What Inspires Me: The Day I Heard Pink Floyd

Ticking away the moments that make up a dull day
Fritter and waste the hours in an off-hand way
Kicking around on a piece of ground in your home town
Waiting for someone or something to show you the way

When I was 16 years old I heard Time by Pink Floyd and the lyrics changed my life. I hope they do with you as well. Let me set the scene.

When I was in my later years at school one of my teachers wrote in my school report, ‘Colin is the school clown’. He was right. I loved making people laugh. I still do. To me school wasn’t a place to work; school was a social club and gave me an audience every day. Unfortunately my grades reflected this behavior. If truth were known, many people thought I was a waster, and on reflection I was.

As my friends all got good jobs I was left out. I started to regret not working at school. My first job reflected my lack of education. I started work in retail, stacking shelves. I knew I didn’t want to do this for the rest of my working life. Then I heard the words to Time. They told me I could "tick away the moments that made up a dull day, fritter and waste the hours in an off-hand way....in fact I was good at that. As I looked around many people were doing the same. Many people, including myself, were "waiting for someone or something to show you the way". But as I pondered about my life I realised that there wasn’t anyone who was going to show me the way. It was up to me. I realised there is no great overall design for your life. No one has thought it through for you. Everyone is busy doing what they think is the right thing and I realised that old quotation was very true… ‘If it’s going to be, it's up to me’.

The song also scared me. The lyrics go on:

Tired of lying in the sunshine, staying home to watch the rain
You are young and life is long and there is time to kill today
And then one day you find ten years have got behind you
No one told you when to run, you missed the starting gun.

And you run and you run to catch up with the sun
But it's sinking, racing around to come up behind you again
The sun is the same in a relative way but you're older
Shorter of breath and one day closer to death.

“No-one told you when to run, you missed the starting gun”. I realised the starting gun is silent. Most people don’t hear it, especially when you are young as there are a great many distractions and the future seems so far away.

I heard lots of people, who were older than me, constantly reflecting back and saying 'I only wish I had...’ or ‘I wish I had....'. This scared me. I realised ‘life was not a rehearsal’ we all have just one chance at this and I didn’t want to live a life of regret.

I realised I was now starting from a disadvantage. I had squandered my early years and many people had written me off. I turned this negative into a positive to motivate me. I knew I could do what I wanted but it would take hard work and commitment. I set myself the task of learning as much as I could about business. I read hundreds of business books. I became a sponge. I attended conferences. I debated with people. As I did this I realized the significance of understanding people and human nature how this is so important when leding people and in my choosen subject of Customer Experience. What I lacked in formal education I made up for in sheer hard work. I quickly found I was starting to overtake people who were, on the face of it, better qualified than I. Why? Because I did things. I didn't just talk about it, I made change happen. This is the reason I ended up calling my company Beyond Philosophy, to reinforce the fact that a philosophy, an intellectual thought, a strategy is essential but it means nothing unless you go beyond the philosophy and do something.

I learnt a very simple fact. Business is run by people. Customers are people. Therefore, if you can develop a ‘Human Centered’ approach and understand people, why they do things and how they are motivated, then this will give you a big advantage. I focussed my company on putting some science behind the Customer Experience and looking at the emotional, subconscious and psychological side of an Experience. This approach differentiates us from our competition and is starting to come of age, even though I wrote about this in my first book, Building Great Customer Experiences, back in 2002!

So what is the message? Life is there for the taking. Don't let people say you can't do something. You can. The choice is yours. But be clear, the starting gun is silent. There is no point waiting “for someone or something to show you the way”. No one will - it's up to you. Hard work, dedication and commitment are the key. Hence, I love the quote ‘There are no traffic jams on the extra mile’...

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Photo Credit - https://www.123rf.com/ Oleksii Khmyz