The Pressures On

The pressure's on

 I recently was speaking at a national conference, called Policing under Pressure. My son Josh was with me and before we began our sessions, I asked him to describe to me what he saw. He said it like it was - the police officers there were tired, weary and discouraged.

 Ironically the speaker just before us told the audience: 'To stay where you are, you have to run as fast as you can. To get somewhere else you have to run twice as fast.' 

 We want better companies, better departments, better families and we want to live, and the pressure's on. I was running a seminar at the Institute of Directors and a delegate approached me to chat about some of the things I'd shared in the presentation.

 She was the managing director (president)  of a very successful business. She began to tell me about her work, but as she did so, her eyes started brimming with tears  as she began to pour out her life story. Here was a lady who had the database of her top 100 clients in her head - she even knew their kids names. But this lady had started to realise that success was more than corporate achievement or exceptional customer care. She was asking the questions What is the heart of real success? How can I find it in my business and my life? What does it mean to be successful? And she was afraid that she  was going to miss it.

 Work can be good - in fact it can be wonderful - but let me encourage you to remember it's not all there is. You have family and friends -and those key relationships won't look after themselves. You and I need to set aside time for the people who matter to us.

 And we all need to carve out some special time for ourselves as well. In the next few days take 10 minutes go for a walk and enjoy breathing, looking, seeing, touching. If you enjoy it, why not be really radical and do it often? The carpenter called one such idea a stones throw. I talk about it in the book Love Work Live Life. A place just far enough away from busyness and people and cell phones, but not too far so as to be lonely. A place surrounded by natural created things not man made things and I love my stones throw. It's a place a physical place in the outdoors where for a few minutes hours or even days I can have time alone with myself and with the creator