Live today and not for tomorrow

Speciality Bites with

Paul Hargreaves

Chief executive of Cotswold Fayre

• Becoming a B Corp
• Top trend predictions for Christmas 2021
• Self-sacrifice: The importance of building a leadership legacy centred on others
• Undercover Boss
• Can/should bosses really be close friends with their staff?

I spent much of the first few years of running my business half wishing I was doing something else

Financial pressures had forced me to develop a business that I had been running as a side-line and leave behind my work with people needing help in inner-city London.  I didn’t realise this at the time but only 50% of me was committed to the early years of Cotswold Fayre, the other 50% was wishing I was making more of a difference to the world by righting injustice and poverty.  Now, of course, I have managed to combine that through what we do as a company; more of that another time!

What I want to concentrate on today is to help us focus on what we are doing today and give ourselves 100% to it.  It is easy, particularly in these days of social media to become envious of what other people are doing and wishing that we were them.  Or we spend our time hoping for a change in our circumstances and things will be so much better in the future when we are doing another job, gained a promotion or have fallen in love with someone else.  Some of us never quite live in the present as we think the grass is greener on the other side.

The truth is that the grass is as green as you make it on your side, and it is those people that live 100% in the present that move into other, perhaps more exciting, opportunities as they are the ones that are happier and attractive to others as they give off positivity to others.  It is a wonderful thing to know that right now you are doing what you enjoy and what you are good at and, even if you think you are destined for greater things, to achieve the maximum in your current position.  Yes, there will always be others that seem to be luckier than you and those that just seem to be in the right place at the right time, but you are only seeing the highlights of what they have achieved, and you don’t get to see the back story, which may involve difficult times.

Steven Furtick said, “The reason we struggle with insecurity is because we compare our behind-the-scenes with everyone else’s highlight reel”.  Has there ever been anything better at doing this than social media where everyone posts their highlights but very rarely their lowlights.  When you know you are in the right place and achieving your goals there is no need to wish you were somewhere else doing something different.  You can be pleased that you are not doing what someone else is doing because you know you are in the right place at the right time.  It is time to move from FOMO to JOMO, where J = joy.

Enjoy this week like no other.