Your 30-Day Endurance Challenge

I dare you. Take part in this 30-day, continuous, challenge that will prove your worth.

You have 30 days to perform a continuous task. This will involve dribbles of discipline. It will mean enthusiastically engaging your Core – values, character and self-belief – to get down to serious business about your Potential. You could consider the following suggestions for your personal challenge:

1)    Exercise (do something physical) every day for about 20 minutes.

2)    Blog, on whatever you like to share or discuss, daily.

3)    Post 3-5 quotations of well-known people on Facebook.

4)    Write a page, of your 30-page novel/screenplay/play, everyday.

5)    Talk to, send a text message or e-mail, to three latent friends, each day. Actively keep in touch over Social Media, or in-person.

6)    Do something that is not your preference (i.e. a prejudice/dislike). It could be completing household chores, putting out the thrash, bathing your pet, or checking conditions of objects.

7)    If you are injured or recuperating from injury, diligently do your rehabilitative exercises for the next 30 days (and beyond) to become stronger and stable.

8)    [Insert your own challenge/Dare].

I am participating, too, with new challenges. Come May, this daily blog (on leadership) will be three years old! Thanks to author/marketing expert Seth Godin for initiating this challenge for me. This month, I will be focusing on my ride and swim (on alternate days) as these are my major areas for improvement. On the professional side, I will be researching and learning how to enhance my businesses, both online and face-to-face. Exciting days ahead!

I dare you. You can dare me back. All the best! And, enjoy the process in the next 30 days.

Writing With Smoke & Mirrors

I am reading English writer, Neil Gaiman’s ‘Smoke & Mirrors’ now. My favourite stories in this 1999 compilation include Chivalry, which is about an elderly widow who finds the Holy Grail beneath an old fur coat in a second-hand store; the other is The Price, about a stray cat that defends his adopted family from unseen evil, almost very night. He is a very good writer (writing since 1980’s) of short stories, and his genre is mild horror, fantasy and the macabre. He is a Triple Threat: novelist, graphic novelist, and screenwriter. Among many books and graphic novels, he wrote Sandman, American Gods, and The Graveyard Book.

Smoke and mirrors are allegorical references to the art and craft of magic. Much of the apparatus of older magical illusions utilize principles of physics, including reflected images, and the use of smokescreens as a form of misdirection. Audiences have concluded that the trickery of most box illusions is founded on self-contained props, using these two principles of magic. In recent decades, illusion-builders have departed from such strongly alluded approaches to more sophisticated machinery and technology. There is no smoke and mirrors with David Copperfield’s Flying Illusion or The Pendragon’s performance of Metamorphosis (a mini-illusion attributed to the late-American magician and escape-artist, Harry Houdini).

Beyond novels, writing is a useful skill. We write almost everyday on electronic mail, post on Facebook, write reports, or post on our blogs. Writing is both a skills and discipline. To write everyday may be a simple task, yet it may not be easy. Sometimes, you may have to dig deep to uncover and unearth useful information and insights. Seth Godin has been doing that, consistently, and daily for a few years. He inspired me to take up the challenge to blog every day for the last two and a half years. I conclude, thus far, that it has been a relevant and purposeful exercise as I have learnt much. Readership has been increasing steadily, and with a healthy SEO ranking worldwide. I also wrote a full novel within 30 days in an online challenge; I learnt to work with deadlines and deliberately stimulate my creativity.

Perhaps you may want to consider writing regularly and honing this key skill and competency?

The Tribe Has Spoken

Those infamous words uttered by host of Survivor, Jeff Probst in every episode decides, ultimately, who will be eliminated for the game. In effect, each member of your tribe gets to vote for the one who they think should be banished from their tribe. By a process of secret ballot - in quasi-democratic fashion – one person will be eliminated, much to their consternation.

Tribes was a phrase coined by marketing guru, Seth Godin in his book of the same name. Gather a group, share a cause and spread the word. You will see it in almost every social media tool – share with your friend, retweet, et al.

Tribes can make or break the strength of a cause. Both brickbats and bouquets are tools of mass distraction and destruction. Careless and callous remarks can influence others, as do partial and preferential opinions. Thinking through the issues and challenging our own thoughts are necessary to ensure that new ideas and innovative practices can emerge during doldrums. Tribes can build a new business, or denounce a well-established one. The connections that tribal members build on are forged through time, shared interests, shared values, commitment and involvement. Leverage on this positively and you can magnify you cause astronomically. Lance Armstrong's LiveStrong yellow wrist-bands are a testament of how tribes rally for a personal and shared cause.

Last weekend, I found out that my friends shaved their heads for Hair For Hope. One-Armed Runner, Adam showed me his bald plate before he ran a half-marathon. This amazing fellow runs in almost every race despite being physically challenged.

Leadership Lessons: How often do you promote somebody’s cause? How widely does your word spread? How much weight do your recommendations hold? How active are you in networking your way through a charitable cause?

Should you want to promote your cause via social media and online marketing, this is a piece on how you can promote your website.

Even David Copperfield, the Maestro in Magic has a cheeky sense of humour. Here, he challenges Harry Potter and J K Rowling. Believe it or not!

Clanning or Tribes

Marketing guru, Seth Godin wrote a bestseller called 'Tribes'. Interestingly, in 1997 trendspotter and futurist, Faith Popcorn wrote about 'Clanning' as one of 17 future trends for clicking with consumers. In effect, the community spirit is what moves people to achieve a sense of identity, common cause, unity in numbers, and a sense of belonging.

Triathletes belong to a tribe of everyday people, who lead extreme lives in their pastimes. Lard man from New Zealand writes about his adventures in triathlons. He is an interesting person with a wicked sense of humour. Read his blog if you dare!

Many tribes exists, and universally, tourists are a strong and predominant group. Camera-ready, ever eager, and abundantly curious and pedestrian, tourists will crowd around anything and anyone. You see them cordon off streets watching buskers perform. You also meet them at fast-food convenience outlets. Book-lovers will scour bookstores like a library. Coffee connoisseurs will make a beeline for the next caffeine-infused shot. Foodies will search websites by food bloggers to seek that next gastronomic or epicurean indulgence. Such is the magnetic appeal of like-minded individuals in endurance sports in exotic locations doing the unthinkable. Some groups hold annual runs while in underwear or even naked (Naked Pumpkin Dot Org).


Here are some snapshots that clicked with my sense of adventure (to be upload soon, as working with an iPad has it's challenges, when traveling).

John doing the famous plank at the Olympic Stadium in Barcelona; my version is modified

Photo-credits by Mel Chan