Recently, a friend asked me a pretty challenging question—one that started me thinking differently, and sparked a course of action that has made a big difference in my everyday existence. So I thought I’d ask you that same question:

If you could do one thing differently today, what would it be?

What would you change? When I was asked this question, the answer was immediately clear: I’d do more writing. I’d spend an hour or two at work on my own creative writing.

The thing about this question is that it’s a small-time equivalent of the big life questions that tend to throw us: where do you want to go? What are your hopes and dreams? What do you want out of life?

If you’re anything like me, you can’t even begin to answer those questions in a logical, conscious way. Maybe you’re quite enjoying the way things are going anyway—maybe this is kind of what you want out of life. Perhaps.

The question “if you could do one thing differently today, what would it be?” removes the pressure from the equation and lets us home in on something that we really want, or something that’s really bugging us—something we want less of.

If your answer to the question was something like “I’d change the fact that I have to go to work—I’d do something else,” then that probably says something about how much you like your job, or your colleagues, or perhaps that you really need a day off or a holiday.

If your answer, like mine, was that you’d have more of something, then you might have struck on an unrecognized passion, or an unrealized desire.

So I’d realized I wanted to do more of my own writing projects. Great. The thing is that the answers you come up with for this question—your hidden desires—are likely to be achievable. I wasn’t saying “I’d write a novel”: all I wanted was a couple of spare hours to work on my own stuff. This is a pretty easy goal to achieve.

Indeed, within a week, I’d made the decision to clear at least half a day from my schedule each week to work on my own projects. Realizing that I wanted to do more writing in general, also I changed my working relationships to focus entirely on writing work, as well. Both these changes have worked out really well for me.

So, what about you? If you could do one thing differently today, what would it be?

This week, I’ve noticed an alarming trend among the people I know and love! They work hard, they’re kind and generous, they’re great, intelligent, fabulous people…

…But they barely ever congratulate themselves for any of their achievements!

Do you congratulate yourself?

It sounds inherently self-serving to congratulate ourselves—egotistical, silly, embarrassing, you name it. But since I started working for myself, I came to realize that if I didn’t congratulate myself, no one would. There’s no performance review period, pay rise, or Employee of the Month award in my work. There are just clients and readers.

So I started celebrating the things I’d done that I thought were good—the things I was happy with. If something I wrote performed very well, I might go out for dinner. If I handled a difficult client successfully, I might get out the champagne. If I was really rapt with a piece of work, I’d sit back and acknowledge that I was pleased with it. I might tell a friend or show my family. I might sing “We are the champions” if no one was around…

Gradually, I found myself acknowledging achievements that weren’t work-related too—side projects, hobbies, personal goals, and so on. This gives me a sense of my own capabilities—something that’s all too easily overlooked as we jump from one challenge to the next. And as you’d expect, it’s given me more confidence to handle what life presents. (I’m still a terrible singer, though…)

I can’t get over how few of the people I know really celebrate the things they achieve. In my world, even something as small as remaining calm while my colleagues panic, or suggesting a good compromise for a difficult work decision can be worth acknowledging. And in that context, new clients are practically party-prompting news!

Do you congratulate yourself? What have you achieved this week and how will you celebrate it?

Note: you can, of course, hear “We Are the Champions” in all its glory (and watch Freddy Mercury play piano in nothing but hotpants and a red kerchief) at YouTube.

There’s a lot of talk on the importance of gratitude these days. So this week, I thought I’d ask:

What are you grateful for?

Right now, I’m grateful I’m alive. Looking at the various uprisings and disasters facing people all over the world right now, it’s easy to feel fortunate simply for the peace we have.

It’s easy to be thankful that these kinds of tragedies haven’t befallen more of us, and that the challenges I face each day are comparatively minimal. They’re little things, with limited implications. I’m very lucky to have only these challenges to deal with.

What about you? What are you grateful for this week?

Fun can elude us. Sometimes, we might not realize it’s missing; other times, we know we lack it, but we don’t know where it’s gone. Instead of thinking about what’s fun, I thought I’d take a different angle this week:

Where do you find fun?

I’ll bet you’re thinking, “Oh, lots of places,” but really, I’m curious to know: where?

The places I can almost be guaranteed I’ll find fun include:

• on the back of a horse—I’ve recently rediscovered the wild-riding fun of trail rides
• on a camping trip—there’s such freedom in camping; it’s so much fun
• on a dance floor—I’ve always got a kick out of dancing, although I never seem to do enough of it
• where my friends are—I love hanging out with friends.

If I combine either the first two or the last two, I can be assured of having a pretty fantastic time: it’s fun squared. And knowing that these things are fun for me, I always have a pick-me-up handy. If I feel things are getting jaded, I can organize a horse ride or a visit to a friend, and up the fun count of my week instantly.

What about you? Where do you find fun?

We all have those days! Or weeks. Whatever we do, life has its frustrations. So this week, we’re asking:

What’s bugging you?

Rather than let this post descend into a rant, how about we stick to one thing each? What’s the one thing that’s bugging you right now?

For me, it’s inaction. I really hate inaction, whether it’s my own or someone else’s. At any one time, I can spot people dragging their heels for no real reason (that I can see—of course they may have great reasons that I’m not aware of) and it tends to drive me crazy.

I know that I’m impatient and that inaction bugs me, so I try to do things myself, in my own life, that give me a sense of progress. Often, I’ll do those little projects independently of other people, so that I can feel as if I’m acting unhindered. This can help alleviate my frustration over inaction I might perceive in other areas, and it’s the best antidote I know to getting bugged by inaction.

What about you? What’s been bugging you recently?

There’s a lot going on around the world at the moment, so I thought I’d ask:

Who’s Been in Your Thoughts this Week?

The people of North Africa, particularly Libya, have been in my thoughts this week. This latest uprising of civilians striving for true democratic rule is awe-inspiring.

Here in Australia, we take democracy for granted. It’s easy to forget how important it is, and what it represents for those who don’t have it. The Libyan people, en masse, are willing to fight—really fight—for something that they believe in, as are the people of Tunisia, Bahrain, Egypt, and other countries engaged in protest.

Few of us are lining up to do the same here, but some are.

Someone else who’s bee in my thoughts this week is Darren, who’s off to Tanzania to participate in, and bring attention to, the work of a non-profit organization CBM, which is running a Comprehensive Community Based Rehabilitation program there.

While this is a different example of action, CBM’s and Darren’s work is another inspiring case of individuals being willing to commit to action in order to make a difference.

All these people are now engaged in taking sometimes radical, often challenging steps, and accepting personal responsibility to alter the status quo. I’ve been thinking a lot about these people over the last week. They make this seem a very hopeful time.

What about you? Who’s been in your thoughts this week?

Remember the festive season? Doesn’t that seem like it was a long time ago? We’re well and truly into the thick of things now. And I bet you, like I, moved more than a few mountains this week. We’d love to hear about them!

What mountains did you move this week?

For me, this week’s mountain was work-related.

As a freelancer, I have this idea that I’m supposed to get to choose the types of work I do. But sometimes I’ll get sucked into a project that I’m not excited about—without even realizing it.

In the last few weeks I started seeing the potential for this to happen with one of my clients. Many of us have trouble saying “no”—especially in terms of work—and in the last week I had to face that challenge and somehow negotiate my way out of a project without offending a great client or reducing my prospects of working with them in future.

It was tough, but I think I managed it! And I’m really excited about having freed up some time to spend on projects that should be a whole lot of fun.

What mountains have you moved this week? We’d love to hear about them!

They say that home is where the heart is. But is that what “home” means to you?

What, or where, is “home”?

For me, home isn’t the place where I was born or where grew up. It’s not where my family is, the house I live in, or wherever I lay my hat. It’s the western part of my state, Victoria, in Australia.

Before I moved here, I used to holiday in this region, and I like the sense of peace I feel when I’m here—it was always a long way from the trials of everyday life.

Now I live here, but this area still gives me that feeling of escape, safety, and relief. My “home” is a haven. Out here, the demands of daily life can be put aside and I can be myself. “Home” is also acceptance and belonging. But there’s something else. In this landscape, I feel connected, as if something in me agrees with this place—as if something clicks. So “home,” for me, is also about restoration and wholeness.

Do you feel similarly about your home? What else does your home mean to you? I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments.

Typically, it’s around now that many of our New Year’s resolutions start to fall flat. So I thought this week, I’d ask a tough question:

How do you define success?

I think I define success largely by how good I feel. An example? This week I was offered a little project that will probably be one of the weirdest I’ve worked on—weirder than the time I posed as a hand model for a Facebook ad, and on par with the time I wrote a board game for a financial company.

The weirder my work is, the more fun it is. And the more fun it is, the more successful I feel. There are other contributing measures of work success—is the client happy, does the content perform, and so on—but my key metric is how I wind up feeling about the project. If I feel good about it, then I probably see it as a success.

This definition applies beyond my work. On the weekend, I made cheese for the first time.

The semi-hard cheese I made is still curing, but already I see my efforts as having been pretty successful. Why? Because I enjoyed the experience—I had fun learning, trying something out, and experimenting. This was a successful experience, even if the cheese itself winds up being a failure. Perhaps that sounds crazy, but making cheese was fun, and it made me feel good.

We all see success differently. How do you define success?

Yeah! Everyone loves a hero! Whether it’s Superman or your sister, a hero is a pretty inspiring force, and one that you can rely on to make you feel good about things.

Who’s Your Hero?

I have a few heroes, but the one that stands out the most is Alfred Russell Wallace. As Wikipedia says of him,

His observations of the marked zoological differences across a narrow strait in the [Indonesian] archipelago led to his proposing the zoogeographical boundary now known as the Wallace line.

This brief statement barely hints at the passion, the enormous amount of work, and the depth of logical and imaginative thinking that lead Wallace to identify the fact that the strait between the islands of Bali and Lombok marked a place where two tectonic plates meet, in the 1850s and ’60s, some fifty years before the theory of plate tectonics would be developed.

But that’s not all. Wallace “is best known for independently proposing a theory of evolution due to natural selection that prompted Charles Darwin to publish his own theory”, so to me, he’s a bit of an underdog, too.

Apart from the romance of his story, the thing that makes Wallace my hero is that he used his unique powers of observation and consideration to deduce from his environment something which had previously been unimaginable. His work amazes and inspires me.

…but who are your heroes? Tell us about them!