achieving your dreams — BLOG

October 13, 2013

It was summer 2003 and I was working on a construction project in a small English town called Biddulph in Staffordshire. I was commuting weekly driving up at the crack of dawn on a Monday and driving back down to London on a Friday afternoon. Fortunately I love driving and even to this day if I hear of a road trip my ears prick up and my eyes light up. So the commute by car was not a chore but a pleasure.

Whilst up in Biddulph me and a fellow consultant were staying at a bed and breakfast on Biddulph Moor called Chapel Croft. The town was so small there were no hotels let alone any of the international brands. The nearest big city was Stoke-On-Trent and the drive there did not appeal to us at all. The little B&B was tucked away among farms and cottages leading up to the Moor. Paddocks and pastures lined the route and there was one country pub that became our dining venue for the three-month duration we were there. The landscape and scenery could have been akin to the Yorkshire Moors straight out of Emily Bronte's Wuthering Heights. The drive up to the B&B would take us past farms with quintessentially English names such as Dingle Brook Farm, Thorn Tree Farm and Three Nooks Farm among others. The lane names led me to think J.R.R. Tolkien probably spent time here to get inspiration for The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings. Names such as 'Over-the-Hill' and 'Under-the-Hill' as well as 'Dingle Lane' were everywhere you turned.

Our landlady was a retiree and she would prepare a cooked breakfast for us every day of toast, eggs, beans, mushrooms, tomatoes and anything else you fancied. I avoided the Black Pudding but occasionally would indulge in some cooked meat. I was on a strict diet at the time as I was training for the London Marathon in April 2004. My colleague lovingly named the lady Mrs. Miggins attributed to her grandmotherly demeanor and loving, caring attitude towards us and another guest who were a fixture at her farmhouse.

The third guest was a young engineer who was a client staff member on the construction project. He would also commute by car every week from the Welsh coastal town of Llandudno (pronounced "chlan-DUD-no"). He was in his late twenties and an avid kite surfer. He would join us at breakfast and then in the evenings on some nights for dinner. He would tell us no matter what the weather he would be out in his wet-suit kitesurfing the cold turbulent waters off the Welsh coast.

I would relay to him my love of running, as he would see me run along the top of Biddulph Moor every morning at 6am in training for the marathon. Come rain or shine I would be out there, we both called each other mad but became good friends due to our passions. Over the course of my time there I came to understand that he was not too happy with being an engineer. He had studied at Bangor University which was about twenty miles from Llandudno and even though enjoyed engineering he did not feel satisfied or fulfilled.

At the time I was studying for my coaching certification with The Coaching Academy and I wanted a live client (pro bono) to coach over a period of time. My young engineer friend willingly accepted and we began a program of eight coaching sessions. The key model that I used was the GROW coaching technique which essentially helps the individual find their own answers. The GROW acronym stands for:

Goal - this is whereby the individual determines the goal in mind. I used other questions to concrete his answers and what those goals meant to him.
Reality - this is to understand their current reality in relation to their goal, i.e. to determine a starting point.
Options - this is the fun bit, where I asked my friend to list out all the possibilities if anything was achievable.
Will - this is whereby I got him to commit to some form of action, i.e. I got a commitment from him to take the first step towards realizing his goal, No matter how small he needed to take the first step.

Over the course of eight weeks we would meet and I would coach him two or three times a week to ensure he did not falter and was on the path to achieving his goal.

About three weeks before the end of my engagement I turn up on site and my engineer friend has a surprise for me. He states that with my help he was going to bring his goal forward by six months. I inquired further and was told that he was leaving the job and going to fulfill firstly his goal that I had worked with him on and then his lifelong dream.

Sure enough at around the time I left he disappeared west to Llandudno and that was the last I saw of him. So what was his goal and his lifelong dream?

Well his goal was to be a professional kitesurfer and his dream was to have a kitesurfing business teaching people how to kitesurf, own a shop that sold kitesurfing gear and make the sport available to a wider audience.

That was my first real life encounter of someone having the gumption to take that leap of faith and follow their dreams. The great thing about going for your goals and dreams, it's never too late.

July 24, 2013

I was working in Istanbul for four months from December 2011 to March 2012. The hotel I was staying at was in the Old City, close by to the Hagia Sophia and the Blue Mosque, both of which were within walking distance. Outside my hotel I would come across vendors of all sorts of goods and services, from umbrellas when the heavens opened up, to roasted chestnuts and shoe shine guys.

There was one vendor a shoe shine guy who placed himself to the left of the hotel entrance and laid out his wares. His shiny golden shoe shine cabinet with all the different polishes, waxes, creams and cleaners. There was an assortment of brushes and cloths that were placed neatly in their respective holders. The chap owning the paraphernalia and manning the station was a young Turkish man and come rain or shine and even the odd flurry of snow he would be at this post. He would clean and shine shoes each and every day without fail.

I took the advantage of his services pretty much once a week every week during the weekends. If the weather was good I would wear my shoes whilst he polished them, else I would leave them with him. One sunny Saturday when I first began to use his services I began to get to know him and between his broken English and my dodgy Turkish we managed to communicate and become friends in a strange way. I got to know his name as Ercut, he was 28 and was married with two children. He said he lived local and worked seven days a week.

My assignment in Istanbul ended in March 2012 and the last I saw of Ercut was the weekend prior to my departure. However, I had been invited to a wedding and revisited the city in June 2012. I stayed at the same hotel and I made a note of looking out for Ercut and he was dutiful as ever manning his shoe shine stand at his regular spot. I was only in the city for a couple of days and on the day of the wedding I got my shoes shined. We bantered in our Turkglish, with him questioning me as to why I was not married for someone in his forties. I shrugged and gave an answer that was befuddling to him.

I revisited Istanbul a year later in June 2013 and stayed at my usual haunt. This time however there was no sign of Ercut and not knowing how to find him I was disheartened. I was travelling with my girlfriend, to whom I detailed my friendship with Ercut and my concerns of whether he was OK and if his family was doing well. I walked around with a heavy heart concerned about Ercut.

On the third morning of my 4-day trip I left my hotel room and as my girlfriend was sleeping I decided to get some new towels and toiletries from the room service guys. I walked out and saw a young Turkish man cleaning the adjacent room. I excused myself and as he came out of the room and looked at me there was a moment's hesitation followed by recognition. It was Ercut, he cracked a massive smile and his eyes lit up. My heart lifted into the heavens and the two of us clasped each other in a bear hug.

Ercut was wearing the hotel uniform with his name on a shiny bronze name tag. He looked immensely proud and happy with his new job. We both reverted to our Turkglish and exchanged greetings. I asked him how long he had been in his new job and he replied 5 months. He then reverted back to his job at hand and as my room was on his service route, he asked if I needed anything. He happily supplied fresh towels, tiptoed back into my room with me and took the old towels. He insisted that he clean the room, I replied that it was not necessary as my girlfriend was fast asleep and I did not want to disturb her sleep. He insisted further feeling that he was failing in is duty, I told him it was fine and he beamed a smile at me and went back to his duties.

I left the hotel and went about some tasks I had to complete. Upon returning to the hotel I explained to my girlfriend what had happened and what I had experienced.

I was so happy that through grit, determination and a desire to succeed Ercut had lifted himself out of bare subsistence. He now was on the first rung of the ladder to a bigger and better life not only for himself but also for his wife and two children. Ercut to me was the embodiment of human drive and desire to succeed, to overcome the odds and prevail.

On my last day at the hotel I had a picture taken of Ercut and me, as I left he gave me a hug and the biggest smile.