Paul Davy

“Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth”   Mike Tyson Have any of you trained in martial arts? If so, you will remember practising how to defend against a certain technique. With a compliant training partner. They don’t resist, they let you do it. Then at the end of the lesson, you do some sparring, fighting within the club rules. Most of the time all the techniques you have been practising go out of the window, you end up ‘brawling’. Then as you progress, you start to use some of the techniques in your sparring. In the beginning, you will throw the technique but your partner is not compliant anymore. It doesn’t work, you try again and it still doesn’t work.   Then you get punched in the mouth.   What do you do now?   Does this technique actually work?   Was this a good plan?   Do I just need to practice some more?   Does this technique work for me?   Do I actually want to fight an...

The Wizard of Oz is a story about a journey. The journey of Dorothy. It starts in the Land of Oz. The destination is to get home. If life is a journey too, can the story of the Wizard of Oz give us some fundamental lessons to lead a better life? Let’s find out Most people would have watched, read or heard the story of the Wizard of Oz, or one of its versions. If not, or if it has been a long time, here is a recap. A young farm girl Dorothy and her pet dog Toto live on a prairie farm in Kansas. One day a cyclone rips up the farmhouse from the ground and deposits it into munchkin country in the Land of Oz. The farmhouse lands on the Wicked Witch of the East, who is the evil ruler of the munchkins, and kills her. The Good Witch of the North comes and thanks, Dorothy. She gives her the magical silver slippers of the Wicked Witch of the East. She also tells Dorothy that to get home she will need the help of the great and powerful Wizard of Oz. To find the Wizard of Oz she must follow the ye...

An American investment banker was taking a vacation in a small coastal Mexican village when a small boat with just one fisherman docked. The boat had several large, fresh fish in it.    The investment banker was impressed by the quality of the fish and asked the Mexican how long it took to catch them. The Mexican replied, “Only a few hours.” The banker then asked why he didn’t stay out longer and catch more fish?    The Mexican fisherman replied he had enough to support his family’s needs.    The American then asked, “But what do you do with the rest of your time?”    The Mexican fisherman replied, “I sleep late, fish a little, play with my children, take siesta with my wife, stroll into the village each evening where I sip wine and play guitar with my amigos: I have a full and busy life.”     The investment banker scoffed, “I am an Ivy League MBA, and I could help you. You could spend more time fishing and with the proceeds buy a b...

We can define the word ‘change’ in the following ways: ‘Make or become different’ ‘An act or process through which something becomes different’ You could also say change is where something no longer remains the same. Safety and Security Where something remains the same it provides safety and security. The same steady job, with the same steady employer, makes us feel safe and secure. Secure that at the end of the month we will receive the same steady wage. Which in turn will make us feel secure that we will have the money to pay for our mortgage, bills, and childcare. We all feel much calmer and safer with some level of certainty in our lives. If too much in our lives remains the same, we do not grow. We stop moving forward, we stop improving, we stop getting better. We can become stale, we can start to feel depressed, we can start to feel stuck. Being stuck is awful, there is nothing we can do about it, or that’s how it feels anyway. Uncertainty and Change If things start to chan...