Wednesday 25 January 2012

Don’t you dare squander your talent.



The other day I went to the funeral and memorial of a friend who recently died of cancer.

His name was Adam Green.

He was 43 and one of the most talented people I’ve known.

As a young boy in our school assemblies he’d strum a guitar and sing like an angel.

As a teenager we’d jam together in my parents’ garage.

And as a man he led a true rock star life. Touring the world with Eric Clapton, Grace Jones and his own band, Saint Jude.

Unlike so many of us, Adam lived the dream.

He found something he was truly great at and was brave enough and stubborn enough to realise his potential.

Adam’s funeral was incredibly sad. He left behind a wife, two beautiful little girls and many friends whom he’d helped over the years.

But it was also incredibly inspiring.

How many of us really make the most of a god given talent?

What could we achieve if we took what we are really good at and ran with it, 100 miles an hour?

You can recognise the those who do.

They’re the flames that burn the brightest.

And light up the world for the rest of us.

Thursday 19 January 2012

Why January rocks!


I love January.

Not the weather of course. That’s revolting.

Especially if you run, or ride a motorbike, like I do.

And not the dark, dark mornings. They’re horrendous too.

No, the thing I love about January is the wonderful sense of fresh beginnings.

Of possibility.

January’s all ‘out with the old and in with the new’.

It un-boxes a brand new year.

Revealing 12 months of potential fabulousness that await us.

Things we might not have dreamed of.

Who knows what joys this year holds? 

The iPad 3? 

The iPhone 5? 

Yet more new technologies that will change the way the human race behaves?

Not to mention, perhaps, the odd exciting new start-up business. Ahem…

January gives us the opportunity to dream of perfection.

Of stuff the way it should be.

Sure, by December we’ll be hanging in rags drenched in the reality the past 365 days has dumped on us. 

Hindsight is not always a wonderful thing.

But dreaming is.

(That’s the reason I’d never consult a fortune-teller. That and the fact they’re total charlatans.)

In January the future is unwritten. 

Anything’s possible.



Except, possibly, skiing through a revolving door...