How much effort should we put into our New Year’s resolutions? In other words, how much resolve should resolutions need?

January 4^th and another New Year begins. Always a time of reflection and new starts. How many people are starting their new year’s resolutions feeling over-full in every way from the festive season? Everyone full of enthusiasm, gym memberships going through the roof, chocolate sales going down!!! And yet, by February, often these resolutions have fallen by the wayside. Eating healthily feels boring, you realise that your gym membership is costing you about £50 a time, old habits start to creep back in and you feel that sense of disappointment in yourself. A familiar cycle for us all?

So, as I sit her on the first day back to focusing on Genergy after the New Year I am asking myself if I can create something new this year. Something different and sustainable and even fun! There is something about the energy of New Year’s resolutions which is about deprivation, stopping doing things or doing more things which are ‘good for us’. Even writing that phrase I can feel the hard work behind it. Why are things that are good for us never as much fun as the naughty stuff?! And why do the two things have to be in different boxes? Jonathan has been asking me what I want to be different this year or if I want to set any resolutions, and I’ve been reluctant to really say anything concrete. It was only this morning that I realised that I don’t want my intentions this year to be in a box or to feel restrictive. I want them to feel free and expansive and like they will really positively add to my life rather than take away from it.

So, as you read this, tune into the resolutions or intentions you have set. Notice without judgement how they feel. Do they add to your energy or deplete it? Do they feel exciting or like a ‘should do’? Do they feel heavy or light? Do you really want to do them and do they feel exciting… and like you can’t wait to get going? If they don’t then the chances are that they will have fallen by the wayside come the cold days of February!

For myself, this year is about creating life in a different, more integrated way. And, I notice as I write this that I am struggling to find the right words. Even the word ‘integrated’ feels like it has an old energy about it and takes conscious effort and work. However, what I am intending is that I can let all the pieces of my life flow easily and effortlessly together and that the energy of one piece sustains and grows the rest. The Cattells are a family for the first time this year with the arrival of our beautiful daughter, Ella Rae, and our gorgeous Labrador, Rosie. Jonathan and I also run Genergy and have our own interests and needs as individuals. If you looked at it on paper, you’d think that we have a lot on our plates! And yet, when I spend time with Ella I feel a true sense of expansion, creativity and connection to the world that then expands me as an individual and enhances my work. And my work adds to my energy and sense of what I am about in the world which I then bring back to my family. A virtuous circle.

I first noticed this when I was pregnant last year. At first, I was nervous about coaching clients when I could feel the baby moving inside me. Would I be distracted? Would it bother them? How much could I allow the baby to impact on my work? Would I have the energy I needed? And, the wonderful thing I discovered was that when I allowed the baby to be part of my energy and the work I was doing, I was a more powerful coach than I have ever been. She became part of a greater energy in the interaction and encouraged me to be less attached, more creative and more connected to the bigger potential of my clients than I could have been without her. On one level, what I was doing was less important because the baby was the most important thing happening in my life (whereas my work had previously always been my baby!) and yet, in other way, because I was unattached and connected to this bigger piece of creation my clients made bigger shifts! It was quite an amazing experience and a big lesson for me. I was more me than ever before and it was wonderful.

Coming back to my intentions for this year….. To be in flow. To be brave. To be fit and strong and healthy so that I have maximum energy for the year. To be truly present in- and enjoy every moment with my daughter who changes so fast every day. To love my work and to allow the fullest expression of me – wife, mother, passionate people-developer, business owner, lover of people – into everything I do. To be more successful and fulfilled than I have ever been. And, when I feel into this, the individual pieces have more energy. Yes, I want to get back into exercise and get fit but I’ll do it an easy way. I’ll eat healthily so I have energy but I won’t deprive myself of the odd piece of chocolate either. And I’ll celebrate all that I achieve.

So, tune into what you really want this year as your biggest, most creative, most expansive self. What would you really love to be true at the end of the year? What really expands you and your energy? What is going to be FUN and bring you joy every day? And, then see what feels right to commit to. Not from a sense of responsibility but from a feeling of developing you and becoming even more of the person you want to be. If it feels like hard work, reframe it or ditch it. Let’s get over the ‘shoulds’ of a traditional January and enjoy this new beginning for what it is. A time of fresh starts, new energy and renewal.

I can’t be put in a box or divide myself into pieces of home and work life and neither can you if you really want to be you. Enjoy every facet of who you are and allow it to flow. I can’t wait to hear your adventures - check in with me so we can see how we’re doing!

Here’s to a magical 2012. May you surpass your biggest dreams.

Love.

Lisa

Have you ever wondered what your best sides are? Ever taken a moment to quietly ask which of those things about you actually get the best out of others? The things you can ‘do’ can be useful. But more important and infinitely more powerful are the things you actually ‘are’. What are they? And how can we spot them? One dark night 10 years ago, a very interesting man started to explain.  He was worth listening to. He was one of the most mysterious and interesting men I’ve ever met. I’m not allowed to say his name.

About 10 years ago, I decided to do something I’d always wanted to do. I decided to go back to university and conduct some postgraduate investigative research of secret intelligence (e.g. spies). And after a couple of months, I one day received a phone call. My academic supervisor (a Professor) was telling me I’d been invited to ‘an evening’. A guest speaker would present something and then we’d discuss it as a group. He couldn’t tell me any more, but would I fancy going and playing along with this? Errr…. Yes please.

The bells should have started ringing, but they didn’t. I was too busy working my socks off to listen to my intuition.

A few days before this ‘evening’, I was told I didn’t need to where a suit, I was told which town we were going to, I was told overnight accommodation had been booked for me.  I was told the theme for the evening’s discussion, and I was told that there would be a small group of people who ‘shared my interests’.

As the Professor and I arrived at this special building, a man in smart clothes greeted and addressed us as ‘sir’ and took us to a special room. It was a lovely room. A small room. Around it, there were 6 men, with 2 spare seats for me and the professor. We were shown to our seats. And as I was led, I noticed that I was not only the only one NOT wearing a very smart suit, but I was also at least 20 years younger than anyone else present.

And as I sat down, I looked around at our small, intimate table of 8.

Ever have one of those moments when you wonder whether everything’s real?

Opposite me was one of the most famous people in the global history of sport. Next to me was a very successful man whose sons are credible and famous in the English-speaking media world. At the other end of the table was the leader of a very warm country’s intelligence service, and next to him a smiling man who never looked up, but whose crisp and polished appearance gave the impression that he was quite high up in something British. It was just the man to my left that I didn’t know anything about. Unlike everyone else, he didn’t have a title on his name card.

As I sat there, I decided this evening was a privilege. Nerves were inappropriate. So I took part as fully as I possibly could. And when the presentation of the theme of the evening and subsequent group discussion had ended, I relaxed in my seat.

And the man to my left turned to me and smiled. We spoke in English and it was quickly clear that this man had a million experiences he could never discuss. He was just so friendly, warm and smiley. It was a glass of red later that we started discussing our lives. And then his truth flowed.

“Jonathan, I belonged to an organisation which had 2 roles. One was our official cover. The other was the important bit. Our organisation was required to constantly travel through another country and pretend we weren’t doing anything wrong. But all the time, we were up to stuff.”

(There are times when listening says more than asking questions. This was one of them.)

“Jonathan, my role had 2 main responsibilities. I had to steal things in other countries for my Government. For example, I frequently had to break in to military bases and remove radar- and weapon parts from the military aircraft I found. Then I had to run. I did this for years and it kept me fit.

But the really interesting – other - part of my job was looking at people’s bits.”

(There are times when listening is better than saying the first thing that goes through your head.)

And he explained. His role during the Cold War had been to help the organisation and Government he worked for prepare for the possibility of future World War. And to do this, he travelled from one place to the next in a specific European country looking for people whose behaviours shouted leadership. Sometimes, he’d notice them in cafés and restaurants. Sometimes, it’d be walking down the street. Sometimes, he’d notice good leaders purely by the way they looked at people. I thought he must be joking. But he meant it. He explained:

“If my country needed to secretly make friends here fast, we’d need to know the people in the community who are natural leaders. Not those who are simply high up due to their age and experience. True Leaders are those whose personalities and inner behaviours influence those around them without even trying. I used to look for those bits in people that make others simply enjoy being human and natural with each other. People who listened properly and treated others with kindness were often worth looking into. They made those around them function better. They were often great leaders. But I had to look carefully. And I had to look for their bits without them even knowing I was there.”

And as the evening continued, this man shared more and more and more about what he’d looked for in future leaders. Listening and learning to all this was a fascinating couple of hours. I don't expect to witness an evening like this ever again.

So, what are our leadership ‘bits’? How good are we at getting the best out of others without even trying?

How well do we listen to other people? When someone’s talking, which part of them do our eyes focus on? How often do we smile in the company of others? Do we like to listen, or do we prefer to be listened to? When we walk into a room, how does the atmosphere of the room change and what happens to the voices of others when we’re near them? Do small children enjoy our company? Do we notice the truth inside people’s intentions? How much energy is there in our facial expressions when we’re with others? How well do we let those around us know that we truly see them? Not the surface, not the image, not the perception, but the beauty of who they truly are?  

Not many of us are spies. But take a moment this week to notice the secret bits of others' characters. They’re beautifully endless. Our impact on the lives of others also has the most stunning potential. So take a moment this week to nourish the life or career of at least one other person. But shhh… keep it a secret.

X Jonathan

Success is good. Success feels right. Success can be what we crave. It achieves results and creates smiles, pride and a wealth of stories. But what happens when we don’t succeed… and instead fail? Failures can unlock a determination more beautifully potent than is often understood. Life and leadership are about more than just low-level successes, they're’ also about spotting the potential and energy in any disappointment. So what happens when we fail, what does failure unlock in us… and how much more fulfilled can it make us? Buckle up... we're off to Vienna for the answer.

Success is a potion of many things. It’s a way of using our past to manage our present to influence our future. And success can be a healthy way of living. As a recipe, it works. A dash of ‘reason’, a spoonful of ‘why bother’, a sprinkling of ‘this is what will happen if we don’t succeed’, a flake of ‘needs of others’ and then chuck in a handful of ‘healthy-ego’ to keep things motivated. Stir them all up, and you have the promise of achievement. Our daily lives can contain more success-seeking than we’re often aware. But how did you react the last time you failed something important?

In October 1989, I went for some tests. They were military tests. I wanted to be a fighter pilot in the Royal Air Force and I hoped the RAF would agree to pay me money to improve my education – do my A-levels - until I was old enough to start flying. The tests were reputedly very difficult, and most people failed. I found the tests difficult. And when I got home, I found out I’d failed, but only sort of. They wanted me to be an Officer, but my flying skills weren’t good enough to be a pilot. However, they informed me that If I accepted a scholarship to become the kind of Officer who works on the ground, they’d let me have one final go at the pilot tests a year later. Yes please. I accepted. Signed. Bring it on! Then I received a letter telling me how nobody passes the tests a second time round. Well perhaps sometimes, but only exceptionally rarely. I should prepare for a life on the ground.

And 12 months after failing the tests the first time, I was sat in front of Wing Commander M. I’d just had my final go at the tests. And he looked stern. Wing Commander M was an older man, perhaps about to retire. He looked at the file with my test-results and documents, then closed it. Pushed it aside.

His face was an experienced military face that held a thousand secrets. I’ll never forget it. He stared into me for a moment, then he asked me a strange question. He asked me, 12 months on, what was most important… becoming a fighter pilot or replacing the previous failure with success. I knew what I felt, but the words weren’t there.  I bumbled something then he smiled. Before I left the room, he gave me my pilot-test results. I’d passed. I was going to be a military pilot.

But his words stuck with me. Some things, you hold close as you quietly grow. The unspoken answer to his question had been something to do with my ‘best’. One day, I’d have to help someone else who’d failed. But when would that day come?

Years later, I took a job teaching British English at Vienna’s Federal Teacher Training Academy. It was a fascinating place with truly exceptional professors and teachers. They had a policy of only teaching ‘British’ English.  And the students mostly loved it. All Austrian, they all wanted to teach English to very young children in Austrian Primary schools. They were encouraged to get involved as much as possible. In their early twenties, they were excited. Mostly.

It was only after a while that I noticed in one of the groups the woman at the back on the left. She never did anything wrong, she just seemed a bit different. And she was a little older. Totally committed to what she was doing, just not as vibrant, not as ‘connecty’, not as much ‘fun’ as the others. And the day before her final oral English exam at the end of her final year, my boss spoke to me about her.

She’d been here before. And she’d failed. In a big way. In fact, she was a ‘failure-story’. They wondered whether she should be there at all. She wasn’t going to make it in English. As a result, she wouldn’t make it as a teacher. The way her results had gone over the last 3 years, everything now hinged on the result of her oral exam the following day. Apparently, after her initial 2 years of study, this student had failed English really badly then suddenly taken a year off without warning. She wasn’t one of their success stories. She needed at least a ‘D’ the next day to pass and become a teacher. The only mark she’d ever previously had in English was an ‘E’.

Given the circumstances, and as I was the only Mother-tongue English speaker, they asked me to conduct her final oral exam set for the following day.

When she arrived next day, she was twisted with nerves. As the oral exam began, I did my best to smile and keep things relaxed for her. She was doing her very best posh English (which the academy preferred), but it wasn’t good at all and the language wasn’t coming. She was so nervous she could hardly speak. She wasn’t going to pass and it was all falling apart. She burst into tears and ran out of the room. Something told me to stay there. About 25 minutes later, there was a knock at the door. I let her back in. With a red face and tear-blotched skin, she sat down. She was so sorry. She said she just found the posh English so false and unnatural. So I told her to speak the English that felt most natural to her.

“Really???” She then explained in German that she’d always been terrified that her English would let her down as a teacher, so 2 years ago when she’d failed, she’d decided overnight to take herself out of her comfort zone, give up her Viennese home and spend a year in England to truly learn English. She’d gone to a place called Essex and worked as a Nanny for a year. She found the people of Essex fun, honest, warm, and life-changing. While there, she’d asked herself why she was putting herself through all this. Why? And the English there was a bit different from posh English. Would it be OK to speak that instead of posh English? I asked her to do whatever she enjoyed the most, using whatever flavour of English tasted best. And then it came. She started to talk and it was simply unbelievable.

She looked and sounded every bit Essex English. Her language flowed, her smiles, her shrugs, her eye-rolling, her pleasure of life, her everything. It was unbelievably fluent British-English. Just the Viennese-Essex way. And for 30 minutes it continued. At the end, I thanked her for her time, shook her hand and she left the room. I knew which mark to give her. She’d done amazingly. I told my boss. He was speechless, but he understood. I gave her a B+. This meant she was now a qualified primary school teacher. About a week later, she saw me in Vienna, walked over the road and gave me the biggest hug. She then started crying and we sat down, as she had something to explain.

She’d always kept it quiet, but when she was 7, her mum and dad’s car was hit by another car. Her mother and father were killed immediately, and she was severely injured. Her injuries meant that when she grew up, she wouldn’t be able to have children. Yet she adored children. And becoming a teacher was life itself for her. As we said goodbye, there was a sparkle in her eye. “Jonathan, I failed then ended up in Essex for a reason. I’ve got the English now. But it was more than that. When I was there, I realised that my failure had shone a light on the very best I could one day be. Failing showed my how brilliant my future could become. I simply had to enjoy living my life to unlock it. And I’m going to do things very differently with children. I’ve got an idea. Just wait and see. Goodbye Jonathan”. With a kiss on the cheek, she was gone.

9 years later, I was in Vienna doing research. And one evening, the TV was on. I looked up from my papers and saw it. Austrian TV News was proud of something. A new primary school had opened for children who couldn’t speak properly. This primary-school was a world-first. Young children would learn language while playing funny games and pretending to be someone else. The school was achieving amazing things with these children. And its headmistress was suddenly shown. She was being asked how she’d managed to pioneer something so difficult for children. As she answered, she was holding two of the toddlers. "The route to every person's best is to let them enjoy everything they are." The headmistress was smiling while tears rolled down her face. Her tears were the same ones she’d tried to hide from me 9 years previously.

Success is great. But sometimes, it’s what happens when we don’t get it right first time that unlocks the truest power of who we are and what we’re capable of. Our disappointments brim with the scorching energy of our potential. We just have to ask what the biggest piece of learning is around what we’re experiencing. The greatest success people will ever enjoy comes from the truest power of their own life. Life’s constantly throwing challenges at us. So this week, let’s throw a few challenges back:

Life, you’ve been really good so far, but come on… are you capable of being even better?

:-) Jonathan

Thinking is strange. On the one hand, we need it. Yet the more we think, the more our heads hurt. If we don’t think enough, we don’t understand situations properly. Yet when we think too much, we instantly over-complicate things.  So what is the ‘right’ balance – a ‘healthy’ amount of thinking to do? Just as importantly, what role should thinking and ‘brains’ play in leadership? Is good leadership about doing things in a clever way? The journey to the answer lies in how many X’s you can handle.

The impact of our brains on our behaviours shouldn’t be underestimated. So how do we feed our brains? Here’s what many of us do.… we experience things which we use to create perceptions… then we create ‘information’… then we find a way of understanding this information… we react to it… we make assumptions… then we have a very private response to all this that creates what we call ‘opinions’. Sounds like a straight-forward process, but what does thinking do for leadership?

This last week, the British Defence Minister Dr. Liam Fox has been torn to pieces by the press. The story has gone a little like this… the minister has a close friend. This friend has described himself as an advisor to the Minister when meeting important people in business and around the world. Though not an official representative of the British Government, this man has participated in extensive discussions concerning Government relationships and decision-making. Who was this man? How much did he influence his friend the Minister? Was his presence good or bad? How do we work out ‘right and wrong’ in this situation? Just as importantly, given that the Cabinet Minister – a very clever chap with a PhD – sits right at the core of Britain’s political leadership, how should his boss – the Prime Minister – be a great leader here? What and how should a Prime Minister be thinking during this?

The Minister resigned. But hang on. How many assumptions are we making? How reliable was the information that led to this scandal? How planned was the role of the media? Who benefits from the Minister being removed and replaced by someone else? How certain can we be that what we have now is ‘better’ than what we had before? How powerful is human reaction to incoming information and how easily-to-manipulate do these many sources of information make us? Managing response-to-information is an interesting challenge.

A document released by the British government[1] shows how clever the British Government used to be at managing spies.  In 1939, Britain’s leadership created something called “Security Intelligence Middle East” (SIME). It was run by MI5 officers based in Cairo. This was rapidly followed by the creation of the “Inter-Services Liaison Department” (ISLD), run by MI6 Officers based in Istanbul. Both organisations work to protect British interests. Broadly speaking, MI5 stops people getting up to mischief in Britain, whereas MI6 is responsible for conducting mischief abroad. Of course, these lines sometimes became blurred, so the political leadership then created something called “SIME Special Section”, which contained officers from both services.

SIME Special section created a leadership group called the ‘Twenty Committee’, also written as the “XX Committee”. This contained some very clever people. As you might be able to guess, the role of this “XX Committee” was to devise clever ways of getting enemy spies to “Double-Cross” (XX) their own people. In other words, they used to catch the spies of their enemies (Nazi Germany then later the Soviet Union etc) then ‘turn’ these agents into ‘Double-Agents’, meaning that these enemy spies instead began serving Britain while pretending to be Britain’s enemy. These Double-Agents clearly betrayed those who trusted them. All the time, they had to pretend to hate Britain.  

Imagine what would have happened if the Media had got hold of this, received only half the truth about this and splashed the half-news across TV screens. Like headlines, how many Leadership decisions are made and opinions formed with only part of the needed information?

The Thirty Committee (“XXX Committee”) took things even further.  More than ‘Double-Crossing’ their enemy, the XXX Committee ‘Triple-crossed’ the enemy. They did some really clever disinformation. When Britain’s own spies were captured and the enemy tried to turn them into Double-Agents working for Britain’s enemy, Britain would then turn them back again. In other words, the enemy would THINK the spy was originally working for the UK, they’d THINK the spy had been convinced to betray Britain, but all the time, the information being passed by the spy to Britain’s enemy was created by British Intelligence in such a way that the enemy would make poor decisions, while THINKING they were being really clever. Britain’s XXX Committee was blooming clever. They came up with the sneakiest of ways of saving British lives by disinforming Britain’s enemies. They created false spy networks and ways of disinforming the enemy that make your head hurt. One of their operations (“Operation STIFF”) even involved them dressing a corpse in a military uniform and breaking the corpse’s neck, before strapping the corpse into a faulty parachute and throwing it out of an aircraft over enemy territory. The corpse was armed with ‘real’ codes which enabled the enemy, once the body had been discovered (and assumed to have been killed while parachuting), to intercept “secret” British communications. The communications were of course entirely false, but the enemy didn’t know that. The enemy made decisions based on false information and lives were saved.

In the world of Defence and Security, Secret Agents need to cross (X) people. Double agents need to double-cross (XX) people. And Triple Agents need to triple-cross (XXX) people. How much farther can this go? And just as importantly, how many of these X’s can your head deal with?

Few of us are spies, but how much information and thinking do we allow ourselves to get bogged down with? How many X's do we introduce into our lives? What happens when we think? And when we think about what others are thinking? What about when we think about how others think we might be thinking? And should we be thinking about how to influence how others could possibly be made to think if we just start thinking a bit differently? Thinking about thinking provokes thought.

Head hurting yet?  Leadership isn’t about thinking, so what’s the best way of leading people? What else is it that makes some people great at leadership?

Forget the X’s. Stop thinking. Turn off your mind. Ditch the words. Throw your postgraduate Degrees away. Stop reasoning. Bin the balanced consideration. Put down that Sudoku… give up trying to explain, justify or riposte.

Just be you.

There’s nothing quite like you. The way you are, the ways in which you behave, they all make the biggest difference. Your instincts are exceptional. Just forget using language to describe them. Don’t think about it. Forget the interpretations, descriptions and perceptions of others. Just be.

If you’re a leader and want to do a great job, it’s easier than you think….

Be what you want to see. It’s a no-brainer.

:-) Jonathan X

Some days define life. They create smiles when least expected. You know those days… when only once things have gone ‘wrong’ that we realise that they couldn’t possibly have gone better? Those moments are precious for our learning… when you think you’ll only be satisfied if something goes a certain way. But then it doesn’t. Yet you’re even happier. What can be learned about how we human beings attach ourselves to a desired outcome? It’s a big question. The answer is… dog-poo bags.

How many days of your life have been spent hoping, really hoping, for a particular outcome with something?  Perhaps with a big project?  A deal you’ve been putting your heart and soul into? Putting an offer in for a house you’d love? Someone you’ve asked out on a date? A particular present for Christmas? Good news about the health of someone important to you?

On those many days, what happened to you while you hoped?  Tension, excitement, hope, desire, curiosity, expectation, impatience, aspiration, dependency, more hope? How much energy did this use? And what difference did it make?

Last week, our day went wrong in a huge way.  Nothing we wanted happened. Everything went wrong. We’ll never, ever forget the day. It was awful. It was simply perfect bliss.

Lisa and I are expecting our first baby. We’re just weeks away, and just recently, we’ve been busy. We’ve been attending ante-natal classes and NCT like there’s no tomorrow. We’ve met some very genuine people experiencing similar moments to us, and it’s all pretty exciting. And as many of you will know, when you’re only weeks away, you’ve just completed the decorating, nursery-furnishing, house-alterations and priority shifts. If you’re not careful, it’s easy to tire yourself out even before the baby arrives. So last week, we decided to have a day off.

After our bacon-and-eggs-in-luxury-bread-rolls start to the day, Lisa suddenly had an urgent beauty to her face. There’s a beach we’ve heard of on the south coast. Everyone raves about it. We’ve been raising a young Golden Labrador (“Rosie”) for just over a year, so we thought taking her for a walk along this hidden beach would be an experience to remember. Lisa just came out with it:

“Babe… shall we scrap the day? Shall we? Do you remember that beach everyone’s been on about? Once the baby’s born, it’ll be months before we can decide anything in the moment…. Sod it… Shall we?”

It was last week during the heat-wave. The sun was shining, the day was glorious and for the first time in my life, I ignored the alarm bells in the back of my head. Google told us the beach was only 75 minutes away by car. We packed our beautiful doggy into the car and off we went.  And as we set off, everything seemed ok.

It was only when we were 6 miles away that things started going wrong.

Our hour and a quarter journey turned into 3 and a quarter hours. Like us, everyone else in England wanted to go to the beach too. It’s a remote beach, so there were no cafés en route. How was our Labrador doing in the back of the car in this heat? Did she still have enough water? And my pregnant wife… how was she? Was her stomach OK? And her back? Did she still have enough snacks? Would she get stressed? And THAT question… might she start having contractions in the car in the middle of this traffic jam in the middle of nowhere???

But the more we waited, the more we talked. The more we talked, the more we connected. Talking about our baby. Smiling remembering our wedding, laughing at the moments we’ve shared since we’ve been together. Feeling those same moments we did as we walked along the beach together when we first met. And talking. Really, truly talking.

Half of Sussex awaited us at the beach. There were millions of people. I’ve not ever seen a British beach like it. Not a spare square-metre in sight. And while I rapidly scanned the miles of beach for somewhere for my pregnant wife to sit, the sun beat down. And every child in England wanted to stroke our dog. Our golden labrador isn’t used to that many people, and she’s a blatant flirt. So surrounded by children, with the energy of fun and excitement everywhere, she suddenly pulled with new force and her lead snapped. She was gone. Children were chasing her, so was I and as I looked back at the beach from the water, my pregnant wife was on her own, standing, in the extreme heat.  I had to get back to her. I had to save our little dog (could she swim?). And as I ran to my wife, she laughed and pulled out the camera. She was fine. She was smiling But where was the dog?

This was awful. Why hadn’t we just stayed at home and switched off for the day?

I found the dog. She was in the sea in the middle of 20 or so young children. They loved her. She loved that they loved her. She was loving their attention. And as the children stared, stroked and cooed, their parents surrounded their children, enjoying the beautiful, mad doggy in the middle. I needed to look after my wife, so I had to first get our dog back. I got to the middle of the group of admirers, and held our Rosie carefully. And just as the 30/40 people around us tried to tell me how lovely Rosie was, Rosie decided to squat and share her breakfast of earlier that day with everyone around her.

You can only imagine what kind of pandemonium followed. It was like something out of ‘Jaws’. And as the waves crashed, everyone ran. Children screaming, parents saving their little ones. Only I remained. Running through the water, with poo bags in hand. Trying to scoop up. Desperately trying to look in control. And as everyone stared from the shore, there was the most beautiful smile. It was part of the most beautiful laugh. It was my heavily pregnant wife… taking photos. And as the shame, horror and sweat engulfed me, I started laughing too.

The shame. We had to leave the beach. Our dog didn’t understand what she’d done wrong. My wife was thirsty. She was hot. Our dog wanted to give more love. Why wasn’t she allowed to? And once we’d reached the front of the 30 minute queue at the only cafeteria, a young lad doing his very best in English told us there was at least a 1 hour wait for any food. We decided to just go home. And it took us 45 minutes just to get out of the car park.

The journey home lasted 3 hours. The day had been one stressful disaster after another. That’s why it was brilliant.

Ever since leaving home, we’d been talking. There’d been constant giggles, smiles and laughter from my wife. We’d enriched even further our connection as a couple and as parents-to-be. Our Labrador Rosie had experienced love and attention she’d never dared dream of… and she’d learned to swim! My partner had had laughed and laughed and laughed. And all the way home, we knew we’d had the best worst day you could dream of.

Life is a privilege. It doesn’t last forever. Yet it gives us the opportunity to enjoy moments that feel purely eternal. We simply have to be real enough and switched on as people to notice these moments as they occur. When we appreciate what we have while we have it, days feel fuller. They feel like the very gift they are.  We human beings thrive on ideas, plans, and intentions. And they’re good to have. But knowing when to let go is crucial to our growth. No matter how amazing our initial ideas are, something better is always waiting for us. And when we’re big enough to let go of our initial thinking, the smiles, laughs, beauty and dog-poo bags change our life forever.

:-) Jonathan