In a creative fit, one Tuesday morning (Actually, Alison's birthday), I wrote a blog about the parent and the business owner. I wrote this because sometimes I get those little phases where my mind is clearer than others, where I seem to understand myself for things better than I do when it's catastrophic and scattered and too busy to think about anything else.
What I understood in these moments on that Tuesday morning was the principle of understanding myself and continuing to try to understand myself based on things that have happened this week, based on things that are always happening.
I spiralled out of control the other day, following some other people who run a business entirely different from mine and wondering why I wasn't them.
You'll have realised that the last few days of blogs have been darker or more shouty; that tends to be what happens when I get to that situation, but I published the blogs anyway because these are always a message to myself later on, always a way of me understanding myself a little better.
I also wrote yesterday about the metaphors. I see life in metaphors and stories; I am inspired by other people's stories or stories of things they've done and achieved that drive me further to improve or at least try to be a better version of myself.
I also began to understand my character type and how to get the best out of my character type, so maybe I am ADHD; it seems to fit the pattern, as other people tell me. Chris Barrow used to always talk about how when I got into full flow when I was speaking, my eyes would bulge out of my head. Maybe that was a compliment, but perhaps that is a sign of my hyperfocus.
I certainly have a hyper-focus state, and when I reach a situation like this, where I can put out 7, 10, or even 20 blogs at a time hyper-focus, that's hard to match anywhere else.
I developed a system where I can dictate my emails. I can do 100 emails in 20 minutes, so it seems that I am extraordinarily productive, but I'm not because I can also spend three hours just entirely procrastinating and not getting any work done.
That is the understanding self, understanding that it will be ok because there will be a hyper-focus stage in a minute.
I also have begun to understand how I teach, how I speak and how I lecture, that in itself is a blessing because I will stress in a maximum way, putting lectures together with an extraordinary amount of slides only to cast it all adrift and not actually talk about what I intended to.
That's a disaster for people who set aims and objectives; it's a disaster for people who want me to stick exactly to a syllabus; it's a disaster if you want me to robotically teach facts to people.
I am not that guy; never ask me to come to teach facts to people; you're better with someone else.
That is why it has been extraordinary to work with Beatriz Sanchez in the Academy; she has been able to systematise me a lot better than anyone has ever been able to do in teaching.
The problem with my teaching situation is that it's a total hyperfocus situation, and so I drop into it, and I go, and then I never remember what I did.
In November this year, I spoke for two full days on business, one in Edinburgh and one in Muscat.
I have no recollection of what I said in those days, but what I understand is that I changed the lectures as I went through them.
You'll see me now in this situation, teaching with an iPad and a pencil at the front, I can click the iPad and see the next 20 slides, rearrange them or delete them as I'm working so that I know that the audience is getting the maximum benefit from what I want to say based on what I think they want.
I think that is normal for everyone, but it probably isn't.
The problem with this situation is that it utterly exhausts and empties me, and therefore, I can't do this every week, I can't do a lecture day every single week because I would just be broken because it takes too much out of me.
I couldn't do a world tour with Ed Sheeran singing or speaking two or three times a week, I would be busted, and that's part of understanding self.
And so I cannot be those guys I talked about at the start of this ramble, the people who have got a business is different to mine, the guys that look as if they're taking over the world. I'm not because my character would not sustain that; the hyperfocus ADHD maybe dyslexic guy who can't finish a list of 10 things but is able to inspire two or three people in an audience to be better versions of themselves; that guy cannot run 25 practices, education business, a supply business, a coaching business and a whatever other business all at the same time at the age of about 15.
That's part of understanding self.
Understanding self, at least for me, is knowing how to make the greatest contribution with the tools that I have and falling back to one of Campbell's mantras of do what you can with what you have, where you are.
Maybe all this blog is for is to try to remind me and refocus me in the right direction.
Blog Post Number - 4028