Wise Wednesdays

I don’t read the news on principle but I do like to get a decent news round on the state of the world every now and again...The Chatham House London Conference 2017 was just that. I was reminded of the growing lack of trust globally in institutions, political leaders and the nation-state model… Trust is crucial to life. Without it, we would never get out of bed; we would never venture beyond the safe boundaries of our known life. To create something new in your life, you have to trust that good things are possible beyond your ordinary life. Which brings me to this week’s theme. PROBABILITIES VERSUS IDENTITIES Whilst I’ve been “lucky” in getting the jobs I wanted in my career, there was a bottle-neck phase in my early career… When applying for my second medical job, I experienced repeated rejection while everyone else in my cohort was getting on. After a few tears and a lot of soul searching, I eventually got my dream hospital job spending a year in Londo...

  Remember the last time you were “on a roll”? Remember that feeling that you couldn’t set your foot wrong, the serendipity was astounding and everything seemed to fall uncannily into place? Best of all, it felt like no effort at all, like it wasn’t really you doing it. And then it stopped. It’s usually because you started to believe it was you, that you were awesome, special. So then you’re thrown out of the flow and start feeling like a magician without magic. FLOW LESSONS FROM FENCING Last weekend, I fenced one of this year’s fencing World Cup medallists. I actually enjoyed the (losing) experience because I got a glimpse of the mind of a genius. I love to learn and this was a masterclass. Even though the medallist was clearly in a league of his own, he felt that he wasn’t performing at his best lately. Now, he could down the road of trying motivational techniques but the truth is the quickest (and probably only way) to g...