How to ask for help from people you don’t know

"May you please assist me?" "I need your advice/guidance" "Please help me" some of the difficult words to say by people in distress. You have to be vulnerable to say these words. You have to have gotten to a point where you know you can't help yourself anymore and the only way out is to…

Just keep swimming

During a time I was feeling stuck a few years back, I would always remind myself of  this video of Dory in Finding Nemo. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Hkn-LSh7es In the movie, Dory shares some sage advice with Nemo’s father about what to do when life gets you down: “Just keep swimming, just keep swimming, just keep swimming.” It is a…

Behind closed doors

The way you do business. The culture of your team. The joy in your work. The way you talk to people. Is it better than what you portray on the internet or worse? Would your fans be surprised for the better or for the worse if they got to see a true day in the…

What you say and what you do

You really don't know who you got with you until you need them. A lot of people talk a good game, but when you really need them to stand up to the plate and do what they said they were going to do, there is often a great difference between what they say and what…

Replace social distance with physical distance and social closeness

Let us replace “social distance” with “physical distance and social closeness.” Adam Gazzaley, a Professor of Neurology and Psychiatry at UCSF, made a great point about replacing “social distance” with the more accurate “physical distance” as our go to term for our efforts to flatten the Coronavirus curve. At a time when feelings of loneliness and a lack of…

Your job is to pretend the future is certain

508319912 You know there is no money in the bank. You know you are weeks away from bankruptcy. You know you can't guarantee payroll. You know you can't guarantee the goods will be delivered. It's scary. It keeps you awake at night. Just make sure you keep your fears to yourself. Keeping a poker face…

It is easy to be against something

An artist friend of mine Richard was telling me that he doesn't care what his customers think. Instead, he writes and creates for himself. If his customers like it, fine. If not, fine. This is the gutsy statement of an artist. Fortunately for Richard, there is a high correlation between what he likes and what…

The next pandemic in the horizon

If there is doubt about the devastating effects of climate change, the pictures of the aftermath of Cyclone Eloise coming out of Beira in Mozambique are a sobering reminder. The next pandemic that will be not be stopped by closing borders, social distancing and sanitisers is climate change. We can turn a blind eye to…

Clean restrooms

You can tell a lot about the hygiene of a place, by the hygiene levels of their restrooms. The restroom facilities at The Gold Reef City or at ______ [your favourite restaurant] are clean. Restrooms are not a profit-centre, of course. They don't make restrooms clean because they are going to charge you to use…

Dealing with grief

The past few weeks and months have been heavy with a lot of people contracting the COVID-19 virus and others losing the battle against the virus. The heavy clouds of grief and sorrow continues to hover around our heads days on end. When you lose a loved one, it hard to pick up the pieces…

Lobsters in the Titanic

Actions and reactions drive our happiness. If our actions are aligned to our purpose and values [i.e. if the what, why and how are in place], we give ourselves a good shot at happiness through what we do. However, our actions make up a smaller part [10%?] of our life experiences when compared with our…