No, not a discussion of a Queen song, although it’s a pity I can’t add a sound track of Freddie Mercury. At the moment I have quite a few things that need doing in a short time. I’m under pressure. Or am I? As Seth Godin pointed out in his blog a couple of weeks back, I’m under pressure from myself. Most of the urgent items on my To Do list I have elected to add to it. Sure, if I didn’t do them one or two people might take a dim view but the world wouldn’t end, I doubt it would even make much difference to my life. And those disappointed folk would mostly forget pretty quickly.

Yesterday I was discussing fear of certain situations with Derek Norval, my co-facilitator of our Succesful Speaking workshops for people who are nervous of speaking in public. As Derek pointed out, although there may be deep seated reasons for our fears, we choose to be frightened. We can make a decision not to be. I remember reading a book where the author said that one day she took a decision to be happy. And so she was. In the latter days of my corporate career I would look for the positive in whatever situation presented itself. Sometimes I would make my colleagues laugh at the absurdity of my take on ‘positive’. But there is no doubt that if you look hard enough, there is nearly always that proverbial silver lining in every cloud.

By the way, I chose to write this post. Sure I hadn’t written anything for a while. But I could have let another week or two go by. After all, none of you has been banging on my door asking when I am going to write a new post. You have my full permission not to feel under any pressure to do so in future. And you can give yourself full permission not to do things that aren’t essential. And not to fear the consequences.