Andy's Blog

Baby bear goes downstairs, sits in his small chair at the table. He looks into his small bowl. It is empty. 'Who's been eating my porridge?' he squeaks. 

Daddy Bear arrives at the big table and sits in his big chair. He looks into his big bowl and it is also empty. 'Who's been eating my porridge?!?' he roars.

We’ve coined the term ‘mood hoover’ to describe someone who’s stuck in a rut of negativity. I’m not talking about depression. I’m talking about people whose default way of thinking is ‘can’t do’. You know the sort... lots of tutting and rolling of eyes. You ask them how they are and you get ‘not too bad, considering.’ Or, ‘I’ll be all right at 5 o’clock.’  Oh, and mood hoovers are characterised by plenty of heavy sighing.  I describe their outlook as ‘every silver lining has a cloud!’

Let me be clear. They are not horrible people. Far from it...

I read the following paragraph, written by an esteemed author. ‘Each and every one of us harbours the illusion that the whole enterprise would go straight to hell without our individual daily contributions. In fact no one is indispensable. Every worker is replaced and forgotten as swiftly as the anonymous slaves who hauled blocks for the pyramids.’

And I thought, how far off the mark can you be?

TCD is ‘Time Constraint Disorder’... the inability to meet deadlines. Invented by Michael Foley as a joke.

But then he found out that a professor at DePaul University wants procrastination recognised as a clinical disorder. Check out some of the disorders that have already made it into the tome that is ‘Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders’...

Here’s an interesting dilemma for you. Put yourself in my shoes and decide how you’d play it...

I arrived at the airport in plenty of time. Heathrow T5. Nice! Went through the check-in procedure, then the security checks.  Forced down my 2-litre Evian rather than chuck it away. Nearly drowned! Took off my shoes, removed my belt, watch and loose change but still got beeped. Enjoyed the frisk. Wandered through the shops. Sprayed myself with something expensive. Visited the loo as a matter of urgency. Went to WHSmith to choose something to scoff. Wondered why a bag of wine gums costs £3.50 so opted for a small packed of McVities digestives. Loo again. Then found a seat and sat down with my laptop on my knee and did some work to kill an hour. So far so good.

Hopefully not! If you do find a few then my advice is to have a good scratch and, if that doesn’t work, change your underwear (reminds me of a mate of mine who bragged about how many pairs of pants he owned. Twelve! Imagine! We were amazed that a bloke needed that many pairs. Until he explained, one pair for January, one for February, etc (I digress...sorry).

This blog isn’t about ants in your pants. It’s about ANTs in your head...

You have to be of a certain age to remember ‘Jim’ll Fix It’, a slightly creepy programme where an ageing DJ in a white shellsuit had loads of kids sitting on his knee, while puffing on a fat Havanna cigar. And Jim specialised in making their dreams come true. Mmmm. Not sure that’s going to work in the modern era?

Anyway, the point was that Jim would organise for things to happen. He’d read out a letter and, hey presto, some child’s ambition would happen. Sometimes it was big stuff that only Jim could organise, like a ride in an F1 car, or to take part in a West End show. Or to have Showaddywaddy playing in your school assembly. Fair doos. That’s proper telly. And Jim always fixed it for you and you and you-oo-oooo.

If, like me, you’re of a certain age, the likelihood is that your grandparents had a ‘job for life’. It’s also quite likely that this applied to your grandpa but your grandma didn’t work (not in the paid sense at least).

Skip a generation and, typically, your parents probably both worked. They might have had one career change along the way.

Fast-forward to today. You’ve probably had several jobs with a career trajectory that has been slightly upward but often sideways or downwards. All a bit ‘snakes and ladders’. And, in the current climate, there are too many adders and not enough ladders!

I've got good news, great news and fab news!

We’ve been delivering our messages in schools for a while. Being positive doesn’t mean that you deny the fact that some workshops have failed. I remember driving back from the south coast after battling with some 14 and 15 year olds, wondering why I had even bothered to make the journey.

But the vast majority of ‘Art of Being Brilliant’ school sessions have been very well received. I’m really proud of some of the results we’ve achieved and, to be frank, we go where other training companies fear to tread. Not only are school gigs 10 times tougher than corporate work, but budgets are much tighter so we often end up making a loss...

I’ve just finished writing ‘The Art of Being a Brilliant Teacher’ with Chris Henley and Gary Toward (if you attended the last 2%ers you will know them and their fab school). Fingers crossed that it’s a half decent book that connects with its intended audience. But one thing it has forced me to do is think about the issues faced by educators.

As always, I ask for your patience while I make my point. Please hang in there. This could be the most awesome 5 minutes of your day!

No folks, not Buzz Lightyear. Buzz Aldrin, world famous for being the...ahem... 2^nd man on the moon! Poor Buzz. Never got over it you see. Some of the following may be urban myth, but please bear with it anyway.

(I received this today, an irreverent view from Joey, aged 14)

God created the world. Crikey! He’s achieved some good stuff. And we look up to him (in all senses of the phrase, the great dude that he is, sitting loftily in the clouds).  He seems to be a decent role model what with all those commandments and stuff. I mean, ‘thou shall not steal’, etc all makes good community sense...