating! I am lucky in that I have had the experience now at both work and at home of having well thought out goals and actually achieving them through the focus and single minded dedication that they require to be achieved. I am now starting to sound like a goal guru. The point is that there is so much clutter in life that if we are not focused, we are going to get swayed by all sorts of influences and then not really achieve the things that we want in life or the things that make us happy at heart. A point I should make is that I did have all of these goals that I was on my way to achieving BUT they were not making me happy. Only once I have included this year off concept, did I truly start to look deep within myself and understand that I did not really know myself and what I wanted. I also started to understand that I was aiming for the wrong things in terms of my own happiness. I have long since ranted about the values and norms of society and yet my goals initially mirrored those of society. Talk about being hypocritical. I don’t like society and what it wants and yet I was trying to deliver the same things. For me it was a great realization that I was stuck like everyone else and that this is the norm. I sure had to find a way out! It has taken me 2 years to find it but until I focused my attention, there really was no way on earth that it would be possible – viva the human mind!

Another key reason why goals are so wonderful is that they help me make decisions now that may affect my longer term outlook, i.e. all of the decisions I make now have my long term goals in mind. Most goals should be set with the bar very high – this means that they are not easy to achieve. The only way to achieve them is to do it in baby steps. I can then make decisions about these baby steps on a daily basis knowing where I want to end up – it sure simplifies the decision making process.

My last word on goals is that they should be shared with your friends and family. I have been amazed at the support that I have elicited, as well as the spirit unleashed within myself to meet those marks (I would hate to let them all down!). I always thought that this stuff was private. I was convinced that others would laugh at my thoughts and ambitions. Now that I have published some of my thinking, I have heard plenty of sniggers (which I ignore), but those who really love and care and understand me, have become an amazing source of inspiration and support. This blog already includes a few surprising incidents that have happened to me in the recent past. There are plenty of people out there that are behind me and yet I did not even know this support was there. AND boy do I need that support. I think rather take the chance of being laughed at, than lose the opportunity for the amazing gifts that those around us have to share with us.