I write this during a rest day between two full-day trainings. I’m sitting in my room in a luxury hotel in the beautiful German countryside, deeply satisfied with how things have gone so far, reassured by the quality of my German, and appreciative of just where I am in my life.
The title comes from Mind Work Production’s (MWP) focus for the year: We Score. My challenge to myself is not only to score, but to do so in a way which expresses the best I can possibly offer – the best I can possibly be. I know something about what it means to score and how it feels, from my footballing days, so I already feel connected to that particular aspect of the company’s DNA.
Right now, having given one day’s training and with another one tomorrow, it feels as though I’m standing in front of an open goal and all I have to do is hit the target. But there is more to it than that, because it takes effort and teamwork to establish such a scenario in the first place.
The effort has come from over 20 years of work, encompassing intense learning, struggles, insights, doubt, persistence and breakthroughs. The teamwork comes from MWP. Take this project as an example. People behind the scenes have spent hours creating a training which I simply have to give. Together they have embodied the ethos of MWP which is a collaborative approach in which the balance is sought together, so that from that place we can push the boundaries… a little… or a lot.
All of their work and all of my work have coalesced in this ideal experience for me. I am doing something I love, in a language I love to speak, with a group of people one doesn’t find around every corner. All I had to do was put the ball in the net. Easy. And it was. It was also highly enjoyable, deeply satisfying and immensely helpful. Significantly, it was also the result of hours and years of effort: the ideal combination of individual performance and teamwork. I scored, but we scored. And they scored.
My ongoing challenge, therefore, is to bring everything I have to every opportunity I receive because when I stand before a group of people, ready to deliver, I know that most of the hard work has already been done.