PERSONAL MANAGEMENT
 
There is who I am now
and who I will become.
There is, what I do now
and what is yet to be done.
 
There are tasks for today
and yet nothing to do.
For all sits as one and
all rests in you.
 
So, my priority for today
and my whole life plan
is not just activity, but
to make real who I am.

PERSONAL DEVELOPMENT QUESTIONS
1. How will you make real all that you are?
2. What aspects of your real self, have yet to find their true voice?

SELF HELP
 
I reached out to my therapist a few weeks ago.
I told her it was urgent. I needed help.
She said ‘I can talk to you in eight or nine days.
That's my next availability’.
 
Now, what that did was create a vacuum
that I had to fill. I was basically in therapy
with her, every day for eight days.
I knew I had to be ready for our session.
 
When we met, I wanted to pay
my therapist immediately. I said that we didn’t
need the hour, because I'd been working
every hour since we scheduled the session.

PERSONAL DEVELOPMENT QUESTIONS
1. How can you apply distance learning therapy to the colleagues you work with?
2. How can you apply distance learning therapy to a situation you are trying to figure out? 

THE GATHERING 

It’s the gathering up,
before leaving behind forever
that person or place.

We’re taking forward memories
which will gradually
fade over time.

We are left with only a feeling
about the place or the person
now long gone.

​PERSONAL DEVELOPMENT QUESTIONS
1.
​2.
3.

LOVE
 
Your role is to share
the love that God is,
especially to those
who do not understand,
that God is love.
That is all.

​PERSONAL DEVELOPMENT QUESTIONS
1.  If we see God as love how does this change the way that we see and talk about God?

OUR QUIET SELF
 
I sat for two and a half hours in
Costa yesterday, in the city centre,
beside Waterstones bookshop.
 
After all the drama and busyness
of Christmas and the New Year
I just needed to sit.
 
Sheffield Cathedral and Saint Marie’s
had both closed early
for the bank holiday.
 
But God is in Costa coffee shops
and Churches,
someone once wrote.
 
Indeed, God is with us
wherever we are, for God is in us.
God is part of who we are.
 
We just need to sit and
listen to our quiet self,
wherever we are.

​PERSONAL DEVELOPMENT QUESTIONS
1.  When will you take a few minutes today to sit and listen to your quiet self?
2.  Where will you be?

UNBELIEF
 
Do not fall into the trap
of rejecting love,
because others tell you
to call it God or
wrap it up as religion.
Ignore their beliefs in
Gods and religions.
For there is only Love.

PERSONAL DEVELOPMENT EXERCIS
1. How can you express all that you believe in terms of love?

RADICAL REVIEW

You’re never too old
to do a radical review
of your career, and
your future.
 
You’re never too busy
to do a radical review
of all that you do, and
where you’re going.
 
It’s never too late
to do a radical review
of all that you are, and
what you will be.

​PERSONAL DEVELOPMENT QUESTIONS
1.  Carry out a three-stage radical review.
​2.  Look at your career and your future.
3.  Look at what you do and where you are going.
4.  Look at all that you are and what you will be.

REMEMBERING ELVIS
 
God has left the building.
He’s had enough of
being locked up in Churches.
He’s fed up with being ignored,
categorised and chastised.
 
God is not waiting for us
to become concert goers,
to come and see him.
Love is coming to us.
Jesus, like Elvis, has left the building.

PERSONAL DEVELOPMENT QUESTIONS
1. ‘Elvis has left the building’ was used as a phrase to disperse the crowds at the end of an Elvis Presley concert. It was first used on the 15th December 1956 by Frank Page.
​2.  God has escaped from the box that society put him in. Where might he be now?
3.  How and where will you meet him?

AGENDA 
 
The same things have
been going over in my head
for days now.
They have become all consuming
and the focus of all I think about.
I need to change the agenda.
 
And so, I deliberately set out
a different set of priorities
for me to do and think about.
All the other stuff can
fit in at the end under
‘any other business’.
 
In this way, I can reset
what is important and this
is the focus of my attention.
All that was before,
will find its rightful place and
will be sorted and completed.

PERSONAL DEVELOPMENT QUESTIONS
1.  Write out an agenda for tomorrow.
​2.  How does this reflect what is important for you in the short term?
3.  How does your agenda help you with your longer term priorities?

​THE UPPER WINDOW
 
The light was always on
in the top window.
Twenty-four hours a day
for months, it stayed on.
 
The house was empty
and I think they forgot
to turn off the light
in the top room.
 
Now, this morning
the light is off.
Have they re-visited the house,
and turned off the light?
 
Or perhaps the bulb
has simply died?
Whichever is true, we are all left,
looking into the darkness.

PERSONAL DEVELOPMENT QUESTIONS
1.  How can you shine your light 24 hours a day?
​2.  What do you feel when you look into the darkness?

​THE FOUR CLIENT RULE​

If we stop seeing our clients
as necessary obstacles
to earning an income, and instead
view them are stepping-stones
of learning, harvesting and leverage,
all will work perfectly, together.
 
For one is a journey to love itself.
Another drives my productivity schedule.
The third is my accountability partner and
the fourth is my lever into and beyond
the community of four that I’ve created.
It’s the four client rule
​

​PERSONAL DEVELOPMENT QUESTIONS
1. Who is in your community of four?
​2. Who are you actively helping? (your clients)
3. How are your clients helping you?

​VALIDATION
 
Everyone I say this to
thinks I’m nuts.
You’re the first person
to actively encourage me
to keep going.

PERSONAL DEVELOPMENT QUESTIONS
1.  Who was the last person that you said words of encouragement to?
​2.  What is your favourite ‘encouragement phrase’?
3.  Who encourages you? How?

​DAD'S DRAWER
 
Dad’s drawer in the kitchen
usually had all that was needed
for fixing and mending.
 
Insulating tape, screwdriver,
batteries, tape measure, twine,
scissors, washers and fuses.
 
It was all there, in the
‘go to’ place for refurbishment.
For most things could be mended.
 
It still breaks my heart now,
to throw things away
that I know can be fixed.
 
We’ve given into replacements
or the latest models, even as this
increases our global waste.
 
We’re losing the ability to re-do and
re-purpose, and the opportunity
to be creative and ‘have a go’.
 
We lost the skills and experience
of a different generation
when we cleared out Dad’s drawer.

PERSONAL DEVELOPMENT QUESTIONS
1. If you were to have a ‘Dad’s drawer’, what would be in it?
​2. What did you learn from your parents about managing daily life?
3. Is there anything that’s not working, that you need help with fixing?
​

​COFFEE SHOP
 
I don’t want to go anywhere.
I just want to sit here.
Just sit here thinking
and not thinking.
Writing and dictating.
Listening and not listening.
Reading and reflecting.
 
I don’t want to go anywhere.
I just want to stay here.
Just stay here thinking
and not thinking,
forever in this place
of nowhere and nothing,
that holds everything we are.

PERSONAL DEVELOPMENT QUESTIONS
1. Where is the place that you feel holds everything for you?
2. Where can you truly be yourself?
​

​INFLUENCING SKILLS
 
Influencing is when you actively support
what others want to do, by facilitating
how they move forward in that direction.

​PERSONAL DEVELOPMENT QUESTIONS
1.  When did you last use your influencing skills to help someone?
​2.  What is the main way that you influence a situation with the language that you use?
3.  What is the main way that you influence a situation with the way you behave?

​WHY?

Why do I do what I do?
Why am I here?
Why am I doing things that do not make me happy?
Why don’t I change the world?
Why don’t I do my perfect job?
Why don’t I stop working altogether?
Why don’t I give me children the future I wish I had?
Why am I asking these questions?
Why have I ended up here?
Why am I stuck?
Why am I still thinking about the same things?
What is my why?

​PERSONAL DEVELOPMENT QUESTIONS
1.  Can you find one response that will answer all these questions (this is your ‘why’?)

ALL THAT REMAINS
 
When I look back, I think
about the amount of time
and energy I put into
that project, or job, or task.
 
It was all consuming
at the time, filling my mind
and my day, with
so much to be done.
 
And yet, now all the work
in the project, or job, or task
is gone, and all that remains
is a vague memory.
 
We can be consumed by
what we do, repeating this
pattern day by day,
until there is no time left.
 
And yet beneath
all this activity is who we are,
because in the end,
this is all that remains.
 
So, when you meet someone, do
not just ask ‘what do you do?’
but take time to explore, also,
who they really are.

PERSONAL DEVELOPMENT QUESTIONS
1.  Deep down, how would you describe who you really are?
​2. How is this reflected in what you do – your work, your home life and your relationships??
3.  How might you go beneath the surface to find out who others really are?

PRODUCTIVE INCLUSION
 
Inclusion is much more than including.
It’s much more than trying
to involve everybody.

Inclusion in the active promotion
of every person
for the benefit of everyone.

Inclusion is a process that
expands the possibilities of the whole
​by realising the potential of each person. 

​PERSONAL DEVELOPMENT EXERCISE
1. How can you expand the possibiltites for each person that you know? 

MONK UMBRELLAS
​
It’s late in the afternoon
and the attendant is
going around the pool,
putting down the large umbrellas.
 
He’s tying the cream covers
with their cream belts,
around their sturdy brown poles.
 
The umbrellas now all stand
spaced neatly apart like monks,
guarding the ocean
here at Cunan, Mexico.
 
The Monk Umbrellas look
out across the Atlantic
to their counterparts,
in the square at Candelaria.
 
Towards the statues
of the Guanches kings
who ruled the pre-Castillian
kingdoms of Tenerife.
 
Together they all wait
for a new day and to protect us all
in the Cathedral,
and by the pool.

PERSONAL DEVELOPMENT EXERCISE
1. What does the arrival of a new day mean to you?​

FORGETFUL

​Older people are sometimes
viewed sympathetically
or in a patronising way,
when they seem to struggle
to remember dates,
or names, or events.
 
But what younger people
do not yet know is that
as we grow older,
we can be blessed with
‘the cloud of forgetting’,
which is often given other names.
 
An unknown 14th century mystic
set out clearly for us, how
the cloud of forgetting
awaits us all, as we
move upwards to become
one with eternal love.
 
Once we have this understanding,
we too can experience
the gift of forgetting, now.
We can also look
to forgetful older folks with
​a sense of wonder and learning.

​​PERSONAL DEVELOPMENT EXERCISE
1. How might you learn and appreciate the gift of forgetting?

CHAIN REACTION
 
You don’t have to know
where this leads, or to
see the plan completed.
 
You don’t have to
see the consequences of all
that you have set in motion.
 
For this is for others
to take from here,
and to follow through.
 
Just like all
that was handed to you,
many years ago.

TEACHER TRAINING
 
The student must become
an extension of the teacher,
and not just one who copies.
 
In other words, the student
must grow with the teacher,
so that the student
can become the teacher.
And the teacher,
is then the student.
 
In this way. our role
is continuously shifting.
For we are all both teacher
and student, at the same time.

PERSONAL DEVELOPMENT EXERCISE
1. Write down when you were last a teacher - and a student.
2. What is your personal definition of 'teacher' and 'student' in your life?  ​

ELEPHANT IN THE ROOM

Illness and death
await all of us.
It’s the elephant in our room.
It’s there, but we don’t talk about it.
 
Years go by,
the room gets smaller.
and our elephant
comes nearer.
 
Soon we will be
touching each other.
Then our elephant will ask 'why have
you ignored me all these years?
 
We could’ve been friends
and learned so much
​from each other.
We could’ve played together'.
 
And then he left me.
The elephant in my room.

PERSONAL DEVELOPMENT EXERCISE
1. Have you spoken to the elephant in your room?
2. How will you play together? ​

DIRECT MARKETING

If you really want
to make an impact.
If you really want
to get that sale.
If you really want
to build your business.
If you really want
to achieve a new position.
If you really want
to win someone’s support.
 
Send a hand-written letter.

​​PERSONAL DEVELOPMENT EXERCISE
1. When might you use direct marketing - that is truly personal?
2. Who do you really need to make an impact with? 

​COMMUNITY

Community is the
framework of relationships
that delivers your purpose.

​PERSONAL DEVELOPMENT EXERCISE
1. What are the key relationships that you have that enablle you to deliver your purpose?
2. Are you clear on your purpose?
3. How can you cherish and develop the relationships that really matter to you?
4. What new relationships might you need to look at?  ​

​Day 532 of Des McCabe's Personal Development Exercises