Why do we need to know how to be happy?

Why is happiness so important? Are we born happy and then lose it? What has happiness to do with business success?

I recently became aware of a number of business owners who work such long hours that they neglect all the things that make them happy, except their work.

Because I believe that most of our best ideas come to us in the downtime when we are playing or relaxing, and because I believe that we are all so much more than our businesses, this bothered me a bit so I decided to conduct an experiment.

I asked people to list ten things that they DO that make them happy and then to schedule into their diaries every day something they looked forward to doing and then actually DO them.

Over 130 people shared their lists with each other on-line and about 30 turned up for a meeting to discuss their ideas on happiness, led by philosopher John Turner (www.metathink.co.uk)

These are some of the ideas the people in the group expressed:

To be happy we need to focus our minds, not drift along without being aware.

To be happy we need to be in the flow with an absence of distractions

To be happy we need to be creating and doing

To be happy we need to feel valued – by ourselves as well as others

Happiness is our life’s purpose and nurturing friendships is a major part of this

We need a verb: “to happy” (apparently, in ancient Greek, there is/was)

On one thing everyone was agreed: If there was a machine that could make everyone happy all of the time, we wouldn’t want to turn it on. There are times when we need sadness, and happiness is something to be worked towards.

The second part of the experiment is still ongoing but these are my own thoughts on happiness:

“Happiness depends on ourselves.”

2500 years ago, Aristotle enshrined happiness as a central purpose of human life and a goal in itself.

2500 years later neuroscientists came to pretty much the same conclusion.

The Nature of Happiness 

Despite the fact that many human beings live their lives believing that they will be happy if they get everything they want, both ancient and modern wisdom shows that this is far from true. Tests show that we are notoriously bad at predicting what will make us happy (or unhappy) and we prove ourselves wrong time and again. Rich people are not happier than poor people and yet much of our society is geared to the pursuit of material possessions and fleeting pleasures.

There is a school of thought that says that happiness cannot be pursued or sought and we just need to be open and wait for it to alight in our lives  but this too is disputed by both philosophy and science. This is because happiness is not something that can be gained or lost in a few moments, like pleasurable sensations. It is about the ultimate value of a life, measuring how well we have lived up to our full potential as human beings.

Aristotle tells us that the most important factor in the effort to achieve happiness is to have a good moral character — what he calls “complete virtue.” He argues that virtue is achieved by maintaining the balance between two excesses – reminiscent of Buddha’s Middle Path.

Neoroscience shows that happiness is inextricably linked to the faculty of attention.

Attention systems that lack focus or have become habitually trained on feelings of poor self worth or criticism lead to emotional states that are out of control and lead to anxiety, depression and other distressing states. Studies show that contemplative practices such as meditation are wonderful ways to train the brain into new habits of paying attention to subjects or feelings that enhance self-worth and strengthen new neural pathways.

The language is different but the message is the same.

Happiness takes effort.

Aristotle advocates the education of the whole person, including one’s moral character, rather than merely learning a set of skills. He taught that developing a good character requires a strong effort of will to do the right thing, make difficult decisions, not give in to immediate gratification and that through training and practice we can achieve our full potential and the enrichment of human life.

Neuroscience shows that we can change our brains, not by intervention with medication or stimulants but by practicing new thought patterns. The basic structure of our mental life is habit and, just as we strengthen muscles in our bodies by practice, so we do the same with our brains.

Qualities we admire in others, e.g., kindness, generosity, humour, patience, compassion are not innate qualities but are skills that we can learn with practice until they become new habits. If we admire these qualities in others we can aquire them for ourselves by paying attention, repeating behaviours and becoming the kind of person we most want to be.

So, happiness is about human flourishing and thriving not about feelings of pleasure and it is an activity rather than a state.

What does this have to do with business?

Building a successful business, especially when you are working alone, requires great discipline. Doing the right things at the right time, even when we don’t feel like it, making difficult decisions, turning away from the quick fix in order to stick to a long term plan, staying focused on a task, being mindful, keeping the promises we make to ourselves are all important.

If the pursuit of happiness is about human flourishing and thriving, applying the same principles to business can only be a good thing. Happiness is not something we take time off to do and then feel guilty about, it becomes both the reason and the way in which we do everything.

Rather than say “I’ll be happy when ….” (I’ve got to x turnover / this job is finished / that client is satisfied / I have some reliable staff), and recognising that these things are not what makes us happy and that we don’t have to wait for them to happen, creates the freedom to make the pursuit of happiness an habitual activity that leads to real fulfilment of our potential as human beings.

Take part in the experiment

If you would like to take part in the happiness experiment simply schedule into your daily activities things that you DO that will make you happy and then DO them and share your ideas with the rest of the group either by leaving a comment below or on the LinkedIn discussion here:  http://lnkd.in/4MM6ca

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When Richard Burton, (RIP) was a young actor and was cast in the role of spear carrier in crowd scenes, his presence was so compelling that he stole the limelight from the actor playing the king.

How do you make this kind of impact in a crowd?

More importantly, in business, when you meet people for the first time, how do you get make sure they take notice of you, trust you, want to know you and recommend you to their friends?

There are all sorts of techniques that help people change their self-beliefs in order to become more confident, there are voice coaches, body language specialists, NLP trainers, hypnotherapists and more.

However,

People don’t see your beliefs.

They don’t know what you’re thinking.

They’re not aware of your emotions.

The only thing they notice is your BEHAVIOUR

For thousands of years, actors have been making us believe in them by displaying the BEHAVIOUR of the kind of person they want to portray.

What happens in their personal lives doesn’t affect their performance.

They are often insecure as individuals but still deliver great, believable performances.

They often do it eight times a week for hundreds of weeks with great consistency.

They can portray characters that are totally unlike themselves with enormous conviction.

How does this help an ordinary person who wishes to create an impact?

Easy! We can copy what the best actors do.

Five Easy Steps on How to Make an Impact

Define the role you want to play, e.g. charismatic leader, honest salesperson, trustworthy consultant, creative designer, useful team player

Define the qualities a person in this role displays, e.g. charm, authority, consideration, tact, etc.

Take each quality and work out what you need DO with your body to show those qualities, e.g to display consideration you may need to show that you are actively listening. What does a person who is actively listening DO? They make eye contact, lean forward and nod.
Repeat this process for each quality until you know exactly how to DO what a person in your chosen role would DO.

Practice. Practice until you become your behaviour, until its stops being an act and becomes authentically you. (Physical actions trigger emotions and create beliefs)

Be the best version of yourself that you want to be – consistently.

Do – Be – Have

DO the things you need to do to BE the person you want to be and the things you want to HAVE will follow.

Burton played 136 performances of Hamlet over 18 weeks. The production grossed $1,250,000. It was the highest-grossing and almost certainly the most profitable presentation of the play in the USA, if not the world.

He was born the 12th child in a family of 13 children in a mining village in Wales. His mother died when he was 2 years old.

“I find it ludicrous, learning some idiot’s lines in the small hours of the night so I can stay a millionaire”. Burton, 1972

This post is inspired by a training session with Mark Doyle of Fecund

Fecund provides measurable bespoke training for businesses as well as open Leadership and Personal Development Programmes. For more information contact Mark Doyle at mark@fecund.co.uk

Do these techniques work for you? I’d love to hear your comments ….

Marcus Orlovsky

Imagine the excitement of buying, selling and racing cars at aged 19 and making enough money  to not only pay for yourself to go to university but to buy a home for your mother and grandmother.

Imagine starting work at one of the world’s biggest firms of accountants and owning two Ferraris and therefore not toeing the corporate line and getting promoted again and again because, instead of telling your bosses what they wanted to hear you told them what they needed to hear.

Imagine owning a string of antique shops while still working in the corporate world.

Imagine borrowing £7,000,000,000 (that’s £7 billion) and re-building vast areas of London, including Broadgate, Ludgate Circus and Stockley Park.

Imagine owning Tiger, Tiger the famous bar and club in London’s West End, a software house (PLT) and starting Lazy Town, the internationally renowned children’s entertainment and lifestyle brand that has a direct and measurable effect on the health of children.

What kind of a man manages all of these achievements?

Imagine having a father who was so violent he beat your mother and threw you down a set of concrete stairs when you were just five years old.

Imagine being taken into care when your father went to prison and your mother was sectioned and incarcerated in a mental health institution.

Imagine working to get yourself through university and caring for a mentally ill mother who committed suicide one day when you forgot to supervise her medication.

Imagine losing £2.25 million when your stock crashed and you chose to try and help others recover their investment, instead of taking the easy way out and selling it while you could.

Imagine raising and giving away millions and bringing all of your remarkable talents and qualities to bear on challenging an education system that consistently fails those who don’t conform and helping to change the curriculum, teaching styles and the physical environment.

Is it any wonder that Marcus Orlovsky left an impression on his audience that most of them will never forget?

Before divulging his own background, Marcus got the audience thinking about why it is better to do the right thing than the done thing. He used examples from the food industry, the oil industry, education and others where decisions that caused misery could have been avoided if there had been stronger leaders instead of managers, willing to speak up.

He asked us to name the CEOs of the world’s five largest companies. We couldn’t.

He reminded us that feelings are more powerful than knowing, talking and thinking and asked us what we would all wish for any new born child.

The answers, universally, are to create unique human beings who show happiness, helpfulness, kindness, creativity, inquisitiveness, inventiveness, resourcefulness and love. And yet their formative years are spent learning facts and they are judged, often for the biggest part of their lives, on how well they remember lessons in maths, history and science and hardly ever on the things we all wish for them to achieve.  Worse than that, their dreams are often dashed and they are forced into pigeonholes and punished for displaying  behaviour that doesn’t conform to the accepted norms of our educational systems.

And yet there are remarkable examples of people, like Marcus himself, who don’t fit the system and succeed against all the odds. Of the 200,000 iphone apps, many were invented by under 14 year olds and 40% of employees in Google have autism.

Marcus now spends his time at the educational consultancy http://www.bryanstonsquare.com/bringing his prodigious talents to bear on improving education and helping to build an environment that gives children a chance to make their dreams come true.

The reaction from many members of the audience was that Marcus caused them to re-think their definitions of success and question their own assumptions

He left us with this thought: “If it has never been done before, there are no experts” with the subtext “So dare to dream and give it a shot!”

If you would like to find out more, sign up for the Bryanston Square newsletter and follow them on Twitter @BryanstonSquare

David F Smallman, Managing Partner of Pathfinder Team Consulting,  invited participants in The Inspired Group to ask him any question about business. These are his answers:

Q. What advice would you give someone in their first year of business?

A. Don’t lose the passion. Ever. Not even in your 42^nd year.

Q. Is it wise to use an untested business model?

A.  No. Get it tested.

Q. How do you make sure a new idea doesn’t get stolen before you develop it?

A. Keep it out of the public domain until you’ve had it patented, trade marked etc. Non disclosure agreements are hard to enforce.

Q. What is the best way to price your services?

A. Price the project according to the value to the customer. This may mean that you charge two very different prices for the same work. Charge 25% up front, then two further instalments of 25% and 50%. In over 40 years in business we’ve never had a significant bad debt or had to waste time chasing money.  Cash flow is vitally important and this way, your expenses are covered before you start.

Q. What is the single most important ingredient in creating a successful business?

A. Passion (as above)

Q. What one channel would you choose to market a business?

A. It depends on the type of business:
Manufacturing – distribution / sub contractors
Service Provision – figure out how your customers/clients like to buy and meet them there
Accounting / Financial services – traditional routes are still working

Q. What will the future economic power of the UK be like?
A. Look out for a debate between David and Phil Jones of Excitant Ltd on this topic. David recommends reading The Big Short by Michael Lewis.

Q. If the three essentials of business are producing the product or service, managing and marketing, what time should a business owner spend on each.
A. In a 60 hour week (which most business owners admit to working)

Marketing 55%  – 33 hours
Making       35% – 21 hours
Managing   10% -   6 hours
Anyone spending more than 6 hours managing a business needs to streamline or outsource and ask themselves if they using this as an excuse not to do the marketing.

Similarly, when marketing, use the same equation:
Existing customers 55%
Short term prospects 33%
Long term prospects 10%

Q. Should we strive to continuously make our services or products better?
A. Excellence can sometimes be the death of a business. Quality is what is good enough to satisfy the customer.

Q. Is social media providing businesses that use it with an advantage?
A.  Many big businesses just haven’t got it yet but many smaller businesses are using Social Media to great advantage so it gives them an edge in engaging, listening and providing what customers want.

There are more questions and answers on the LinkedIn discussion http://lnkd.in/Hw4QVb

Questions that David didn’t have time to answer:

Is there a particular hobby or pastime  associated with business success?
Is there a difference between leadership and management? (See http://lnkd.in/xMdyjG for this discussion)
What is the best strategy to cope with a business failure?

If you have any other questions for David, or comments on his answers, please add them below …

What does success mean to you?

We live in a culture that is pretty much obsessed with success, and there’s a lot of advice on how to be successful – how to set the parameters of success and how to model the behaviours of successful people.

John Turner, philosopher and visiting Fellow at the University of Hertfordshire Business School led a discussion on The Philosophy of Success

Phil Begnett | Web Video Producer filmed and produced two short videos taken from the nights excellent seminar.

As the evening was very “Interactive” with the audience, the video had to be shot from the “side” of the stage ….

Here’s the links -

Funky Philosophy – Activity based Philosophy -

Deep Networking – The antidote for speed networking!

This post is related to the previous post “What does Success Mean to You?” and to a lively discussion on LinkedIn with 71 comments! http://lnkd.in/Htuywx

If you’d like to join in, leave your comments here or on the LinkedIn discussion!

Written by Bonnie Cotier of Golden Dog

Ann Hawkins, of Cambridge-based The Inspired Group, began the year asking us to reflect on this age-old question on LinkedIn. The discussion that followed dragged me personally back to contemplating my high school civics lessons and university philosophy lectures as I probed my current state of successfulness. Click here for the LinkedIn discussion.

The discussion highlighted that there are two sides of “success”. One concept is the process of living a fulfilled life. The other is the concept of materialistic celebrity life. While the latter was acknowledged, the consensus remained in agreement with Aristotle’s argument as presented in his book of Nicomachean Ethics.

“Success is… peace of mind in knowing… that you did your best to become the best that you are capable of becoming”

Lee Jackson

Aristotle calls eudaimonia, translated loosely as “success” or “happiness”, a proactive state of being. It has no final end but is comprised of a continuous string of ends, each building one on the other towards a better, higher good.

According to Aristotle, in order to attain success you must use your skills and knowledge to pursue certain objectives for the sake of a higher objective. To illustrate: one accomplishes a singular objective or goal such as going to the gym and working out. A higher objective would be to get into shape. The highest objective would be the commitment to live a healthy lifestyle. It is the active pursuit of the highest objective that attains success.

He states that once our basic needs are met, each of us actively attempts to live well in our own way. Americans consider this concept an absolute right. It is written in our Constitution that we have the right to the pursuit of Happiness.

“Every goal I have achieved has led me to the next – enjoying the last for just a brief moment.”

Bob Brotchie

Therein was the meat of the discussion. All of the participants have their basic needs met and therefore have the ability, freedom and opportunity to pursue success.

Each of us had developed an individual approach to determine or measure our successfulness. There was a consensus that freedom of choice is considered an essential ingredient to one’s sense of success. Also, for many, our opinion of our successfulness was based on our contributions to the wellbeing of others, either through the work we do or the choices we make. The discussion provided a broad range of attributes of successfulness in life and business to consider and weigh.

The value to me came from stopping for a moment at the beginning of a new year to take a satellite view of my current situation as I map out both my personal and business plans for 2011. It was a good exercise to see if the singular goals I was making on a daily basis were adding to my highest objectives of living a successful and fulfilled life.

Many thanks to Bonnie for this thought provoking summary!

What does success mean to you? Share your opinion below or explore Bonnie’s excellent blog and share your ideas on her Golden Dog blog here

If you go to networking meetings to sell, you won’t be interested in this. If you’d like to have fun meeting people, you will.

Fun tip 1. Expose yourself

Step out from behind your business persona and expose the real you! People do business with people they like but how can anyone like you if you just spout a sales pitch? If you want to be remembered as interesting, charming, funny, passionate you need to BE those things. Truly passionate people never have to ‘say’ they are passionate – they demonstrate it in the way they behave.

Fun tip 2. Never ask “What do you do?”

There are a million and one ways to open a conversation and the more you know about a person the easier it is. Before pitching up to an event find out who is going to be there and check them out on line. Then you can start with a ‘real’ question (like WHY they do what they do). If you can break the ice with an on-line conversation before meeting someone face to face (get a good on-line profile picture so that you are recognised) then you’re way ahead of the game.

If you meet a complete stranger, stay personal. Start by paying them a compliment, ask them who is the most interesting person in the room, what are they expecting from the speaker, what is the most interesting thing they’ve heard so far, who do they want to meet. Listen to the answers and have a proper conversation. Don’t jump in with a sales pitch.

Fun tip 3. If someone asks what you do, don’t tell them

Say you haven’t come here to talk about yourself (you haven’t, have you?) and ask them questions about themselves. If they go into a sales pitch, interrupt and ask different questions (its not rude – you didn’t ask to be sold to). Get them away from business and find out who they really are.

Fun tip 4. Be prepared to be dazzled

Everyone you meet is so much more than their business and they are also standing in their own acre of diamonds – their circle of contacts. If you do all the talking there is no chance that you will ever discover who they are. By showing a genuine interest in people and discovering common interests and values rather than trying to sell to them you could find yourself drawn into that circle and who knows where that might lead.

Fun tip 5. Make people feel comfortable

When you are completely comfortable with yourself you stop thinking about you and give 100% of your attention to others. This makes people feel special and they relax. If its all about you it’ll never work. People mimick our posture and facial expressions so if you are relaxed and having fun, they will be too and they’ll always be happy to be around you.

See related post  “Seductive networking”

What do you think? Will you abandon your elevator pitch and expose the real you?

Do you need goals, plans or a strategy?

It’s the middle ages and Winter and the food has run out in your village.

A bunch of responsible folk get together to decide what to do.

You may hope that Spring will come early but, as we all know, hope is not a strategy.

The group decides that the best course of action is to go deer hunting. As you are stalking a deer you notice a rabbit that would be a much easier kill and would feed your family for a week. Killing the rabbit would spook the deer.

What do you do?

Phil Jones, author of “Communicating Strategy” used this story to open his presentation. If the goal is to feed the village and the plan is to do this by bringing home a deer carcase, the planning process will encompass all the elements of making this happen.

The plan is what we do to decide how to execute the strategy. Therefore, the plan itself isn’t important, but the process of planning makes carrying out the strategy easy.

Some people argue that if you have a vision that excites you enough, you don’t need goals, plans or strategies. This may be true of a single person pursuing their vision but there are lots of examples of small businesses taking on jobs to bring in immediate cash that distract them from the long term goals.

Whenever more than one person is involved the strategy and, more importantly, how that strategy is communicated becomes very important. The goal of the team, in this case, the village, may be at odds with the goal of the individual and could result in lots of rabbits being chased at the expense of the organisation as a whole.

For more information on communicating strategy see http://www.communicating-strategy.com/ or contact Phil Jones at http://www.excitant.co.uk

Why a strong brand can help you build a strong business.

It is estimated that we are bombarded with over 10,000 marketing messages a day so how can a small business get noticed in amongst all this noise?

A strong brand is one of the best ways to build a business. It needn’t cost a fortune and these tips are just as applicable to a small SME as they are to a multinational corporation.

What can having a good brand do for your business?

All of the strong brands we see around us every day started out as small businesses selling a product or a service. It is awareness of the brand that brings increased sales, a loyal and long term customer base and perhaps even premium pricing. Staff members become dedicated employees because they understand the brand, believe in it and feel a part of it.

James Hammond “The Brand Doctor”  of Brand Halo has spent almost 30 years helping businesses to create all the benefits of a strong brand with some innovative ideas.

A brand is not a logo or a strapline

He is adamant that a brand is NOT a logo, a colour scheme, a strapline, a mission statement or a promise. He puts forward the idea that a brand is the total experience that a customer has with your company, its product or service. In other words the brand belongs to the customer and resides in only one place: the long term memory of the customer.

Andrex (a British brand owned by an American company) has been the Number One best selling toilet tissue all over the world for 37 years, often selling for four times the average price of other brands – all because of a puppy!

James has a simple formula for creating an EPIC brand: Emotion, Perception, Innovation and Communication.

All sales are made from EMOTION and justified by rational thought, therefore all strong brands need to create an emotional response. James suggests that determining the emotional benefit of our product or service is the starting point for creating a strong brand.

Instead of a USP define your ESP (Emotional Selling Point).

As all emotions are the response to a PERCEPTION and we form perceptions from our senses, checking out how our products look, sound, smell, taste and feel is important, especially to check if these are giving messages consistent to the emotional benefit we’ve already identified.

The visual sense is probably the easiest to check: what emotions does the look of your product or service trigger?

What does your website / office / shop / printed material look like and are these images consistent?

What do you and you customer facing staff look like?

Are all of these consistent with the emotional benefit you offer?

Do the same with the other senses. What emotions do the sounds of your business trigger? (Telephones, voices, background music.) How does it feel? (Do you use or allude to tactile sensations?). How does it taste? (Even an allusion to taste can be very powerful.

A recent Skoda campaign that used pictures of a car made out of food and refered to the Fabia as a ‘tasty’ car increased footfall in dealerships by over 600%).

The sense of smell is the second most powerful after sight. It is estimated that 75% of our emotions are influenced by what we smell and yet this is often a neglected part of brand awareness. We all know that the smell of sun lotion evokes feelings of warmth, relaxation and well-being and that the vanilla smell of baby powder is comforting.

The reason that many household products have smells associated with nature is because most of us enjoy these smells and so we use more of them.

The reverse of this is that most of us will experience a stomach lurch when we enter a hospital, dentist or school because of the smells we associate with unpleasant experiences.

Checking the smell of your product, your premises and yes – you and your staff is important. Are all of these smells consistent with the emotional benefit you offer?

Warm, happy people

INNOVATION is the third ingredient in an epic brand. The Innocent drinks range is a superb example of this. Innocent asked fans to knit and donate woolly hats for their little bottles. For every bottle sold with a woolly hat, Innocent and Sainsbury’s donated 50p to Age Concern. This so caught the imagination of the public that almost 500,000 hats were knitted last year and over £250,000 raised for Age Concern.

Every business, product and service has a story worth telling

People are interested in people and while we can’t all be larger than life Richard Branson type figures, who you are, and why you are doing what you’re doing, is a major part of your brand and another way to engage the emotions of your customers and clients, so COMMUNICATE this in a way that lets people see the human side of your business.

Don’t SAY you are passionate, convey it in your message. Don’t SAY you are trustworthy, let your customers give their testament.

A strong brand is one of the best ways to survive an economic downturn so instead of tightening your belt, strengthen your brand!

To read more about creating EPIC brands see James Hammond “The Brand Doctor”

This post was written by Katherine Connolly of Keeping HR_Simple

http://www.keepinghrsimple.co.uk/

Over 100 people listened to Richard McCann talking in the Cambridge Cancer Help Centre last night and many of us were moved by what he had to say.

I have heard messages like these before – “you can do it”, “get out of your comfort zone”, “challenge yourself”. I’ve never once thought they applied to me. I’ve never once felt personally affected by any of them. For me, the speakers and writers were always talking to someone else. They didn’t apply to me because I didn’t want to feel challenged. I didn’t want to leave my comfort zone, thanks very much. I never wanted to release my potential because as far as I was concerned, maybe I didn’t have any. I’d rather not try than do it and fail.

I’ve never once felt personally affected by any of them.

Last night, Richard’s message got to me. I believe that things happen for a reason (Jason always says that things don’t just happen, things happen just) and that the time was right for me to get that message and what’s more, to act on it.

Until we started this business, I was a PA.  A very good PA, thanks very much. I went to work every day, stayed in the office, acted as the central point of contact for everyone and everything. If someone wanted to know where something was, guess who they came to? If someone wanted help or advice or to pass on a bit of gossip, guess who they talked to first? I knew everything that was going on and I was very comfortable. My feet were firmly under the table there and I loved it all; the job, the company and the people.

I’ve learnt that I’m capable of much more than I think I am.

Now I know that I was missing out. Doing that job was fulfilling maybe 1/10th of my potential. If even that. I’ve learnt so much in the last year but mostly I’ve learnt about myself. I’ve learnt that I’m capable of much more than I think I am. I’ve learnt that I can go out and talk to people – people I’ve never met before. I’ve learnt that I can survive difficult situations. I’ve learnt that I have a way to go before I could call myself a good public speaker. But I’ve tried it and I’m willing to keep trying it. I may never be as good a speaker as Richard McCann but I have the potential to be. I’ll never dye my hair ginger though – I don’t want to be an honorary member of “the ginger massive” .

Most importantly of all, I’ve learnt that if I say “no” to the things that scare me or worry me or make me feel uncomfortable, I’m missing out. So, thank you to Richard McCann for bringing that message home to me. People probably tell you all the time how you’ve affected their lives but you should know how you’ve affected mine.

Richard McCann