Jump on the boat when it comes…

I was asked during the week what I am going to do next year and the honest answer was – I don’t really know.

While there are several possible opportunities on the horizon, there is also a chance that none of them at all will actually transfer into something positive for me.

When I thought about that for a while, I realised how important it is to remain positive and to carry the self-belief that, if those opportunities do not work out, others will come instead and I just have to try to make the most of them.

Making the most of them is hugely important, but it’s also imperative that I don’t sit around waiting for the ‘perfect opportunity’ and then realise though inaction, that I may have actually already let it slip by.

I was reminded of a story I heard years ago about a flood that swept through a town causing widespread devastation.

The flood waters were rising steadily and as they began to seep into houses, a rescue boat pulled up outside a house where a man was standing on the ground floor watching the water rise higher and higer and begin to seep under the door.

When asked by the rescue workers to hop in the boat, the man replied that he was ok, he would be safe and that he had great faith in God and God would save him.

The waters continued to rise and the man had to move upstairs where he watched from a bedroom window as another rescue boat pulled up and offered to take him to a safe place.

Again he turned down the offer, saying he would be fine and that God would save him.

The waters kept rising and the man eventually had to climb onto the roof of the house where, after a short while a rescue helicopter spotted him, offered to winch him away, and again he refused, saying God would save him.

An hour later the man had drowned in the rising waters and when he reached heaven he was a bit peeved and asked God why he hadn’t saved him?

To which God replied: “I sent you two boats and a helicopter, what more did you want from me?”

To me that story has always been one that says, when opportunities arise then go ahead and try to take them if you can.

Don’t wait until you are ‘ready’ because how do you even know if you are if you don’t try?

Of course nobody knows how things will ever pan out, but waiting around and doing nothing, thinking that everything will somehow come good by magic, is not the way to go.

Jump on the boat when it comes and enjoy the voyage of discovery it takes you on.

Because the only thing worse than wishing for opportunities, is wishing you hadn’t missed the boat when one had come your way…

Out of hiding…

I’ve been thinking a lot this week about hiding. Or, perhaps more correctly, about why I should make sure that I’m not always doing it.

 

Yet, it’s easy to hide. To find something safe and somewhat comfortable and even if it’s not where you actually want to be – you know that where you want to get to, means being out there in the big bad world.

Maybe, you don’t even know where you want to get to. But you know that too means casting off the safety net and taking steps into the unknown.

Through my work and through my hobbies, I am absolutely privileged beyond doubt to meet amazing people every single day.

Often, I get to tell the stories of these real-life, genuine heroes and heroines and I’m truly in awe of them.

I think they’d laugh at the idea of that. And yet, I hear their stories or in many cases see their story unfold and I know these are truly outstanding people.

Ordinary folk for sure, but they are brilliant people doing fantastic things.

Yet, some of them I would say are hiding.

Some of them have a safe place now and the 100 reasons why they should not leave is pouring cold water on the one burning a hole in them every day telling them why they should.

And I get that. I get the idea of safety and security and I also get that it is also not easy to put yourself out front and centre, if that is far from your comfort zone.

Trust me. I am an introvert by nature, sneaking into the corner away from the spotlight is my default setting.

But I’ve also learned that when you are in that corner, your head can easily fill with doubts and before you know it, you somehow think that you are less.

And then the excuses sneak in and all of a sudden the world and its mother are to blame for all of your woes.

I was thinking on this during the week, when I heard photographer Jay Doherty talk of how he had gone about setting up his business.

If it failed, he said, it was down to him. Nobody else would be to blame, but it didn’t stop him from going for it anyway.

As I drove home that night, my head started processing some of the stories I had written, heard and witnessed of the people around me in recent weeks and months.

When I thought on something else Jay had said that night: embrace every new experience as part of the adventure, I remembered that one of my own poems had suggested you need to get beyond the edge of the comfort zone for the magic to happen.

Another poem sprung to mind then, a reminder to forget comparisons and remember what a brilliant person you really are.

For me, all of that was a reminder to stop hiding behind excuses and to make a start on getting on with stuff I’d procrastinated over.

Who knows where any of that’s going to lead me, but sure isn’t that all part of the adventure?