So what!

You know what lies ahead: The work that comes through slogging it out until Friday.

If you are anything like me, as a lawyer, I spent the weekend recuperating and thinking about how the following week was going to be different. But, in truth, it made no difference: The system wore me down to the point where I resigned myself to another week of mediocrity.

The thing is if you want to design a life that that mirrors who you are, fuels your passion and makes you come alive then, as cliched as it may sound, it won’t happen by happenstance.

You have to stop doing the same shit every week.

Do more of the stuff that you love – you know the stuff where you feel like a real version of you, and not someone who is constantly pretending.

Work is work.

Following your passion is entirely different.

Forget the money just for once. If you have to adjust when you get up and go to sleep then that is a small price to pay for living a life on your terms and not one decreed by a multitude of others – the boss etc.

Yes, you have to pay the bills and all that stuff but the fear of losing only comes when you can’t see how your passion mirrors financial security. And, let me tell you, no matter how hard you try, you won’t mirror your passion with your current income. It’s only when you let go of the need to earn that you will understand what it feels to live a life of purpose.

If you follow your art, the money will snap at your heels.

You need to ask the simple question.

Am I happy?

Don’t lie.

If not, then start living your life, and not existing from one day to the dull next.

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• life?
• love?
• living?

We’re here for such a short period of time, and yet, early on, we draw a veil that shuts out the light from living a life that could have been.

Why?

Fear?

Fear of what?

Fear?

Is fear really that bad to lose the one and only opportunity you have?

How many times do you hear about people who have come close to death who, in that instant, decide to turn over a new leaf, and live life on their terms? But do you really need some cataclysmic event to show you the light?

I know that one blog post or a bushel of books or quotes isn’t going to make a jot of difference beyond the synaptic impulse, but, sooner or later, I hope reality dawns and you realise that living a meaningful life is much more important than how much you earn or the label that you endlessly parade.

Who are you?

Why do you exist?

And what will be your legacy?

These are the important questions and they rarely, if ever, get addressed. Indeed, most people are so busy carving out a living that they don’t stop to think if their ladder is leaning against the right wall or if they are climbing something that just goes on and on and on without purpose.

Stop and focus.

If you value your life don’t ever be afraid to take time out to understand what is important to you. And don’t think of the exercise as a way of coming out of your self-imposed exile with a revitalised sense of the important vs. urgent. That’s way too shallow. You need to understand what that inner voice has been saying to you for the last few years, and find a path that will, over the long haul, allow you to live a life closer to the real you.

Don’t be afraid to ask for help. You can’t expect to have all the answers, let alone, in some instances, know which questions to ask.

My mission is to unlock your potential – the genius that resides within that is very often you harshest critic. It’s to help you answer the difficult questions, and come up with a plan that taps into your strengths so you start living a life on your terms and not what others have come to expect of you.

It’s not about happiness per se, but if you can find inner peace that will go a long way to lifting the veil that has shut out the light for so long.

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I will spare you the detail.

Me and hosting are hardly best of friends, but at least I’m back in business to start writing, creating and sharing again.

Also, you will see a sharper focus to my writing, if only because I know more about myself now (see my recent piece on Medium) than ever before.

Thanks for your patience.

- Julian

We operate in two worlds: the one we think people are comfortable with; and the one we are comfortable with.

You might think you can coalesce the two. But do you?

I lived under the career yoke, and made all the right noises. Inside, though, I was angry, frustrated and ill at ease with my surroundings.

Being authentic doesn’t mean speaking our mind, whatever the consequences. It means being thoughtful, giving and appreciative of others, but most of all being expressive of who you are. In my experience, seldom, if ever, do people produce their best work when they wear a faux mask.

Not all employers are the same, but too many allow an atmosphere of fear to manifest where everyone plays the game for all it’s worth. Some bosses think it a major part of their job to keep everyone in line. Not only do I think this mistaken, but it’s positively subversive. Their job is to realise the potential of everyone.

Ask yourself this simple question.

What does your name stand for?

Seriously.

What does it stand for?

Just imagine someone writing your obituary:

‘[Name] … played the game really well’

You are here you for a reason.

Make the most of the opportunity.

My thing is to realise your potential – to awaken your genius.

I can’t imagine anyone coming to me for help and saying: “I want you to show me how I can play the game better.”

Be authentic.

Now.

Not tomorrow.

And forever.

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Every day is an opportunity to make a difference.

But we take too much for granted, from our health, to what we eat.

These days I keep a journal (like morning pages). The part I enjoy most is where I jot down a few lines of gratitude. It could be the celebration of drinking a cup of tea, or the wonderful dawn chorus that so inspires me.

Even if you don’t feel inspired to write something, allow yourself a moment of solitude every day to reflect on those things you cherish.

We all know that life is what you make it. But don’t get so caught up in the striving that you ignore all the wonderful experiences that make up your life.

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Practically everywhere you look, you sense a resigned sense of “Ho Hum, it’s good enough”.

It’s not just that we don’t like to complain. No, we have allowed standards to slip to the point where even a simple “thank you for your custom” seems exceptional.

I have lamented before the fact that people don’t care enough. In most cases, and it’s a sad indictment of our culture, things only happen (to our satisfaction) when we complain.

It might be stating the obvious, but every business is a reflection of the people who work for or own it. If the business is sloppy, dirty or tired then that merely reflects the lack of aspiration that lies within. The thing is, as much as I love the social media paradigm, I often wonder if that doesn’t mask a multitude of sins – namely the product or service is no better than average. I recognise in a global market place, it’s hard, sometimes, to stand out – but, in truth, if you offered the World’s best service or product, would you really need to embark on a lavish programme of content creation and syndication? Of course, business is cyclical and there is every chance that unless you are reminded every so often about your experience, you are just as likely to forget. But I don’t think so.

To give you a vivid example of a business that stopped shooting for the stars, consider Parker Pens. The Parker 51 is still one of my favourite pens. But where are they now? Yes, the market for writing instruments has declined but why is it that Mont Blanc has stolen their thunder, and more than that, created a prestige brand outwith pens? It all started when Parker stopped making great pens, and decided to produce something that was worse than average.

I wish I were more sanguine about the situation, but it infuriates me how few people care. It might sound petty, but this whole culture of “How are you today?” or “Would you like to buy a [name]?” is, surely, the apogee of mediocrity. It’s as if these pithy, nonsense lines are being proffered to make up for the otherwise inferior service, dirty interior and people who don’t (genuinely) care about the business.

It would be nice to report that someone has taken a stand against mediocrity (surely we don’t have to rely on Jamie for everything?), but I fear it’s just too unwieldy and banal to warrant a scintilla of attention. In any event, where would you start?

Education?

Healthcare?

The government?

Utility providers? (So much for privatisation.)

OK, forget the macro. Are you willing to challenge yourself to get better every single day? Not just to read a book, but to challenge the status quo and make excellence the benchmark in everything you do?

I hope you won’t think me a curmudgeon for raising this point. I’ve been around the track enough times to recognise when people are trying, and when they are going through the motions. I just think we deserve better. Mediocrity should not be considered normal, when it takes comparatively little effort to change things.

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• certainty
• predictability
• security (or so they think)
• a rehearsal of their autobiography
• living up to the expectation of others

Even if you have a dream, you dare not think outside your limited purview. Yes, you might have read about and be inspired by someone who has made it big, but you know that you lack the self-belief to go beyond your (current) safety zone.

My message is simple. If you have a passion – and it matters not what it is (in my book, the more esoteric the better) – then for heaven’s sake pursue it.

The greatest challenge in my work is to empower people to believe. Too often we are swayed by our history and give up even before we start. Indeed, our inner critic is a master at destroying our fragile level of confidence. Just as we think we about to make the leap, it moves out of the shadows and whispers mischievously “Who do you think you are kidding?”

As someone who invested my soul in the business of work, without ever considering my real passion, I know all too well what it feels like to go through the weary, tiresome motions that leaves you feeling cold and disengaged. Each day grew harder and harder, to the point where it strangled my inner spirit – I was literally dying from the inside out. In the end the only driver – if you can properly call it that – was the money. And what a stinker that was. All it did was drive me to compete against everyone else (well at least I could say I was the highest paid – as if!).

If you have a passion for something, then you owe it to those you love to pursue it. If you think you can put it off for some time hence – not that old retirement chestnut – then you are deceiving yourself. In fact, by the time you get to the stage where the circumstances are just right, it’s likely the fire that once burnt so bright will have dimmed to a point that hardly warrants the effort of rekindling things.

The thing about passion is that once you get started, if you are truly inspired, you don’t need a 7 Step Programme to make things happen. Passion, in all its glory, is enough to carry you over the threshold and on to great things.

Passion doesn’t just have to translate into starting a business. It could just as easily see you working with and inspiring others; or travelling; or any number of things.

My point is, you don’t need to read masses of material to know what to do. You know what to do.

So, as they say, let your spirit soar, and unleash your passion on the world.

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Unfortunately, we are conditioned to believe that having to go back and analyse our flight path is a sign of (massive) failure.

Take something like websites.

For most businesses, they grew up, electronically, in an era when it was necessary to have a limited digital presence, in most part to replicate their brochure(s). But, nowadays, the website has to answer a multitude of questions – the brochure version doesn’t cut it. The problem is that the landscape which people look to (or copy!) hasn’t changed much, and there is a dearth of originality.

My plea – or should that be a clarion call – is for everyone to go back to square one and start asking some serious questions:

1. Why do we need a website?
2. What’s its purpose?
3. How will we differentiate our offering among all the other me-too varieties circling around?
4. How will we keep on message with our brand values?
5. Do we properly understand our demographic and psychographic?
6. Who will resource it?
7. Who will ensure that it doesn’t fall into disrepair?

You get the picture.

Right now, the talks that I give are focused much less on mastery of the social media platforms but, rather, the importance of your own, unique digital capital. Yes, it might seem basic, but only because social media has become a distraction from leveraging the greatest value you possess – the people within your midst. After all, it’s their creative minds that will provide you with the WOW content that will differentiate your business and its offering.

Please don’t feel that social media isn’t important – it is – but when your messages are directing me back to your desired hub, please make sure that what I find excites me, rather than leaving me feeling a huge sense of disappointment.

Starting over needn’t involve breaking the bank, but it may just be the wisest decision you ever make.

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Perhaps it is that everything new smooths out in time, but the message I’ve promulgated for as long as I can recall – to earn attention – is a wasteland.

Indeed, not only is there is a dearth of original content, but there is an unapologetic affront to my senses by dint of everyone peddling their brand of Uberness. To put this in concrete terms, you only have to look at the lack of engagement on Google+, Twitter and LinkedIn to understand the point. Come on. If your content was so remarkable, how come your Tribe haven’t gone wild with excitement – “WOW look at this!”

For many businesses they have a long road to travel before they embrace social media, but I fear that, by the time they have cracked the cultural issues, they will have lost the element of social and defaulted to bugging, buying or begging for attention. In fact, many are there right now. Also, they wouldn’t dream of investing in a creative department, but default to promulgating their previous, anodyne material to a new(ish) medium.

Social media networks do not help. In many ways they are antithetical to whole notion of social. Don’t misunderstand me. I’m not against advertising but it isn’t social media. Of course, there is a convergence between paid and earned media but the good stuff seems so heavily promoted that any value is lost.

I hope I’m wrong about social media; but I instinctively feel there is a gap in the market for a proper social media platform where constant self-promotion, selling and offers are banned or at least removed from my line of sight. Perhaps I’m asking too much. However, I wouldn’t need much persuasion to give up some of my platforms and focus on more creative material, even if it meant losing out on the opportunity to (occasionally) syndicate my work.

It may well be that because I’m British I feel particularly squeamish about bugging people all the time. But I don’t think so.

I don’t think it matters a jot where you hail from. If we spend our precious time online then, surely, it isn’t much to expect not to have to wade through the treacle in search of the really good stuff and a bit of honest conversation.

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In the early days, I was driven by the need to fill a lacuna in my knowledge of many ignored areas over a period of 20 years of studying law. Thankfully, that sense of inadequacy has abated.

Now, I read to develop as a person.

But reading is only part of the story. Whatever I read, I try to apply in my life.

I’m not sure where the needle has swung with the Nation’s proclivity in reading. My sense is that we are probably reading no more than we did 20 years ago, but our tastes are more eclectic (see We Are All Weird by Seth Godin).

What I’m certain about, however, is that few people, having read a seminal text or otherwise, set out with the avowed intention of changing how they live their life or behave.

Take something like Dale Carnegie’s book How to Win Friends and Influence People. The principles enunciated are timeless. Yet how many people do you meet who walk the talk?

I accept that life is not a counsel of perfection but reading is more important than acquiring a bushel of Top 20 likes.

Done right it has the power to transform your life.

PS. What one book would you say has influenced you more than any other? In my case, it’s probably The War of Art by Steven Pressfield.

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