The only work we ever need to do on this planet is the work on ourselves. However most of us find it easier to focus on others and see what’s wrong with them. We judge them, we get angry with them, we’re jealous of them and sometimes we just want to be like them. We don’t always see the best in others do we?
What if, what you see in others, you realised those traits were merely a reflection of you? Your own failings expressed in others, of course you won’t like what you see. It’s tough to see yourself in others. Might it be that you’re not perfect either? That you have some failings too? Some stuff you need to work on, get better at, be more forgiving of yourself and others, develop better habits, have more compassion?
This is tougher then we realise. Yes we need to start from a place that says we’re not broken and if we start from that place then the others aren’t broken either. If you can start from that place everything else becomes just easier. Because if you stop spending time focussing on others and just on yourself, what else can you learn about you, about your habits, your decisions, your micro-decisions, your thoughts and your addictions?
If we could just work on ourselves and become the best we can be for ourselves, not for anyone else, just for ourselves then we could actually become a more compassionate individual seeing the best in everyone around us, including some of the worst people walking the planet. We all have a dark side, it may not have been expressed in hideous crimes or actions but it will have been expressed in some way towards someone, maybe even someone you love.
Time to go within, time to spend time looking in the mirror before looking at others.
Grandfather de Groot and Michael de Groot in Surinam 1974
Thank you, thank you ladies and gentlemen! That was Mike at the drums, with his own interpretation of ‘Dreams’! Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang! Michael will you join us? We were discussing the preposition.
Back to reality and the stuffy classroom with my classmates grinning at me, while the flush of being elsewhere with my thoughts, slowly spread over my face and added to the general hilarity!
Once upon a time there was a young man who had learned to play the piano, a little, then discovered the rhythm of the beat and the joy of rolling drums. That was going to be his instrument and he worked at getting the rhythm , the rolls, the crescendo and the final crash to a perfection that finally got him the much coveted position as lead drummer in his favourite group’s orchestra. He travelled the country till he was proclaimed the star of the show, only to be banged down to reality with a preposition.
Reality! A long hard road to achieve the impossible or was it just possible that one day the tables would be turned and I would be up there taking a bow to the deafening applause, thinking I was dreaming again and that I would be brought back to the classroom where my classmates were clapping their hands to draw attention to the teacher and the work on hand!
There I go again, it is so hard to concentrate and stop this habit of using the hum of the teacher’s voice to lead me to those wonderful places away from the dull drab life that I lead. How can I learn to be interested in the uses and abuses of the English language when there is so much more excitement in the sound that I can bring forth with just a flick of the wrist on those beautiful skins? I must stop, I must stop. My passport to reality is proficiency in English which will eventually lead to making my fantasy worlds of the past, the living world of today! Dreams do come true, especially if they have been day dreams!
From early childhood, we are encouraged to concentrate and every lesson in a school classroom is directed at the student in such a way that it makes it impossible not to do so. But not all of us are blessed with those very gifted powers of being able to keep our minds on the subject that is being taught, especially if it is of no particular interest to us or the teacher is unable to hold the interest of his or her students. It is so easy to let the world of fantasy surround you with those tempting delights, which are far more exciting than the reality of the classroom, that the younger student, the less disciplined the mind and the easier the flight from reality.
The business of growing up consists of filling the mind with knowledge that will enable one to meet the demands of the adult world where what you know is more important than what you are. There is no time or need in your waking hours to dream of flying like a bird, you can fly! Or being famous, you can become famous and world renown, all you have to do is hi-jack a plane or train or kidnap a child or a businessman and you are famous! Write a book? Easy, just collect all your wildest fantasies together and fill them with enough obscene words and you can top the best-seller book list.
Day dreams are fast becoming a luxury that only the very young can participate in, or those who have suffered from the pressures of modern life and have to go to a group therapy session so that they can be encouraged to let their mind wander and enjoy once again the fantasies that have been crowded out by the reality of our world today.
Has climate any affect on national character? When I was asked this question, the first picture that came to my mind was that of happy laughing people in sunny Spain. So that I would say that as far as my experience is concerned, I do think that the climate affects the people of a country and also the character. Astrologers turn to the stars to find good and bad omens in our lives with the help of the position of the moon and the sun and we Europeans living in the northern hemisphere are certainly influenced by the changing position of the sun. When spring arrives in Europe, we look forward to the longer hours of daylight and are walking with our heads up and a smile on our faces, because we know that soon it will be time to enjoy more of the sun.
Bright sunshine, light and warmth, the ingredients for growth and happiness. Dull days, cold and darkness, the characteristic recipe for sitting together trying to discover the meaning of life. Although we in Europe have the opportunity of having the time, in winter, to think and talk of all aspects of life, we envy our neighbours in the sunny countries who have the sun all the time, because we know that the fact that the sun is shining gives them more freedom, they live a carefree life.
So my answer to the question of whether the climate affects the national character, would be yes most definitely.
From a piece of work that I submitted to my course in Amsterdam, learning how to write business English, in preparation for us to move to the United Kingdom. My mother (Marion) assisted me greatly with writing this article at the time. My dream when I was 15 was to become a drummer in a band. I did learn to play the drums and did indeed become a drummer in a small unknown, very short-lived new wave/punk band in London. We even recorded a very poor demo on my father’s reel to reel tape player. I still have the recording and it pleases me from time to time to listen to my own mastery on the drums.
The UK Bank, ‘TSB’, faces hefty regulatory fines for what’s been described as one of the worst tech problems to hit the country’s banking space in recent years. 2 million customers were locked out of their accounts for six days! #OMG heads will roll, fines and compensations will be delivered without mercy. Really this is truly uneblievable. All the advertising spend can never repair a customer service blunder like this one.
Sainsbury’s and Asda (Walmart) are merging. Two of the biggest supermarkets in the UK will become one humongous supermarket chain (Sainsda?) that with leverage suppliers and customers alike. If in doubt all you have to do is watch the song that the Mike Coupe Sainsbury’s CEO was singing on TV. He sang We’re in the Money from the musical 42nd Street. It inspired our latest cartoon. Enjoy!
Thankfully his older brother and friends who were much older and stronger were nearby outside the school to protect him from any danger that could have been nearby. Just as well because Michael was not as strong and tall as his peers, which meant that he was very vulnerable to being chased down and beaten up.
It was probably one of the first fearful moments in his young life and an event that will unlikely ever be forgotten by him.
It was lunchtime in Amsterdam outside the Moreelse Mavo School where Michael attended with his older brother and his twin sister. The school was very close to the Vincent van Gogh museum and the main cultural area in the centre of Amsterdam, including the Rijksmuseum and the Concertgebouw.
The man looked vicious, angry and on a mission to harm Michael. All Michael could do was to run to his older brother at full speed, whilst being chased by a much older man, who was now running at full speed and catching Michael metre by metre.
JIMMY, HELP!!!!
Jimmy heard him and immediately came to the rescue with his friends who stood together like a solid wall of muscle and strength. Michael quickly hid behind them and the man walked in the other direction whilst keeping his arm and index finger outstretched pointing at Michael whilst muttering the words, I WILL GET YOU! (Ik krijg je wel).
To this day young Michael had no idea who this man was and why he wanted to beat him up. He never saw the man again, but the memory stayed with him forever and the fear of meeting him again haunted him daily for a number of years afterwards.
Movies are still the best stories ever told, because it activates pretty much all the important regions in your brain. When viewing even a fictional story on the screen, you can’t help being transported into the story and feel like you are the main protagonist.
Couple this with our human sense of fairness, winning and surviving and we will generally always be on the side of the main heroin, literally willing her to succeed in her quest.
Physically we will have similar feelings of fear, anticipation, worry, doubt and our motor cortex in our brain the part that’s governing the firing of our muscles are also engaged. Wonder why you may feel breathless or exhausted after watching a gripping, high action movie? You just starred in it. And because all of those factors you will want to experience more of it next time. We are addicted to the thrill of movies.
I often witness my wife Clair filling her eye ducts with water when there is a sad scene in a movie. None of the action is actually happening to her but because of one of our other major emotions ‘empathy’, we are now feeling what the starring character is feeling. So if they are sad because they lose their partner or their fellow warrior in a fighting scene and they show sadness, we feel that sadness too. Us guys can often hold on and keep a stiff upper lip but the ladies have a better empathy button and will feel their hurt at a deeper level.
I recently interviewed Harun Rabbani on my Share Your Story Podcast. In fact I interviewed him twice as we ran out of time on the first episode. The second episode allowed us to go into a lot of depth on his expert topic, ‘decision making’.
I highly recommend a listen. Harun explained in intimate detail what it takes to become more conscious in making your decisions. I loved his insights. All of us look back at decisions we’ve taken and usually with some regret or doubt. Doubt whether we’ve actually made the right decisions in our lives. We also know without a shadow of doubt some of the decisions that have landed us into trouble, whether it be with our family, our work colleagues and our spouses and children.
It’s not easy to make the right decisions and as Harun explains decisions are just like any muscle in the body. If you wish to grow a muscle you have to exercise it. If you want to make better decisions and know that they are the right ones, you have to exercise that process too.
Harun explains many different options to improve the art of decision making and one of those is journalling.
I had never heard of this previously, so I am delighted that I learnt this from Harun. I started the same day.
The premise is very simple. At the end of each day, reflect on the decisions you have taken in the day. Identify one major one that deserves being recorded in your journal. Write why you took that decision and how it made you feel. I have to say having started this just a few days ago, it’s making me feel much better about my decisions already and I feel in such a short time more confident about the decisions I will take in the future.
One of the better side-effects of reflecting on your decisions is that you will slow down a little before making decisions, you start becoming a conscious decision maker.
Made a major decision, which is to end my courtship with MailChimp. I’ve flirted with Mailchimp for at least a decade, using it to send newsletters at first, then adding people from capture forms and in the past year adding new connections from LinkedIn and drip feeding them useful and practical information and it actually was. I did carefully think about what to share with my connections and start some engagement and some of it did work.
And I did all of this because the greatest marketers of our world teach us all to build our lists and then provide them with value to convert them into clients. I’ve always felt incongruent and at times very inauthentic with this approach and last year I decided to stop all drip feed practice completely.
My current Mailchimp account — no lists!
I had already stopped email campaigns but when MailChimp released free email automation, I got interested again.
No more, I myself do not like being on the receiving end of any email campaigns, so why would I do this to my contacts. If you’ve ever had one of my automated emails, I sincerely apologise, I was on my learning and growth journey.
Now with GDPR upon us in just a month, I felt it appropriate to divorce MailChimp. It feels amazing!!
Doubt is by far our biggest thought process. We doubt ourselves the most. Will we make it, will we make enough money, will we be loved, will we get the right work? All this doubting gets us further away from our dreams and wishes. We literally attract our doubts.
You must have heard the saying ‘What you focus on grows’, so our focus on our doubts will literally grow out of nowhere. Instead of believing our doubts, what if we believed that the doubts are just lies and fears.
Through listening to a number of podcasts, meditations and examples, I have become to realise that almost anything can be solved by just being curious.
When a thought comes up and you are lucky to notice it, become curious about it. When you pick up that drink or food, before you consume it, become curious about it. Become more aware about your surroundings and the addictions that are manifesting through you. Curiosity is self-enquiry and self-enquiry allows you to question everything about your own behaviour and actions.
It takes some practise at the start, but once you start you will not be able to stop. Become addicted to curiosity and self-enquiry to rid yourself of behaviours and habits that are not serving you including the habit of self-doubt.
William and Kate announce royal baby to Prince George — Michael & Josh #dailycartoon
There’s a new Royal Baby in the UK and it’s time for celebration, but maybe not everyone will be that happy? Prince George for example.
Whenever there’s a new Royal Baby, the world goes bananas. The fact is there are millions of babies being born every single day, why should a Royal one be so special. It’s not like he’ll ever be King right?
Anyway it inspired us to create an appropriate cartoon, like all children I’m sure George won’t want to share his toys with him!
Freedom of Speech on LinkedIn — Michael & Josh #dailycartoon
World politics are in the news 24/7 and we all struggle to get away from the stories that invoke our emotions. Whether we like it or not politics influence the lives around us, the cost of products and services and our general wellbeing. We wish to express our opinions on social networks to perhaps create a movement, a useful debate and share what we think and feel. But some of us prefer to stay away from these discussions and object. Andrew Pain asked us if this would be a good topic for a cartoon and I agree it is.
In social psychology, reciprocity is a social norm of responding to a positive action with another positive action, rewarding kind actions. As a social construct, reciprocity means that in response to friendly actions, people are frequently much nicer and much more cooperative than predicted by the self-interest model; conversely, in response to hostile actions they are frequently much more nasty and even brutal. (Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reciprocity_(social_psychology)
I felt inspired to write about this topic by my stepson, because of his very obvious lack of reciprocity. So it got me thinking is it something we do naturally or do we have to be coached and trained to act in a reciprocal way towards our family, friends, colleagues and/or strangers?
When children who live with their parents for possibly over 20 years have had everything provided for them, I believe it’s really quite tough for them to make the transition to seeing the need to return the favour for all the services that are provided to them free of charge for many years. I know we should not be viewing this as some sort of transaction and you would hope that your child will eventually realise that they should contribute to the household in many different and selfless ways.
But what if they do not have any inkling that this is something they should be doing and even when you ask on a number of occasions in a gentle and persuasive manner that their contribution would really be appreciated, but they still refuse to do anything, what is the correct and supportive strategy?
The Three Musketeers — Michael & Josh #dailycartoon
The West has declared war on Syria. Macron, May and Trump agreed and have taken action against the tyrant Assad following a chemical attack on Syrian’s citizens. We drew this in the morning of the day that the attack took place. We didn’t know for sure that the three of them would actually take action.
Can we still trust our journalists? We’re all exposed to news, whether on TV, the web, social media, newspapers and digital news. But how do we know that anyone is actually telling the truth?
Everyone is desperate to get more eyes on their publications and in the main this is for one single reason. Advertisers revenue. Advertisers revenue is how news channels survive. Sure the BBC may be an exception to that rule and after all everyone with a TV, probably most these days has to be a licence for the privilege to watch the BBC.
So apart from them (BBC) everyone else needs to earn a revenue in order to pay their workers and keep them in jobs. So desperate are news channels these days that they are probably willing to risk a few bad stories in order to pull in the punters.
Dr. Jamie Whyte is a Director of Research at The Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA), a free market think tank, based in London and his TEDxWarwick 2018 talk was very revealing. A news channel in Germany have already been fined for their fake news.
Mind Map created by me after attending TEDx Warwick 2018
They need to prove to their advertisers that their site or publication is the most active or popular in terms of eyeballs and as such they will need to get those punters (us) into their world.
There’s nothing better than a well thought out and sensational headline to grab our attention. We think we’re just clicking through to an innocent and factual story but in fact we’re all pulled into an advertising multi billion industry that pays many workers to keep spewing out garbage every single day.
Tony Robbins becoming the student — Michael & Josh #dailycartoon
Tony Robbins (also from Netflix — ‘I’m Not Your Guru’ — fame), made an error of judgement and suggested that the #metoo movement were looking for significance. He apologised on Facebook stating that sometimes, the teacher has to become the student. This was such a time. It inspired our latest cartoon and takes him back to the beginning by doing his own firewalk.
Accusing people of things can get you into all sorts of trouble. I’ve done it many times and I’m sure you have too.
For starters we do not have any understanding of people’s back story do we? I will mention just one example that happened to me recently and I have many more.
I received a connection request on LinkedIn from someone I don’t know. A week later I received an email suggesting that I’ve been added to his list. I challenged it and gave him all my ‘ego’ reasons why he shouldn’t be doing this. He came back and told me a story that said that his material probably saved 3 people from committing suicide. Gulp!
I didn’t know this back story but he also didn’t use his story in his initial email. Had he used it, I probably would have just unsubscribed and not said anything else further.
“A man points his index finger directly at the camera.” by Adi Goldstein on Unsplash
Tony Robbins was recently accused of something he did with a participant at one of his UPW events. I didn’t join the abuse online that followed it although I did believe he had made an error in judgement. Now, I’ve attended many of Tony’s events and I know he has the highest regard for his participants. Why did he misjudge the situation, why did he make such a misjudgement or was he just misunderstood?
We’ll probably never know but one thing’s for sure we are all still learning and growing even well into retirement and beyond.
Reacting and accusing people we do or do not know is something called System 1 thinking. System 2 is waiting, holding back and assessing the situation, examine the thoughts that are coming up for you and reflecting on the situation before jumping in with our ego and accusing someone of something that probably isn’t even true. Better to ask a question to learn more about their motives.
So my question in the future when receiving unsolicited emails from strangers who have added me to a mailing list will potentially be; ‘Thanks, I was wondering was there any particular purpose you were thinking of when you added me to your mailing list? It would really help me to decided whether to unsubscribe or not.’ Thanks for your help.
Boris Johnson and Jeremy Corbyn — Michael & Josh — #dailycartoon
Boris Johnson (UK’s foreign secretary) accused Jeremy Corbyn (UK’s labour leader) of being useful idiot. It’s fascinating, because Boris portrays himself in the media as a bit of an idiot. What example are these leaders showing young people that it’s okay to call each other names? It inspired our latest cartoon.
Alexander Nix, Mark Zuckerberg, Hogwarts and 87 million data — Michael & Josh #dailycartoon
Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg confirmed to our amazement that actually 87 million people’s data (1 million Brits) were sucked away from them by Alexander Nix and co at #cambridgeanalytica. The story is growing into a modern day Harry Potter that even J K Rowling would be proud of. It inspired our latest cartoon.
There are so many ways to communicate with people via the web these days, that it’s becoming increasingly difficult to decide which method to use.
Most of our contacts are in at least 3 different locations. Probably Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. Then there’s also Instagram and Snapchat. That last one depends on how old you are, so forget that one for the purpose of this article.
Do you send them a) an old-fashioned text message b) a Facebook messenger c) direct message them on twitter or message them on LinkedIn. Not sure we do many on instagram at all, I’m just the wrong age group.
Well it all depends if you have their phone number or not.
So here’s my approach these days.
a) if I have their number and they are in the UK, send them a text message. It’s likely that this service is always left on in terms of notifications. b) if you don’t have their number and you are connected on LinkedIn, message them there. The chances are that they haven’t switched off notifications for that. c) failing that use normal email or phone/Skype them!
It still doesn’t sound simple does it.
To be honest all I want is a simple life and all those social networks have made it increasingly cumbersome and not efficient. Remember when they said that technology would make our life’s simpler and we would be able to spend more time with our families and friends? Well the opposite has actually happened. If you haven’t already lost your teenage son in his online gaming and your teenage daughter in snapchat world then you probably will lose them in a different platform that hasn’t been invented yet.
I watched Stephen Fry on Netflix in his one-man show to launch his book called ‘More Fool Me’. It was a fantastic show of storytelling and anecdotes of his family, his life, the ups and downs and the ridiculous. Of course Stephen’s knowledge is incredible and he shared many interesting facts.
There was one fact though that stood out for me and that was the very simple fact that most of do not know the names of our great grandparents. Wow, I thought, is he really true? So I put it to the test with my own family and he was 100% correct, I really do not know the names of my great grandparents. I don’t even know the proper names of some of my grandparents, what’s wrong with me!
Well a few of them died before I was born, that’s grandparents and my parents never really spoke about them, let alone speak about their own grandparents. I definitely feel I missed out somehow or did I?
It’s a shame that we’re so caught up in life’s stuff that we don’t even know our great grandparents’ names. So now I’m on a mission to find out their names. There are a few relatives still alive who I can ask, I’d better be quick, because you never know what might happen to them and then the info is lost.
I know these websites exist that you have to pay for to find your ancestors, but I’m not keen to share my personal data there, as who knows whose going to be hacking in to those in years to come.
And I know I have a chart somewhere that my father worked on during World War II, when he was hiding in an attic from the Germans, yes that really happened, he spent his teenage years in hiding. whilst he was in hiding he did do some work on researching his ancestors.
