Better things to come

Day 11 (Sunday 11th December 2016)

11 - the total number of medals won by Cuba in the 2016 Rio Olympics.

My advice would be not to pick a fight with a Cuban; almost all

the medals were for some form of combat sport - 5 Golds (3 for Boxing,

2 for Wrestling), 2 silver (one for Judo, one for Wrestling) and 4 Bronze

(3 for Boxing and the last for Athletics - the Women's Discus Throw)
Cuba had a big year in 2016 including USA lifting sanctions and 
the death of Fidel Castro.

Alex Moyle is the writer of our Sunday read.  He feels as though 2016 has been a year of hollows, however he is determined not to let things get the better of him. Alex founded his own businesses in 2014 and 2015 - one is a specialist consultancy, Selzig, which helps organisations enhance sales performance; and the other, Elevated Recruiting, takes Alex back into his arena of corporate expertise in which he worked prior to going independent, namely providing learning and development to recruitment firms, helping consultants enhance their skills. For over 17 years Alex worked for the globally renown recruitment firm Robert Half. After proving himself as a consultant he progressed to being the UK Staff Development Manager.

Alex lives near Bristol with his wife and family. He is an engaging speaker.  H is also an active voice on social media - a prolific blogger and a regular contributor to debate on Twitter and LinkedIn. You can follow Alex on Twitter (if you don't do so already), his handle is @Alex_Moyle.

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Better things to come

I can take or leave most of the things associated with Christmas.  But I do love  the way the Christmas period encourages everyone to let go of the past and hope for a better year to come.

From a personal perspective I am glad to wave goodbye to this year.

My old manager used to say "Alex, when you succeed you get paid in cash, when you fail you get paid in experience".  

Well if this is true 2016 has made me a millionaire!

2016 has challenged my purpose,  my confidence as a father, husband and a human being.    Despite all my aspirations and passion, most of the year has felt like I was fighting a losing battle against the cosmos.

I would love to be able to write this and tell you how every day I still leapt out of bed with 100% passion to defeat the foes. 

The reality is, that on a lot of days, I have struggled with direction, passion and desire to fix the problems fate has put in my way.

Paul McGee in his book "Sumo" talks about people succumbing to a victim mentality and how this is, in part, caused by a person playing the wrong records (thoughts) in their head on loop.

I have definitely had times where I would be a case study for Paul's views.   The weird thing being that whilst you play those negative records in your head there is another voice that's locked in prison cell in in your head shouting "stop playing those records", "Stop being a victim". 

For a moment it seemed like I might need to buy a Harley Davidson to cap things off!

It is fortunate that the other little voice  did not taken long to break out of his cell and put the "victim voice" in his place.

Whilst I would like to say that his escape was all my own work. The reality is that family, friends and random acts of kindness helped the good voice to rise to the fore once again.

But enough of the confessional, what am I going to do to stop it happening next year....

For 2017 my aim is to:

- Focus on doing less things, but executing each one better.

- Work harder to recognise the little victories that are often ignored

- Adapt my expectations in line with the circumstances that present themselves

So that is my confessional, what about you the reader?

I have no doubt that most people will have had their own challenges this year.

Art Deco Bronze "Sisyphus" by Ganu Gancheff

All I ask is that you think about how you can leave the bad things behind in 2016 and look forward to better things next year.

After all most of us will be feeling better about 2016 than David Cameron and Hillary Clinton……….

Who would have thought it….!

Eat, drink and enjoy being with your friends and family in the coming weeks.

A Christmas Dole by Joseph Clark, (1834 – 1926)