From Care Home, Catalogue Modelling to Reporting Conflicts

Follow the numbers more so than the dreams and passion.

It was never ever enough. And when I tell my story, I might often draw a raised eye brow, but that’s a few seconds in many years. There’s pain leavened in them years.

You likely know the scenario. Follow your dreams, or otherwise your passion. But you’re young. You didn’t design your circumstances. You might even have inherited them. I didn’t want to be in care, but I was.

There’s a lottery to being born. What might it have been like in the difficult years of 1800. But that’s a moot existentialist point. But in the here and now, what we dream, what we desire, is not a given.

And that’s not to deny the power of dreams and focus, but that it’s easier in hindsight to pull threads into a narrative that says, “I followed my dreams and here I am”.

Well actually then I should be an F1 racer, astronaut and a newer version of James Bond. Ah, this is where you say but be realistic. Dream realism! At any point on my journey, as now, I can only dream and then face life’s javelins hurtling at me.

As real life narratives unfold, there’s no guarantees and those dreams, well they’re dreams. That some people make it to their destination owes so much to the numbers.

Life’s poem in a nutshell. Numbers! To move from go, you need to throw a dice. You’ll not know where it lands. You might influence it, But when it does, you’ll move forward. Doesn’t necessarily give you an eye on the prize, but you’re narrowing the odds.

Numbers. I tend to tell the story of Luke Perry who auditioned for more than 250 times to become an actor. Then landed 90210.

Numbers. A young client of mine, was let go by a company. They were making a mistake, but I told him to send out 10 CVs. He did and within a week two had materialised as interviews, and week later he’d taken a new job. His previous employer upped his salary to stay. I said it was his call, but mapped out different scenarios.

Numbers. The 10,000 rule has been challenged but it doesn’t take away from the fact you have to put hours in, and that in the search for that job, or that you wish for, you’ll have to get used to numbers.

At a party a guy in a white suit and shoes approached me. He was happy and had to share. After 33 attempts he said asking a woman to dance with him, on his 34th time someone did.

It’s easy to look back on events and formulate a ‘kind’ narrative, but these stories/ events happening in real time are invariably terrifying and uncertain, bookended with. “What’s going to happen next?”

I’ll write about this some more later and S.T.A.C.K.E.D

Our Story Hub programme uses “S.T.A.C.K.E.D” which is culled from many people’s and my stories about growth. In mentoring next gens, numbers are important.

I forgot to add I’m a maths/ chemist grad too, so am wedded to stats. The more you ask, the more cvs that go out, those chances swell a bit more.

I continue to ask and have so far gone from C in conflict , to D in doctorate, wondering what’s next?

S.T.A.C.K.E.D coming soon.