Seasonal Paradise

Heroes: The Iron Nun

When you exercise, time stands still.  

Sister Madonna Buder started running at 47 and did her first Iron Man at age 55.  Now she's done 45 Iron Mans. She's 86 and going strong, and says she "trains religiously." She's the perfect reminder to get out and enjoy your body. 

And if the Iron Nun isn't enough of a kick in the pants for you, there's always 97 year old Charles Eugster, who holds the 200m and 400m sprint world records (for age 95+).  

He can do 50 push ups, and took up bodybuilding at 87 so he could impress the girls, according to this BBC video about Charles.  What a character! "Aging for me has become an enormous pleasure, a delight, a joy!"

Hero: Lord Hanson

Hanson plc bought companies, culled them, and brought them back to life.  Lord Hanson was the head of the company, and a controversial character, along with Gordon White, an even more controversial figure.  They had a nose for value and waste, and were good at creating good viable companies from under-performing industrial companies. 

Key to the Hanson philosophy, and the reason they walked away from an opportunity to acquire Avis, the car rental company, was that they believed "never risk more than you can afford to lose."

Lifelines: The things you own end up owning you

Blind people have more sensitive hearing. 

When you close your eyes and drink wine, you can taste more. 

It would seem that our senses attenuate each other.

How about our sensitivity in relationships?  I had a moment of realization a few weeks back.  I realised that the feeling of owning goods attenuated my sense of relationship, to some small extent.  I've known for a while that I feel better, owning less.  But now that we're in Prague for a couple of months, with the bare minimum of 'stuff,'  I think Irena and I are ever so slightly more sensitive to each other because we're not bothered about 'stuff.'   We're renting a very nice two bedroom furnished apartment, with a great view of the Autumn woods, just a few minutes tram ride from beautiful Prague.  We have our laptops, two suitcases of clothes, and that's it.  IT FEELS GREAT!  All we have to care about, is each other. 

Here's the view from our window, showing the first snowfall of the season.  It was just cold enough for snow, but not cold enough to settle at all.

Studies on happiness around the world agree that the people in countries like Nigeria, El Salvador and Colombia are happier than people in the USA and UK.  Why?  I'd surmise, partly because they don't have so much 'stuff'' and they focus more on their family and community.  They can generally rely less on their governments and personal financial wealth to support them, so they focus more on the family, partly as a matter of survival.  Their very existences depend on having a close support network in many cases and as a (very significant) side benefit of them spending more time with family and friends, and less time pawing over their stuff, they're happier. 

Just a thought. - Mark :-)

Lifeline: Control the things you can control and don't worry about the rest

Don't fret! Most of the stuff around you, you can't really control. You CAN control your actions, your mindset, and your micro-environment to some extent. But you can't control most of the things you'd be inclined to worry and tear yourself up about.

"Control the things you can control, and don't worry about the rest." This lifeline changed my life. I first heard it as part of my training for Airpic in the summer of 1994. Here's the context. 'You can go out and sell aerial photography door-to-door but you can't really control sales. You can't CONTROL someones decision to buy. You CAN however control the quality of your demonstration of the product, and the quantity of demonstrations.'

That made a lot of sense to me at the time. And the lifeline has made a whole lot more sense in many other contexts since I took it to heart and made it part of my life, since 1994. When I first heard it, I found it gave me a lot of relief. Thank goodness. I really couldn't control sales. The pressure was off. All I need to do was model the best people, modify the pitches to make them mine, and then get my ass out and be faster than anyone else.

It worked a treat. With Airpic, with all my jobs since, and most especially with my company Courtland Brooks. I know I can't control if my clients get picked up by the press, or if a potential partner decides to do business with us. But I CAN can make sure the press and potential partners get great and compelling information, and make sure to follow up. So, I learned from my experience with Airpic, to take the heat off myself. I couldn't control the end result. I just had to break-down the actions needed to make the chances of meeting a favorable end result more favorable. Then do them. ...and not worry too much. :-)

Lifeline: "People are just as happy as they make their minds up to be"

Who said 'people are just as happy as they make their minds up to be?' 

Abraham Lincoln!  Its the single most important sentence and 'lifeline' that anyone has said that has changed my life significantly for the better.  Here's a little story around this lifeline. 

I moved to the USA as soon as I graduated from uni. and worked my 4th summer in a row selling aerial photography for a company called Airpic.  This time, to communities in Pittsburgh.  I then went travelling around the USA. While travelling across the USA, I often asked people where the best and finest place was to live in the USA.  Some said Denver, others thought New York, many favored San Francisco and San Diego, and the concensus was that Los Angeles was dangerous, stay clear.  Still, L.A. had its lure.  Coming from a fishing town in the U.K., I'd never seen a movie star in person before. 

So I headed to L.A.  I'd bought an R.V. for $2000.  A very low sum for even a fixer upper RV, I thought.  Little did I know, this particular RV had a Chevy engine that was prone to warping, forcing the exhaust gasket to blow every 500 miles.  Noxious fumes would leak into the cabin.  I'd drive with the window down until I could find a suitable auto repairs supplier, park up and spend a few hours trying to fix the exhaust gasket once and for all.  I was never successful.  Every 500 miles, more noxious fumes and another repair job.  All the way across the U.S.A.  Still, the scenery was great and the vagabond adventuring was first rate. 

I landed my RV in Malibu Beach, nestled it in among the other RV's parked up in front of the million dollar homes on the beach, and quietly lived there for three weeks.  I'd welded a motorcycle rack to the back of the RV in West Virginia, and also got a great deal on a nice knobbly-tired off-road but road-legal motorbike.  That was my escape pod from the RV, and I used it to tour all around Santa Monica, down to Orange County and in to Anaheim and beyond.  But the RV didn't have a generator, and living by candlelight was getting old so I decided to rent a room, and get a job. 

I worked as a Ford dealership car salesman for a short red-haired former toy salesman from England who took pity on me.  The room was more interesting.  I lived in a house with a Vietnam vet and his Vietnamese wife and four children.  The oldest daughter, a 14 year old, had just had serious brain surgery and had a tumor removed.  She took a liking to me.  Until I brought my girlfriend home for a visit.  Then she treated me with thorough scorn and hissing resentment.  The kind of scorn that only a half-out-of-her-wits 14 year old who had just survived brain surgery could.  But still I stuck around.  I had a prozac popping girlfriend who was going through her dark stage.  She showed me around town, for a few months.  She showed me the dark side.  I showed her the lighter side.  Fast forward. 

I then spent my 5th summer doing to door to door sales work for Airpic.  The prior four summers I'd worked hard to raise enough cash to pay my own way through school.  I was the company's top salesman, and had insisted on coming back each year for more punishment.  I actually enjoyed it.  I was the guy nobody could quite figure out.  I wasn't especially smart or good looking, but I sold more aerial photos than anybody.  I was fast.  I ran from door to door.  I turned the whole thing into a memory game.  I'd memorise as many names, and stories about the community as I could and then use that to bring the community photos to life.  I tried to entertain people, and they enjoyed it and didn't say 'no' too much. 

But in my 5th summer working in the USA, I had a few setbacks.  My sales teams and I were based in Lansing, Michigan.  We rented a nice furnished house, and I took the room with the waterbed.  Nice!  A waterbed!  But, noone told me that you're actually supposed to turn the heater on on a waterbed, even in the summer.  One morning I woke up shuddering from the cumulative effect of sleeping on the bed for a couple of weeks.  The water was colder than my body temperature and had slowly sapped the heat right out of me.  Then I looked around and realised that the waterbed had turned into a moat.  It had a slow leak and the water finally brimmed up to the top of the sides of the bed. 

I developed a cough.  I continued to work.  It got worse.  But I had some sales competitions in hand.  I continued, won a mountain bike, then won my dream camera, then the cough got interminably worse and I had to take a day off.  Then another day, to see the doctor, who told me that I had walking pnemonia.  Then I took a test and lo and behold, I had dormant TB.  No more work, no more competitions, I had to quit and recover.  I was at an all time low.  I'd quit, left my team behind, and drove back to California with my tail between my legs.

It was around this time that I was introduced to the phrase, "people are just as happy as they make their minds up to be."  I remember when I heard it for the first time.  It was as if someone had smacked me across the face.  It was one of my first true points of realization.  I NEVER looked back after hearing those words. 

Happiness, quite simply, is a decision you make.  Lincolns gift to America was unification, and freeing the slaves.  His gift to me was happiness.  Thank you Abe Lincoln.