Mark the Coach

It now seems almost a month that Ross and Brand’s “shocking” Andrew Sachs-related phone mischief has been dominating the BBC news, though I’m sure it’s only a few days. They certainly caused a stir. Are we being prudish and reactionary if we don’t laugh at Russell Brand?

No. What shocks me about Russell Brand in particular is just how unshocking he is. He watches himself so hard – always keeping a weather eye out for getting a reaction. It’s cool to be revolutionary – it pisses people off. Something gets destroyed, something gets created. It makes things change. That doesn’t mean that if you piss people off you’re being revolutionary. Without the substance, it’s just getting up somebody’s nose like a schoolkid trying to get your attention.

So don’t worry about causing a stir in others – cause a stir in yourself. That’s when you really get to do something great.

We certainly live in interesting times. As stock markets and banks lurch from crash to crash, pundits alternate between blaming banks, politicians, regulators, City traders and anyone else whose scalp is conveniently poking above the parapet. What’s clear is that under the rosy surface of apparently stable growth, problems have been lurking. It’s in the way of these things that they don’t get seen most of the time; but when they do, all hell breaks loose. That’s when we do crisis management.

So it is with all of us, managing our own lives. Most of the time things are fine. It’s only now and then that we experience difficulty with confidence, relationships, decisions or whatever it might be. So it can be easy to think of them as something that’s not generally relevant or important.

But they’re there alright, waiting for things to come to a head. They’re always there, probably having much more of an impact behind the scenes than you realise, but they’re elusive. And that’s how those “crisis points” can be a real opportunity. When you’re confronted by these things is when they’re most accessible. So that’s the time to take a hold and make the change you want.

Just like the markets need to do right now. Now’s the time to see what’s not working for them and correct it, while it’s all out there to see.

I’ve always run my own businesses, and seem always to have been surrounded by people in the same situation. My Dad did it. My fiancee does it. My best mates do it. I think it’s a very cool thing to do, chock-full of self-empowering and self-expressive goodness. It’s got its challenges, of course, and you have to deal with those yourself – no passing it on to another desk or another department. When I first experienced coaching and self-development, one of my first thoughts was “This will be so useful in helping me run my business!”

That’s why I’ve decided to put together a program combining various goodies such as personal and group coaching for one-person businesses. Stay tuned for more news as it happens!

I’ve just made one of those utterly delightful discoveries that truly make one’s day. I’ve been watching a program on the BBC’s iPlayer, and started fiddling with the volume fader. Do you know what I found? In the best tradition of all things Spinal Tap, it goes up to ELEVEN!

Who would even notice such a detail? Yet someone made sure they put it in. I’m thrilled.

Picked up a great fauxtation the other day from Jamie McDonald, eminent coach and all-round lovely guy:

‘Ironic, isn’t it, that we can say we’re afraid of our emotions?

Jamie is, I think it’s fair to say, very sharp.

I’ve just listened to The Reunion on Radio 4, bringing together some of the principal creators of the great, great film Withnail and I. Two things jumped out at me and really made me think, especially about the 60s. How British was the 60s? How English?

Richard E Grant spoke of Englishness and “the nobility of failure and permission to fail”. Well, I loved that of course. Failure is very rich fertiliser for learning and the birth of new ideas. The British do culturally embrace failure, and I realised it’s not about the vain, empty pompous gesture and the stiff upper lip, but about

Richard Griffiths (Uncle Monty in the film) pointed to Danny the dealer’s great line at the end of the film – “We are 91 days from the end of the greatest decade in history, and there’s going to be a lot of refugees.” I’d never considered the great significance of the line before, but it’s there in spades. There’s been a decade of socio-cultural revolution; people have, up to this point, been able to know that they’re actually IN the Sixties, the fabulous Swinging Sixties. By the same token, very soon they’re going to be not in it any more. Where next for the revolutionaries, and for those who were displaced by the revolution? It’s interesting that the very character who utters the line resurfaces in Wayne’s World 2 to answer his own implicit question. (He by now is the world’s greatest rock n roll tour manager.)

If you’ve seen this already, you’ll know it bears watching over and over; if not, you have to watch it. Eddie Izzard’s sparklingly spontaneous and surreal monologuing meet Star Wars Lego on U-Tube. Not much more to say really…

I’ve had to admit to myself that I really don’t know much – and actually, that’s OK. In fact, it’s better than that: there’s something very liberating about being able to say ‘I don’t know,’ and being happy and accepting and at peace about it. It’s empowering – it paves the way for listening and learning. To quote Frank Herbert, ‘If you understand, then you cannot learn. By saying you understand, you construct barriers.’

We’re often called upon to have an opinion. ‘How do you feel about…?’ ‘What’s your view of…?’ Politics, religion, the news, women, men, sport – the list is endless. Well, we know what we think, don’t we? Nothing wrong with a healthy exchange of views. Actually what I notice myself doing sometimes is saying what I thought about it last time I thought about it. That could have been six years ago, but at least it gives me something coherent to say. After all, formulating opinions out loud would just look stupid, wouldn’t it? Heaven forfend we might have an opinion that’s wrong, or looks ill-considered.

So the danger is that the need to know stuff and to have an opinion actually prevents you thinking about things. Now that’s REALLY silly. Ignorance is plainly a much higher state of being.