Alastair Macartney's Blog, page 7

We Are Perfectly Mad

My wife and I have never been normal. This fact, though potentially embarrassing for some, is something we revel in. We have strived throughout our individual lives to write our own rules, and follow our own paths. It wasn’t, however, until those paths collided, in the melting pot that is London, when my British accent helped me reel in, and then fall for, an American vet student, that we felt the true breadth of our freedom. Not only were we free to be exactly the people we wanted to be, but we could do so with the support and love of someone just as crazy.

Now we want to stretch just one step further, and share our Perfect Madness with the world. We want to infect you all with a desire to challenge yourself to escape the confines of conformity, to create your own happiness, to make the impossible possible and to redefine the road to success in your life. If you choose to join us, by tuning into our bi-weekly blogs, listening to our podcasts, and maybe even attempting to complete our year long Toolkit challenge, you must know; this is no easy journey you are about to embark on. Opening your mind to all the possibility in the world can be exhausting. However, to ease your transition from a drone to an enlightened free spirit, we have carved many small steps into the mountain you must climb.

Let’s start by breaking it down, piece by piece. Perfect Madness is our frame of mind. The same frame of mind that may be viewed by friends, colleagues, peers, and absolutely by family members from previous generations, as just plain madness. But we can definitively say that madness has purpose, direction, rewards beyond measure, and to put it simply; is perfect.

There are four pillars of the Perfect Madness frame of mind; Balance, Allies, Adventure and Path. It is only when we actively, and effectively invest in each of these aspects of our lives that we can achieve Perfect Madness.

Balance:

Happiness, Health, Spirituality and Fitness

Ensuring our minds and bodies live in harmonious symbiosis by engaging in daily activities that promote health and induce smiles.

Allies:

Love, Networking, Family, and Friendships

Actively engaging with our loved ones, and expanding our network whenever possible, for it is with a helping hand that we can achieve anything.

Adventure:

Pushing Boundaries, Travel, Risk, and Leisure Boundaries

Refusing to settle for the mundane by discovering and creating excitement and enhancing pleasure whenever we can.

Path:

Success, Career, Productivity and Money

Redefining success by finding the vocation which will provide the greatest sense of daily satisfaction, and optimising productivity to ensure our profession does not engulf our lives.

We welcome you to join us! Start by reading our page on Your Journey and follow our blog for more details and to keep-up to date with weekly content release. But don’t stop there, its not enough to read, you won’t passively absorb the Perfect Madness bug, you have to act! Check out the Perfect Madness Toolkit, which aims to provide you with everything you need to live a year in the Perfect Madness frame of mind. Within its pages you will find the tools required to challenge yourself to escape the confines of conformity, to create your own happiness, to make the impossible possible and to redefine the road to success in your life.

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Four Lessons To Beat The Wedding Industry and Celebrate The Happiest Day Of Your Life

Three Facts About Me

I want to start by sharing how three seemingly unconnected facts, leading me to discover that the Wedding Industry does not have the creation of your “Dream Day” in mind. The masterminds behind such ideas as wedding favours, or in other words, presents the bride and groom buy for their guests … on their wedding day … care about only one aspect of your matrimonial celebration; how much money is it going to make them??

Aforementioned Elyse trivia time. To begin with, I have the distinct pleasure of being not only American, but born and raised in Southern California. The golden coast has a reputation for beauty, opulence, luxury, and instilling in each generation the innate desire to competitively demonstrate how much money you make to your neighbours. In the good ole US of A, and particularly in SoCal, the home of movie stars and Orange County, or the cringeworthy “O.C” as the world has come to know it, I was all too aware of what having a wedding entailed. Since childhood, I had known the endless list of professionals which must be hired, gifts to be bought, and traditions, celebrations and pre-celebrations which must be observed, in order to avoid wedding planning failure.

Which leads me to my second fact, my husband is very much British, and it was with the above knowledge in mind, I had the tiniest, infinitesimal, degree of hesitancy when he got done on one knee, in the woods behind our Oxfordshire home, to propose. Of course the extreme delight at the prospect of spending forever with the love of my life won out, and I said YES! It was when we sat down for our first wedding planning session, that the significance of my fiance’s heritage became relevant. If my betrothed would have hailed from the States as I did, our conversation would have began at whether or not to have our engagement photo shoot prior to our engagement party and ended with who will make toasts at the rehearsal dinner vs the wedding reception. Instead, every other wedding phrase I brought-up, was met with “you are joking right? That isn’t a real thing?.”

The final fact, which has led to my dismal opinion of the wedding industry; I had TWO weddings. The geography of an international love affair is to blame, but my hope is the lessons learned can help not only myself, but others, and therefore, were worth the pain, the stress, and the expense.

My Two Very Different Weddings

Our first wedding was planned for the summer of 2013, in the city of Oxford, near to our home, and with the hopes of accommodating our dear UK friends. With my family in California, and my husbands having emigrated to New Zealand several years prior, we were effectively orphans in our country of residence, and our British friends, were our greatest support, and our “family away from family.” So making sure to have an event to include them was essential.

Our second wedding was then planned for the Autumn of 2013, in the beautiful Orange County coastal town of San Juan Capistrano, and would include a guest list which literally spanned the globe. The stakes were immediately higher for this event, as was the budget.

Lessons for a Perfect Wedding Day

There is no way to carefully reveal the nature of our first wedding, so I will just come out with it; we had a fancy dress (costume party for my American readers) pub crawl in Oxford. How did this come to pass you might ask? My husband-to-be simply said one afternoon “what if I was wearing a giant afro at our wedding?” Which leads me to my first lesson learned about how to have the perfect wedding day; remember at all times, this is not your day alone, but instead the shared celebration of your shared love, and the marking of the start of your shared life. Don’t let yourself get so caught-up in what vision you have created in your mind, fuelled by your frienemies at the Wedding Industry, that you are blind to discovering what would make you both happy that day.

So instead of ignoring his silly suggestion, I pondered it. Soon enough talks of afros turned into the creation of a whole theme; “Love through the ages”, and on the day my husband and I exchanged vows, I didn’t just have an audience of my best friends to support me, I had an audience of my best friends dressed as 80s rockstars, Cleopatra, flappers, hippies, and even a Roman Soldier to sign as our witness. My husband and I spent under $500 for our wedding. Total. Including our outfits, the price of the legal paperwork, and sharing a meal with our nearest and dearest. Second lesson; don’t be afraid to break away from the expected and the predictable.

One of the reasons I enjoyed our first wedding so much was the value for money. It’s human nature to appreciate something more, when we know we got a good deal. Third lesson; frugality is a virtue, why wouldn’t you want to apply that logic to your wedding? We explained in our email invitations that we would like as our wedding gift for our guests to join us on the day, and treat themselves to a pub meal. We booked a pub which would cater to a large group without charging a venue hire fee, and we had a ceremony at 10am to avoid a venue hire fee at the Registry office. Our wedding toasts were beside an Oxford canal, were we all drank out of communal store-bought champagne bottles. Instead of spending our whole budget on a fancy cake, we fed each other a bite of sticky toffee pudding from the pub’s dessert menu. Rather than hire a pricey professional photographer, we handed our camera to a friend before the ceremony and asked him to take pictures for us whenever he could, he was more than happy, and felt honoured at the delegated responsibility.

Our California wedding was beautiful, immaculate really. Every detail of the decor and the day were painstakingly planned. In fact, so much was to be packed into one afternoon that guests were handed a handmade craft paper Itinerary as they walked along the beach to the ceremony. Final wedding lesson; plan the day to optimise enjoyment, not tick wedding industry boxes. I enjoyed the bringing together of our families in the many pre-wedding events, never felt so pampered as after our hair and make-up stylists were done with me and my bridesmaids, I have beautiful sunset beach shots from our photographer, and the personalised wedding topper from our three tiered cake. But, I also had months of planning, a hefty budget, and a day that had to run on military precision timings to accomplish everything it set out to.

Its NOT All About the Benjamins Baby

Don’t be duped into believing you have to follow the traditional wedding recipe in order to have your ideal wedding day. No one cares if they go home with a keepsake keychain, or got to take their picture in a prop photo booth, they are there to celebrate your love, and set you on the right path of a supported and happy marriage.

In our first celebration, I accomplished the goal of every wedding; my best friend and soul mate became my husband. But this goal was achieved without breaking the bank, without any stress or anxiety, without a single pre-wedding tiff, and I had more care-free fun in that day than on any before or after it.

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Fear Exists In Your Head

This is an extract from my new book, Perfect Madness: Escaping The Confines Of Conformity, Making The Impossible Possible And Redefining The Road To Success In Your Life! Please have a read and let me know what you think.

Fear Exists In Your Head

Are you scared? Is it a rational fear? Often our fears aren’t rational at all. Those that fear air travel will quite happily drive in cars and on roads that have a far higher statistical risk of serious injury or death.

Fear is all in your head. You choose to be scared, to be fearful. Of course, that’s not strictly true. If your mind were free enough to choose then you probably wouldn’t choose to be scared. But on a deeper level, one that may at first seem out of your control, it is you and it is your mind that is choosing to be scared and to feel fear. It is your own personal perception of the situation and how you choose to deal with it.

This means that as well as choosing to be scared, you can choose the opposite; you can choose not to be scared. You can decide to confront that fear head-on, to say no to it. It’s up to you, it’s your body, it’s your mind, it’s your choice.

It all starts in the brain, your brain. The hypothalamus portion of the brain controls the ancient survival reaction known as the fight-or-flight response. As your stress increases about 30 different hormones are released into the body, including adrenaline.

Confronting your fears and standing up to them can be one of the hardest things to do. In fact, just thinking about doing that probably invokes fear. The secret is not to reduce the response from the hypothalamus or the secretion of hormones – we might one day need these very real survival responses. The secret is to prevent the hypothalamus from being triggered in the first place.

Trying to prevent this trigger might seem a little impossible at first, but it works in stages. It starts by reducing the secretion of hormones and dealing with them before you can get close to full prevention.

Now for the hardest part – you need to choose to confront your fears. Pick just a tiny fear first. Step outside of your comfort zone and push your own boundaries. Don’t think too much, just delve in and go for it. Force yourself to be scared.

Perhaps you’re scared of picking up a spider or speaking to a random stranger. Stop what you’re doing right now and go find that spider or a stranger. Commit.

How did it go? Did you die or suffer serious injury? No? OK, go and do it again. Right now. Then do it tomorrow and the next day.

How scared were you after a week compared to the first time? The fear will have reduced. The more you do this the more your irrational fears will reduce. And the best bit, this added confidence translates to your other fears. Your ability to manage other irrational fears and to cope under pressure will improve as you deal with these smaller fears.

Commit. Do it now. Step outside of your comfort zone and embrace a fear, whittle it down and conquer it. Choose not to be scared any longer.

My new book Perfect Madness: Escaping The Confines Of Conformity, Making The Impossible Possible And Redefining The Road To Success In Your Life! is available for pre-order on Amazon at the hugely discounted price of $0.99/£0.77. It would really help me out if you got it during the pre-order phase and left a review when it goes live. Check it out on Amazon.

 

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How To Conquer The Selfish Side Of Charity

Supporting charity, any charity, your charity is a noble cause to have. Many millions each year donate many billions to worthwhile causes. The charitable sector has become a multi-billion dollar industry and it’s one that, like many others, I’m very pleased to be involved with in some small way.

The Selfish Side

But there is a very selfish side to charity. It’s also a side that I love and a side that drives me. Used properly, this selfish side to charity is actually of great benefit to charities and of benefit to the individuals as well.

Whether I like it or not I have an ego. I try to keep it tamed and under control. Occasionally it dominates a little too much like a naughty child that has escaped from his play pen, running wild before its parents catch him and restore order. It’s this ego that the selfish side of charity feeds.

Like many of us, I’ve done sponsored events such as a short fun run, raising money for a good cause. If I’d done the run without raising money it would have still given me some form of satisfaction. But undertaking the event and raising money for charity multiplied that factor and made me feel even more accomplished.

Happiness

Psychologically, supporting charity makes us happier. A study from the University of British Columbia indicated that people felt happier when they were spending money on others instead of themselves.

When you do good, you feel good. By helping others be that donating money to charity or helping someone cross the road, you get a certain sense of satisfaction and your level of happiness increases.

Moral Compass

We all have an internal moral compass. Some people’s moral compass is more attuned than others. No matter the precision, we all make mistakes and could operate better but having this compass to guide us, for the vast majority, will bring us back to supporting others. It’s the right thing to do.

Using Your Selfish Side to Everyones Advantage

Some people feel bad that supporting charity makes them happy. They feel bad that somehow they get pleasure in someone else’s misfortune, that it has stroked their ego. Sometimes they then stray away from donating further help or assistance.

But that isn’t the case. You feel pleasure and happiness because you’ve helped someone or something. In some small way you’ve helped to make something possible. Now turn this further to everyones advantage:

Donate More. The more you donate the more you will get this happiness ‘rush’. You feel good and those you help get more assistance.
Don’t Just Donate Money. How about food and blankets to the homeless? What skills do you have? Could you use them to help the charity? Donate your time, effort and expertise.
Market What You Do. Not to boost your ego but charities need all the help they can get. Let people know you’re donating to charity and why you chose it. It’ll raise awareness for the charity concerned and might result in donations and support from others.
Pick The Cause For You. Find something you’re really in to. Perhaps you know a family or friend that has suffered from cancer or know someone in the military. Then support one of these charities. Find something that really resonates with you. The closer your bond to the cause the more likely you are to continue any association in the longer term and provide an avenue for longer term happiness from it.
Tax Breaks. Whether a corporation or an individual, there are tax breaks involved in giving to charity. Even if you can afford not to, make the most of them and then give even more to charity.

Strive to feel good when you support charity. It’s a good thing, not something bad. The better you feel about it, the more you’re likely to continue it. The better you feel the more the charity benefits in the longer term.

Start today. Find a charity you bond with. Take action. Make an online donation now and share the cause on social media. Then come up with a plan to follow this up and do more.

Photo by Emiliano.

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When A Career Break Is The Right Career Move

What is a Career Break?

Like the vast majority of your fellow humans of the world, you worked your way up from the bottom of the food chain in your chosen career path.  Before you had time to blink, time to stop and look behind you, to assess how much of that mighty mountain you have ventured up, your twenties were gone.  Your thirties.  How many decades have to pass us by, before  we take a deep breath and we give ourselves the gift of self-analysis?

When Do you Take a Career Break?

The answer is slightly different for us all.  In general terms, sometime in our late 20s or 30s the forward momentum which fuelled us through the previous decade(s) with a go-getter attitude seems to start to wear off.  Perhaps, the goal posts we envisioned that once reached would mean we were successful, we were content, we were happy, seem to have been met, or pushed further away.

After 11 years in, I had to hit the pause button.

Why Would You Take a Career Break?

The reason is different for everyone.

Once in a lifetime opportunity.  Your best friend since childhood is taking a year away from life to travel the world, and wants you to be their partner in crime.  Your mother faces the Big “C”, and months of chemotherapy and radiation treatment.  You are expecting your first baby, the start of your own family.  Whatever the specifics are, the motivation is the same; if you miss this, it will never happen again.  If you aren’t there to see your babies first smile, a picture will not do it justice, and the second will somehow not be quite as perfect. If you pay for a nurse to stay with your mother and provide her with care, you will always have a tinge of guilt that you didn’t nurture her, like she once did you.  Arguably slightly less ominous, if you aren’t there to take pictures with your friend in front of the Eiffel Tower,  you will be harassed by the ever-annoying onslaught of selfies.

You have reached a breaking point.  The biggest clue that you need to take a step back can be a loss of passion in your life.  If you used to wake-up everyday with a smile, and love heading to the office, and now find yourself living for the weekend, something has shifted internally.  It may be that your priorities are merely changing, now you have a family at home, and the pull to them outweighs your pull to work.  Or it may be slightly more serious, and you are contemplating the fact that your chosen career path no longer satisfies you.  Either way, time away, a complete removal, to allow yourself the freedom to ask the right questions, and find their weighty answers is what you need.

Self Investment.  The older we become, the more slices invade our once relatively empty pie chart of daily time allowances.  The easiest slice to give away when the kids activities start to occupy every afternoon and weekend, is ourselves.  Do you remember the list of self-improvements we hoped to accomplish once life was settled?  To go back to school and earn a degree, to become a certified yoga instructor, to meditate twice a day, to master French cuisine.  I am sure I don’t have to tell you, life doesn’t settle.  It becomes increasingly more intricate and complex, while free time seems to shrink proportionately.  If we don’t make the time to seek out those dreams, however seemingly obscure, and make them a reality, this life will pass us by.

Why not all three?  As the big 3-0 approached I slowly, and then abruptly, realised I was facing all three of the above reasons.  After over a decade of non-stop achievements on the step-ladder of my chosen career, a small animal veterinarian, I was exhausted.  Compassion fatigue, is the trendy phrase the industry uses to describe the fact, that I was becoming the person who hoped, no, prayed, their out-of-hours emergency phone didn’t ring, and used my two weekends off a month as motivation for surviving my 60+ hour weeks.  I had always wanted to be a vet, this was my dream job, so how I had lost that spark I left vet school with?   The passion for helping animals and the people who loved them seemed to be fading.  Coincidentally, my husband and I had discussed our desire to start a family, and I knew that a safe pregnancy, and extended period at home with my new baby were the right choice for me.  I was not going to be the one to miss my son’s first smile.  Finally, a nagging urge for self-investment had been growing in me since before I graduated vet school.  Though I was a qualified vet in the UK, I needed to pass the American Veterinary Boards, or NAVLE exam, if I ever hoped to practice as Dr. Mac in my home country.  Again and again, I pushed it off.  Too busy on my course and then too busy working to possibly attempt this goal.

So How do You Take a Career Break?

I have a recipe for enabling a successful career break; the three S’s of success to be exact.

Save.  If you have been clever enough to gather a nice green pile in bank already over the years, it will expedite the actioning of a career break.  If you only have a meagre pile, or no pile at all, worry not, there is no time like the present.  With each transfer to your savings account, think of the priceless gift you are purchasing for yourself; time.  Speaking of which, this may be a lengthy process, perhaps even years, but try to think of the prolonged period, as a positive.  Time to plan how you will use your time effectively.

Support.  Like anything in life, you can’t take this journey alone.  You will need to confide in your family and friends, you will need them as allies as you take a giant leap out of the confines of conformity.  Don’t be surprised if this takes a few conversations before they are on board.  Especially members of older generations, will find your “abandonment” of everything you have strived for shocking.  Explain your rationals, and stand your ground, you are the only one with uninhibited access to your mind and to your heart, only you can make this choice.  Also, don’t be surprised by the generosity of your allies, and don’t be afraid to take it.  It may be a while until your next paycheck, and if someone wants to buy your drink at the pub, or cook you a lovely meal, accept, and know that you would do the same if roles were reversed.  Finally, if you are married, engaged, or in a serious relationship, you will need your partner on board.  More likely than not, your finances are intertwined, and presenting a plan of how you can make a career break work in your specific financial situation, along with the why you need one, is crucial.

Sacrifice.  Undoubtedly forgoing the income you once collected weekly, will mean a back-to-basics move in your life.  The yearly trip to the Bahamas, the spa days, the seasonal updates to your wardrobe, and eating out Friday- Sunday may all need to be bypassed for a period of time.  The stripping away of the non-essentials is a cleansing experience.  This is meant to be a period of redefinition in your life, and what better way to do this then to ask the question, what do I really need to be happy?  More often then not, we find that the answer to that question does not have a price tag.

Who is a Career Break Right For?

My time away from the hospital has already been such a gift.  I have passed my NAVLE exam, and feel a surge of pride whenever I sign correspondence Dr. Macartney.  My pregnancy could not have gone any smoother, and my son continues to grow the perfect amount for each prenatal appointment, and in less than a month I will be smiling at his face, waiting for him to smile in return.  But maybe the best blessing of my career break is that I can’t wait to go back.  I have had time to analyse what aspects of my profession were draining my passion away, and I feel equipped with strategies to address them, so that I can wake-up with a smile every morning and love what I do again.

So who is a career break right for? I might be so bold as to say, everyone.  We all need the space and freedom to make sure we are getting the most out of our time on this planet.  Our career is not the only aspect of life which needs to be nurtured, and invested in.

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