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The Child

"A child of five would understand this. Send someone to fetch a child of five."

Groucho Marx

We are trying to be a more innovative and inclusive organization," I was told recently by a major technology company CEO. "We have smart people working for us, really smart people but whenever we talk about simplifying our systems so that we can be flexible, more responsive or more creative, people just ask endless questions. What do we do?"

My answer may appear glib, almost flippant, but it wasn't.

"Don't employ anyone over five years old!"

When you look at an abstract work of art, a Jackson Pollock or a Picasso, what do you see? Do you look for something specific? A right answer perhaps? Do you cheat and look at the description on the wall or in the guide book?

When a child looks at a painting they either like it or they don't; they'll say, "too many colours, too dark, not enough spots, too many lines or it looks like an evil witch, or I just don't get it!"

The joy of young children is that they don't know that they have to be clever or, more importantly, right! They are just loving being, doing and thinking, asking and saying.

The world is full of the most extraordinary possibilities.

I often ask audiences and groups that I work with to look at paintings and photographs and ask them to tell me what they see. Most say nothing; you can see in their eyes that they have ideas, but most say nothing because they don't want to be wrong or appear daft, they don't want to appear to have failed in front of their friends, peers and colleagues.

When I was a very young child, my maternal grandfather would take me to the Summer Exhibition at The Royal Academy of Art in London; I loved it. We would walk through the galleries looking at paintings, drawings and sculptures. We never bought the guide book because we just wanted to look at the art for ourselves. Some of it we loved, some we found really boring and some, I remember thinking, I could have stared at forever. I didn't know who the artists were or what the medium was that they used, or often what they wanted to convey.

At that age I loved painting and drawing; I could do it for hours. I remember a peculiar little daytime television programme called Paint Along with Nancy that I used to watch whenever I had a chance. It was a simple, step-by-step guide to painting landscapes and still lifes; I loved it.

It turns out that one or two of my teachers thought I was quite good at art, and as I got older, they told me that I should take exams to prove how good I was.

That's when my love of art stopped.

I was told how to paint and draw in a certain way; the correct way. I was shown other art and told that that was how it should be and what it should look like.

Soon afterwards, I stopped painting and drawing altogether.

I had fallen out of love.

A few years ago, around the time of the new Millennium, I discovered eBay. At the time, we were redecorating our home and wanted to hang some art on the walls. I used eBay to find some reasonably priced work. As I looked through the material on offer, I struck on an idea. I was going to produce some art and try to sell it on the site. I went out and purchased some acrylic paints, some rectangular canvasses and an easel. My first attempt was a canvas painted in gradient tones of purple with a thin bright lilac line across the middle of the canvas. I called it "Purple Horizon" and stuck it up on the site for auction. To my amazement, it made over £100. It was simple.

I loved painting it and a few other canvasses that went on to sell too. I hadn't painted for over ten years and it had taken me until my thirties to get over the feeling that my work could only be worthy if it was judged to be of value by someone else. I also found my self-confidence, partly I guess because it was just a bit of fun, to pick up a brush and lose myself in painting.

What did you love doing as a young child? When did you last do it? Go and give it a try right now!

The idea that everything we do must be of value to others becomes quite a major theme in the way we lead our lives.

I work with a few professional athletes; one, a cricketer, came to see me when his career had begun to stall. As a youngster he had been tipped for the very top; he had huge natural talent and flair but as he headed into what should have been his prime something happened and he hit a worrying streak of underachievement. He didn't lack passion or commitment but something wasn't working, which made the situation even more worrying. He sought counsel wherever he could. He would studiously listen to coaches, advisers and colleagues, desperately searching for the answer.

We met at his lowest point; unsure if his contract would be renewed or even whether he would be able to continue his career in professional sport. We didn't do anything complicated during our work together. For most of the time, we talked; about him, his aspirations, his love of the game and his feelings as a young successful player compared to now. He had an absolute desire not only to succeed for himself but he had developed an, at times, suffocating desire to succeed for others. He had started to overthink everything about his life; constantly looking through the lens of what others would expect of him, what they wanted him to do, how they expected him to behave.

Now this can be complex for most people. However, when your job is to hit a ball being hurled at you at nearly one hundred miles an hour, even a split second of self-doubt or second guessing can put you in harm's way. You might not just mess up, but end up getting seriously hurt in the process.

Taking it back to basics

Overthinking is a real problem.

We talked about a number of things, taking much of his thinking back to basics. I remember him telling me how much he loved the smell of the fresh cut grass, of playing on a warm summer's day and even the sound of the birds in the trees and the smell of the equipment; leather and wood.

So instead of walking on to the field of play, trying to juggle everyone's advice and expectations in his head, he started noticing those simple things. He started to focus on himself and trust his own instincts again, which in turn allowed him to be more objective in his reflections and more able to absorb advice into his own sense of what would work for him.

He relaxed and started to trust his own instincts again; he began to reconnect with his own talent.

The impact has been profound; he didn't just earn a new contract, he is now in the prime form of his career and is well on his way to fulfilling that youthful potential.

When was the last time you stopped and just enjoyed some of the sensory world around you? When did you last take time to look into the night sky?

Our success or our own perception of success becomes so dominant in our thoughts. Yet, do we ever stand back to think about where those perceptions come from? How often do we reflect on whether they really are ours?

Success = happiness?

I have an older relative who was born in a different time and place. She was a gifted musician and performer who had dreams of acting and singing as a career. Her parents, who like most parents were desperate to see her make a success of her life, were concerned about her ambitions, partly because for a young, middle class woman, this simply wasn't the done thing. Her parents wanted to see her married to a successful young man with prospects, so that they could build a successful and therefore happy life together.

She was raised well and deferred to their better judgement. She married young and settled down to have a family. She always had a piano and would often play; she even wrote the music for the first dance at her wedding.

But life didn't really work out as planned for her. She had two children and has gone on to have a happy life with her second husband, but always gets quite emotional when she thinks about what could have been.

Her joy comes in seeing her own children plough their own furrows; she has always passionately protected their right to define their own success and has always been there for them when they failed. That takes huge courage as a parent.

Thank you, mum!

Failure and the fear of failure is not a new theme of discussion but it cannot be ignored. As young children, failure isn't a bad thing, it's just a thing. We fall over, we get up. We make a mess, we tidy up. We mispronounce a word or a phrase, we laugh and we try again.

There's failure and then there's FAILURE!

When we are very young and we make a mistake, people laugh at us, we laugh, and it's fun. We are relaxed, there is no stigma; so we listen and learn, rethink a strategy and go again.

As we grow a little and start school we still have a go, jumping at opportunities to try stuff out, to engage and to answer questions.

A little later on we are rewarded for getting things right and sometimes punished for getting things wrong. For the school test champions comes the glory; certificates, stickers and jobs of responsibility in the classroom; and those parent consultation evenings when the ticks in your exercise books are held up as examples of just...