The Time I Was Denounced

What would happen if we took a risk and told people what we loved about their work?

I am seated with my back to the wall in a non-descript independent Bangkok coffee shop with several square faux-wood tables arranged in a four-by-four square. Around the table are my writing partners. 

I’ve never attended a writing critique session before, and yet here I am. Sanjay’s writing is up first, he has written a blog post on male toilet etiquette. We have a few giggles about the topic. Toilet humour is always a great cross-cultural bond. The event organiser, AJ, jumps right in, ‘Sanjay, you have a real lack of story and some of your urinal descriptions are way too dense. I think you could do a better job with that.’ 

When I read the event description titled critique, I thought, ‘how bad can it be?’ Turns out, quite bad. Denunciation meetings were something I had read about in Mao’s Cultural Revolution (read more about this in a previous blog) – what am I doing here?

Next it is my turn to denounce Sanjay. ‘Let me start by telling you what I loved about your blog.’ Sanjay sits up as I say this. ‘I loved how you took something mundane and made it funny, especially the description of large venue trough style urinals.’ I am excited as I see how well he responds to this positive critique. I am even more excited by the prospect of Sanjay repaying the favour and telling me what he liked in my writing.

Zara’s writing is up next. Before we begin, she asks a sensible question, ‘does anyone here read fantasy?’ Blank stares. Asking our group to give feedback on fantasy would be like asking me to sit in on open heart surgery and comment on what didn’t go well. 

She’s suitably bombarded with criticism. 

‘I thought the main character was in a river.’ ‘I stopped reading halfway through because I was bored.’ ‘I didn’t understand the characters.’ ‘There was too much world building.’ ‘There was too little world building.’ 

What on earth is she supposed to do with that? Should she take out all of the pieces that the group doesn’t like? When we remove everything that people dislike, we are left with nothing. Imagine if the England football team took the advice of every pundit on what they should change, they would be left with nothing.

By this point I feel awful for Zara. But truthfully, I am more concerned by what is going to come my way next. I zone out of the conversation as Zara continually receives lazy feedback from a couple of guys who genuinely seem to be enjoying themselves.

‘Jack, your turn.’ Thank God I am a notetaker. I open my laptop to my notes page. I turn to Zara to give her some more feedback. ‘I loved your writing because the descriptions took me right to the market where it is set.’ Zara smiles. ‘What else did you like?’

When we tell someone what is working for us, they know what they can do more of. In a world of abundance, we need to know what is right with us, so we can repeat it with intention. Everybody around that table had performed a miracle that day, they had written something from their heart and laid it out in front of people. The best piece of feedback could be, ‘keep writing’.

We have an amazing talent for negativity as humans. The tiny reptilian part of our brain sneaks up on us, unaware that we are in a chilled café and not the dangerous savannahs. Our negativity bias is there for a good reason. For fight or flight. For protection. The scientific consensus is that the human brain hasn’t changed for at least 50,000 years. Think about that. 

How much has our world changed in five years? In 50? 500 years is unthinkable. 5,000 is abstract. 50,000 is unfathomable. It is the world of sapiens and neanderthals, fighting ice ages and huge animals. Survival was an everyday fight. It made sense to have a negativity bias. One in which we are alerted to a rustle in the leaves. Usually it’s just the wind, but sometimes it is someone, or something, trying to kill us. Best not to wait, your mind immediately sets off a sequence of events to prime you. 

Our brain is built to focus on what is wrong with the world around us. Try and tell yourself otherwise. We catastrophise, we don’t miracle-ise. We lie in bed thinking of what we messed up that day, not what we smashed out of the park. We read into a Microsoft Teams message from our boss saying ‘let’s talk’ that she will fire us, not that she will promote us. 

When we give feedback on somebody’s writing, we default to, ‘here is everything I disliked’, not, ‘let me tell you what I loved.’ Creativity doesn’t come from negativity. It comes from abundance. We live in a world of abundance, if only we saw it. 

“The world is full of magic things, patiently waiting for our senses to grow sharper”.

William Butler Yeats.

When it came to my turn to be denounced, I will spare you the suspense, I was. ‘Your polymath descriptions sounded like Wikipedia.’ ‘Your website is shit.’ ‘This comes across as a puff piece about you.’ The last comment stung because it touched on something I already worried about – the fine line between sharing your journey and sounding like you're bragging about it. I am not saying I am J.K. Rowling (is that a risky reference!?) but I wasn’t sure what I could do with that ‘feedback.’

Some of our greatest creatives of the 20th century were roundly denounced. Steve Jobs said:

“Customers don’t know what they want until we’ve shown them.”

Do I feel I have the same visionary foresight as Steve Jobs, of course not. Do I appreciate the sentiment that to build my Wildest Dream, there will be countless people who disagree with what I am doing and perhaps bruise my ego? Yes. 

What did it do for me, to be told what I’d done was worse than toilet humour? I suppose I felt nothing. I realised I didn’t need these strangers to tell me what I had done was great. I needed these strangers to tell me they disliked my blog, because that is the journey I am on. 

One year ago, I wouldn’t even post on LinkedIn out of embarrassment for sharing my ideas. Now I am publishing a bi-weekly blog and actively sharing it with the world. What does criticism do for me? It creates a thicker skin, it builds resilience, it shows you who your customers really are. 

That evening, I received an email from an ex-colleague I massively respect. ‘This is nice!’ in response to my latest blog post. What else do I need?

Where are you listening to the critics? Where do you need to let go of what they say and focus on what you know is the right thing to be doing?

Deepen Your Curiosity

Brené Brown is the world leader on being vulnerable enough to live to your fullest potential. Marcus Buckingham is one of the modern founders on focusing on what is right with people and right with the world. Will Guidara is a real life example of someone who has always doubled down on what his organisation is amazing at.

1. Daring Greatly by Brené Brown.

2. Love and Work by Marcus Buckingham.

3. Will Guidara on the High Performance Podcast.

We Learn More From Stories Than Textbooks

The Women by Kristin Hannah

We can learn all we like from non-fiction, but some of the best sources of wisdom are in stories. Real, made up, or loosely based on facts, these stories are how we learn to interact with the world. I’ve just finished reading The Women by Kristin Hannah. It is a coming-of-age story wrapped up in the tragedy of the war in Vietnam. I am hesitant to say Vietnam War after we were told in Vietnam that it is called the American War. The protagonist, nurse Frankie, rushes off to Vietnam age 21 to follow her older brother to the dismay of her parents who want nothing more than for her to be a good wife and mother. She returns home after two tours, broken by the loss of her brother, her fellow doctors, patients. Compounded by a broken heart, she loses her way, deep into the forest. Her forest is marred by drink, prescription pills and PTSD. 

This fictional character, steeped in the reality of history, lived and breathed the reason I created Wildest Dream:

She’d made some of the most momentous choices in her life before she had any idea of consequences. Some had been thrust on her, some had been expected, some had been impetuous. She’d decided to become a nurse at seventeen. She’d joined the Army Nurse Corps and gone to war at twenty-one. She’d gone to Virginia with her friends to run away from home, and when her mother needed care, she’d come home. In love, she’d been too cautious for years, and then too impetuous. In retrospect, it all felt haphazard. Some good decisions, some bad. Some experiences that she would never trade. What she’d learned about herself in Vietnam and the friendships she’d made were indelible. But now it was time to actually go in search of her life.

Hannah, Kristin. The Women.

She was lost in the forest. At times death seemed the only way out. But through the passing of time, great friends and supportive parents, she came to a place at the age of 29 when she could finally look in the mirror and say, ‘I need to find the path.’ 

Wild Swans: Three Daughters of China by Jung Chang

On her 16th birthday, there was no celebration as both her parents were in prison. Instead, Jung writes down a poem. Something she loves about her father is how he introduced her to classical Chinese poetry. She knows it’s dangerous to write as your words can be taken out of context and help against you for many years. Her words hit the page. “I described my bewilderment at the new world, at not knowing what and how to think. It was a poem of groping in the dark, searching.” A banging on the door. Happy birthday. As usual the rebels were probably here to raid the house. Jung runs to the toilet, tearing her poem into tiny pieces and flushes it away. 

We learn a lot from fiction, but perhaps we learn more from the lived experience of others. Jung Chang is an inspiration for me, author of Wild Swans who documented life in 20th century China by telling the story of her grandmother, mother and herself. Her life was unspeakably hard. As a child of Mao’s China, she lacked access to proper education, play and her love of writing, instead witnessing death of her friends and of society instead. 

She watched first hand as her parents were tormented, beaten and imprisoned for their inability to bend to the complete mania of Mao. After Mao died, a slither of normalcy returned, and she could go back to school, finishing top of her classes and nationwide tests – her ticket out of China. She was one of a select few who were granted permission to study in the United Kingdom.

She was in her mid-thirties, finally free from China and its daily torment. Yet she was stuck. 

It was at this moment that I lost the passion [for writing]. In fact the last thing I wished to do was to write. To me, it would have meant to turn inwards, and dwell on a life and a time that I hated to think about. I was trying to forget China.

Jung Chang, Wild Swans: Three Daughters of China.

Throughout her early adulthood in China, then in the UK, she was in her shadowed forest. But drip by drip, she found her passion. She explored her new country, she fell in love with Jon Halliday. Eventually, her mother was able to visit her. For weeks and months, her mother recounted stories of the three Wild Swans. The grandmother, the mother and finally the daughter, Jung. These stories would go on to become her international bestselling book and launch her as a voice for the truth about recent Chinese history. 

She didn’t wait until she was 50 to turn inwards. She turned inwards when she intentionally started thinking, what do I love doing? What am I passionate about? An entire generation were under some form of mind control from Chairman Mao. For Jung to break free and create the life she now has is remarkable. It would’ve been easy, and entirely forgivable, to give up at any of the hardships in her life. She didn’t. She kept on walking through that shadowed forest until she re-found the path. 

The Original Mid-Life Crisis Was Not About Porsche 911s and Buying Red Trainers

I’m sitting in a café in Brera, Milan. A small wooden table, the legs balanced on the cobbled streets. I’m alone. Liv flew back to Bangkok this morning. In front of me is a plate of pasta, half eaten. In my hand a book. A book, half in Italian with English translations alongside it. I’m halfway through it, but I again flick back to the first page, re-reading the sentences I’ve underlined.

Nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita,

mi ritrovai per una selva oscura,

ché la diritta via era smarrita.

When I had journeyed half of our life’s way,

I found myself within a shadowed forest,

For I had lost the path that does not stray.

The Divine Comedy, Dante Alighieri, Canto I (14th Century).

The Original Mid-Life Crisis

We are all familiar with the stereotype. The 50-year-old guy buying a Porsche 911 and a pair of red trainers. But this halfway-point-of-adult-life is too late for a crisis. Why have your mid-life-crisis when your kids have already left home and you have just the twilight of your career left?

But, the original mid-life crisis was not about sports cars and colourful trainers.

The original mid-life crisis is and always will be around your 30th birthday. And it isn’t reserved for men. In Dante’s time – 14th century Renaissance Italy – life expectancy was 60 years old if you were rich. So half of our life’s way was very much your 30th birthday.

We Have A Child’s Brain Until Our Late Twenties

Dante was onto something from a neuroscience point of view as well. In our 20s we look outwards for validation. We look to the world and say, ‘who do you want me to be.’ Up to our 30th birthday, our brain is constantly building neural pathways, solidifying them and pruning unused connections. 

As we progress into our 30s, our mind shifts and with a fully developed pre-frontal cortex we move into a more reflective state. 

With reflection comes early signs of wisdom, we usually begin a journey of realising that the identity we have created for ourselves is based on following the world’s expectations. Satisfying parents, then teachers, then friends, then universities, then organisations.

When we reach half of our life’s way, our brain supports us to move to an introspection unavailable to a teenager. ‘Who am I?’

My Shadowed Forest 

As I read and re-read those sentences in the Divine Comedy, I reflect onto the last few years of my life, my shadowed forest and my path. It would be easy to say my ‘shadowed forest’ was working my career and realising I was selling unhealthy food to children. Yet, it would be too easy to say that – I loved my time there, the pace, the people, the challenge.

I found myself within a shadowed forest.

Too often we try to point at one single cause – it is easier for our brains to understand that. For me, it was more a feeling that the world has always given more to me than I have given in return. My career has always been about learning and my personal growth. I have never looked at my years in consulting and corporate and thought, how can I make the world a better place. My shadowed forest was not burnout, it was not a slap around the face, it was a mismatch between potential and purpose. Yet knowing something is not the same as doing. 

I needed agency and as is usually the case, inspiration came from adventure. Sat in the driver’s seat of our Toyota Hilux, the white paint stained red by the desert dust of Namibia, Liv and I listened to the incredible Greenlights by Matthew McConaughey. As the hours of bumps passed underneath us, I knew that as soon as we returned from that trip I needed to do what he’d done since his mid-twenties. Not to take as many drugs or play the bongos naked, but to start recording my life by journalling. That was my Greenlight, my first drip in the bucket.

“We cannot fully appreciate the light without the shadows. We have to be thrown off balance to find our footing.”

Matthew McConaughey, Greenlights

Catch The Drips And Let Your Purpose Take Care Of Itself

You won’t be as clear headed as Steve Jobs, having epiphanies to make the world’s best computer. Instead, the first step out of the forest is to figure out who we are, and that starts with what we love. Don’t spend your time ruminating over lack of passion, spend it recording what you love, what you are passionate about. Move the bucket to catch the drips. 

Drips are those small moments when you quietly think to yourself, ‘that’s cool’. One drip into the palm of your hand quickly evaporates. Quickly forgotten. Catching the drips in your bucket means noting things down with intention. Journalling or sharing your curiosities with someone.

In Milan I’m catching drips. One morning I am at the Veneranda Biblioteca Ambrosiana checking out Leonardo da Vinci’s journal of inventions (read more about da Vinci’s amazing range in this previous post here) . The next morning I’m with the incredible Nikos where we discuss our Wildest Dreams. That evening, I meet an old friend Francesca for dinner and talk about life. The rest of the time we walk around the city, exploring. 

Catching drips. 

Those small moments for me are my inspiration. Reading and learning about the renaissance history, brainstorming the future with an amazing Greek guy, sharing life’s challenges with a good friend. 

Drips are those small moments when you quietly think to yourself, ‘that’s cool’.

When you are present enough to catch a bucket full of drips, the water can be used to wash away the dirt which covers the path. 

The bucket of drips has led me down this path of studying, researching, coaching. On a Monday morning 18 months ago, I was paid handsomely to check my emails and talk to my team. Instead, I am sat here writing a blog post that might be looked at by up to 100 people, perhaps half will make it to this sentence, maybe less. I don’t have clarity on where it will lead, but I know I’m moving towards something that matters.

The pasta’s finished. A light breeze moves through Brera, sliding the napkin off my lap and onto the cobblestones. I take a sip of water, glance again at the underlined lines in Dante. I’m still here, in the shadowed forest. But light is filtering through the canopy now, and the path ahead is just a little more visible. And that’s okay. Have your crisis early. Get your bucket, I’ve got mine and I’m catching the drips.

Deepen Your Curiosity

This week I feature two incredible books – The Women, and Wild Swans – in their own way the protagonists tell the story of entering their shadowed forest, losing the path, and finding their way out in their 30s. To read more about how we learn more from stories than textbooks, check out the bonus blog on the website. 

1. Divine Comedy, Inferno by Dante Alighieri.

2. The Women by Kristin Hannah.

3. Wild Swans by Jung Chang.

We Need To Rebuild Our Tribes. Not By Blood, But By Choice

Lessons From Leaders

“Le fabbriche sono fatte di uomini, di mezzi tecnici e di muri. La Ferrari è fatta soprattuto di uomini.”

“Factories are made of people, machines and bricks. Ferrari is made of mostly people.”

Enzo Ferrari. 

"The strength of the team is each individual member. The strength of each member is the team."

Phil Jackson.

“If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.”

Often cited as an African proverb, though its exact origins are unclear.

“It's better to hang out with people better than you. Pick out associates whose behaviour is better than yours and you'll drift in that direction.”

Warren Buffett.

We Are A Tribal People.

100,000 years ago, tribes worked. Living in small, close-knit groups of kin, Homo sapiens came to dominate all other hominid species and animals, eventually migrating out of Africa 50,000 years ago. 

Hardwired to live in groups of 30-150 people, who stand beside us come rain or shine, we developed language, culture and imagination. These unique skills were the backbone of our superpower – our ability to work in teams.

The Gorilla Debate

Consider a male gorilla. Now consider a strong man, say Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson. In hand-to-hand combat, who would win? Well, most likely the 200kg gorilla would outlast Hollywood’s finest, weighing 120kg. Now, consider Tom Holland, Spiderman, weighing in at 65kg. Without his spiderweb spinning fingers, he would be crushed by the gorilla. Obviously. 

What if Tom was joined by an all-star cast of your favourite 100 light weight actors – I’d include anyone from the Superbad movie, maybe as bait. The gorilla would no sooner have beat its chest before our all-star cast of talented men would’ve formulated a plan and taken the gorilla down. 

Act 1: Tribes At Their Best

70,000 years ago, tribes slowly walked out of Africa, travelling a few kilometres each year as they searched for greener pastures.

Tribes worked. They survived the polar ice caps expanding to cover Chicago, New York, the UK and Central Asia. 20,000 years ago, how would the Rock have made himself a warm jacket, whilst hunting woolly mammoths, fending sabre tooth tigers, navigating the Bering Strait Land Bridge? He wouldn’t. He would be dead. Our small, determined, collectively organised ancestors did survive though. 

These unique skills were the backbone of our superpower – our ability to work in teams.

Once the ice thawed, climates became ripe for farming, and humans began to thrive with populations booming across the globe. In these farming civilisations, we were still tribal, still in groups of up to 150 people.

Humans had the same brains as we do now, they were smart. These were not cavemen. If you took a human baby and teleported it from the Fertile Crescent in 9,000 BCE and dropped it in Bangkok with me – it would fit right in. It wouldn’t know the difference. 

Act 2: Tribes Start To Unravel

Our environment has changed, but our emotional brain has not. Now, as I sit on my balcony in sunny Thailand, I couldn’t tell you the name of any of the 150 people that are most proximate to me right now. Hang on, my wife came home, there’s one, and my cat, if he counts? Two. So, how did we get here?

The Industrial Revolution began in the United Kingdom and spread throughout the world in the 1800s. Incredible progress was made to human civilisation, but at a cost. Tribes began to wither, fray, and move to the ever-growing cities. Mass migration on a scale never seen before, saw humans organised into working units, led by managers. Manage comes from the French word ménager, meaning to handle horses. Factories didn’t need tribes, they needed output, and like animals, humans were another capital investment. 

The dimmer switch was turned down on the human spirit at this time, a little bit of light lost behind the eyes. We lost connection, we lost rest, we lost play, we lost our tribe. Where tribes had leaders who inspired and protected, the industrial age gave us managers who treated us like bricks and widgets. 

But all was not lost. Over the coming centuries emerged visionaries who remembered that the essence of the tribe is people. 

“Factories are made of people, machines and bricks. Ferrari is made of mostly people.”

Enzo Ferrari. 

Three days ago Liv and I visited the Ferrari Museum at Maranello, just outside Modena. I was taken back to my childhood. I loved supercars, with posters of Aston Martins and Ferraris on my bedroom walls.

Maranello was full of Italians. Proud of their heritage, they flocked in and surrounded the beautiful cars dotted throughout the museum. In the first room there were some old car shells from the 1960s. Beautiful, curved metal, shaped incredibly by hand. Printed on the wall above it was that quote from Enzo Ferrari. He knew that people are at the heart of a great organisation. 

Act 3: Tribes Reimagined

The 21st century is just beginning – we have a wealth of opportunity ahead of us. We will not win by being tribal in the traditional sense of the word. Tribalism, belonging to one group, is always going to draw us in, but now we need to lean into a multi-tribal world. No longer do we belong to one village, community or race. We choose to belong to sports teams, workplaces, universities, nations, continents and the world. 

Diversity is being in the room; inclusivity is belonging in the room.

Enzo Ferrari understood it, he understood that to consistently add the most value to the world, we need to bring diverse individuals together to become one tribe. 

I started writing this piece two days after returning from our leadership retreat. Bringing together incredibly high performing people in Thailand, Patrick and I guide these 25–39-year-olds through growth of both the body and mind. 

This is the 21st Century tribe. Lebanese, English, Czech, Straight, Gay. The 21st Century tribe is founded on diversity and succeeds on inclusivity. Diversity is a statistic; inclusivity is connection that drives collective progress. Diversity is being in the room; inclusivity is belonging in the room. Inclusivity is a mindset, of coming together despite our differences and because of our shared values. 

There is far more power to belonging to a tribe of your choosing.

As a species our minds and bodies have not changed for 100,000 years. Our environment has been in constant flux. Over the last half millennium we have dropped the very essence of what makes us human – the tribe. In its place came isolation, loneliness, and the myth of the self-made individual. We don’t need to go back to tribes based on blood, on religion, on borders. There is far more power to belonging to a tribe of your choosing, one whose people come from different places, who have had different hardships, who have different goals in life. 

We now have this amazing ability to fly halfway around the world and discover places where we truly belong. I think it is okay that we are less close to our hallway neighbour. What is not okay, is to not take advantage of the wealth of communities that exist to cater to your passions, your interests and your needs.

Deepen Your Curiosity

1. The Evolution Of The Human Brain - William H. Calvin PhD on page 17.

2. History of the World by Andrew Marr.

3. Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari.

Wildest Dreams Come From Range

Lessons From Leaders On Range

“Smart people are a dime a dozen, they don’t usually amount to much, the real key was being creative. And whether it is Leonardo da Vinci or Benjamin Franklin or Steve Jobs, these are people who love to seek patterns across nature. They were interested in everything you could possibly know. By seeing those patterns, they made mental leaps that others didn’t do.” 

Walter Isaacson.

“Time you enjoy wasting is not wasted time.”

John Lennon.

“Modern work demands knowledge transfer: the ability to apply knowledge to new situations and different domains.”

David Epstein, Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World.

“Learn how to see. Realize that everything connects to everything else.”

Leonardo da Vinci.

“The creation of something new is not accomplished by the intellect but by the play instinct.”

Carl Jung.

Range Comes From Curiosity.

As a child I never believed I was amazing at any one thing. For Sunday league kids football I was a goalkeeper, then a defender and occasionally a forward in six a side. I could spend hours building Lego sets, arranging toy soldiers into imaginary battles, or piecing together puzzles of the world map and its flags.

In secondary school, I was popular, but not one of the cool kids. In class I was smart, but I never received the attention or pressure of being the smartest. My academic journey was never a straight line. Final exams had ups, downs, and several resits.

What I was great at was curiosity. Sometimes it got me sent out of class for talking too much or asking the wrong question. I wasn’t the best at any one thing, but I had a quiet superpower: I was fascinated by people.

I spent the summer break of university working for an eccentric American who owned a handful of engineering factories in Birmingham. I loved it. I was good at designing logos, understanding finances and organising machinery layouts. I was great at getting on with people – whether the eccentric American or the factory workers. This was one of my first data points that it was valuable to be good at many things.

I moved into consulting where I would have amazing conversations with business leaders and industry experts. Why was I good at it? I knew how to connect with people, to connect disparate ideas together, and to move fast. Whilst consulting, I discovered the phenomenal book Range by David Epstein. He challenges the myth that specialisation is the only path to success. Instead, he argues that generalists – those who dabble, explore, and connect dots across fields – often thrive in complex and unpredictable environments. 

Generalists – those who dabble, explore, and connect dots across fields – often thrive in complex and unpredictable environments.

It made me look back at my experiences in a different way.

I knew that what I was doing, this ranging, exploratory type of work was beneficial. Why else would we place so much trust in general practitioner doctors – highly trained generalists who help us navigate complexity?

Range helped me to make sense of me loving Lego, blowing things up, history books, geography lectures, ski mountaineering, piano playing, cooking, drawing, being outdoors, being indoors with friends, economics, politics, sociology, psychology, strategy, communication, critical thinking. I’ve always been an easy-going person, willing to share, willing to try something because ‘why not.’

Looking back, I wasn’t born with Range – I built it. As a school kid, my Range looked like curiosity. As a consultant, it became understanding and insight. Today, it’s my ability to hold multiple perspectives, to move from abstract to practical.

I am finding my Wildest Dream in my Range. Yesterday evening Liv and I spent an hour building Lego – a Viking Village to be exact. It was such a throwback to childhood. My Wildest Dream is not to build a Lego Viking village for a living, but maybe it’s to build something new and novel.

Leonardo da Vinci lived through the Renaissance in the 15-16th centuries. In 2013 he shot back into the limelight for posthumously becoming the artist of the most expensive painting ever. $430m for the Salvator Mundi. I urge you to explore his story. Da Vinci wasn’t just an artist; he was a bridge between disciplines, the original interdisciplinary thinker. He was Range. He was the ultimate master of Range. His contributions to scientific discovery, engineering, military equipment, human anatomy and biology are incredible. He had such a diverse range of interests, curiosities and skills. Diversity which only he can make overlap.

Da Vinci wasn’t just an artist; he was a bridge between disciplines, the original interdisciplinary thinker. He was Range.

Never look at your hobbies and think it is getting in the way of something. If you love yoga and baking and piano playing, keep doing it. Maybe you won’t open a yoga retreat or an Etsy baking store or become the next Ludovico Einaudi. But those passions? They shape how you lead meetings, how you connect with people, how you see the world. That’s value. 

I’ve been playing piano again. Not to perform – just to enjoy the process. That small creative act reminds me that our Range, our inspiration, lives in the margins, in how we choose to spend our time when no one’s watching. What hobby, what curiosity, could you return to?

Today I see range in my great friend James, a Gen-Z renaissance thinker. Able to talk, communicate and share stories in sport, philosophy and technology. Excelling in building deeply technical AI models and working with stakeholders in Australia, Dubai and Finland. James has a deep sense of Range. 

He is the Gen Z AI-Renaissance man. What is his Wildest Dream? To contribute to multiple humanity wide challenges. Humanity wide challenges, that is a Wildest Dream. But, multiple, that is only achievable by someone with Range, by someone who has developed their passions across multiple disciplines.

Range is when the 17th century mathematician Gottfried Leibniz was inspired by the 4000-year-old concept of Yin and Yang. 

Leibniz was a true Range master of the 17th century. He moved effortlessly between disciplines. Inspired by ancient philosophy and the concept of Yin and Yang, he made groundbreaking discoveries in mathematics and logic. 

Yin and Yang are foundational concepts in Chinese philosophy, representing complementary opposites – light and dark, active and passive, expansion and contraction. According to mythology, eight elemental symbols were first developed by Fuxi, an ancient cultural hero. He observed the natural world and understood that these dual forces, Yin and Yang, were the building blocks of creation. The eight elemental symbols of Heaven, Lake, Fire, Thunder, Wind, Water, Mountain, and Earth were each made of solid (Yang) and broken (Yin) lines.

Leibniz was a true Range master of the 17th century. He moved effortlessly between disciplines. Inspired by ancient philosophy and the concept of Yin and Yang, he made groundbreaking discoveries in mathematics and logic. One of his most enduring contributions was creating a simple numerical system using just 1s and 0s. One century later, George Boole would be inspired by this binary system to create Boolean Algebra. 

In the 1930s, Claude Shannon took a philosophy and mathematics class at the University of Michigan and learnt about Boolean algebra. As an engineer he applied this idea of binary logic to electric circuit boards. 1s and 0s, Yin and Yang, on and off. Shannon was another Range master, making contributions across mathematics, information theory and cryptography. It might surprise you to learn that Claude.ai is named after Shannon. 

From Fuxi to Leibniz, Boole to Shannon – Range has always driven progress. What began as ancient philosophy became mathematical logic, then evolved into the language of circuits, and now powers the digital age. Range is more than having a hobby. It’s how civilizations leap forward.

In times of uncertainty, Range becomes a competitive advantage.

We are living in challenging times. Challenges are just challenges – they are neutral, they are a construct of our mind. It is up to our interpretation on how we live through them. In times of uncertainty, Range becomes a competitive advantage. Like Da Vinci, we each carry the potential to overlap our own unique mix of skills – to find creativity in the collision points of science and art, philosophy and tech, the ancient and the future.

Each of these humans, Da Vinci, Leibniz, Boole, Shannon, have advanced human civilisation greatly, lived through challenging times and approached it with a sense of exploration. Each of these humans explored beyond their primary discipline, they found range in invention, in philosophy, in art, in engineering. In sketchbooks and circuit boards, in conversations and curiosity. 

The artificial intelligence revolution is just beginning. The 21st century is just beginning. This is the renaissance for us, Millennials, Gen Z, Gen A. This is our time to get involved in transformational challenge. Be a warrior. Get outside. Find challenges and challengers that are worthy of you. Do not hold back, do not be meek. Seek courage to grow, to learn, to develop, to explore, to adventure, to meet people. Read books, talk to people you disagree with. Find your Range.

So, what is your Wildest Dream? What Range will you need to build it?

Deepen Your Curiosity

My favourite learnings on range:

1. Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialised World by David Epstein.

2. The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish - Episode 121 with Walter Isaacson: Curiosity Fuels Creativity.

3. The Lost Leonardo - Documentary Trailer.

Adventure Is In Our DNA

Advenir (Latin): to come towards.

Aventure (old French): chance, fate, risk.

Adventure: to move towards something new.

Lessons From Leaders On Adventure

“Most decisions in life are two-way doors. You pick the door, walk through it and you can always turn round and walk back through it if you don’t like what’s on the other side.” 

Jeff Bezos. 

“It is in our nature to explore, to reach out into the unknown.”

Ernest Shackleton. 

"As you begin to walk on the way, the way appears." 

Rumi.

“Fill your days with more life, rather than your life with more days.”

Ben Fogle.

We Are All Some Version Of Space Faring Astronauts.

Since the dawn of human time, we have been adventurers and explorers. Hominid beings didn’t miraculously pop up in Africa, the Americas and Eurasia all at once. Our ancient ancestors started in Africa, battled, ate, fought, walked, forded rivers, climbed mountains, hugged coastlines, and sailed into the unknown, all in the hope of a better life. As tribes grew, climates shifted and food sources changed, humans walked their way around the world.

We are adventurers at our heart. It is in our DNA. Humans that couldn’t hack the journeys, weren’t socially smart to help the tribe, weren’t able to buy into a vision of something better – well, they were left behind, along with their DNA. 

In the millennia to come, humans moved across oceans and continents. We still do. I am sitting on my balcony in Bangkok writing this. Days like today, I sit here and write and think my life is incredible. Adventure is at my heart. It is at your heart too. 

Perhaps you have forgotten? 

As a child we didn’t dress up as office workers, lobbyists and computer coders. We dressed up as frontier busting cowboys, space faring astronauts, faraway-land princesses, scary savannah animals – adventurers. Our childlike wonder is wrapped up in the excitement and fear of the unknown. 

We are adventurers at our heart. It is in our DNA.

As children we are obsessed with Harry Potter, Star Wars, Jurassic Park, Indiana Jones and other universe stretching movies. We are meant to explore and be uncomfortable. Why do so many young adults travel and explore the world? It’s certainly not for fame and fortune. We have an in-built desire to adventure.

Adventure is filled with emotion: inspiration, wonder, danger, risk. When we have adventures, we are inspired to take positive actions we wouldn’t have dreamed of in the first place. 

Adventure can not only come from travel, but also from new experiences. New experiences that evoke emotion. Watching Wilding by Isabelle Tree, I was inspired by the positive actions that this couple have taken over the last 25 years to regenerate a part of the UK from depleted farmland to wilderness. It inspired me to see two people so in love with what they do, so risk taking to do something so different. 

The constant oscillation between movement and stopping, between adventure and rest, is what brings inspiration.

My friend Pete has an in-built compass for adventure. He joined us on our annual leadership retreat in Thailand. He grew up in a working-class family in the UK and followed all the usual routes, watching his parents work incredibly hard throughout his childhood before applying for an apprenticeship to learn a trade. At the same time, he was born into a UK system of schooling where everybody was encouraged to apply to university. He was not offered an apprenticeship. He was offered a place at university. Neither his parents nor his two sisters had been to university. It wasn’t a route well travelled. 

His Dad gave him some great advice, ‘Pete, you aren’t going to sit around playing PlayStation. If you don’t have an apprenticeship, go to university.’ So off Pete went, and the rest is history. Now he is in Dubai, another kind of adventure, working for an incredible legal. His parents and sisters could not be prouder of him. 

I continue to write this at 30,000 feet, enroute to Bergen. The past few days have been a whirlwind – landing in London from Bangkok on Sunday night, delivering a workshop for a brilliant B-Corp on Monday, coaching Next Gen leaders in Birmingham on Tuesday, and catching up with friends and old colleagues back in London on Wednesday.

By adventuring from one thing to the next, you build a catalogue of experiences but a debt of rest. The brain needs time to recover. 

It was fast paced, but it was my pace. I get inspired when I jump from café, to train, to park run, to meeting, to lunch with a friend. I get inspired when my pace speeds up. I get reflective when my pace slows down, such as now, on the plane. This constant oscillation between movement and stopping, between adventure and rest, is what brings inspiration. Adventure to be inspired, rest to decompress, process and learn. 

By adventuring from one thing to the next, you build a catalogue of experiences but a debt of rest. The brain needs time to recover. Adventure + Rest = Growth. Without the rest it becomes a slippery slope to burnout. When we double down on adventure we need to double down on the brakes.

Adventure for you doesn’t need to mean being on a flight from one continent to the next. It can mean reading a new book, exploring a new part of town, being inspired by a documentary. 

Ben Fogle, the British adventurer, talked about how he had a mental health ‘blip’ in 2023. A blip in the course of his life, but a fierce storm at the time. This was a perfect storm built up from many different factors, none more so than his constant rush from adventure to adventure. His privilege was his curse. Privileged to be invited to climb Mount Everest one month, traverse rural Japan the next, and run a marathon the week after. All lifetime achievements for most, but an ordinary week for him. Ordinary, but no less consuming. And when you consume that much adventure, there is a necessity to slow down. He had to pump the brakes for a few months to recover from his debt of rest. Now he is fortunately through to the other side and has a much healthier relationship with adventure and rest. Even for someone whose identity is shaped by exploration, the body and mind eventually demand stillness.

Adventure is at the core of my life, it is something I value deeply. Being able to travel the world, meet new people, work with amazing clients and share it all over again creates an amazing feedback loop of inspiration for me. Adventure for you doesn’t need to mean being on a flight from one continent to the next. It can mean reading a new book, exploring a new part of town, being inspired by a documentary. Adventure is a tool to bring emotional inspiration.

The best leaders are adventurers. Not because they climb mountains, but because they step toward uncertainty. They choose growth over comfort. And they rest, not because they’re tired, but because they know growth depends on it. Ask yourself, what adventure can you have today?

Deepen Your Curiosity

My favourite learnings on adventure and exploration:

1. A History of the World by Andrew Marr.

2. Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari.

3. The Alchemist by Paulo Coehlo. 

4. Walking the Nile by Levison Wood. 

5. Elon Musk by Walter Isaacson.

6. Into the Wild by Jon Krakauer. 

7. Podcast - Ben Fogle on High Performance Podcast. 

Values Are Not Words. They Are Sentences With A Word Attached

Valere (Latin): to be strong, to be worth, to be well.

Value (economic 14th century): the price or monetary worth of something.

Values (philosophy 19th century): deeply held beliefs.

Lessons From Leaders On Values

“The true test of character is whether you manage to stand by those values when the deck is stacked against you. If personality is how you respond on a typical day, character is how you show up on a hard day.”

Hidden Potential by Adam Grant.

The antidote to Fear of People’s Opinions has two dimensions: (1) to have deep love and care for others’ well-being … and (2) to act in alignment with one’s purpose, values, and goals. 

The First Rule of Mastery by Dr. Michael Gervais. 

“Our values are constantly reflected in the way we choose to behave.”

Mark Manson. 

“When you do things from your soul, you feel a river moving in you, a joy.”

Rumi.

“If you stand for nothing, Burr, what do you fall for.”

Alexander Hamilton.

Values Are Not Words. They Are Sentences With A Word Attached.

Most people hear the word values and quietly switch off. It sounds corporate - the kind of thing you'd find painted on an office wall or buried in a slide deck. We say we care about values, but most of us would rather talk productivity hacks. Yet, values are not corporate. They’re personal. They’re not what you scribble down in a workshop and forget. They’re what you do, especially when no one’s watching.

They’re there when you choose to tell someone the truth, even if it hurts. They’re behind that rising feeling of frustration when someone flakes on you. They’re the reason you give your time, or your money, or your energy, to something that matters to you, without needing a reason. We don’t need to manufacture our values. We just need to notice them. Think about a time:

• You did something courageous, because you knew you had to even when you didn’t want to.

• You disagreed with someone because what they said was so fundamentally wrong that you couldn’t sit idly by.

• You told a friend the truth even when you knew it would hurt them.

• You can’t help but give money to the homeless man on the walk back to your train station after work.

• When things get comfortable, you can’t help but add a bit of jeopardy, risk, or change into the situation.

Chances are, one or two of these sentences will resonate with you. That’s because it is what you value. A value isn’t a word you scribble in a notebook during a workshop. It’s not what you post on LinkedIn or hang on an office wall. It’s not the five adjectives you hope people write about you in a leaving card.

You value what you spend your time doing. You value what you spend your time saying. You value what you spend your time thinking about. 

Do we get to choose our values? I’ll take you back to Harry Potter and The Philosopher’s Stone. When Harry and his classmates arrive at Hogwarts, they are led into the grand banqueting hall and one-by-one, the first years sit on a rickety wooden stool, and an oversized wizard’s hat is placed on their head and a dialogue between the sentient hat and young Harry ensues. 

‘Not Slytherin, not Slytherin, not Slytherin…’ says Harry, desperate to avoid being placed in the progressively evil house of Slytherin. The Hat is drawn to all the dark things that have happened to Harry, his parents being killed by the dark wizard Lord Voldemort. As any good lead character, Harry has other ideas, he wants to be away from evil, and to be with the brave and courageous wizards sat in the red and gold of Gryffindor. In that moment, he chose his values. ‘Gryffindor!’ Roars the hat to everybody’s delight. He chose Courage over Cunning and Adventure over Ambition.

Much like Harry chose to not be Slytherin, we can find our values by defining what we are not. Warren Buffett’s partner, Charlie Munger, delivered a speech on how to guarantee misery:

First, be unreliable. Do not faithfully do what you have engaged to do. If you will only master this one habit, you will more than counterbalance the combined effect of all your virtues, howsoever great. If you like being distrusted and excluded from the best human contribution and company, this prescription is for you.

In Hiroshima, Japan, a cool city with an incredibly dark past, Liv and I found a beautiful little coffee shop in the rain. Since I’ve stopped drinking alcohol, coffee has become my daily ritual of a bloody good drink. I’ve switched up searching out surreal vineyards for coffee shops that serve world class flat whites.

We drop our umbrellas outside and get welcomed graciously by the server behind the counter. I see an older Japanese man drinking his flat white, and I can see the foam is done precisely. ‘Flat white please’. 

We sit down, the barista now weighing out the beans precisely on scales, the milk measured meticulously in a clean jug, the machine checked, the espresso pressed, and the milk poured. Another European couple walk in and order some coffees. We get our coffees after ten minutes and it is exactly as we expected. Precisely the same coffee as the guy before us. I savour it and watch as the barista performs the same rituals with the same precision at the same steady pace for the European couple. 

If they had company values pasted on the walls in that coffee shop (they don’t because it was a cool place and not at all corporate), it would say Customer Service: Delighting Every Customer in Exactly the Same Precise Way. Customer Service across a lot of Japan has a ritual and deep respect throughout. The ritual is important. The treatment of the customer is almost religious. Time does not always come into it. If you want a fast coffee in Japan, go to Starbucks. 

Because the truth is, you can’t live your values on a whiteboard, and you can’t understand them by staying inside, in your own head, your own comfort zone, or the echo chamber on your device. You can only live your values outdoors.

Values are a sentence with a word attached. Much like Charlie Munger, one of my core values is Reliability and I would define it as doing what you said you were going to do. Reliability means something to everyone. The Oxford English Dictionary defines it as consistently good in quality or performance; able to be trusted. It is similar, but certainly not the same as my definition. 

Yesterday evening, I had a conversation about values with my colleague Garreth. He talked about Integrity being one of his key values. His definition of Integrity, do what you said you were going to do. This is remarkable in how it is exactly the same as my definition of Reliability, one of my key values. How much more deeply can Garreth and I connect and understand each other, now that we know what it is we truly value. 

If you’ve read this far, you probably already know what you value, you just haven’t put it into words yet. That’s the point. Your values don’t need to be pinned on your LinkedIn bio or printed on your company t-shirt. They need to be lived. You’ll spot them in how you show up under pressure. You’ll hear them in how you speak to the people closest to you. And if you're brave, you’ll start to consciously take tough decisions with values in mind. Because the truth is, you can’t live your values on a whiteboard, and you can’t understand them by staying inside, in your own head, your own comfort zone, or the echo chamber on your device. You can only live your values outdoors.

Deepen Your Curiosity

My favourite learnings on strong values:

1. Hidden Potential by Adam Grant.

2. The First Rule of Mastery by Michael Gervais. 

3. Mark Manson’s Blog on personal values.

4. Poor Charlie’s Almanack by Charlie Munger.

Seven Lessons On Rituals

Ritus (Latin): custom, usage, ceremony, religious practice.

Spiritus (Latin): breath, soul, life force, inspiration.

Spiritual (modern): A state of meaning, inner harmony, or well-being.

Lessons From Leaders On Rituals

“The greatest threat to success is not failure but boredom. We get bored with habits because they stop delighting us. The outcome becomes expected. And as our habits become ordinary, we start derailing our progress to seek novelty.”

Atomic Habits by James Clear.

“Small daily improvements, over time, lead to stunning results.”

Robin Sharma.

“Champions don’t do extraordinary things. They do ordinary things, but they do them without thinking, too fast for the other team to react. They follow the habits they’ve learned.”

The Power of Habit by Charles Duhigg.

Seven Lessons On Rituals

Doing the thing is so underrated. This morning, I almost didn’t do the thing, which is writing right now. My mind got sucked into preparing for holiday, working on a keynote I have in two weeks, and using time to tie up loose ends. I am writing what could turn out to be my life’s work, or it could not be, it is uncertain, and humans run away from uncertainty.

The greatest achievements in our life are not reached through daily epiphany and daily mountain top climbing. They are achieved with everyday actions. I dream of reaching mountain tops. As I encourage you to as well. The whole purpose of this blog is to get you outside, to get you exploring, to get you dreaming of impacting the world in the way you know that you can.

But, it always comes back to today. To tomorrow. If you go to the gym today, and tomorrow, I can assure you, you will notice no change to your body, perhaps it will even feel worse, it will feel sore, tired and the aches will make you want to pack it in. Today you can take a small step, you can’t finish.

Doing the thing is underrated. Doing the thing every day is what Warriors do.

First, Warriors create their own arena. The place they go to do battle. My thing is writing, and my place for battle is quiet solitude on my balcony, the kitchen table, a quiet place in a hotel resort, undistracted. There is no WiFi in my arena.

Second, Warriors operate on a schedule. Much like the English Premier League, my arena is scheduled far in advance. My time to create is anchored to finishing my daily yoga in the morning at 7.30am. Warriors don’t operate with surprises when things such as waking up are entirely in their control.  

Third, Warriors approach their practice with a serious intention. Many of us feel deeply responsible to the work we do. But we are human. Put some smartness behind your intention. Am I lazy and uncommitted if I check my email whilst I am supposed to be writing? What if I turn off the WiFi before I start? Now the question is irrelevant if I am lazy or not. I can’t check my email now. We must appreciate we are in a world of distraction – turn off the WiFi when you are doing the thing.

Am I lazy and uncommitted if I check my email whilst I am supposed to be writing? What if I turn off the WiFi before I start? Now the question is irrelevant if I am lazy or not. I can’t check my email now.

As the arenas shift in our life, so can our intention. Bruce Springsteen would always blow away his children, until his wife, Patty, said, you are missing the children at their most beautiful. So he decided to fight more in the arena of fatherhood, to be there to cook breakfast, and to allow his writing to be distracted.

Fourth, Warriors don’t fight those people around them when things get tough. They fight their own inner demon telling them to ‘stop, it isn’t worth it, what you are writing will amount to nothing, that future you’re studying for, someone else has already done it, really they have, remember you saw them on Instagram last night?’ Warriors understand that the quickest path to positive self talk is through Self Awareness and Self Management. Recognise that you are talking s*** to yourself. Manage and regulate yourself through practices such as yoga, meditation, breathwork and exercise. Doing the thing after any of these practices is a super smart thing to do.

Fifth, Warriors approach life with humility. Much like John D Rockefeller comments in letter #36 to his son, rich people should give money away quietly. Those of us with the gift of time to focus on doing what we love should do so quietly, without ego, without arrogance. It should be dedicated to the betterment of humanity, not to the elevation of our Instagram feed.  

Sixth, Warriors approach their practice as students. I follow my one hour of writing everyday with one hour of studying. I study where I feel gaps of excitement in my knowledge. In the last month it has taken me down the path of philosophy, Buddhism, Aristotle, Plato, shamanism, the smartness of New Caledonian Crows, hospitality, dopamine, adenosine, cortisol, agricultural revolution, Neanderthals and many more. Leonardo Da Vinci lived through the Renaissance – he is most famous for his painting of Mona Lisa and recently becoming the artist to have sold the most expensive painting ever, Salvator Mundi. Did you know he also made great leaps in military engineering and anatomy? He would sit in the morgue and understand the anatomical structure of corpses so he could better paint his Mona Lisa’s smile. Learning is never in vain, with an open mind it will always connect back to your practice.

Learning is never in vain, with an open mind it will always connect back to your practice.

Seventh, Warriors know that practice hurts. We aren’t fair weather warriors. We do the practice when we feel bored, like shit, like the world hates us, we still sit down for one hour to do the thing. We exercise when we are tired because we know that’s when we grow and become amazing. We judge our effort not our output. Because, hurt is effort. Leonardo Da Vinci posthumously sold his Salvator Mundi painting for $430m. He would have been hurting to create that, painstakingly, with then no output. Who would say he didn’t achieve greatness?

Deepen Your Curiosity

My favourite learnings on rituals:

1.        Turning Pro by Steven Pressfield.

2.        The Power of Habit by Charles Duhigg.

3.        The Wealth Money Can’t Buy by Robin Sharma.

4.        Atomic Habits by James Clear.

5.        Podcast - Bruce Springsteen and Obama on Renegades Born In The USA.

What Is Your Wildest Dream?

Dream (Old English): joy, mirth, merriment. 

Dream (modern): A cherished aspiration, ambition, or ideal.

Welt (Indo European root for Wild: 4500 BCE): woodland, untamed land.

Wild (modern): not domesticated or cultivated, uninhabited, emotionally intense, or enthusiastic.

Wildest Dream: a bold and aspirational ambition, sitting in the uninhabited part of your mind. In its purest form, it is unconstrained and deeply personal.

Lessons From Leaders

“All men dream: but not equally. Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds wake up in the day to find it was vanity, but the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act their dreams with open eyes, to make it possible.”

TE Lawrence.

“Whether you think you can, or you think you can't – you're right.”

Henry Ford.

“The people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world are the ones who do.”

Steve Jobs.

What Is Your Wildest Dream?

What does wild mean? It means uninhabited, inhospitable, impassable, unknown. Wild. You can only be brave enough to get there when you are totally uninhabited by restricting thoughts, negative people, dreary circumstances of reality. In Thailand on our annual leadership retreat, we answered the question ‘what is your Wildest Dream?’ We answered the question in the sea with the rain falling on our shoulders. The preparation was critical.

We finished eating lunch an hour ago. I look around at everyone, seven good men at the table, all fully bought into the change process. I’m so excited for the next part. I want their lunch to go down and be digested properly. 

The rain starts, often that would be a hindrance to leadership development. Perfect. I stand everyone up and I just say, ‘to the beach’. ‘Will we get wet?’ Asks someone, ‘yes,’ I reply. We walk, with me speeding up, to the beach – it is just 20 metres. Down on the beach I gather everyone in a circle. I want to pump the blood up, get people moving. 

“The dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act their dreams with open eyes, to make it possible.”

TE Lawrence.

‘Max, give us an exercise to do.’ Max obliges and gets us to hold our arms horizontally, making the shape of a cross for one minute. Aching arms, ‘Patrick give us another exercise.’ We run on the spot doing high knees. Carter, Luke and Rami all give us push ups, squats and lunges. I’ve left Nate to last before me, he usually has a wild card. ‘Do roly-poly’s’ says Nate.

My eyes get wider as I see Nate doing one, getting covered in sand. I love it. It feels almost primal, childlike, and hilarious, watching everybody getting sand in their hair, down their back. It’s my turn. ‘I want everybody to jump in the sea, and I want you to grab the shoulders of someone opposite you in the sea and just shout! Shout and whoop in their faces!’ 

We get so primal, so wild, so unknown versus our usual environment. 

‘Come in close guys, get in the circle, let’s just float here in the sea.’ Everyone comes in, a bit tense from throwing themselves in the sea, but ultimately relaxed, a thousand kilometres away from sending emails. I say, ‘what is your wildest dream?’

‘What is your wildest dream?’ 

Your Wildest Dream. This question is best thought about after a deep period of reflection, a quick period of dopamine release, a total reset of our brain. The magic, the courage, the uninhibited dreams that flowed from my friends’ brains and came out of their mouths was wild. Creating solutions to humanity’s greatest challenges, building an independent architecture practice, creating an interactive documentary to change a million lives, taking a business franchise to Africa from Turkey. Wild. Crazy. Totally out there, yet in that moment, we all believed it, we all felt it, we all knew we had the courage, creativity and grit to achieve it. 

Your Wildest Dream is what sits in the rusty recesses of your mind. It is the tiny thought that you might have entertained once, but perhaps not shared with many people, if anyone. It’s that crazy thought that seems completely unachievable. It might be as crazy as flying to the moon, or as down to earth as living by the sea. We all have them. We all have excuses we tell ourselves that means we don’t entertain the thought. ‘I have a mortgage, I need to hold onto this job, I don’t know what will happen, the other candidates are more qualified than me.’ 

It is the tiny thought that you might have entertained once, but perhaps not shared with many people, if anyone.

I just finished reading Chasing Daylight by Eugene O’Kelly, the CEO of KPMG who was diagnosed with terminal brain cancer at 53. He quit his job right away and lived out his final 90 days with the positive intention with which he led his company. “After I was diagnosed, I came to consider consciousness king among virtues. I began to feel that everyone’s first responsibility was to be as conscious as possible all the time.”

Creating a Wildest Dream doesn’t mean fanciful living in the future. It means stopping to reflect, to think, ‘where do I want to go,’ because only then can we know and be truly conscious that the steps we take today, and tomorrow are in that direction. 

Maybe it’s time. Maybe it’s time to go back to that thought you once dismissed, the one that felt too bold, too uncertain, too ‘not me.’ Maybe it’s time to entertain the possibility that it’s not crazy – it’s just unclaimed.

Deepen Your Curiosity

My favourite learnings on finding your wildest dream:

1. Chasing Daylight by Eugene O’Kelly.

2. Podcast - What your dreams are trying to tell you about your waking life with Dr Rangan Chatterjee and Dr Rahul Jandial.

3. The Alchemist by Paulo Coehlo.

4. Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson.