‘Do one thing every day that scares you’ Wear Sunscreen tells us.
As an interactive event producer and sometimes coach I am quietly confident that only when we are pushed out of our comfort zone can real change happen. Only when we take a risk and succeed do we vibrate with a sense of achievement. (Oh yes there are other ways to make us pulse, but not quite in the same sense, wouldn’t you agree?)
How often, in our busy lives do we proactively take risks, or even invite a little more randomness into our lives? It doesn’t have to be life-threatening. It can even be as simple as taking a new route home or looking at a situation through another perspective. We are not talking Dice-Living a la Luke Rhinehart here, although the Dice Man does have his merits.
Paula Reid, one of life’s true adventurers inspires me on a number of levels, check her out in Honouring. Celebrating after a successful event and several beers, Paula introduced me to AQA (Any Question Answered) a text service that eloquently answers your random questions. We asked AQA for a dare that I had to perform and we were in the middle of the bars in Canary Wharf on a busy summer weekday evening. AQA challenged me to ask the next person of the opposite sex if they’d like to marry me (Fine. I stand up on stage for a living, this isn’t really going to phase me). However, if they said yes, I had to jump for joy (OK). If they said no I had to roll on the ground……(oh dear). My team made me ask 5 people.
The question this week therefore is: What was the last random thing you did?
2 responses so far ↓
paulclarke // 4 October, 2008 at 12:02 pm |
I’ll have to ignore the Great River Race and the Brompton racing. Both were ‘random’ in the sense of being left-field, out-there, and other tired clichés signifying eccentricity. But I’d planned them for a while, so they don’t really count.
Being a father of teenagers gives one the ability to deliver enormous embarrassment through random acts. So I could mention a recent school garden party – a crowd of yoof gathering around the bucking bronco, jeering at the parents for not taking part.
So…
I got within a couple of seconds of my fourteen year old’s record. He was either proud, or mortified. Hard to tell really at that age.
But the most recent was last Saturday. Got talking at a wedding to a young man and his young man. Very pretty they were. Needing a fellow guest to show them the way to the reception I leapt on the Brompton, in full morning dress, and shot through the streets of Farringdon with the lead singer of The Feeling (for it was he, whoever they may be) and his entourage struggling to keep up in a very nice new sports car. That felt pleasingly random.
Claire Lancaster // 5 October, 2008 at 2:23 pm |
At first I thought it had been a long while since I’ve been as random as I have been in the past. Life as a mother to a toddler juggling two businesses doesn’t leave much time or scope for randomness … or so I thought … but when I actually stop to think about it my days are pretty much wholly random held together by pit stops for eating and sleeping along the way!
But the most recent random event would be one of “kindness” last Monday when I bought a tube ticket from London City Airport to Charing Cross for a newly landed international friend … I say “kindness” because the truth is they were in front of me and keeping me from friends, who were in a bar with drinks and I was on a 36 hour child free pass. It was worth the couple of quid to buy the ticket to get them “OUT OF MY WAY” without me having to shout! A win-win random act, visitors to the UK think great things of Britain and I got to make the most of my childfree pass!