Add new tag

“Casablanca” is one of my top three movies. My favourite part is the final five minutes. Ending the film with “the beginning of a beautiful friendship” is the perfect close.  I only wish I’d thought of it first. But just before that comes the best line in the film:

“If that plane leaves the ground and you’re not with him you’ll regret it. Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but soon and for the rest of your life”.

What’s the plane you need to get on? When does it take off?

And are you going to tame those Tigers and be on board? Or will you regret it? Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but soon and for the rest of your life?

Here’s looking at you, kid!

Jim.

PS – Here are Bogart and Bergman http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FpoyshqB8-o, give yourself a treat!

Click on the image to view the Rule 1 video

We are true to ourselves when we speak our truth. We are alive rather than dreaming. Worthy of respect and love and admiration. We inspire others to act, inspire others to speak their truth and to discover who they really are. We discover who we really are.

But.

The Tiger roars at anybody whose Rule 2 Rulebook tells them not to speak their truth! And that is most people. The Tiger will tell us to please others, to confirm, to “go with the flow”, “not to rock the boat”, to be “nice”.  And we mask this with intellectual rationalizations. We should respect all (but not ourselves?) we should go with the give and take of life (of course, but are you giving too much?)

We don’t need to fuel controversy wherever we go. That is not speaking our truth. That is being scratchy and intolerant of others. But we do need to respect ourselves. Speak your truth.

Sat Nam.

 You have both assets and liabilities, remember, not just liabilities.

How much attention have you given to your assets recently? Mental attention. Attention in your heart and spirit? How grateful are you for your assets?

The Tiger will ask you to remember your liabilities. Your weaknesses. It will demand this of you aggressively. You may have grown up with this harsh criticism. You may now be very used to your own harsh internal criticism, even pride yourself on it. It keeps you striving! You may well be proud of being a “perfectionist”.

Maybe you wouldn’t need to strive so hard without it? Maybe your energy and peace would bring you greater support and encouragement from others? Maybe you can’t be perfect and “they” all know it already (being human also)?

Forget the liabilities today. Remember your assets, your strengths, your victories, your kindnesses, your gentleness, that others love you and wish you well.

Relax.

Jim.

In August 2008 Marc Hogan was bet £1 that he couldn’t become a stand up comic in less than 12 months and perform a one man comedy show at the Edinburgh Comedy Festival in August 2009 for 21 nights. He won the bet!

We hope you enjoy Marc’s thoughts on New Year’s Resolutions….

Now we’re in January I’ve been thinking a lot about 2010 and what the year will bring.  Last week, my wife Kirsty asked me, “So what are your New Year’s Resolutions?”

2009 had been a momentous year. I had done something that most comics thought of as “mad” and I can honestly say it was the most exhilarating, depressing, terrifying, and most rewarding 11 months of my life…

As a public speaker I now share that story with businesses to help them achieve their goals.

Both Jim and I managed to achieve two very different goals, and we both reached them in different ways, however I recently came across some research by Professor Richard Wiseman on the subject of motivation.

Professor Wiseman tracked more than 5000 participants from around the world who were attempting to achieve a wide range of goals including losing weight, gaining a new qualification, quitting smoking etc.

One group was followed for 6 months, the other for a year.  At the start everyone was confident of achieving their goals, however by the end only 10 percent of participants had achieved their goals.

The successful 10 % used the following techniques:

1. Made a step-by-step plan;
2. Told other people about their plan;
3. Focused on the good things that would happen when they achieved their plan;
4. Rewarded themselves for making progress;
5. Recorded their progress.

Now whilst I didn’t use all of these techniques, I did do the majority of them, and on talking to Jim, I know he also utilised some of these principles.  For me the biggest influence for achieving my comedy goal, was telling other people, simply because I couldn’t bare the thought of failing in front of everyone.  Even when friends, other comedians and business customers thought I was mad and told me it couldn’t be done, I continued to broadcast what I was doing.  I found that telling everybody I met increased my commitment and made me persevere.

So this year , even though it terrifies me I’m making public that I am going to write a book. It may be a thin book, but it will be a book that I will have typed with my own fair hands at 3 words per minute.  Apparently the average book is 30,000 words long, so that’s 10,000 minutes, which is about 166 hours.

If I can write for 1 hour a day I should be finished by June!

So what are you going to achieve this year? Feel free to tell everyone!

Good luck
Marc

Here is our second guest blog from Blaire Palmer, MD of Taming Tigers.

I have been doing a lot of reading lately. I am writing my third book and I have a stack of fat tomes to get through before I start putting pen to paper (or fingers to keyboard). It is always valuable to be up to date with what your competitors are thinking and saying and, of course, I get a lot of useful ideas and support for my own views by reading the work of authors I admire (and others I find “challenging”).

One of the best authors I have come across in my research is Patrick Lencioni, the author of “The Five Dysfunctions of a Team” and “The Three Signs of a Miserable Job”. A client recommended the latter when I explained that my new book is about the difficulties of the typical work environment – the tolerations such as meetings, poor leadership, silo working and long hours – and what you can do about it as an individual and as an organisation.

One of the aspects of Lencioni’s work I like best is that he tells a story. When you are reading 20 or 30 books in a short space of time you discover how many are forgettable. One has twenty-five messages, another has fourteen, another has seven. Who can remember them all?

But Lencioni helps you to remember his Three Signs by telling a fable drawn, I expect, from real life experiences he has seen. It is one of the elements of Jim’s “Taming Tigers” book that I think really works too. He tells us a story of his own journey, weaving the Rules throughout.

Whilst our “story” can be limiting and negative in parts, it always has highlights and successes in it too. And it is a story we keep writing throughout our lives. You might review your life story today and think it reads more like a tragedy! But the good news is, we’re not finished yet. The final chapter has yet to be written. Maybe we haven’t ridden a racehorse on live TV. Maybe we haven’t run a major corporation. Maybe we haven’t climbed the world’s highest peaks or volunteered to help homeless children in India.

But we’re all writing our story and that story can help us understand ourselves better, just like Lencioni’s fables help us to understand and remember important lessons.

As we are about to embark on a new year (2010 is the year of the Tiger, by the way) many people will be talking about their hopes and ambitions for the new 12 months. So it is a great time to review your story before you set out on the next chapter.

What are the lessons life has taught you over the past twelve months? How have you been able to re-write your rulebook in 2009? Are there potential negatives you will be taking in to 2010? How can you re-write those so they support and enable an exciting new chapter rather than undermining your efforts to make a change in 2010?

Jim and I, and the rest of the team here at Taming Tigers, are spending some time doing this over the next few days and weeks. In our blogs we’ll be sharing our own journey as ever. We would love to hear what you have discovered too.

Blaire