A grey and stormy day at one of the most remote hotels I've ever stayed at. After breakfast I remark to the owner: "this feels like a wonderful day to do nothing". "Isn't every day a wonderful day to do nothing?", he replied. "That sounds like a 'Winnie the Pooh'...
Travel has the power to shift our context, causing us to look at things in different ways. A one hour flight, thirty-five minutes drive, a converted shipping container on a farm overlooking a view for miles and miles...
What do you see first in the picture above? In looking at it, did you notice yourself slowing down and focussing closely on the image? In my most recent three daily posts, I have focussed on a theme of reducing and simplifying. When we do this, we are able to bring...
David McWilliams, here seen at the best party of the year for Economist and Economics geeks, Kilkenomics, is one of my favourite writers. Today I share his latest post, "Can Bernie Sanders fix the broken American Dream?" and a few bullet points on why I love the way...
I recently wrote "Slow Motion Multitasking", musing on the value of slowly moving between tasks and projects. Today a simpler thought around our choices around pace in this so, so fast moving world we live in, about the power of going slowly. I sense, from inspiration...
Conscious mental exercise. Stories around bringing consciousness to stretch and grow our mind in everyday situations.
Quite the view, isn't it? I recently spent a week back in Cayman, where I had upwards of thirty meetings, talking with well over sixty people, including leading a four-hour session for a team of twenty-two. I worked out that in all that time I had less than two hours...
The other day, I felt inspired to write by my friend Morgan DaCosta coining the phrase: "Coaching by Walking Around" This was a "level up" from the idea of Management by Walking Around, part of the essence of which is to walk randomly around and be present to those...
Taken after a photo shoot, looking over the Thames to Temple. London is such a city of both tradition and permanence as well as dynamism and growth. Yesterday I had a wonderful experience with a highly creative photographer, Simon Edwards, as we walked around London...
Some Scots for you in the title today. “Whit’s fur ye’ll no go by ye” Translation: What's for you will not go by you. My Scots grandmother or, in more recent times, a dear friend (also Scots, naturally!) would use this to remind me to have patience, to relax, to be...
Musing on silence. Do find time to rest and recharge and find silence at this time of year
How is your heart doing at this very moment ? How is your Haal ?
I believe that there is no such thing as an original idea, only riffs on a theme. Here I riff on “Less is More”
Paint a picture with words and other will follow. Lessons from Saint Ex.
My story of #Flow from the day Stephen Hawking died. Be present.
Ikigai, Flow and Leadership
This week a twist, three powerful commencement speeches to share
This morning I write this overlooking a beautiful and quiet garden on a winter's day in the Scottish Highlands. I am visiting friends and they have gone out for a while and I sit here in solitude and stillness. We have so much information in the world, so much for our...
I recently read Silence in the age of noise by Erling Kagge, and a couple of themes came out for me. One was that while yes, we can find near-absolute silence by heading out into the wilderness, silence is available to us at any time, in any place. The key is to...
In my last article, Power of Silence, I began to muse on silence and what being silent opens up to you. In chatting about this with my wildly polymathic friend Maeve Gillies, she sent me this link to a musical work by John Gage called 4'33". Over four minutes of...
I'm exploring the concept of silence, including reading this book : The author once spent fifty days walking solo across Antarctica with no radio and I'm fascinated by his observations on silence. To me it is far deeper than being in nature, it is about silence within...