The Barn!

I was at an ABC meeting recently and asked the group what they would like me to speak about and I gave them a choice of Donald Trump or The Barn! All but one of them chose the barn, so, here is the same story for you…

Last summer Sarah (My Wife) and I moved to the middle of nowhere in the Weald of Kent, it’s that quiet that the road where we live has grass growing in the middle of it. One of the attractions of the house for me is that there is a barn in the garden which is about 12m x 40m in size, the perfect man cave!

I had visions of a gym, pool table, cinema room and other boy type things. I started with getting the gym sorted and having a good area to train and all was going well when a client of mine asked if I could help him out with a favour by storing a little bit of his furniture?

Of course I said yes; now imagine my surprise when this articulated lorry turned up outside of my house… It blocked the road for nearly two hours while they unloaded all of the Rattan garden furniture which was stock that he hadn’t sold through the summer and wanted to store for next spring. The barn was full and had just about left me with a training area that was about 3m x 4m, tight was an understatement.

Like most things in my life I just get on and do it and look at the positives of any situation and thought it would all be back to normal come April.

In January two young ABC members challenged me and my mate Jamie to a little fitness competition, which in itself is great fun, however, if you know me you will know that I don’t enter anything half-hearted and I expect to win! So, we have five weeks to train for the competition on the 6th February. Training five days out of seven, three in my now confined gym space and two with Ross my personal trainer.

Two weeks into the training regime and Ross is off on his jaunt to Thailand with no consideration for me and this very important competition! (Just joking) Jamie and I decided to train together one a week at his place and once at mine. The first session at my place and Jamie walks into the barn and says “Bloody hell, this is tight, why don’t you move the stuff around and make some more room?” I said “No, I’ve looked and I think it’s about the best it can be.”

An hour later and some Tetris like thinking from Jamie we have moved all of this boxed up Rattan furniture into a completely new order and doubled the space for the training.

Now then, you might be saying what has this got to do with anything? Well, it reminded me that sometimes we can be too close to the problem to see the solution and sometimes to even see that there is a problem.

Maybe stand back from your life and business and look at where you are too close to see what you need to see to make the change that will give you the result that you are looking for.

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