Lessons Learned The Hard Way

I am away on holiday at the moment and planned on not working at all. Turns out that apparently that was wrong and I am working for the 10 minutes it’s going to take me to write this blog. It is all about lessons I learned the hard way!

The Lessons I Learned The Hard Way, In 10 Minutes

The thing about being a coach in the 21st century is that social media marketing is inevitable. Done well, it attracts exactly the kind of clients that you want and repels those you don’t want. (For those of you who took a sharp intake of breath at the ‘repels clients you don’t want’ bit, I promise you that there are clients you don’t want. If you’d like to debate it with me, here’s a link to our website. Book a call with me and I’ll happily talk it through with you!)

However, this is a 10 minute article about nothing to do with social media.

The Best Laid Plans…

I’m currently on holiday in Italy. It has provided me with many lessons, learned the hard way! I left home on the morning of 12 August in my camper and drove to the channel tunnel. I spent the night of 12 August in a lovely spot just outside Calais and 13 August in not quite such a lovely spot outside Reims.

On 14 August I should have been staying in a particularly lovely spot outside Geneva which I’d chosen because I have my bike with me and the description of the site I booked said it had nice bike trails available.

However, it turns out that fate (or the universe, or whichever name you prefer to give it) had other ideas. En route from Reims to Geneva, my camper started making a weird juddery noise/feeling and it gasped its last breath just outside Chaumont. The short version of what happened next is that I spent 5 hours hanging around a garage waiting for a cylinder to be fixed. At 5:30pm the mechanic came to tell me that it wasn’t going to be done before Monday.

To say that the afternoon was stressful is to understate it considerably.

When Life Gives You Lemons

I’m no paragon of virtue. In fact, I’m short tempered and impatient. However, sometimes I’m able to take my own advice and turn lemons into lemonade.

I spent the weekend discovering the (relatively few) delights of Chaumont. It’s not very pretty, it is hilly (making biking the hard way) and the food/drink is good – apart from the greasy Chinese buffet I ate on the Friday night, because it was the only place I could find that was actually open on the holiday weekend of the Ascension of Mary. (I didn’t realise that she ascended, but apparently she did and the French take celebrating it so seriously that they close for an entire weekend in August!)

Italy The Beautiful

I arrived in Italy at 8pm on Monday 17 August, after a very warm drive. Tired, hot and thirsty and I took advantage of the lovely friends I’m staying with by eating lots, drinking way too much and falling into bed drunk (but happy) at midnight. I didn’t even offer to wash up!

The Moral Of The Story

• Be flexible
• Stay cheerful
• Look for the lovely in things that aren’t so lovely, and learn from the hard way
• When it all sorts itself out, that’s time to drink ?