The Hard Truth About Personal Development

Contrary to what a lot of the world’s Gurus will tell us, personal development has very few guarantees.
“Follow these simple five steps and you will retire rich in ten years”
“Do as I did and you will be promoted at work in under 2 months”
“Double your speed/endurance/performance with these 3 simple exercises”
The truth is, that no […]

Integrity and the Real Thing

In a day that is no longer with us, wood looked like wood, steel looked like steel and concrete looked like concrete.  Today we have steel with timber-look patterns printed on it, timber with thin veneers of stainless steel on it, and concrete embossed and painted in timber grain.  What we see isn’t always what […]

The word “Vocabulary” is not in my vocabulary

The word “slow” is not in  my vocabulary, and neither is the word “bad”.  The word “disgusting” isn’t there and neither is the word “pain”.  Come to think of it all of these words are missing from my repertoire (and a whole lot more as well):

Ugly
Boring
Unhealthy
Old

Have I taken to heart the message of popular psychologists […]

Lifestyles of the Old and Crusty

Yesterday, I rode my bike in an event called The Kasama Century Run.  It involved 100 miles of riding around the area of Kasama in Ibaraki prefecture, Japan.  That is the primary reason that they call it a century run.  However riding through the countryside, made me think of the other use of the word century. 
The […]

The Power of Anger and three other useless myths

Anger is a powerful emotion.  It must be true because we all feel the power of it as we pick up the lamp and throw it out the window or we are gripped by it as we yell out insults that we don’t even understand, in our anger.  Surely it is powerful.  But not if […]

The Power of a Fresh Start

Eighteen months ago, I came to Japan with my small family and a trolley full of luggage.  Out of that luggage here is a rough list of what I brought:

A small quantity of clothes
4 Cd’s
2 DVDs
4 books
1 laptop
1 bike bag full of a racing bike, helmet, shoes etc.
1 wetsuit

My wife and my daughter brought a similar […]

The Most Important Date in my Diary

I have been married for over ten years now (to my first and only wife).  This makes me feel like a statistical freak if I can believe all that I read about increasing divorce rates and decreasing average marriage duration.  If I add to these statistics the number of people in seriously dead marriages that are just continuing for economic […]

Overcoming Unnecessary Guilt

There are two main types of guilt that I know of:

Guilt where we have done something wrong.
Guilt where we feel like we have done something wrong but haven’t.

When I see it written like this I feel like it is so obvious, but I know that as humans we hardly ever get the balance right.  Even on […]

Worlds worst phrases - Killing Time

I can think of very few common phrases that are more destructive than “Killing Time”.  Why would we ever want to kill time? 
When I was growing up I loved an Australian band called “Killing Time” and I think that one of the reasons was that I found the name strangely exciting.  The concept of wasting a precious resource, seemed […]

Does Anyone Listen To Music Anymore?

I love music, so many different types of music.  Whenever I get the chance, I will have some music playing.  No matter what style you choose, music seems to make even the most mundane activities come alive.  In the same way that a movie soundtrack amplifies your experience of the film, music in the background […]