I caught up with a good friend of mine, Jen, after work one evening and I was surprised to see she was on crutches. She rolled her ankle pretty badly during a netball game, which put her out for the season. This didn’t get her down though. Jen is always upbeat and looks for the good in every situation. She said that since she started using crutches everybody has been so helpful. “A guy literally ran across the road to help me get out of a taxi. Then he held the door to the entrance open and made sure I got through alright. With a quick (more…)

Erwin Schrodinger was an Austrian Physicist and he devised the paradox known as Schrodinger’s Cat in 1935. Schrodinger said that if you put a cat in a box with a poison that might kill it, at the end of an hour the cat has a 50% chance of being alive, and a 50% chance of being dead. According to quantum mechanics, since we can’t see in the box to know if the cat is alive or dead, the cat is both alive and dead. Of course, we know that this is not possible; nothing can be alive and dead at the same time. However, I disagree. (more…)

I was a very junior software developer and I absolutely sucked. Not only was I learning the trade I’d recently made the transition from the gym environment to the office environment and knew very little about office etiquette. To say that I was struggling was an understatement but I was too full of determination to succeed that no matter how embarrassing the mistakes I made (including deleting thousands of credit card dispute records from one of Ireland’s (more…)

As a kid growing up one of my favourite cartoon characters was always Donald Duck.  You just know that no matter how happy he is at the beginning of the cartoon that things are going to go terribly wrong and he always ends up getting the short end of the stick…largely of his own making.  One of my favourites of Donald was when he hit a moral dilemma and sure enough a little devil appears on his right shoulder encouraging him to go after what he wants regardless of the consequences. (more…)

I must’ve been 16 years old and I’d been cycling for about a year or so.  I’d head off with my friends on 60 and 80Km bike rides up into the Wicklow Mountains.  Wicklow is called the Garden of Ireland so you can imagine how beautiful it is up there.  I remember one particular ride because on this occasion I was unfortunate enough to get two punctures!  I had a spare tube but when I got the second puncture my friend, Conor, gave me his spare… (more…)

…and knew in that instant that I needed to make a change.  I found myself lying floor at 4am in a serviced apartment in New Plymouth.  My eyes stared blankly into nothingness, my arms lay loosely on the floor as my body slumped lifelessly against the vanity cabinet in the small bathroom.  I opened my eyes to the sound of her screams.  I felt the adrenaline surge through my veins as I was pulled back from darkness.  “What happened? Where was I?”  The realisation hit me (more…)

There’s a lot of talk in leadership circles about resilience and how leaders have to be resilient.  I agree but the way it’s talked about it comes across as this mystical state that is only available to a lucky few.  Resilience is simply the ability to bounce back quickly from adversity.  It’s a skill that helps us move beyond those tough experiences life throws at us and may even make us stronger in the process.  Although there are people out there who exhibit certain personality characteristics (more…)

Ever since I returned from Australia in my early 20’s I was extremely goal driven. I was in massive debt (for a 20 year old) and had no job in an environment where employers weren’t exactly laying opportunities at my feet. But I’d managed to get myself around the world for the last year on a wing and a prayer and I wasn’t going to let a little thing like no job opportunities get in my way of getting back on my feet! I set a goal that I would get a job…any job…within 2 weeks. (more…)

In most leadership material you read you’ll come across the need to be self-aware.  I agree, it’s a very important element of growth because if you’re not aware of the need to change it will never happen, right?  But how do you do develop self-awareness?  Often times when I’m running a workshop on leadership I start with awareness and how to develop it.  To do this I always start off with the concept of the Self.  One way the Self can get into conflict is when there is too great a gap between the Actual Self and the Ideal Self. (more…)

Every so often I work with a client who gets quite irritated by the things that people are doing around them.  For example, one client I worked with used to get extremely irate at his flat mates.  He used to go barmy when he’d be the last one to get up in the morning and all the curtains in the house are closed, the rubbish is sitting in the corner of the kitchen or the bin is overflowing, food and dirty plates would be left on the counter top from last night’s dinner.  He’d leave the house after cleaning up after his flatmates and with every step he’d mentally spit and fume about his flatmates and their disgusting habits.  Then he’d arrive at work…ready to start the day.  You can imagine how things would go from there. (more…)