Inwards, onwards & upwards
A journal of invitations, ideas & inspiration to keep you moving from where you are to where you want to be
Two-storey skyline
Arriving in London at 25, I was ambitious for summits to scale.
The city architecture was a constant reminder there was always more I could be doing: starting something new, reaching higher, improving.
My motto; ‘onwards and upwards’.
Looking backwards to move forwards
This summer we took our three children and the dog to visit my parents.
After a chaotic week of garden football, rowdy dinners and wet walks, the cereal, red wine and grass were all gone, the white carpets were turning grey and the ipads refused to charge: it was time to leave.
The night before we headed home I went to a party where my friend Gemma asked ‘Do you miss living up here?’
The question stopped me in my tracks.
Be Here Now
I don’t know about you, but I’m someone who likes to move fast. Who thrives on action. Who loves - no - needs to be busy.
In fact, if I’m not being productive I’m not really sure what to do with myself.
Most days, my life is lived as one continuous flow of tasks, each with a box next to it just begging to be ticked. My status update reads ‘to do’. My autobiography will be titled Doing. My grave stone will say simply: ‘DONE’.
Like Ferris Beuller before me, I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: “Life moves pretty fast. If you don’t stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.”
Be astonished
Welcome to my June newsletter.
This month’s journal entry is a little longer than usual. Ironically, it’s about how precious our attention is….
So I hope as you pay yours to these 1,000 words over the next 4 minutes, they offer you a worthy return on your investment.
The 97.3% Failure
When I left university in 2002, I decided I wanted to be a theatre director.
The established career path was to get experience as an Assistant Director and work your way up from there. Great, I thought, I’ll do that then; enthusiastically, I set about applying for Assistant Director jobs.
Meanwhile, 5,200 miles away, a team of scientists in Arizona were launching an ambitious and intimate study of arboreal life in which the world’s biggest biosphere was created by planting trees inside a dome.
And some 370 miles west of that dome, Kobe Bryant was lining up as the Shooting Guard for the LA Lakers*.
Over the course of the next five years, here’s what happened…
Bring back the video shop.
It’s 1991, I’m 10 and it’s Friday night. That means only one thing: Blockbuster Video.
My mum takes me and my best mate Paul to choose a film. We have around 100 to pick from but we’re only interested in the new releases. In the era of Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, Bruce Willis dying hard and Val Kilmer’s Batman, this is a 10-year-old boy’s weekly highlight.
One for all and all for one
This month I’ve been thinking about people.
Meeting people. Leading people. Understanding people. Managing people. Celebrating people. A huge portion of our time is spent gearing our emotions, attention and actions around people who aren’t us.
And yet, they can be such hard work. Hell is other people, Satre famously observed. So why do we fill our lives with them?
Move Mountains with your Mind
A few years ago, when I was Joint Artistic Director of Paines Plough, we were exploring the idea of building a pop-up theatre and looking at where we might tour it to.
On a tip off, our Producer and I set off one wet and windy November morning to visit the once-thriving seaside destination of Margate.
CATEGORIES
About Coaching | Newsletters | Aspiring Artistic Directors | How to Begin | The Power of Perception | Unleashing Creative Thinking | Working with Other People | Better Decision-Making | How to be More Resilient | The Importance of Attention | Be More Present | Learning From The Past | Thinking Long-Term | Navigating Change | How to Persevere