Woody Wonders

In just under a year's time I'll be running my 13th marathon.   It's been a few years since my last one and I'd already been thinking about the possibility of doing another one when the opportunity was handed to me on a plate. I was scrolling mindlessly on my phone when up popped the  'Rob Burrow Leeds Marathon' .  Many of you may already know his story through either being rugby fans or being impacted in some way by MND. I didn't need to read anything else, I was doing it and that was that.  The reason I didn't need to know anything else about it, and to give you some context, is that I lost my own sister to motor neurone disease.  The opportunity to be part of a race dedicated to raising awareness and funds for MND is going to be both epic and emotional. The bottom of my world fell out when my sister told me her diagnosis, because there is no cure; MND kills a third of people within a year and more than half within two years of diagnosis.  I lost my ...

Am I simply becoming more cynical in my old age (don't answer that!), but it feels like these days there's more and more people either not being held accountable for their actions or we feel a sense of entitlement when things aren't going our way. We're making more and more demands on our employers, schools, doctors, government etc etc and expecting them to fix all our problems.  I'm going to skirt round the fact that our government lie at every opportunity and make the chimps tea party look sophisticated.  However, the fact is that we still expect them to fix everything. It's a very fine balance because on one hand we shouldn't be settling for second best and should, quite rightly, be demanding good service from everyone we come across, but we also shouldn't expect them to fix every little thing.  Nobody wants to receive bad service but mistakes do happen.  When they do, we jump straight onto social media and bad mouth them.  In my view however, you can...

"The problem is not the problem;  the problem is your attitude towards the problem' I absolutely love this quote which I heard recently.  It was a timely reminder of how we use any excuse other than ourselves when things don't quite go to plan.  It's also very relevant at this moment in time as we seem to be caught up in a blame culture - we blame the government, governments in other countries, the economy, economies in other countries, our own companies, even our own colleagues, family and friends.  In fact, anyone or anything in our firing line, rather than taking control and being accountable for ourselves. When we feel we are not in control of a situation, we tend to lash out at others.  It's perfectly normal; it's a self-protection mechanism within us all.  When we don't feel in control, it's often because we're scared and feel vulnerable.  So what can we do to change our attitude and take control of something we don't feel in control of? I...

A quarter gone already you say?! I can't believe how quickly the last four weeks have flown by.  It seems like only last week when I was reminding you about your goals for the first quarter of the year and here we are ... one quarter of the year gone already - eek!! So ... how's it been for you? Come on folks, you promised to be accountable so I hope you've kept that promise to yourselves  and  have made progress.  Here's a quick update on how I've got on ... Woody's Goals Start a blog.   Well, I started and it's been consistent so I'm doing ok on this one so far.  It's actually quite cathartic to share my little wonderings with the world. Run a race every month during 2019.   Another tick.  Meltham 10K in January, Huddersfield 10K in February and Wakefield 10K in March.  Next one is Sheffield half marathon in April. Learn how to use all the apps on my phone!   Google Keep.  Love it - nuff said. Learn how t...