New Year, New Beginnings...

How was your 2010? In what ways did you finish strong, and what are you looking forward to in the New Year...? Here is a quick update and a preview of what's in store at tmc for 2011 - enjoy!

The sands of time - Aussie style

My first tweet of the year (expanded here for readability):

"In 2011 I'll: build a community, ask for help, surf!!, write my book, start a company, care for family (&myself), help charities, travel, have more fun!"

As with most of us, I could easily expand that list to include many more New Year's resolutions...writing more regular blog posts being one that comes readily to mind. So I thought I'd knock that one over right away.

Planting the seeds for Positive Change

Build a community - this one's been a while in coming, largely because I've been too chicken to commit and get the ball rolling. Thing is...it's not about me, so I should get the hell outta the way. I reckon the world needs - and people want - more chances to bring good things into their lives. So while I've been talking about it for a while now and even blogging about the idea, watch for the Positive Change movement to become reality this year. All are welcome in what I hope will become a community much bigger than the sum of its parts and last a lot longer than any of us imagine, which leads to...

Ask for help - a hard-won insight gained this year is that I'm notoriously, shockingly bad at asking people to help me. There's no explanation or good reason for it. The net result is that I think I need to do it all myself; the harsh reality is...I can't. I've got so many terrific people in my world, it'd be stupid not to ask for their help, involvement, ideas and creativity. After all, if they asked and I was in the position to do so I'd happily help them out; this year it's time that I extend to them that same assumption of good intentions and be willing to accept the help of others.

Manly Beach surf break on a glorious January morning

Surf!! - Having grown up in landlocked dairy-farming country in Canada, I got a really late start on surfing. I only bought my first board on my birthday in March 2008. Since then I've done my best to make up for lost time and during this Xmas/New Year's break I've spent nearly every day surfing at my local break on Manly Beach. I always feel great after a surf, even if the swell is tiny or I've had a couple truly epic wipe-outs. 

Making a serious go of it this year means not just getting wet, but paying attention to my fitness, diet and managing the general aches and pains associated with being a 40-year-old surfer-dude. Beyond the purely physical component, as I wrote back in 2008, there's more to surfing than the sea, the sun and the stoke. Reading Shaun Tomson's excellent book The Surfer's Code on the beach this holiday reinforced that insight...and I will keep it alive this year by honouring the Code (see here for a summary) and getting more involved in my local surf community, especially the Sydney Surf Group (take note, Mark, Miki & co...see you in the lineup!).

Gaining inspiration...

Write my book - what this really means is do more writing in general. Business and personal matters took my focus away from this blog over the past two months and I've felt the absence. When I don't write my head fills up with an excess of unprocessed stuff. I don't know if this will make sense but in some ways I think it gums up the gears...and may even make me dumber!

When I write, I think things through, make connections and sharpen my perspective. I also love the act of crafting words to express ideas in ways that are both meaningful and memorable - and hopefully that are useful to my readers as well as giving needed focus to my work efforts (as I did with last year's white paper "It's not Business. It's Personal" - People Engagment that works). I want my book to be a longer version of that kind of work, to string together my thoughts, connections and ideas with a central theme and a practical focus. Rather than a book-as-vanity-project, an object to flog at work and speaking events, I want my book to make a difference in the world and to people's lives, helping them to realize their longstanding goals and dreams.

Today Austral-Asia...

Start a company - I've learned a lot over the past two years about what works and what doesn't in creating viable partnerships and joint-ventures. The greatest lesson from this informal MBA at the "school of hard knocks" has been two-fold: trust my gut and combine positive expectation with eyes-wide-open realism about what a given situation can and cannot offer. This year I'll apply that learning to launch a new international venture. I hope it affords new opportunities to collaborate with some of the talented people I've met over the past few years, and opens doors to work with new people in 2011 as well. More details to come, so watch this space...

Birthday dinner with my brother Trent

Care for family (& myself) - speaking of partnerships and good relationships, I was particularly fortunate during 2010 in (re)connecting with family. My brother Trent made the trek from Canada to Oz and I had a great time celebrating my milestone birthday together with him. I'm proud of the progress my brother Jim has made in successfully rebuilding lots of broken bridges and we've had many long and enjoyable conversations as a result. Other family connections have been more challenging and I continue to learn lessons from the work that goes into making them a success. Here I've discovered a paradox: it's never too late to reconcile, but it pays to take action sooner rather than later because life is too short to waste valuable time doing what you know doesn't work. I will extend more care both to family members and to myself this year, as I've been guilty of taking many things for granted that are in fact very fragile and require care and attention.

They need our help!

Help charities - In 2009 my company tmc made donations to several charities as part of a 1% for the planet commitment and I personally raised over $1,300 in support of the WSPA by participating in Sydney's annual City2Surf 14km race. In 2010 my activities were more modest in scale (primarily raising funds and awareness in support of the Save the Koala campaign). For 2011 I want to exceed 2009's contributions; besides my own efforts I want to kick things up a notch by reinstating my Save-the-world Sunday (STWS) series of posts to help raise awareness of what others can do to help out as well. Look for tomorrow's inaugural STWS post for more details of what I have in mind for 2011.

"Should I stay or should I go now...?"

Travel -This has been the easiest one to say and the hardest one to write about. Without doubt I'll travel a lot this year, as I have done in recent years. I love to travel and relish the variety and novelty of experience that each new journey offers; at the same time I long for constancy and the security that comes from a sense of belonging in a particular place. This tension of variety/constancy is common to many people and we must each find the balance that works for us. For my part this year I want to be intentional, not only about where my choices place me on the variety/constancy spectrum, but about fully enjoying what each experience has to offer. In the words of poet Percy Bysshe Shelley: "The foolish man seeks happiness in the distance. The wise man grows it under his feet." Which brings me to my final resolution...

Trying on a new look... :-)

Have more fun! - OK so, who doesn't want more fun, right? Well, for me this one means a couple of things: being present and enjoying the moment (rather than dwelling on what's coming up or regretting what's passed); being playful rather than serious; most of all, daring to be myself. I once heard (can't recall where) the saying, "If you want to be happy in life, learn to care a lot less what other people think." This is a tough one for me, but like a coach of mine said, "To succeed in life, do what you're most afraid of doing." 

So to sum up this year's biggest resolution in the words of the immortal entertainer Sammy Davis Jr., "I gotta be me...I can't be right for somebody else if I'm not right for me."

A personal commitment - and an invitation to others

When a guy who writes a business book called Let My People Go Surfing has an idea, I'm all ears.


Patagonia founder Yvon Chouinard has put his name behind the one percent for the planet initiative and now so have I - this year toddmontgomery consultancy's business strategy will include a 1% donation of its gross revenues in support of environmental organizations around the globe.

Moreover, my personal commitment is to spread the word to others.

I'm setting myself the goal of persuading five other like-minded businesses to sign up for the one percent pledge to help ensure that the lakes, rivers, oceans, forests, wildlife, sealife and other forms of natural beauty that we enjoy are better protected - now and in future.

So I invite colleagues, clients and friends to visit the one percent for the planet website to find out more and sign up today!

And when you do sign up, let me know so I can add your name to my "list of the like-minded"...because while I'm aiming for five, I'd really like it to be ten, or twenty, or more!
TM

How to go with the Flow and reboot your brain

To help hang on to the pleasant glow of the Easter holiday weekend, here’s a posting with a different focus. In recent months I’ve been enjoying the natural beauty of my adopted homeland Australia by splashing around in the surf here at Manly Beach.

While surfing can be a rigorous and sometimes punishing exercise, it's also very good for focusing the mind and “rebooting” my thought processes. I always come away with fresh perspective and insights. Here are a few I’d like to share:

Humility – the first time I went into the surf with a surfboard, I immediately noticed one thing: the ocean’s utter indifference to my very existence let alone what grand plans I had about "hanging ten". Any notion of my being in control of the situation vanished and was replaced by a healthy respect for the power of the natural forces at play and to which I was now subject. From what I’ve seen, the best surfers sense and work with these forces to create powerful displays of artistic athleticism. Overall, I find this insight is a hugely useful antidote to one’s own controlling tendencies and a good reality check.

Patience – a surfer with 20 years experience said to me the other day, “only about 20% of waves are really rideable, the trick is to know which ones so you have fun instead of getting pummelled!” In a busy lineup at a popular beach you can’t get on every rideable wave that does come in. That means over 80% of your time is spent sitting on your board watching the horizon. Again, this is a useful refocus on what you have control over and what you don’t; you’re not in control of the swell and when the sets come in, but you can control your positioning, location, and level of acceptable risk (as in, “Oh hell, not sure if I can make this one, but I’m going for it!”). It’s also about matching your sphere of concern to match your sphere of control, being aware of what you can and can’t influence and focusing your energy on where it’s going to make the most difference.

Determination – I can tell you now: the fitness level that surfing requires is far beyond what anyone who’s never done it can imagine, and the skill it takes could never be guessed at just by watching the guys who are out there…they make it look so easy...! The secret to success is to have a go, to just get out there and ride waves. So in parallel with patience to wait for the waves to come in, you need to resurface after a wipe-out, get back on your board and get paddling – there's no time to float around the break zone feeling sorry for yourself or cursing your luck because the next wave will be on top of you. It can be hard and frustrating learning new skills but we grow by learning and the challenge helps us to discover just how resourceful we are.

Gratitude – when I (finally) do catch a wave, it’s amazing!! Despite the frustration of being a beginner, this experience helps foster the playful attitude of “aww come on…just one more wave!” that takes me back to my childhood days at the beach when I never wanted to leave the water. It’s a curious thing: like anything worthwhile, when you have to work at it to achieve, the appreciation is greater and the activity becomes very attractive. I think there's more to it than being grateful for the fun to be had. Experiencing the powerful forces of the ocean in this way fosters an appreciation and sense of awe for the natural energy flow of the planet, for something deeper and profoundly older we are. Like the surfers have long been telling us: "Dude…just go with the flow!"

Turns out they're on to something.

The psychologist Csikszentmihalyi has written extensively about Flow. Most of us have been in a “flow state” before, where the goals are clear, feedback is immediate, there’s a balance between opportunity and capacity (i.e. your skills are pushed to their very limit of application), focus and concentration deepen, you are highly present and in the moment, sense of time is altered and the sense of one’s own ego fades as you are immersed in the environment and “become one” with the activity. It’s a good place to be for your body and mind and I find surfing’s a great way to get there.

But don’t just take my word for it: “It’s worth remembering what John Paul Getty said when he was asked in an interview what was the best thing he’d ever done in his life. He said it was when he was a teenager, when he and his friends picked up surfboards, paddled out and rode the waves. This was an old man, who’d been the richest man in the world and done whatever he wanted, and surfing was better than all of it.” [Chris Hines, quoted in High Surf by Tim Baker]

**I invite your comments on what you do to get into a "flow state". It could be a hobby or a passion, could even be something you did over the long weekend. To write your comment just click on "comments" below and a new window will open for you to enter your thoughts. I look forward to reading what you have to say!

TM