This week I brought you wisdom for Leadership from the sagest of sage bears (apologies to Paddington, who comes a close second), Winnie the Pooh.
Today, I bring you the legend that is Eric Cantona, who I also wrote about recently in: “Ferguson and Cantona – Vulnerability and Strength“.
Yes, Leadership learnings from Eric Cantona. You come here expecting the eclectic, yes?
I’ll share learnings from an article he recently wrote, as well as my own reflections.
As I wrote in my recent article on Cantona:
Eric Cantona retired after five glorious seasons with Manchester United at the young age of 32. As noted in this article, he was a “footballing genius, poet and cod philosopher king {and often} as gnomic as a sphinx”. Eric the footballer ended in 1997, Eric the actor, poet and more continues!
Since I wrote that piece, Eric Cantona wrote an article called: “What Is the Meaning of Life?“. Well, one would expect no less from such a legend. In this article, he began with:
“Football gives meaning to your life. I really believe this. But your life, your history, your essence, also gives meaning to your football.”
He then went on to tell the remarkable life story of his grandparents and his great-grandparents before them, then relating that history to how he played football with such freedom and so creativity. He was truly one of football’s greats, and to read his article is to recognise where that stems from.
Some time ago I wrote: “We are the sum total of our experiences” and now when I look at the pages that are visited on this site, this one is now coming up from searches more often than any other. This speaks to our desire to understand ourselves, and part of such self-knowledge is understanding where we came from, as Cantona eloquently talks about in his article.
I feel to repeat the opening of that article, as it may encourage some readers to consider this theme of understanding our individual history.
“A core to #OpenLeadership is self-knowledge, and recent conversations remind me of this quote : “We are the sum total of our experiences. Those experiences – be they positive or negative – make us the person we are, at any given point in our lives. And, like a flowing river, those same experiences, and those yet to come, continue to influence and reshape the person we are, and the person we become. None of us are the same as we were yesterday, nor will be tomorrow.”
Sometimes we look at past actions and events in our life and judge them, wish they didn’t happen, look at ourselves and wish we had acted differently. However, “we are the sum total of our experiences”, they make us who we are today, they create the colours of our lives. When we choose to ignore what they have taught us, how they have formed who we are, we lessen the richness and fullness of who we are and what we have to offer the world.
Another reminder from a conversation today, from one of my very favourite books :
“And, when you want something, all the universe conspires in helping you to achieve it.”
― Paulo Coelho, The Alchemist
My spin on this is that when events and changes happen in our life, we have a part to play in this from conscious (and often unconscious) intention and direction we set for ourselves.”
In closing, the logo of this site is a family monogram of my initials, passed down to me as the eldest child of my generation for four generations. At some level I rebelled against that history in naming my first son, again the first in his generation, by a different name. Today I wear my signet ring with that crest, as well as use it as my logo, in recognition.
As Eric Cantona’s article reminded me, and as I wrote about earlier.
We are the sum total of our experiences