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This week’s DARE at a glance:

Every week, you get to DARE with me: take a Decision, try a new Action, share your Result and Evaluate the impact.

Partnership with The Rundown AI: The latest developments in AI, explained.

Your Decision, Action and Result: Thriving, living and loving in chaos and disruption.

Competition: Win a seat on my ‘DARE: to speak’ high performing presentations course launching 28 April. 

Evaluation: Thank you for your responses - keep them coming!

Book of the Week: How Emotions Are Made by Lisa Feldman-Barrett.

My week: The warmest welcome from Tbilisi and a Comedy Store treat.

 Our life does not pause during chaos and uncertainty.

All our days are precious. We can thrive, live and love in chaos. 

A New Result

Our role is not to change the global environment to what we wish it to be. Our role is to thrive in the environment we have been presented with.

But if we are not intentional about how to live in change that we have not chosen, we can forget this fact.

We will create low-level, joy stealing anxiety. This is entirely optional. Our Decision, our Result.

Over two decades, I have worked with groups facing enormous disruption they do not control. I have had to face this myself, also, and have managed to fail spectacularly and with great pain as a result.

I have spent a great deal of time listening, thinking, acting, reading about, and ultimately watching and learning from what serves us over the long term and what does not.

Here are those learnings, in brief summary, to help shape Decisions for this week as chaos reigns once again.

A New Decision

1          “It’s not fair”

Possibly so; and what response will you choose?

The dopamine rush of self-righteousness and the wasted energy of finding a tribe to re-enforce the excitement of being ‘right’?

Or a careful, humble, honest Evaluation to Decide on a new Action to deliver the RESULT that serves you and those you love? #DARE.

I propose that you DARE to take control. The rest is distraction.

2         Control Your Controllables

Working with elite athletes, we create career defining moments together by focussing internally, on the technicalities of their craft and their own mental imagery and energy sources; not on the performance of the previous skier or the PB of the athlete in the next lane.

It is the same for me personally, creating the mystery of a deep freedive or the magical shared emotional experience of a major presentation.

Focus on what you can control. It is all you can do. The rest is distraction.

3          Get Clear on the Results

Who are you? What do you stand for? What are you going to build and create? What will you be known for? What is the Result you seek – including of course the Results of pleasure, peace, love, relaxation and restorative time?

Now let’s focus on Acting to deliver these Results. The rest is distraction.

4          Protect Your Energy

Consciously Decide the weight you will carry. Decide what conversation you will not be a part of. Decide on and Act to set your boundaries: mental, physical and personal.

Move back from negative and draining conversations that do not serve you.

Nutrition, sleep and exercise. These three things fuel your passions, love and creativity.

Allocate your energy to where it serves you and the people whom you love and serve.

The rest is distraction.

5          Flex without fragility

Be like a healthy tree in the wind.

Enjoy the roots you’ve laid down, work to deepen them. From there, move boldly, shapeshift as necessary. Be fluid: change your tactics on a sixpence if required.

But do not change the objective and be very cautious to change the strategy just because there is a storm rustling your leaves.

Adapt: but do not be distracted.

6          Decide how to role model

“Careful the things you say, children will listen.

Careful the things you do, children will see and learn.” *

Am I teaching anxiety, drama and emotional incontinence? Or values, discipline, boundaries, ownership and emotional intelligence?

*From “Into the Woods”, Stephen Sondheim. Recommended.

A New Action.

This week’s action is to reduce emotion in chaos.

Instead, let’s find the opportunities together and Decide consciously in order to build great Results for ourselves and those we love.

I’ll send YOU a complimentary seat on my ‘DARE to speak’ High Performance Presenting Course if you send me your story of DAREing and we publish it next week.

I am releasing the Early Bird offer for ‘DARE: to speak’ High Performance Presenting, today.

You can sign up for £199 instead of the full price of £250 for a strictly limited period (ends 8 April 2025). Explore the curriculum and sign up below!

Evaluation

THANK YOU To everybody who responded to my request for Evaluations on my efforts to create a newsletter.

I have no idea what I am doing. It just felt like this was needed from the response to my presentations and coaching work.

So how am I doing? Is this something I should continue with? How should I improve? Your guidance and response is very welcome.

Please keep the responses coming and I’ll report back on the overriding theme soon.

Book Of The Week

How Emotions Are Made: Lisa Feldman Barrett

Professor Feldman-Barrett, a psychologist and neuroscientist, helps us understand precisely how our emotional responses are learned, constructed and biochemical. They are not hard wired ‘programs’ within us.

If we cannot understand these processes, we cannot override how we feel in a situation in order to act in our best, rather than our emotion-driven, interests.

Of course, that was a big theme for us in Tbilisis this week. If you cannot leave your self-protecting (personality reducing) comfort zone when exposed onstage – you cannot use your humanity to connect with and move your audience!

There are many spiritual books on how to live a conscious life. They are of enormous value, we are spiritual entities.

Feldman-Barrett gives us all the science to live a conscious life. And in an extremely accessible form. It is a must read for anybody who is serious about living consciously rather than being driven by their processes.

My Week

I am writing to you from Tbilisi, Georgia.

Never have I met a people who tip into laughter so easily and whose hospitality is, literally, bottomless. They have reminded me so much of my family in Ireland and my encounters with the Bedouin in the Sinai Desert.

Even the passport control officers welcome you to Georgia with a smile!

The reason for my visit was to work with a group of senior leaders who are deadly serious about delivering world class excellence.

We have worked on high level presenting. How to use every part of our humanity: our bodies, voices, words and spirit to captivate, and engage; when under pressure, all alone, in front of a serious and senior audience.

Team – you were amazing and taught me a great deal. I will never forget our time together. Thank you!

Fittingly, the rest of my week has been spent preparing the new ‘DARE: to speak’ course – including managing to secure the legendary Comedy Store in London to film your lessons in!

Have you signed up yet?

Write your story 🖋️

Jim

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