Twelve Hopes - Day 13

Thursday 13th December 2018

Thirteen is the number of British Colonies from which the United States of America
was formed - this is why the American flag has 13 stripes.

My musical week continues - tonight I am off to the O2 to be at the "Final Bow" of the iconic band, The Pretty Things, who, after 55 years of wowing audiences and fans, are performing their last electric gig. The band was formed by ex-Rolling Stone Dick Taylor and singer Phil May, and have influenced many of the world's most famous artists, including David Bowie, Bob Dylan and the Sex Pistols. I know that it will be wild. 

Today's piece is contributed by Mark Catchlove, the Director of the Insight Group at Herman Miller. Mark is a thought leader on the work environment and what occupiers and designers need to bear in mind when creating great places. If you get the chance to attend one of his events on workplace design and related research, I urge you to go.  I first encountered Mark on Twitter (you can follow him too - his handle is @markcatchlove). He writes an excellent blog and he will make you think. He always writes popular posts for the Adven Blog series, such as our need to be there and shine a light for others. This year's post is more personal to him - he is sharing his 12 hopes for Christmas. My hope is that Mark himself has a wonderful Christmas and an amazing year ahead. I suspect that he will have a peaceful and happy one full of smiles and laughter. Mark is musical - an enthusiastic and accomplished singer and guitarist. Mark is values driven, he does his bit to make the world a better place - such as by running youth clubs and Sunday schools and being a stalwart of his local community. 

***********

"Heartaches, Hopes and High Fives"

Christmas is a mix of all 3 but I wanted to focus on Hope.

Hope is a “feeling of expectation and desire for a particular thing to happen”
So here are my 12 hopes – 1 for every day of Christmas:

1. That we can agree to disagree – coupled with a sense of understanding and empathy.

2. That we can still have unity of spirit, even where there is diversity of thought.

3. That random acts of kindness are no longer random, but a part of every-day life.

4. That in this busy world we take some time to look around us, to observe, to enjoy, to contemplate.

5. That children can be themselves and are not driven into conforming to the educational norms which so often stifle creativity.

6. That we don’t always rely on data to prove what we already know and have called ‘common sense’ for years.

7. That we do not judge others that are different to us and we stop make sweeping generalisations that hinder our understanding.

8. That we can be the positive difference in someone’s life and have a lasting impact.

9. That good manners will be the norm again, where please and thank you return to our everyday vocabulary.

10. That we will take time to listen more and think before we respond.

11. That we are all given respect whatever our age.

12. That you will have a Christmas that outshines all your previous Christmases and it is one to remember for all the right reasons

“May your choices reflect your hopes, not your fears.” Nelson Mandela

Darkness to light - Day 47

Day 47 (Tuesday 16th January 2018)

47 years ago, on the 16th January 1981, Leon Spinks (the American professional
boxer who in only his 8th professional fight won the undisputed heavyweight championship
in after defeating Muhammad Ali) was mugged and robbed. After being attacked in the
street he was taken to a motel and had $450000 worth of clothes, accessories and jewellery
taken, including his gold teeth. Spinks' boxing heavyweight title was short lived and
after boxing he became a wrestler, winning the world title in 1992 (he is the only person to hold
both the boxing and wrestling world titles). He has suffered heavily as a result of boxing - in
2012 he was diagnosed as suffering from shrinkage in his brain due to the impact of opponents' punches

Today is my father's birthday. He is turning 87. He is an amazing man (and a much loved father and grandfather) and I hope he has a wonderful day. 

The author of today's post, the highly talented photographer Paul Clarke, took a wonderful picture of my father at my eldest son's 21st birthday and I treasure it. If you have not seen his work, I urge you to click onto Paul's website: paulclarke.com - it's no wonder that he has won multiple awards. He has an eye for detail (he writes beautifully too - his blog on his business site is worth reading). You can also find Paul on Twitter, Flickr, and Facebook. He is witty, engaging, perspicacious and highly intelligent - a joy to spend time with.

It perhaps should come as no surprise that a photographer has much to say about darkness and light.

PS I have used various photos that Paul took this year to illustrate his post - you can see them (and more) on his blog and website.

***********************

In my professional world, the world of photos and images, nothing happens without light. Literally, nothing. Seeing it, shaping it, playing with it – that’s what we do.

If I look back over the last decade as I’ve made the shift into this world, I can pick out distinct points when I started to think of light in different ways. How it might be brought into focus; how it behaves in a tight field of view; what colour it is (even when it’s “white”) and how it’s less important whether something is generally bright or dark, but much more important how light and dark contrast with each other.

This was taken in bright sunshine using the sun as the "lightbulb",
 but tightening up the camera to enable only the brightest light to get through

Over 2017 there’ve been times of deep personal darkness for me, but also plenty of light. Shakespeare nailed the very human need for contrast in Henry IV Part One, of course: “If all the year were playing holidays, to sport would be as tedious as to work” - and we have many modern equivalents.

We need the light so that we can recognise the dark, and the dark so that we can appreciate the light.

As I’ve hauled my way slowly into this new industry (from a post-40 standing start), my own lights and darks have happened in different ways. Sometimes they’ve been about finding any business at all. Or about overcoming some technical difficulty, or unfamiliarity with equipment.

This collection of more than 190 antique and modern pieces of photographic equipment
was neatly arranged and photographed by Portland-based photographer Jim Golden.
The equipment was borrowed from members of Portland’s photo community.

But the later stages have been the hardest to conquer. Putting it simply: if you try to do something well, you’ll get better at it. If you get better at it, you’ll attract tougher assignments. If you get tougher assignments, you’ll set higher standards for yourself.

It’s a spiral of expectation and challenge, and in the second half of this year it bit me. The particular client will never know of course – we’re good at hiding our own terrors in this regard. The job always gets done, and done well. But the process – that moment of realising that you’re through to a new level, and must deliver, can be awfully painful.

Composition study: shells by Amiria Gale

I think it’s something that’s particularly tough in the creative arts. What I make – by definition – has never existed before. I produce concepts, not just outputs. Were I making steel rivets, there’d be some opportunity to make a better rivet, but not much. I’d be measured on speed and consistency of delivery, but the product would be a known.

Making unknowns – whether in words, music or pictures – is different. Working with humans, as I do, means that the subject’s reaction to the unknown thing yet to be made will also be an unknown. Unknowns piled on unknowns! Where’s the light to be found in all of that? It’s very easy to fall into the dark.

I did fall, and at the lowest point I felt like giving it all up. If I lost confidence, then there’d be no creativity. No creativity, and there’d be no clients. No clients and… and so the spiral descends.

But I pulled back from the edge, this time. Going back to the simplest principles of how light works with dark. Sticking with my instincts about where the strength of an image would really be found. Stripping away composition and complexity to tell a story with as small a number of elements as possible.

October wedding photo by Paul Clarke

The job was delivered, eventually. The client was happy, immediately. The dark… didn’t recede as such, but took on a new texture. And so did the light. And so we head into a new year.

However brightly or dimly the light shines for you this year, I hope that you find plenty of contrast. That’s really what keeps us going, after all.

Seagulls by Paul Clarke

Taming Your Adversity - Day 35

Day 35 (Thursday 4th January 2018)

35 years on top of a tall pillar in an old temple sited near Aleppo in Syria - the
chosen abode of Saint  Simeon the Stylite (it is his feast day today).  He lived on
a platform 1 meter square (surrounded by a baluster) on the pillar that was fifty foot
from the ground until 459AD. The Saint had spent the previous two years on a 9 foot
pillar but found the general public intrusive. He was consulted by emperors and
leading theologians. His was provided with food by local boys who would climb the pillar
with parcels of flat bread and goats milk or else he raised up food, drink and messages via a rope.

Today is my wedding anniversary - 26 years!! We are going to out celebrate with our sons at a smart restaurant in central London. It is amazing how time flies. I can remember as though it was yesterday making my way on my father's arm through Middle Temple on our way to the Temple Round Church - it was drizzling and I had a long cream train to my dress, so keeping it out of the damp was a challenge. My bridesmaids were dressed in dark green velvet and we all had garlands of holly, ivy and winter berries. My shoes were heeled with the same ornate cream silk that formed part of my dress.

Today's post is by Mike Shaw. It is nearly a celebration day for him too - it's his birthday in a few days. Happy early birthday Mike! Mike says more about his background below (it has had some significant ups and downs), but you might be interested to know that he studied Sociology and Psychology at Liverpool, before completing an MA in Sociology at Leeds. He is also a qualified coach. 

Mike lives in Manchester and, after commencing his career in Education, crossed into the commercial world in 2011, commencing as a Learning Consultant. Over the years he has built on his skills and he undertook further personal development and training, before accepting a permanent role eight months ago as an L&D Advisor for Mitie Plc. He believes in fairness, diversity and inclusion at the heart of the workplace and espouses the use of learning and development to enhance performance and achieve strategic aims. Mike writes a blog, Shaw Things and is active on social media - you can find him on Twitter under @MikeShawLD or on Snapchat as MikeShawLD.

******************

Running in the cold and wet isn’t exactly my idea of fun. Yet there I was in my shorts and t-shirt trying to avoid the puddles and dodge the car splashes, and I was beginning to wonder if I’d made a mistake going running in this weather. Strangely, though, I felt a kind of exhilaration. I felt a resolve, that despite the abysmal weather and the burning cold sensation, I would keep going. Somehow, the adverse conditions seemed to conspire to speed me up and build my determination.

As I ran, it hit me that this experience, right now, was a useful metaphor for my past couple of years and, indeed, beyond. To be honest, at that exact moment I was surprised I was able to think at all, but somehow despite the adverse conditions, or maybe because of them, I had clarity of purpose in what I was doing and, critically, a vision for what I wanted to achieve. In this case it was not only to finish this run but also to set myself a target of running a half-marathon.

Earlier in the year I wrote about the importance of creating my own sunshine, and now I realise that this goes alongside navigating the cold and rain. As 2017 comes to an end it’s naturally got me reflecting on the past two years. The beginning of 2016 was a time of change for me. I wasn’t sure what my future held, where I’d be working, or even what I wanted from my future career. Nevertheless, I embarked upon a new professional life. However unknown or scary it might have been, in my eyes, I only had one choice - grab life and make the most of it.

In the words of Friedrich Nietzsche and Kelly Clarkson, “what doesn’t kill you, makes you stronger!” It might sound glib, especially in a pop song, but if I look back at my past 30 years, that is how I have tried to live, and like many, I have had my own modest set of hurdles to clear. At 16 I failed my O’ levels. At 19 I barely passed my A’ levels.  At 33, as a married man, I came out as gay and split from my wife.  At 40 I had a relationship break-up. At 44 I found myself in a toxic and stressful work environment. And at 49 I had a ‘career crisis’, followed by a ten-month journey to establish a new one.  

As I look at each of these written in front of me, some of them having considerably faded, although they have been incredibly impactful on me and on others, with the lapse of time their magnitude has lessened and they seem like part and parcel of life. I know that people experience vastly more challenging events in their lives, and I am in awe of how they often emerge with an even greater capacity for achievement. I feel I’ve been exceptionally fortunate in life so far, but you deal with what’s in front of you, or as they say in snooker, you play the balls.

Without sounding grandiose, with each life event, I have attempted to use it and grow from it. Rather than get knocked down, I guess today we’d say that I demonstrated resilience.

Though I'm sure they did, I don’t recall people talking much about resilience years ago. When reading about psychological resilience, I like Brad Water’s description of it as, “riding the waves of adversity, rather than being pulled under by the torrent”.  I think this nicely describes the, sometimes, fine line of adversity. That said, I don’t want to misrepresent myself as someone who was close to ‘going under’ and, somehow, managed to embrace the positivity in a moment of challenge. That’s not really me, or at least that’s not my self-perception. Without doubt, there have been times of darkness but I'm a pragmatist. I'm an optimistic cynic and I'm conscious that I don’t want to set myself as an example of how to deal with life’s stuff.

I don’t particularly want to make this into a ‘top tips’ blog but as I’ve reflected, it has helped me to identify my own strengths and, of course, areas for development. Maybe others will take something from it, maybe they won’t. We all have our ways of approaching and dealing with things. Interestingly, I think my own pragmatism sometimes stops me from considering what I draw upon. But in the midst of my reflections, I have realised these have served me well:

Doing new things! I’ve loved developing new skills, such as making videos and podcasts, doing an Ignite talk, and blogging, to mention just a few. In a non-work context I’ve run my first 10K, been to my first jazz concert, and experienced my first live opera. All these, in very different ways, have been enlightening and invigorating.

Taking a “don’t ask, don’t get” approach. The worse that can happen is that people say no, but they rarely do. So, I’ve asked and, through people’s generosity, I’ve got!

Being creative. I don’t particularly consider myself a creative person, despite my O’ level Art (yes, I did pass that!). However, creativity comes in many forms and, of course, as a designer of learning I am exercising creativity.

Using humour and having fun. I use this a lot. I try to see the funny or lighter side of life. A well-placed joke or a bit of play with your colleagues can do wonders.

Being kind to myself. I try not to place too much pressure on myself to always be doing positive and productive activities. I aim to be good enough in what I do and, sometimes, putting things off until tomorrow is absolutely fine.

Finding good people.  As I have written about before, I have built up my networked and learned so much from people. I’ve gained encouragement, confidence, new skills, and so much more.

Using positive self-talk. Sometimes easier said that done but my inner voice is usually my friend and able to tell me that I will be fine. So far it’s been right!

Although, at first, the challenges in my life knocked me back, I know that each and every one of them acted as a driving force. Without these events, in all likelihood, I would have travelled a very different path and my life would look very different. I haven’t let these events define me but, without doubt, they have shaped me. Out of my adversity, emerged hope, and out of hope came new opportunities and new life. My learning is that, whatever the weather, I need to keep running, because that is how I grow.

Darkness is not to be feared - Day 23

Day 23 (Saturday 23rd December 2017)

23 December is the busiest day for travel over the festive period and is often the busiest day
for the whole year, with queues at airports and ports, overcrowded trains and heavy congestion
on roads. In the UK alone there will be over 12 million drivers travelling at least 20 miles (source the AA)

We had a wonderful family meal last night, but today I need to brave the seasonal traffic and get back to London to sort out Christmas for my immediate family at home. I have a lot of things to prepare and wrap.  

Today's post is by my good friend Michael Carty. Michael is a popular voice in HR circles and on social media. He has acted as a focal point for a wide global community for many years (his handle is @MJCarty, and you can read his excellent blog on Tumblr). He is a delightful man, consistently respectful and polite - mindful of the views and feelings of others. Michael works as an editor for XpertHR and is a benchmarking specialist. When not analysing data and making complex matters simple for us lesser mortals, Michael shares his impressions of the world and is a gifted artist who appreciates what he finds around him. He is very well read (from comics to biographies), loves film (especially Star Wars) and is a music aficionado. He is also a loving husband and a loyal, entertaining and much-valued friend.

************************

Black and white, yin and yang, dark and dawn. An intertwining as old as time, as old as life, as old as human lives and hearts.

The miracle of written communication would not exist without this beautiful contrast of dark and light. Pen glides across paper, typewriter hammer leaves its impression, keystroke begets pixel, each enabling the words in our mind to be seen, understood and felt by others.

I believe I have seen every dawn this year. My body clock hates me. The older I get, the worse my ability to remain asleep past the laughably early hours becomes. These are the times of day most people only imagine. My brain has decided, with age, to be wide awake in these unimaginable times. John Updike wrote in his autobiography Self-Consciousness that he loved to sleep late, to let the world get started without him. You have no idea how much I envy him this.

I have had to learn to love both the darkness of the end of the night and the light of dawn. I have had to make the most of this enforced wakefulness. I truly love these times now. I would not trade them for anything.

Weekend early mornings are perhaps my favourite times. The dark and light of strong coffee in a white cup. Immersive, hypnotic music playing (perhaps aptly for the theme our endlessly generous hostess Kate has chosen, the Dawn of Midi’s album Dysnomia is on this minute https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zH4lkK-vSco).

The unfolding black and white of letters as I stumble to form words for my blog (or, in this case, for Kate’s). My mind feels peace and wakefulness, the week’s pent-up conscious and unconscious musings allowed free as night’s darkness slowly gives way to dawn.

Filtered by the smog

I have had two horrible, worrying bouts of illness this year. The second bout of illness knocked me out for most of last month. Shingles, I learned, is no joke, despite what its innocuous, almost friendly name might suggest. "It will make you feel pretty grotty," said the doctor who diagnosed my ailment. He was onto something. A lot of feeling rotten and a lot of rest was in order.

At times like these, the words you need to hear will find you. My recovery was aided by the most wonderful book, The Rise, The Fall and The Rise by Brix Smart Smith. The extraordinary story of an extraordinary life, told in the most extraordinarily vivid language. Good times, bad times, Brix has had her share. "Nothing is better than something that's bad," her biological father told her. We can and should learn the lessons of our darkest times, so that we can fully appreciate the light when it returns.

I blogged recently about this wonderful book (to read it follow this link), so I will not repeat myself here. I am stunned and humbled that Brix actually read my blog post, and tweeted some kind words about it.

I drew a picture of Brix to accompany the post.

Halfway through drawing this picture, I realised the subconsciously apt colour choices I had made, given that one of many highpoints of Brix’s time with The Fall was the collaboration with dancer Michael Clark (I imagine his name will be known to Kate) which resulted in the album I Am Kurious Oranj. I was subsequently amazed to read that Brix found the picture evocative of dawn and early morning in the California of her youth:

"Quite kurious..... it looks like the colour of the hazy early morning sunshine light of my 1960s L.A. upbringing. Dappled through the sycamore trees and filtered by the smog."

A different view of darkness

My first bout of illness this year, back in the Spring, gave me a different view of darkness. I had a very allergic reaction to an insect or spider bite (the precise cause remains undiagnosed) on my left hand. The toxin started to track rapidly up the veins of my left forearm, plotting a worrisome trajectory towards my heart. The poison’s progress was obvious, the vein and the area around it becoming inflamed. A visit to A&E resulted in a prescription of very strong antibiotics.

The effect of the first dose of antibiotics was overpowering. Back home from A&E, I lay in bed feeling a profound, all-encompassing darkness engulfing my vision and my mind from the edges. At first my mind tried to fight against it, to remain alert and awake. But I realised there was no messing with this medication. I had no choice but to surrender to the darkness, to trust that it wanted to heal me. The alert reader who spots that I am alive to write these words will perhaps already have twigged that, thankfully, the antibiotics did their trick. As much as I wanted to resist this enveloping darkness, it was not to be feared.

The best decision of my life

I got married in June this year. Just as my lovely friend Laurie Ruettimann said it would be, this was the best decision of my life. My happiest moment this year was during the ceremony, the ancient power of the words of the wedding vows producing a joy that overwhelmed me (yet somehow I didn’t blub - at least not there and then in the registry office). The wedding day fell during a heatwave. The whole week was sweltering, sultry, dreamlike.

The day after the wedding was the longest day of the year, the summer solstice. I woke to see the first rays of sun of the longest day, the air around me scented by roses.

Softest night loosened its grip over the world.

Darkness is not to be feared.

As transporting as that dawn was, the most beautiful dawn is always tomorrow’s.

Believe.

Snowflakes - Day 23

Day 23

Julius Caesar was stabbed 23 times
What many don't know is that he may have been stabbed by his own son; he had had an affair
with Sevilla (the daughter of a prominent Roman Household) and she bore a son
whom she named Marcus Junius Brutus (known as Brutus).
The famous Shakespearean line "et tu Brute" was in fact, according to Suetonius, a
consul member and witness of the assassination, "you too, child?" referring to Brutus.
Amongst other things Julius Caesar was responsible for the creation of Leap Years.
Morte di Giulio Cesara ("Death of Julius Caesar"). Vincenzo Camuccini, 1798

The only person I have met for a mini tweet up in an airport is the author of today's enchanting and informative post. Sara Wyke lives and works in Geneva and is a courageous HR professional, CTI coach-in-training and wonderful mother and wife (she is British and with her Belgian husband has two little girls whom she refers to as Tiny and Bean). Although a quiet voice, she is a social media enthusiast, active in the ConnectingHR community and is often to be found on Twitter, her handle is @TeenyTinyBean.

***********************************************************************

♪Snowflakes that fall on my nose and eyelashes♫

I adore watching Tiny and Bean, they are amusing to watch and each time I pause and indulge in parental pride of watching them my heart fills with joy. I also learn from them, more than I thought possible. Not just learning my own limits of patience, but much more. The other day I watched as they were walking along the wall in front of our house, Tiny was determinedly walking as only a 4 year old can do. Each obstacle blocking the path led to her jumping off the low wall, walking around the obstruction and climbing back up. When she reached, what I considered to be the end of the wall, the place where it narrows to just a few centimetres wide, she refused to give up. Instead she called over her big sister to hold her hand. With the support of Bean's strong (that’s sarcastic... Bean is a skinny thing) hand, she continued the few meters to where the wall actually ended. She happily jumped off with a huge grin and clearly satisfied that she had completed the challenge. Where I saw the end, she saw a possibility to try something more daring.

How many times in life do we perceive the end of a path, closing a door because we couldn’t see the way ahead clearly? How often do we turn away from a challenge because the path has become unrealistically difficult? And yet, with some additional support from those around us, we could continue to the real end, to the satisfying jump for joy at the end of a job well done.

I have often closed the door due to the perceived difficulty, such as the time I cancelled a training session because the logistical organisation required to find a suitable time to get the 24 presenters in a room together seemed unsurmountable. I am a chicken and have in the past just avoided that hard path instead of asking for support from those around me. I have always found it difficult to ask for help, it felt like defeat and admitting that I wasn't any good at my job. But that was just my perception. My colleagues consistently give me great feedback and, seeing my big workload, often offer help... which I usually turn down. How mad is that?

So when my lovely UK team mate told me that cancelling this particular meeting was now causing a problem and suggested I delegate to him... I had no choice but to accept. I did so grudgingly and felt rubbish about myself for the rest of the day. And then something happened, I got an email from another colleague who thanked me for having the courage to share the workload. She was often in a similar position and rarely had the courage to ask for help, but she appreciated my honesty that things were too hard. She saw it as an invitation to also share how she was struggling with some things. We laughed together about how ridiculous it is that we find it hard, when we are telling employees all the time to ask for help.

We discussed her challenges and, for the first time in ages, I was completely honest with someone about how hard things were. She offered support in a specific area and I readily accepted. In return, I offered to help her with a technical issue, so that she could crack on with another project. We both came away from the conversation with renewed energy and determination to reach the end of the wall. And the path didn’t seem quite so hard, or so lonely.

If only everything in life could be so simply resolved.

But it can be... I hear a voice in my head say. I remember the quote "You can’t push the river, it flows by itself".

Instead of using lots of energy to go against the flow, is it not more effective to go with the flow? I think of a snowflake, it doesn’t waste energy trying to fall in a particular trajectory. No, it just floats where the wind takes it and falls exactly where it should. This is the approach I am now trying to use, floating where the wind takes me. And I am grateful that the wind seems to be taking me on an amazing journey in my career. A conversation with our head of HR a few months ago is leading me to a special place where I am starting to use my creative streak more and more. I would never have thought 6 months ago that I would be asked to create images to be used to represent the company values. This has given me such a boost in confidence. I would have never dared dream that I could incorporate my doodling into work, if I had not gone with the flow I may never have had the chance to do this.

And yet the snowflake is a symbol of another challenge I face, you see I am flakey.

There I said it. I am that annoying person who has loads of ideas but can be guilty of not completing things. Maybe I think the path is too hard, or maybe I am distracted by the next sparkly thing, sometimes both. Sometimes its pure procrastination. I get frustrated with myself, and angry that I allow myself to be this way, but it doesn’t always get me doing things. Even as I type this, I am avoiding doing my 2015 L&D planning, because I just don’t know where to start. The thing is, I too jump for joy when I finish something, and I love that sense of achievement even in something really simple.

So as I commit to floating like a snowflake and asking for help from people around me, I also commit to reach the end of the path so that I can spend more time jumping for joy with a grin on my face.

Let It Snow, sung by Doris Day