There’s Ya Problem

I was having a catch-up with my good mate and uber cool pad holder Jarrod yesterday. Our conversations tend to range far and wide, yesterday was everything from was The Odyssey by Homer  which we agreed was the first modern novel to whether the film clip for Taylor Swifts Blank Space is actually a reflective exploration of narcissism (truth be told that was his topic) Jarrod despite his many good qualities does  Bikram yoga – the brand of yoga where they lock you in a box, crank up the temperature and basically have a race to see whether you survive the class or cook your brain. And if you are really unlucky apparently Mr Bikram comes out and gives you his special yoga.

 He mentioned that he had done the same class, at the same time for two years and had seen a multitude of people come and go over that time. In his last class he saw someone who looked like a professional athlete. Jarrod’s word was he was huge and cut – to put this in context neither Jarrod nor I are hobbits and Jarrod is taller than I am. So this bloke must have been an impressive unit. Apparently, there is an unwritten rule in yoga that you see out the class – you don’t quit. We hold similar views that once you undertake something physical you don’t quit. In fighting if you survive the fight without being knocked out you have won something. If you get knocked down and then get back up you have won something. If you get knocked down and try to get up but cant but you still try you have won something. The victory is often found in the effort not the result.

As to the relevance of this to what we do consider this. We run a mentoring program, this program is expensive both in the price of the ticket you pay to get through the front door and the commitment it requires of people. There are no apologies for either of these factors since it gets results. However, you actually have to turn up and do something; simply paying your entrance fee does not in any way guarantee you success. Consider this, we have had people who have paid for the course and who have never logged in. I have no idea what they thought would happen but apparently them getting off their arses was not one of them. We had people in the current program email us three weeks after the program had started to ask whether it had started. This was a confusing one, so we looked at the status of the emails they had been sent fearing that there might be a problem. There was and it was with them. They had failed to open a single email and had apparently been putting them in a special folder to read later as if their contents would magically drift across the ether into their brains. When I was told this I really didn’t have a response which is quite unusual for me. The actions of some people really do confuse me so much that I don’t have anything to say.

What is intriguing to me is that people such as this are actually confused as to why their life is like it is. They probably have no idea as to why they are not fulfilling their potential. Undoubtedly for them, their life is like it is because of other people and not them.