A year from now, the antidote

Today is Sunday, the 4th of January, and for many people, returning to work after Christmas is perhaps the worst evening of the year.

After having had the time to wind down, as a huge percentage of the population has at Christmas to avoid all the incoming, it doesn't arrive, to sit in front of the television, to go for walks, to scheme and plan for what the year will be next.

To return to work in the dark on the 5th of January will be hard.

It's hard for many people trying to figure that out, trying to get themselves up for the year to come.

For me, it's always a bittersweet week this week, because it's my birthday. I can promise you that it is the sh***est time of the year to have a birthday, because nobody wants to have anything to do with celebrating or partying or going out or doing anything other than surviving the first week back.

But the trick here is to understand that it's the same for almost everyone, and so if you're running a business, if you're looking after people and are customer-facing, then for you to be the antidote to that is to win.

To be kind and empathic and upbeat and motivated, this week of all weeks would set you apart from many other people and businesses in the country, to inspire your team to do that too, that would be clever.

Everyone was happy enough in the week running up to Christmas, but anyone can captain a ship in calm seas. The trick for the leaders now is to go in with a smile and to bring some positivity and some love and some compassion, and some motivation to other people who might not feel like that, patience and team alike. If you can understand that, you can set some things in place to allow you to do it next year. A year from now, when things will be better again.

Understanding that our job is not to be down in the dumps with everyone else, but to put our best game face on, to go in and to smile, and to be upbeat and to move things forward.

That's the job of leadership.

That's the job of the boss.

For many whose financial year ends at the start of April, January, February, and March are three of the biggest months of the year.

Best to get started then, best foot forward, smile on our face.

Here we go again.

Colin Campbell, Chris Barrow, and an intrepid group of dentists will be cycling across the plains of Tanzania from Kilimanjaro in early February 2026. If you would like to support the charity, Bridge to Aid, and this extraordinary challenge,  please click here.

Thank you for your generosity.