The Art of Brilliance Blog

Here’s mystic Andy’s news forecast…

I guarantee there will be some very bad weather in the UK this year – it will be windy (trees will fall), snowy (roads will clog) and very hot (Bournemouth will, for a couple of days at least, be hotter than Malaga). There will be several floods where people will have put sandbags against their door but the water still seeps in. Chances are, they will blame the government.

Globally, the weather elsewhere will be much worse. Some homes in the USA will be taken away by tornados. Bushfires will take out some houses, most likely in Oz.

There will be wars. This will lead to terrible tragedy and displaced people.

There will be several natural disasters. In one earthquake zone whole towns will be razed to the ground and the BBC will linger for six days, just long enough for somebody to be pulled from the rubble, alive.

There will be several inquests into ‘what went wrong’. Most of these inquests will force the nation to re-live a terrible tragedy from 20 years ago. The focus will be on finding someone to blame but, chances are, the victims, whomever they are, will not find closure (whatever that is?)

The various cricket and football teams will get beaten and somebody at the top will get sacked. There will be an inquiry into why we’re so rubbish at sport (except sitting down sports, like cycling, horsey stuff and rowing). There’s a fair-to-middling chance that the rest of the world will catch up with us at sitting-down sports and there will be an inquest into that too. To remain world-beating we will have to invent a lying down sport.

How do I know this? Because I’m nearly 50 and these things happen every year, with news crews pursuing each event, staying just long enough to capture their hideous essence before their story is trumped and off they dash to a fresh rumpus.

There are so many different versions of reality, it is impossible to speak of the nation as if it were a single thing that could be daily captured. The news portrays itself as impartialised reality were each side gets to rant, but more importantly, the news assembles the picture that citizens end up having of one another. The power to dictate what ‘other people’ are like; the power to invent a nation in our imaginations.

It will not surprise you to know that in my research it turns out that happy people consume less news. Not ‘no news’, but less than those around them. This is part of what I call ‘life-crafting’ – being proactive in organising your life in such a way as to maximise your wellbeing. So they shield themselves away from constant negative news, consuming enough to be in touch but not so much that they get affected.

I have followed their lead. Not only do I consume less news but I have also changed my thinking about those who criticise. After all, critics are called ‘critics’ for a reason – it’s a shortened version of the word ‘criticism’. Film critics, theatre critics, restaurant critics… they’re not called ‘advocates’ or ‘supporters’ or ‘praisers’.

I’ve decided that the people who create value tend not to be the people commenting, they are the people doing. They are not the ones who speculate from the sidelines but the ones who fall over and scrape the skin off their knees and elbows, pick themselves up and carry on. So I’ve stopped being a critic or a hater. I recently had a word with my son. He’s a teenager and spends an inordinate amount of time on the internet, and he’d got into the habit of hating things. So, for example, his sister would mention a film she wanted to see and off he’d go, criticising it, regaling what he’d heard about it on the internet. There’s an insidious sub-culture of haters, often online, who join forces to spit bile from the sidelines. So, he hasn’t seen the film, he’s just learned about it from the online haters. So, I told him, you can be part of something nasty, defining yourself by what you don’t like, whether it be a political party an uncool pop band your rival football team or French air traffic controllers.

But rather than defining yourself by hating why don’t you express your passion for what you love? Be pro rather than anti.

He listened politely and is (I hope) bright enough and young enough to change. I can’t help feeling it’s not just about him?

Andy

A very short story. Please stick with it…

Clive stirred his cup of tea and nursed it as he shuffled back to his chair. He sat down in front of the TV. It was already on, in fact it was always on, even though there was, according to Clive, “never anything bloody well on!”

Clive rested the mug on his belly and watched nothing for a few minutes while his tea cooled. The ‘nothing’ was so bad that he flicked through a few other channels of nothing and then back to the original nothing.

He took a sip of his too-hot tea and winced. Nearly ready. It was time to assemble his pills. He had pills for his cholesterol. These were important because they meant he could keep eating butter, and Clive loved butter. I mean, what’s life without butter? Then there was the yellow pill, something to do with his liver. If it wasn’t for this pill he’d have to give up his evening tipple. He had pills for his back pain, with extra-large ones for when it got really bad. He had a pill for his blood pressure and another one for gout.

He’d forgotten what the orange one was for, but he suspected it might be something to do with migraines that the doctor had linked to too much TV. Then there were his diet pills – these were important because they meant he could have biscuits with his cuppa. “They stop your body absorbing fat,” the dietician had explained. They made his pants a bit messy but hey, thought Clive, that’s a small price to pay to be able to eat a box of Maltesers, guilt free.

Clive had a stash of special ‘little blue pills’ that he’d bought off the internet but had never had a chance to use them. That was causing him to take two anti-depressants and a sleeping pill. His most important pill was the red one. This was for his memory. If he forgot to take his red pill he would forget he needed pills at all, “and that’d be the end of you,” the doctor had warned. “Your medication is keeping you alive.”

Clive’s story is of someone who is alive, but not really living. What Clive really needs is a personal responsibility pill; something he could take that would remind him that life is a short and precious gift. A pill that would wake Clive up to the magnificance of a life well lived. A personal responsibility pill would prompt Clive to ask some really cool questions, like, ‘What changes can I make to improve my life?’, ‘What attitudes and behaviours serve me best?’ or maybe even ‘What three things can I do, starting today, that will move me forward?’

I suspect the real issue with ‘Clive’ is that he’s grown so accustomed to mediocrity that it’s too late for change. It’s a whole lot easier to keep doing what you’re doing.

I’m not anti-medication. But I am pro personal responsibility. This story is not about ‘Clive’ and it’s not about pills. Quit masking the symptoms and start changing the only thing you can – yourself.

Andy C

When I was a teenager I would often find myself daydreaming. Quite often this took the form of staring out of my bedroom window… admiring the slightly older girl from down the street as she walked her dog past my house. Until one day she looked up and saw me peeking around my curtain and, guess what, she blew me a kiss!

Yikes! I was a shy teenage boy so rather than see this as a potential ‘in’ for a long term relationship, I nearly died of embarrassment and spent the next three years being careful to avoid her.

My daydreaming crept into the classroom. Whatever was outside of the window always looked more interesting than what was going on inside – even when it was raining. In fact, especially when it was raining. I noticed the raindrops must have been of different sizes because of the variable ripples they’d create in the puddles. And windy days were amazing too. One day two empty crisp packets raced across the tennis courts – cheese and onion versus roast chicken – rarely have I been so absorbed.

And then one day I got told off for daydreaming. Mr Hatcher accused me of ‘being away with the fairies’ and that was it. I immediately labelled this behaviour as wrong and never to be done again. Very quickly I stopped staring at anything – even attractive young women walking their dogs. Then I got older, much busier and I didn’t have time to stare out of windows anymore

Fast forward 25 years and while studying my MSc in Positive Psychology I attended many lectures around the subject of ‘mindfulness’ and how it is being used in the western world to try and alleviate the daily pressures we all face.

I had always assumed that being mindful meant spending a few hours every day in the classic yogic, eyes closed meditative position. Possibly even chanting a few ‘ommmms’?

I couldn’t have been further from the truth. Mindfulness simply requires you to be aware of the moment. The problem is that we’re so hard-wired for ‘busyness’ and our brains are so frazzled with information overload, that being in the moment can be elusive. Rather than pause when we do get a few minutes in our busy day, we grab our mobile phone and do something much more important; like go to Facebook, send a Tweet or catch up with emails.

So my advice is this – learn to daydream again. It will be tough at first and you may even forget to do it for a couple of days – but it can become a habit. Just try it for one minute, right now: stop, relax and do absolutely nothing except focus on your breathing. It’s a sobering thought to understand that you are here, and ‘now’ is all you have. In fact, life is just a series of ‘nows’ and how many have passed you by without you noticing?

Who knows maybe ‘being away with the fairies’ isn’t such a bad thing after all?

Welcome to this joint blog, written by me Hannah (yes, the really smiley one in the picture) and me Andy (the older, less good looking one).

Hannah first:

This is all new to me, I have never blogged before, oh well… here goes…

On a past day, another place, a different hospital (QMC Nottingham for those who don’t know), the same person (Me, Hannah G) met Andrew Cope (author of Spy Dog, Spy Pups and Spy Cats, for those who don’t know).

As a fan of Spy Dog, with 15 books in my collection so far, I was ecstatic! With 36 prepared questions I nervously waited for Andrew Cope to arrive at the QMC school room. Tick, tock, tick, tock went the clock. I waited, I waited some more, then…I saw him talking to the teachers and I almost jumped out of my chair with excitement!

I got him to sign ALL my books while we waited for the other kids to come. YES…1 aim complete.

When everyone else arrived, Andrew Cope went through an amazing slide show of how he wrote and what inspired him and most importantly the Melonie story! A few times Andrew Cope forgot the names and he pointed to me and I shouted out the names! He didn’t catch me out once!

Before he left he gave each of us a book and we each had a photo. I also got him to answer ALL 36 of my questions. He challenged us to each write a story in order to win a Spy Dog t-shirt. I had to fit as many names of chocolate bars and sweets inconspicuously into my story. I managed 76!!! But only came second in the challenge. Sob, sob, no t-shirt for me. Hint, Hint Andrew …I WANT ONE…please!

It was an EPIC afternoon. Thanks Andrew and thanks Readathon.

By Hannah G 😊 😊 😊

And we thought it might be interesting to find out what it’s like from the authors point of view? You see, writing can be a lonely thing – all that sitting at a laptop trying to dream up story lines for Spy Dog. You end up feeling a bit sorry for yourself. And then we get invited to events – schools mostly, or libraries or book festivals. And just occasionally I get invited to a weird kind of school because it’s in a hospital. Nobody likes hospitals, right? Queen’s Med in Nottingham is like a small city, so I parked up and got lost, tutting to myself and grumbling as I sulked towards the ‘school’.

As I was walking to the staff office I went past the classroom and there sat Hannah. It’s rare that you see such a smile. I mean, check it out! And it came with a wave and a squeal. So I poked my head in and said ‘Hi’. This is when I discovered that Hannah’s condition was contagious! I immediately caught her positivity and enthusiasm. Forget the staff office, this is where I want to be, chatting to Hannah, feeling uplifted and inspired.

She really did have 36 pre-prepared questions! I’ve no idea how long I was there? I can’t remember actually speaking? Just being chatted to, nodding and, most of all, grinning like an idiot. I bounced back to my car, rejoicing in an afternoon well spent.

So thank you from me to Readathon and QMC for inviting me. Massive thanks to all the kids who attended my author talk, but especially to Hannah. Just so you know, your happiness spread from you to me, to my family and most likely to any hospital ward you’ve ever been on. A very special teeshirt is on its way.

And for the rest of us who are grumbling about a sniffle or a drizzly day, Hannah has taught us about getting a positive perspective. Life is the ultimate special occasion!

When I was eight I had a beautiful yellow budgie called Sammy Dodger. My little sis and I would close the windows in the lounge and let him out for a flutter. Except one day I forgot to close the window and Sammy escaped. We watched as Sammy flew around the garden a couple of times, chirping with glee, not quite believing his luck and then, wham, he was bombarded by pigeons.

It seems Sammy wasn’t such a dodger after all? He was grounded. I eventually found his body in a bush, he’d been pigeoned to death.

If you’re a happy person who enjoys living life – here’s some BREAKING NEWS – not everyone is like you. I think there might be a message in Sammy Dodger’s story? Something like, ‘Happy people, beware! All that vibrancy and colour? Standing out can be a risky strategy.’

I’ve coined the term ‘mood hoover’ to describe someone who’s stuck in a rut of negativity. I’m not talking about depression, more of an habitual low-level whinging. I call them ‘mood hoovers’ because they’re expert at sucking all the positivity out of you, leaving you feeling exhausted too!

So, what on earth are we supposed to do about mood hoovers? We can’t just give up on them, can we? Or ignore them? Or should we raise our effervescence to ‘irritating level’ in order to annoy them? And what if we’ve married one, or, heaven forbid, we are one?

Contrary to popular belief, the most unselfish thing you can do is live for yourself. The best way to inspire others to be happy and reach their full potential is to strive to be your best self. Live a happy and full life and you’ll lead the way for others to lead a happy and full life. Most will follow, a handful won’t.

Sammy Dodger had a sad ending because he was crowded out. We need more ‘Sammy Dodgers’. If you dare to be fully alive, you will create a ripple effect of positivity until, eventually, you crowd out the neg-heads. It’s brave, but it’s what 2%ers do.

Andy C

Have a go at making sense of these weird real-life contradictions:

1. I recently completed a half marathon. I don’t really like running. I find it boring and it gives me shin splints.
2. My kids have just left or are about to leave home. Parenting, particularly in the early days, was exhausting. My kids didn’t come with a user manual and I often got frustrated at my parental cack-handedness.
3. I run a training company that requires me to work 80 hours a week. I travel a lot. I don’t like working such long hours and I have grown to dislike motorways and budget hotel chains, particularly Travelodges.
4. I write books that have such tight deadlines that I sometimes have to stay up until 2am to finish chapters. I don’t like staying up past 10pm. It’s a chore.

All of these four activities have ingredients that I find exceedingly unpleasant. They all require me to set my personal bar ridiculously high to the point that I will sometimes fail. Yet, they are some of the most meaningful moments and activities of my life. They involve pain, effort, struggle, even anger and despair, yet once completed, I look back and get misty-eyed about them.

Why?

Because it’s these sorts of activities that give me purpose. I’m not going to ‘do a Maslow’ on you, but it’s the perpetual pursuit of fulfilling our ideal selves which grants us happiness, regardless of superficial pleasures or pain, regardless of positive or negative emotions. The end results don’t define our ideal selves. It’s not finishing the half marathon that makes me happy, it’s achieving a difficult long-term goal. It’s not the business profits that makes me happy, it’s the process of overcoming all odds with people I care about. It’s not having awesome kids that makes me happy, but knowing that I gave myself up to the growth of another human being that is special. And, to be fair, my wife mucked in as and when.

Big, important sentence alert! The effort of trying to be happy runs the serious risk of making you unhappy. Because to try to be happy implies that you are not already inhabiting your ideal self, you are not aligned with the qualities of who you wish to be. After all, if you were acting out your ideal self, then you wouldn’t feel the need to try to be happy.

A more interesting question, a question that perhaps you’ve never considered before, is what pain do you want in your life? What are you willing to struggle for? Everybody wants to have great qualifications, an amazing job and financial independence but not everyone wants to suffer through 60-hour work weeks, long commutes, two evenings a week at night school or to remain positive while inhabiting the blasé confines of an infinite corporate hell. People want to be rich without the risk, fit without hurting and famous without the talent.

Bottom line? There is significant mental effort in being your best self. It’s a commitment to a way of thinking that you have to do every day for the rest of your life. You never ‘arrive’ at the perfect sculpted mind and, unfortunately, if you have a month off, the bad habits will grow back.

Here’s the truth. Being a positive, effervescent, inspired human being is hard work. But it’s not half as exhausting as being miserable.

Andy C

In the same way that Bono suggested ‘Sunday B***** Sunday’ was not a protest song, this is not an anti-school blog.

Schools are judged on results, right? League tables have upped the ante to the point where SATs and/or GCSEs are soooo important that teachers are whipping extra effort out of each child in the quest to attain their maximum grade. Because when we crawl (exhaustedly) over July’s finishing line, the child will be able to wave that piece of paper in their hand. ‘A *, whoo-hoo, get in. Let’s celebrate and be happy!’

Controversial, I know, but what if that’s pretty much exactly the wrong strategy?

I’m not arguing against the ‘working incredibly hard’ bit. That’s a given. But cramming every after school and lunchtime with extra revision is tough for the kids and teachers. Thinking aloud, what if there was a better way?

Rewind to when your kids were born. You held your child for the first time and came over all emotional. What was your greatest wish for your child? Was it, ‘I hope she gets a decent academic grounding and has working knowledge of at least one Shakespeare play. Oh, and I’d really like her to understand how ox-bow lakes are formed.’

I doubt it? More likely, ‘I hope my child is happy.’ That’s pretty much all you ever want for your children.

This insight is important because ‘happiness’ is the key to everything. If you’ve ever attended an ‘Art of Being Brilliant’ workshop you’ll know that we talk about happiness as the starting point rather than the end point. So, for example, what if being happy after you achieved the A* was the wrong way around – and being happy every day in school was the crucial bit. Indeed, what if it’s the happiest kids who over-perform at school?

We have a crack team of trainers who can run you some superb ‘revision’ sessions for your school or your child’s school. But we reckon you’d be much better off booking an Art of Being Brilliant session and not mentioning ‘exams’ at all.

Get them inspired to be their best selves… and amazing results will follow.

Most people get stuck in what I call a C+ life. In school report terms, you ‘could do better’ and, for many, life can become a bit mundane. The solution isn’t to lower your sights. In fact, I’d argue the opposite!

Too many people settle for C+ in the hope that A* will happen at the weekend or next year or when they retire. It’s almost as though we set out to expect mediocrity in the hope that something good might happen and surprise us. Accepting mediocrity is a defence mechanism because you’ll rarely be disappointed (but you’ll also rarely be genuinely happy!).

The solution is what I call ‘realistic optimism’. Not some rose-tinted Polyanna approach that annoys people and papers over the cracks of reality, but a genuine expectation that today is going to be a fab day because you’re going to choose to be upbeat, passionate and positive. In a spooky Matrix-style psychological shift of mindset, you are more likely to have a fabulous day. The downside is that, despite your best efforts, the day might still conspire against you and you might be disappointed. But, hey, tomorrow you go for it again…

You see, happiness isn’t actually real, at least not in the sense that you can cart it around in a wheelbarrow. Happiness is a mental construct that you’ve created in your head. And genuinely upbeat, happy folk have certain mental habits that allow them to create more of it.

So, the basic message in our books is to stop waiting for the right person, job or moment (yikes, they might never come!) and learn the basics of how to create more happiness from within.

And, if you’re going to have a happier life, you need to put some effort into being your best self – those A*s don’t happen by accident.

Ahh, Christmas. A time for relaxation and rejoicing.

Sadly, Christmas in our house has become a time of ‘stuffocation’. My kids equate ‘number of prezzies’ to ‘happiness’. Forget gratitude and quality time with the extended family, success boils down to ‘has Santa bought more presents than last year?’ It’s as though we’ve accidentally entered into an unwinnable arms race in which we have to continually buy more stuff because ‘stuff’ is what makes Christmas, right?

The result is that I feel that I’ve been badly malled. Check the clever spelling here folks, it’s not ‘mauled’ as in what tiger does to you, it’s ‘malled’ as in what Debenhams does to you. And I’ve taken a severe one.

But enough is enough. So, in true Art of Being Brilliant tradition, I’ve switched my thinking. In the battle to avoid stuffocating to death, here’s a sentence that at first blush sounds the wrong way round:

The moment we’re content, we have enough.

Read it again. And again. Until it makes sense. The problem is that our brains work the other way around. They think that when we have enough, we will be content.

Being content first is the key.

In the western world we now effectively have everything we could possibly need. Our cup of abundance really doth runneth over. There is no ‘more’ to be had. As John Naish says we have to learn to live ‘post more’ and indeed that ‘enoughness’ is the path to contentment. In a world of enoughness the rules of the game have changed – if everything is available in abundance, the challenge shifts from ‘knowing where to start’ to ‘knowing when to stop’.

I love to hold on to the traditional meaning of Christmas. Yes, Jesus did have some cracking prezzies (although he only got three and they weren’t very child friendly), but he never intended to start a tradition that would eventually result in stuffocation and bad mallings.

So, the message from ‘Brill HQ’ is to be content with what you have and hold on to the simplicity of Christmas. I mean, who’d have thought that baby Jesus would have grown into that ruddy-faced whiskery old man than comes down your chimney?

Happy holidays

The Art of Brilliance team

Last night was the annual seasonal gathering of the eclectic mix that is the Art of Brill team.

[Thanks Mr C for putting on a fabulous evening and being such a generous boss!]

Like any work Christmas do, there was lots of drinking, eating and merry making.

We also made full use of the Christmas cuddle. Some hugs apparently went on suspiciously longer than seven seconds – Andy C was timing them to make sure he got his fair share.

We did a bit of ‘work’ too. The main agenda was ‘Change the world’.

As the alcohol flowed, so did the ideas, culminating in an ambitious project to build a happiness star, based on the Star Wars death star but with a more positive purpose. The plan is to spread happiness over an entire planet with one shot of its giant super laser.

In the cold light of day, this might be a step too far, even for our talented team, but you never know.

It’ll definitely be a long-term project. So in the meantime, why not help us spread the happiness, one random act of kindness at a time. And eventually, together, we’ll spread happiness over our entire planet.

May the force be with you.

Jo Armstrong

I’ve always been a cuddler. I guess it stems from my mum being a cuddler? Whenever I was upset or grazed my knee, a cuddle would always do the trick.

So imagine my recent surprise when I found out that I’d been doing it wrong!

Here’s the science. The average cuddle lasts 2.4 seconds. But, for the love to properly transfer a cuddle needs to last seven seconds or longer. I’ll let you apply that simple principle and prove it for yourself. My top tip is to make sure you don’t count out loud – it spoils the romance.

A second top cuddle rule is to appreciate that not everyone is a cuddler, and this is perfectly fine. It doesn’t have to be a full-on bear hug. You can cuddle people with a handshake, tap on the shoulder, or don of the hat. The secret to a great cuddle is genuinely being pleased to see someone, taking a few moments out of your busy day to actually appreciate another human being.

So, my third top tip is to do more cuddling. Family and friends should be receiving regular seven-second hugs as a matter of course. But how about setting up a lunchtime cuddle club at work? Too far perhaps?

At Art of Brill HQ we like to adhere to standard of public safety and decency so our final top tip is that it’s always good to cuddle, except strangers in the sauna.

We wish you a very merry cuddly Christmas.

Art of Brill team x

Now I have your attention, I have a shed for sale.

Just kidding.

But I’m pretty sure that if I did a survey of who gets a kick out of corporate language, it’d be a very small group who put their hands up. It’s bizarre – everyone hates corporate speak but we all seem to do it. How many times have I listened in on a meeting and heard, ‘Hey guy’s let’s have a round robin of blue sky thinking to coax this puppy out the kennel.’ Well, to be fair, I’ve never heard that particular sentence but you get my drift. There’s an awful lot of ‘thinking outside the box’, ‘putting this one to bed’ and ‘pushing the envelope’.

At Art of Brill HQ we like to experiment so recently I’ve taken to switching my language. I now use my ‘home me’ at work and my ‘work me’ at home. And, hand on heart, the results have been amazing!

I got the idea from my 79 year old dad who is staying with me. My old approach didn’t seem to be working.

Me: “Would you like anything from the kitchen dad?”
Dad: “I’m not sure.”
Me (slightly irritated): “Are you thirsty?”
Dad: “I’m not sure.”
Me: “A biscuit?”
Dad: “I don’t know son.”

This goes on for several minutes and I end up bringing the wrong thing and he moans.

So here’s my new corporate approach. I have indeed reinvented the wheel.

Me:

“Hey dad, here’s the big picture. I want to be totally client-focused and offer you some value added. I’m going to the kitchen to be proactive and could bring you tea, coffee, sandwich, biscuit, copy of Razzle, whatever? So, to keep you in the loop I thought I’d ask which boxes you want to tick.”

I then give him 30 seconds to decide. He loves game shows so I do the Countdown noise before I hit the ground running and collect his order. On my return I say:

“Nice choice dad. Any feedback let me know. I’ll be sat next to you while we watch True Grit.”

I keep a complaint form handy.

Same with my daughter. The old approach of “Please can you tidy your room Liv?” just wasn’t cutting the mustard. So I’ve replaced it with:

“I’ve decided to touch base with you to discuss your request of…”

(I always look down at my notes at this point)

“…‘I’m not a kid anymore father’.

“We really need to put this one to bed Liv so I’ve been researching some sort of quid pro quo agreement. I’ve looked at local rentals in the area and you can get a one room bedsit in a crack house for £35 per month.”

As her bottom lip trembles, I suggest we could compromise and achieve a win:win if she agrees to stop her room smelling like someone’s died in it.

This approach has transformed my home life. However the biggest results have come from applying the ‘home’ version of me at work. I make people more drinks, I spend time chatting about their homework, I’ve even started giving work colleagues lifts to extra-curricular clubs.

On reflection, my home life runs a little better but the biggest difference is people at work seem to love me more.