Folks,

If you want to be a speaker, book a stage. If you want to be fit and healthy in your old age, don't think about what you used to do — start doing what you want to do. There is usually one thing that unlocks the thing you want to do. It might not get you all the way, but it will get you on your way, and that's the point.

This week I’ve been working in rough — sketching out ideas, trying to find the links between them. It's taken me a while to figure it out, but I got there in the end. My job is to help coaches "see" their practice.

To give you an idea of what I mean, this is a sum up of a talk I'm writing for a school about juggling. I don't know very much about juggling, but I do know that a metaphor can do a lot of the heavy lifting when it comes to learning.

A novice juggler will do everything they can to not drop a ball — since the idea of juggling is to keep the balls in the air, it makes sense to do just that. We might pay attention to how many we drop, how well other people are doing, or the reaction of the person teaching us. Whatever it is, it's likely not helping.

The expert juggler, on the other hand, knows it's the throw, not the catch, that matters. The better the throw, the more certain the catch.

Once you can "see" what you pay attention to, you can decide if it helps you — and decide what you actually need. The alternative is moving from one thing to the next, trying to keep all the balls in the air. It's what we do to avoid failure — that's the real problem.

One step at a time, 

Simon

P.S If you would like me to run a workshop at your place of work, or bring to life some of the ideas in my book, I’d love to hear from you.