PLAY HARD. WORK SMART.

Section 1: Let’s start with you.

Living with monsters

This first section is to encourage you to hit the pause button - silence that nagging voice in your head telling you you are not good enough, churning over what everyone else thinks you should do - find somewhere quiet, calm your mind, and just take in some of the ideas and what resonates with you.

What big events do you remember when you were growing up? I remember my grandfather passing away, getting my first bicycle, moving house when I was 11. What events to do you remember, and what emotions do you attach to those events now? My Mum always had an irrational fear of hospitals - until I realised where it came from, so did I. How do some of these events relate to things that make you fearful?

Fear only exists in your mind. Danger exists - you should take danger very seriously, but fear is your mind putting barriers in your way. Fear can feel very real, but if you spend time working out how you can manage your fear, the impact on your decisions and your direction will be dramatic. It is not experiencing fear that is the problem, it is your response to it that counts.

Take a deep breath

Your self worth, how you view yourself, your capabilities, your strengths and weaknesses, is the second area we will focus on. Just as fear is in the mind, so of course is your self worth. On difficult days even now my ‘inner voice’ will go into overdrive, and all the personal insecurities and judgements start to surface about my relative ‘worth’ to others.

This is rooted in your connection to and understanding of two things: your values, and your emotions. You know if you are doing a good job, whether you are completing a piece of work, painting a living room or doing an exercise routine, you do not need a stranger on a livestream to tell you. So think about how you can trust your own judgement, trust your own assessment to your own standards and praise yourself when you have done a good job. You may need help getting motivated, a training partner or a mentor to help bring the best out of yourself, but fundamentally look at how you can take more responsibility for yourself.

Your emotions can provide an invaluable indication of how you are really feeling about something. We will spend time looking at the use of masks in our day to day lives, and the concept of the emotional compass, which can help you tap into what you are really feeling about certain situations or key decisions in your life. This is an area in my 20s and 30s I largely tried to shut down rather than learn to manage, and on reflection I can see a whole series of important decisions which would have benefitted from a better connection to how I felt over how I thought at the time.

PLAY HARD. WORK SMART.

Section 2: Preparing for the journey.

Building your foundations

This section is where the ‘Get to Work’ activities kick in. Three key messages in this section: you are in the right place, choose joy and excitement, and what do you want to do! I never said this would be easy!

Lets break it down a little. At the heart of this is to focus on what you can control - you cannot change the past, only the present moment, so if you have decided to take positive action now, this must be your start point, it’s that simple. We all have baggage, we all have that little voice nagging away with all the reasons not to make a change, but you are here, you have taken action, and you have started, so start believing in yourself and your commitment to chasing your dreams.

Joy and excitement are important in how you approach each day, and how you ultimately identify your dream job, for if what you want to do and the skills and experiences you need to get you there don’t bring you joy, why are you doing it? It is a deliberately simplistic statement, and once you’ve sat with it for a while, and we explore the emotional compass in more detail, it will become clearer how this can help you find and navigate your chosen path.

Decide what you want to do and act on it.

PLAY HARD. WORK SMART.

Section 2: Preparing for the journey.

Decide what you want to do, and act.

Consider these fundamental questions:

• Do you know what you want?

• Do you know what you enjoy doing?

• What is stopping you from doing it?

• What can you do about it?

• What will it feel like when you do?

• What does success look like for you, both personally and in the context of your family, friends, peers and mentors?

You may be clear on your immediate short-term wants and needs – food on the table, new clothes, a phone upgrade, a new car. But what about your longer-term aspirations and your personal growth beyond material possessions?

It’s time to figure out where you want to be and how you want to live in six months, twelve months, five years, or ten years’ time. In the future, when you look back at first picking up this book, I want you to remember why you picked it up and what you did as a result of reading it. That, of course, will partly depend on what you do next.

What ideas and conscious decisions about your future will you turn into actions? This could be a pivotal moment where you decide to take positive action, set a new course and start to follow your dreams. Or it could become just another book gathering dust on your bedside table. You might not get past the opening chapters, or you might take the first steps towards a lifetime of personal growth and fulfilment. Either way, you must first accept that this is your choice to make. Own your choices, treasure them, and accept them. This first step of taking personal responsibility for your choices and understanding the basis on which you make these decisions is the key to living life on your own terms.

It took me twenty years to start thinking beyond the ‘hard work’ mindset and the pay cheque in answering some of these questions. Don’t worry if this all feels a little strange or abstract, far removed from your day-to-day situation. We all have bills to pay and, as I write this during a national lockdown, we are all wrestling with fears and concerns about the future. Don’t let this control you or limit your ability to focus on the positives in your life. Use these questions as a catalyst for thinking about what you want beyond material things.

Reach beyond what your family, friends, and society think you should be aspiring to. Think deeply about where you are, how you got here, what you enjoy and where you want to go. Review your daily routines and the people around you, what works and what doesn’t in terms of how it makes you feel now, and in the context of your more significant goals and long-term aspirations.

PLAY HARD. WORK SMART.

Section 2: Preparing for the journey.

Beliefs and perceptions.

In this exercise, I want you to think about what brings you joy and excitement, and what makes you fearful, angry, guilty or miserable. Consider your life from several different perspectives as we start to explore these questions further:

• Your personal beliefs, which guide the choices and decisions you make each and every day.

• The impact of conditioning - of the personal beliefs you thought about, which ones were formed in your childhood, and how relevant are they to you now?

• The power of perception – you can think about certain events from different  perspectives if you do so consciously – can you think of any examples in your everyday life?

• How much do you focus on the present moment, rather than replaying events from your past or thinking about your future. How does these thoughts make you feel?

• Accept where you are right now, whatever your circumstances, as the perfect starting point for your future growth. How do you feel about that? Is it a relief, or are you still frustrated about where you are today? If you are frustrated, how does that help?

• Think about making conscious decisions – where can you take positive action to take back control of your life in the pursuit of fulfilment and happiness.

Are you excited? You should be, since you are going to be focusing on you, then investing time and energy into evaluating every aspect of your life and your future path. This knowledge will form your foundations, the platform from which you can prepare to chase your dreams with confidence.

PLAY HARD. WORK SMART.

Section 2: Preparing for the journey.

Your core beliefs.

Take some time now to consider your core beliefs and where they come from. Try this exercise. Draw a grid of topics where you could expect there to be potential for discrimination. Consider areas such as religion, ethnicity, sexuality, gender or age.

Now score your level of prejudice on a scale of one to four, with one being low and four being high. Can you identify certain prejudices, situations where you may discriminate, either consciously or subconsciously? What goes through your mind if you see a teenager in a hoody, a pensioner crossing the road holding up traffic, a businessman in a suit or a member of an extreme political group?

How do your beliefs change with the degree to which you know someone or something – your family, friends, community, wider society, your country and so on?

As you start to explore these questions, you will see that we all have certain prejudices. These are automatic responses to certain situations, which is entirely normal. Once you have identified some of these prejudices within yourself, consider the basis for those prejudices. Are they consistent with your parents’ views, or those of your siblings, teachers, friends, peers, demographic, or country of origin? Can you trace where your views originated? Were they triggered by a particular situation or incident, or have they been there for as long as you can remember?

Now for the key questions. How do your beliefs sit with you now? Do they reflect who you are today? Have some of your beliefs and prejudices surprised you? Are there certain beliefs you would like to re-evaluate, or change, so that they fit more comfortably with how you view yourself and the world?

PLAY HARD. WORK SMART.

Section 1: Let’s start with you.

PLAY HARD. WORK SMART.

Section 1: Let’s start with you.