Monthly Archives: February 2018

Why your stories matter

I’m quite open online and offline about my story. Of course, I don’t share everything, just the bits that I think are important about where I’ve come from and what I’m doing now. I share because I know the impact personal stories can have in the world.

The difference in how these stories are told can be stark. Consider two charity events: one that has someone from a non-profit talking about how they make a difference, and one that has someone who has lived experience of the reason the charity exists. Without a doubt, the more effective stories are told by the people who’ve lived it.

It’s one of the main differences between the most recent moves in my career: World Vision UK and the Cystic Fibrosis Trust. At the Trust, we have the ability to put someone with CF in the room with people, to look into their eyes and connect with them on a personal level. My role at World Vision involved finding new and innovative ways of helping supporters walk hand in hand with the world’s poorest children, even when they’re thousands of miles apart and unable to tell their stories face-to-face.

People are understandably fond of quoting Gandhi:

Be the change you want to see in the world.

It’s a great philosophy to share, because it encourages you to tell your story to create the change you want to see. I stand as someone who shows the impact of organ donation and transplantation, as well as the possibility of hope for people living with CF who are struggling, for whom transplant may be the only option.

It doesn’t have to be that grandiose, though. Sharing your story – the change you want to see in the world – can be as simple as telling people how you think your job should be done differently, how your industry should change, how you personally want to change with fitness, ‘wellness’ or just stopping a bad habit and starting a new one.

Your stories matter because they have impact. A personal perspective is powerful, it’s a tool with remarkable influence if you’re willing and able to communicate your experience. Because no one has your unique perspective on the world, don’t be afraid to share it.

Attention to detail

I made myself laugh this week. I posted on Wednesday about my fear of publishing, of how Resistance was trying to take hold and prevent me from sharing more widely.

I’ve not shared any of these blog posts on my social media channels as it stands, althought they are all public for people to see.

It turns out that this site is setup to auto-Tweet my blog posts as soon as I hit publish. So all the time I thought I was fearfully not sharing, it turns out I was sharing with everyone anyway. And no one’s reading them.

The fear I felt about publishing and sharing things with the world – largely because they might not work – is totally unfounded. Of course, I could have told you that. I pretty much did in that post. But now I’ve proven it to myself.

This blog is an exercise in creativity, in experimenting, in trying new things and seeing if they work, and it doesn’t matter to me if they’re read by one person, no people or a million people, ((Let’s face it, it’s never going to be millions!)) so the fear made no sense anyway.

Which makes me wonder to myself what else I’m fearing that I needn’t. What other things am I focusing on in my own head, avoiding for the sake of protecting myself, believing that more people will care than I think? And why would people caring matter to me anyway?

Universal interference

I can be so prescient sometimes. Not only did I predict that my writing-and-posting-daily habit would come to an end, I predicted it literally the day before it happened.

But it highlights one key point in this battle for routine and regular updates: the fact that a transplant doesn’t remove some of the many challenges of living with cystic fibrosis, the key one being energy management. After a busy and stressful few days at work, ((Nothing too stressful: I love my job, but it’s the same as any other job when it comes to it’s everyday stresses and swings-and-roundabouts of challenges and successes.)) I had a bad night of almost no sleep that arrived with aches and pains across a lot of my body and a general level of fatigue. Although the fatigue is probably explained by the lack of sleep come to think of it.

I tried to get up in my normal routine, but my body and my brain weren’t having it. If there’s one thing I’ve learned over the many years of living with CF and my new body post-transplant, it’s that I have to listen when my body is telling me things. So I gave up on posting here and took myself back to bed.

There’s a lesson for everyone in this, because too often I see people struggling on, fighting through the beginnings of a cough or a cold because they think they have to, but totally ignoring the fact that they’re actually making things worse. The best thing you can do for your body when you start feeling unwell is to rest it and let it repair itself. Try to carry on too long and you end up making yourself even sicker, taking more time off work and increasing the stress levels you thought you were avoiding by continuing to work when you were unwell.

We can’t avoid some of the fear of ‘not working’ when we know we have a lot on our plates, but believe me when I say I speak from experience: giving yourself time to rest, recover and re-energise when you need it will make you stronger and more productive in the long run.

The first punch of resistance

In his book the War of Art, Steven Pressfield talks a lot about Resistance, that unstoppable, unceasing force that does all it can to prevent you from doing the work. Yesterday I wrote

The real test of any habit is in its sustainability, so we’ll see how long it lasts. The intentions are good, we’ll have to see is the practice bears up.

and this morning that sustainability has been tested. The Resistance is strong.

On Tuesday it manifested as a challenge with my laptop ((The battery on my 10-year-old MacBook Pro has completely failed so I had to run a power cord awkwardly across the kitchen to be able to write at the table.)) and this morning it’s come along as much stronger doubts.

Why am I writing this, who’s going to be reading it, what’s the point of blogging every day and is it really sustainable? If it’s not sustainable, why carry on, why not just stop now because there’s no point in pushing forwards only to fall down later.

Luckily, I’ve managed to overcome Resistance and sit at the kitchen table, coffee in hand, to write this post. Writing about it is the only way I seem to be able to beat resistance.

I’m writing this blog precisely because it’s hard, precisely because it’s a bit uncertain and it might not work, precisely because there’s a challenge to the habit and discipline that I want to practice and get better at.

Tim Ferriss’ interview with Seth Godin has had a big influence on me, where Seth (of whom I’m a massive fan anyway) says that everyone should blog every day because everyone should put things out into the world to be seen. It’s not about whether the content or predictions contained in it are right or wrong, it’s about just being comfortable putting yourself out there.

I’m not confortable with that yet. I’ve not shared any of these blog posts on my social media channels as it stands, althought they are all public for people to see. So the Resistance is still strong, but I’m still writing, still publishing, still putting myself out there. Baby steps, but always moving forward.

Creating habits

I’m a real stickler for the power of positive habits, for finding the ‘right’ routines to follow every day. The trouble is, I’m terrible at actually forming and following productive habits.

Take this blog. This post will be my second in as many days, drafted between 6-7am in the morning and posted straight away ((Hence, doubtless, the typos that I’ve missed because I’ve only skimmed-proofed it before hitting ‘publish’.)) because I’ve been energised by working on revisions to my book and wanted to get back to a daily, public practice of noting things.

For two days in a row I’ve got up, put on a pot of coffee, grabbed a protein shake and a protein bar as a breakfast and sat at the kitchen table to draft a post to share on here ((In the process I’ve discovered that my laptop battery has officially died, lasting just 10 minutes on ‘68%’ before turning off mid-draft.)). It seems like a good plan, and one that I know a lot of creatives – especially writers – follow, writing first thing in the morning when the world is quiet and their brain is still rousing and it’s been enjoyable so far, so naturally it’s a habit I’d like to stick to.

It’s almost inevitable that I’ll fail, though. The ‘nice to haves’ are always the first thing to go when things get a little bit difficult. It’s only Tuesday, which means my mind and body are still quite fresh from the weekend, and the exertions of my commute and daily meetings etc at work have yet to take their toll.

The real test of any habit is in its sustainability, so we’ll see how long it lasts. The intentions are good, we’ll have to see is the practice bears up.