It’s unbelievably humbling how quickly we get used to things.
If you’ve been reading my posts over the past month you will know just under a couple of weeks ago I relocated from the busy streets of London to the high altitudes of Granada, Spain.
I had plenty of freak-outs along the way, but now, less than two weeks in, I’ve become incredibly used to everything around me.
The weekend just gone I visited the Carnaval de Cádiz on the Andalusian coast with students of Granada University. As our bus slowly rolled back into Granada at 8:30 on Sunday morning, I looked out the window upon the yellow streets and mountains in the distance and felt like I’d arrived back home.
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A couple of years ago while reading Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell I was struck by the ideas in one of chapters.
In short, Gladwell spoke of how a strong Korean cultural hierarchy contributed to Korean Air having more plane crashes than any other airline in the world at the end of the 1990s.
Now this wasn’t, as he points out, due to issues you may expect, such as low quality planes or badly trained pilots. This was due to co-pilots being too scared (read: respectful) to speak up when they they felt the pilot had made a wrong move or hadn’t noticed a warning light come on.
This story came back into my conscious again recently while reading an incredibly long 5,000 word post by Julien Smith, a bestselling author of two books (I’ve not read the first, but I can firmly recommend the second).
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Today I will be moving into an apartment in central Granada that insists on Spanish being spoken as the common language. None of the current residents are Spanish themselves, and as far as I’m aware most can speak English to a very good level.
During the viewing Will and I were perplexed by their hesitance to speak English with us. Will has thankfully come a long way since he first moved to Spain in September and was able to handle all the questions for me (seriously, all of them).
After viewing a couple of other places, including being shown around an apartment by Hagrid’s Brazilian doppelgänger (It came as no shock to either of us when he casually mentioned he sometimes lives up in the mountains), we arrived back at at my soon-to-be new home for a nice cup of tea and a sit down with my new housemates.
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Relax. Those five letters are possibly five of the most important, yet ignored, in an entrepreneurs life.
Relaxing isn’t hip. Relaxing doesn’t get things done. How are you supposed to Do the Work when you give yourself time off to relax?
I’m pretty guilty of this. I’ve barraged through hours and hours of work, week on week, and sure; I got the work done. But at what cost?
The health and lifestyle of entrepreneurs intrigues me. Mostly because, there is little consistency. Time and time again the most successful of entrepreneurs and business leaders will try to push home the importance of rest and relaxation as a small tidbit towards why they have been so successful, but each and every time we choose to ignore this advice in favour of ploughing through another twelve hours.
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Anxiety is nothing but repeatedly re-experiencing failure in advance. — Seth Godin
I’m going to be 100% honest with you. This is the fourth time I’ve tried to write this post. I’ve been sat in front of this screen for over four hours typing and backspacing for England.
All weekend I’ve been saying goodbye to friends, friends of friends, and the odd stranger here and there. Almost without exception every single one has asked if I’m nervous.
“No, not really”, I said, each and every time. And it’s true. I’m not nervous…
I’m anxious. I’m anxious as hell.
Tomorrow I move to Spain, and however irrational I know this anxiety is, however much I truly believe in the above quote, however much I know this experience will seem like second nature to me in a couple of months time, I can’t quit feeling this way.
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If you came here via the email list thank you for clicking through. If you’re not on the list you won’t know this, but every week, along with a link to the newest post, I will usually mention how long the post is to give readers an idea of how long it will take them to read it.
This post is 2,000 words long, about 8-9 times the length of anything else I’ve written in the past six months.
Inspired by Corbett Barr (and used with permission, the nice man that he is), in this post I intend to show you who I really am. If you know me in person, it’s likely you will already have a fair take on most of these, however if you’ve been reading my work for some time but we’ve never met, I’ve no doubt the majority of these will be new to you.
I’ve been honest to the extent that some of the below points don’t frame me in an entirely favourable light. I hope you can forgive me and move on.
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