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Contents this week:

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Your Decision, Action and Result: Designing your Future.

Evaluation: DARE Reader Helen Wilson stares down her Imposter Syndrome to deliver her Half Marathon – and wins her free seat on the ‘DARE: to speak’ course coming in April.

WIN! In our competition - in collaboration with S A PARTNERS - to come backstage with me as I deliver the keynote at CHANGEMAKERS in Manchester this week at the Concorde Conference Centre (yes, there’s an actual Concorde in the room).

“You design your future.

Most people design their future non-consciously.

High Performers design their future consciously.”

Your Result

Design something you want in your future. Begin to build your design.

Design is all around us and I am such a big fan.

An airport. An iPhone. A bike. A turntable or speaker. The taps in your bathroom. A Kipchoge marathon performance or a Shiffrin slalom run. All have been carefully designed and I try never to take the wonder of them for granted.

Sir Jony Ives is one of my great inspirations. You can spend some careful, thoughtful time with him thinking about design here.

Or if you want a very quick introduction to how the greatest industrial designer of the 21^st Century observes the world and questions how things can be made better – try this shorter, but equally profound, introduction.

Back in 2016 I was one of the people who helped (in a tiny way) crowdfund Gary Hustwit’s film ‘Rams’, about Braun design legend Dieter Rams. Now it exists and it’s a lifechanging watch that I recommend. You can learn about Rams’ influential principles of product design here.

You can meet Paula Scher here and discover, if you don’t already know, how much she has influenced what you and I see, as we navigate our beautiful world, through her thoughtful, groundbreaking design.

These designers trained themselves to observe the world, imagine how it could be improved for people, and tenaciously create that improvement into existence through Action. This is something we can ALL do.

Because you design your future.

You design your future through your Decisions and Actions each day. In the free world, and illness aside, we all do. I am well aware we don’t control everything. But we are the primary designers of our futures through our Decisions and Actions and Results.

Do you design your life in the future consciously? Do you observe, imagine and improve tenaciously? Decision, Action, Result, Evaluate in a DARE loop?

Or do your processes non-consciously take your decisions for you (note: they are still your decisions!).

To be brutally honest, most people I meet act (design their future) on a mix of dopamine drivers, fear of uncertainty and of the disapproval of others, ideas their parents imparted to protect them as a child in a bygone age and a preference for scrolling over thinking.

For example: we don’t walk out of an utterly stupid meeting (fear of judgment) but we do complain that there’s no time to complete our tasks. We invest in a new car/daily Starbucks, instead of investing in a cleaner, but we are ‘too busy’ to get 8 hours sleep, prep fresh food or slip our running shoes on.

All of that can change in a heartbeat for anybody willing to, as the spiritual teachers say, ‘wake up’! And take conscious design decisions.

And that is this week’s DARE challenge.

Competition

The DARE Newsletter and S A PARTNERS are offering four complimentary tickets to attend Changemakers in Manchester at the fantastic Concorde Conference centre in Manchester (yes there is an actual Concorde in the room).

You’ll get to come backstage with me before my keynote address, ask any questions you wish and then get front row seats for the keynote.

All you need to do is to hit reply (of click the picture above) and send us the Change you have made using DARE or Taming Tigers and permission for your story to be used in my DARE newsletter to inspire others in the weeks to come!

What is the change you have made as the Result of a new Decision, Action and no doubt, some careful Evaluation as you learned new things along the way?

See you backstage in Manchester.

Your Decision

Challenge of the Week

What is one simple element of your future that you wish to spend time carefully designing. Treating your life with the same love that Ives treated the iPhone. After all, is your life not more important than a phone?

Will you design more time delivering thoughtful, lifechanging experiences for your children?

Will you design a version of you that can speak Mandarin? A strong you with optimal health and weight in ten years time?

Will you design a published book, written by you, on your bookshelf? An investment portfolio?

Will you design the ability to deliver a life-changing presentation to your organisation or community?

Will you begin to design that future, on paper today?

I designed a freedive record once. Everybody, except two special people, thought I had lost my mind and would waste precious time before, inevitably, failing. But it was built. It sits on my ‘shelf’.

You have designed and built many great things too!

Your Action

Ives famously slept on the floor of a factory in China for some weeks in order to be close to the manifestation of his design, to love and care for each stage of its creation. Letting go of his home comforts to build his design.

What can you let go of and say no to in order to build your design? What goes?

What comes in as a daily discipline?

Are you willing to Act Boldly Today in order to begin the process? After all, change starts with an EVENT.

Will you WAIT for an event to come along or will you CREATE your event today, facing the terror and uncertainty that brings with courage?

Your Evaluation

Last week I wrote about Imposter Syndrome as the entry ticket for change and received many emails in response. Thank you for all of them.

Every story we publish receives a free seat on my ‘DARE: to speak’ launching on April 28^th. This week, you also win a backstage pass to my Keynote at Changemakers next week.

Today we are publishing Helen Wilson’s email about about her experience with overcoming Imposter Syndrome.

Hi Jim
I’m really enjoying your weekly newsletters; thank you.  They’re pretty much how I start my week off on a Monday morning, and I enjoy hearing about what you’re up to and the bitesize personal development insights that you share.

I find imposter syndrome follows me around like a shadow so was really interested to read this perspective. 

I joined a new running club in October 2023 and have really battled with imposter syndrome, thinking I’m not good enough to be part of the group and that everyone else is much quicker than me and that I do not deserve to wear the club jersey. 

I’ve worked really hard on consistently attending training sessions twice a week and have found that everyone within the club is just lovely and so welcoming. 

I don’t really enter races as I don’t enjoy the pressure I put on myself, but I decided to enter the Cambridge half marathon, which took place yesterday.  I started a training programme in January this year and quietly set myself a target of achieving a time of 1hr 45 mins. 

I didn’t tell anyone else my plan, but worked hard over the coming months to follow and trust in the training plan. 

It’s been tricky as my husband has been away in hospital since the middle of January and we moved house in February, so life has been chaotic to say the least, but I kept going with the plan. 

The voice of doubt crept in again over the last week, and as I stood on the start line with some of my running friends imposter syndrome kicked in again and I wondered what on earth I was doing here thinking I could achieve this (to me) ridiculous goal. 

I pushed that to one side and got on with what I knew I needed to do, keeping an eye on my pace and surprising myself that I was able to stick to the target pace and I didn’t feel too bad with it.  It obviously got harder as I got closer to the end, but I managed to stick to a consistent pace and even enjoyed myself. 

I came in at 1 hour 43 minutes and 27 seconds – a whole 93 seconds quicker than I had hoped and over 3 minutes off my PB. 

I normally finish events thinking I could have done better and beating myself up, but this was the first time I felt proud of what I had achieved, knowing I had put everything into it that I could have done.  My hard work and consistency had paid off.

Thanks so much for sharing your insights – I really enjoy reading them. 

And we all enjoyed reading yours Helen, thanks so much for your email.

Book of the Week

Each year, I work with 2-3 Executive teams to architect High Performance together.  It is one of my favourite activities.

Critical in the process is to help a group of successful people who are running a global operation that there is another level to attain and that they, usually, are currently showing very few characteristics of a high performing team.

I use a proprietary survey to help them see the gaps, along with a request to read or listen to ‘Legacy’ by James Kerr.

Kerr is a writer who negotiated access to the New Zealand ‘All Blacks’ Rugby team to understand how they have built their enduring and high performing culture.

Personally, I dislike books that turn a short and powerful blog post idea into something that demands 6 hours of your life and begins ‘It all began on a cold winter morning in 1958.’ (No, I’m afraid I’m not a Gladwell fan!).

Kerr does none of that. Legacy is crisp, fast and relevant learning is available on every page.

I thoroughly recommend Legacy if you are interested in High Performing Teams and how you can build one. 

My Week

London is the place where I was born and grew up, making every trip back there an extra special treat.

This week I was in London meeting with a leadership team that is growing to High Performance with energy and courage, creating a High Performing Team Contract together.

Then, on to meet a fantastic audience at the Sofitel at Heathrow Airport. They are creating mission-critical solutions for global clients using fast evolving technology.

It was an absolute treat then to deliver DARE to them live and in person and the reception was wonderful.

Most of the room joined our Newsletter so welcome, thank you for your hospitality on Thursday and every success in writing the next chapter of your story!

London is special to me for many reasons. As a teenager singing Special AKA’s ‘Free Nelson Mandela’, and Peter Gabriel’s ‘Biko’ I was formed and educated by the most incredible things. I witnessed the 24/7 vigil against apartheid outside the South African Embassy in Trafalgar Square.

I remember the statue being erected to the imprisoned Nelson Mandela. I took a photo for you as I passed the statue this week.

You can see that a new inscription was made in the 90’s celebrating his release, and his elevation to Nobel Laureate and to President of his nation.

But the last word this week goes to London’s most famous bear, summing up the spirit of this great City.

Write your story 🖋️

Jim

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