Dr Alan Colley
+44 (0)7747 898373
alan.colley9@hotmail.co.uk

Month: October 2020

Don’t just blame your tools – give them away

I learned to play saxophone at Ashton High School. I never played particularly well – just enough to scrape a music O-level alongside the piano which was my primary instrument.

A source of huge inspiration was my slightly older schoolmate, Ian Kirkham, who played immeasurably better than I did. He went on to play with Simply Red from 1986 for thirty years. You’ll probably recognise his solo in “Something got me started“.  Sadly not much rubbed-off on me. I could never make my instrument sound like his and I always gravitated back to my keyboard. So a decade later, it went unnoticed when I lost track of the Tenor Sax that my parents had bought me having put it somewhere while moving house in Edinburgh.

And then a few years later, I heard somebody play sax in a church worship band and I was transported back to lessons alongside Ian Kirkham. It was like having Kenny G on my Sony Walkman. It was beautiful. It was pure, dreamy, breathy emotion. It was Adam.

I had no idea my friend Adam Archibald played so I eagerly approached him at the close of the service. I explained I’d had a go at learning sax but my instrument wasn’t very good, having leaky pads and not a very good mouthpiece (technical terms). His response stunned me. He’d found the sax he was playing in a cupboard and without an obvious owner had adopted it. He thought it was a beautiful instrument. He had no idea who to thank for it. It was MY SAX. My not-very-good-sax with leaky pads and an inferior mouthpiece. 

There is a really obvious moral to this story that you have likely heard before; “A bad workman always blames his tools“. I was a bad saxophonist blaming my perfectly good sax. 

But there is a less obvious take-away, that sometimes we have to give things away to create something beautiful. I didn’t willingly give away that sax but unwittingly it fell into somebody else’s hands who (instead of my honking grunts) created beautiful, floating, dreamy melodies.

How often do we selfishly hold onto things which could be used far more effectively by others? Not just “things” (i.e. possessions) but possibly our time or talents? If we gave those away without any expectation of a return, I wonder how people could transform them into something beautiful, something far better than we could have done with them ourselves? Maybe we should consider ourselves as “stewards” more than “owners”? Hold things a little less preciously. Share them or give them away. In a future blog I’ll share how I gave my car away, extremely profitably.

You may be one of the “haves” but there are many “have nots” right now. So perhaps it’s time to give away a few hours of your time? Or something from your cluttered house? Or some of your expertise or wisdom? 

You might be surprised when it turns up again, far better than you’d imagined possible.

Business, CoachingAlan ColleyLeave a comment

“You cannae change the laws of physics” – Oh Really?

“Energy can neither be created nor destroyed; rather, it can only be transformed or transferred from one form to another.”

Words that bring a warm reassuring feeling to a physicist like me (and conversely, probably puts some of you in a cold sweat). You may remember how this fundamental law of physics explains how energy is conserved as it is exchanged between it’s various forms. Those might be kinetic (movement), potential (e.g. height), chemical (e.g. exploding dynamite) and E=mc2 from special relativity.

I’m going to upset Scotty and generations of notable physicists – I’VE CREATED ENERGY !

Over recent weeks I’ve had conversations with people about their aspirations, hopes, dreams, passions, plans, beliefs, values, circumstances. I concluded every conversation feeling energised by what I had heard. According to the law of physics, that must have been at their expense. So a few days after meeting, I surveyed them online and 7-out-of-7 respondents gave the same anonymised feedback – their energy levels had increased too. I probably need to develop the experiment to see if energy is exchanged with other factors in the laboratory environment such as the coffee, sandwiches, cakes etc which were definitely depleted in the process.

Energy creation is not always the experience. We’ve all had conversations with negative, backbiting, grumbling, dour moaners that have left us feeling depleted & exhausted. In these cases, I suspect the other party wasn’t left feeling uplifted from the discussion either. Perhaps this also contravenes that law of physics given energy is being destroyed? 

We’d all like positive, up-building, energising conversations all the time. But in some circumstances they cannot be – for example where there is bereavement, loss, sadness, despair. In these cases our expectations should rightly be different. To be truly empathic, we need to sacrificially enter into the pain with the other person. 

So how do we maximise the chances of having an energising conversation whilst also showing understanding and empathy when appropriate? 

  • Hear the other party, listening more than talking

  • Be prepared to walk with them even in the valley of darkness

  • Speak to future possibilities & dreams

I don’t expect to get a Nobel Prize in Physics for this work. But I do want to encourage you to genuinely hear people and make a heart-connection with them, so there’s more chance we’ll all “live long and prosper” (another Star Trek reference).

PS If you’ve been energised by this article (or not), you can join the experiment by going to the survey and giving your own response.

Business, CoachingAlan ColleyLeave a comment