Tag: meeting

Changing the questions

Posted on by philipdodson

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Today I met Amanda, at a very posh coworking space, We Work, and it happened through the power of Twitter, well partly.

So sitting last week a notification popped up from Twitter saying ‘Amanda C Watts, is now following you’. I have to be honest, I don’t always look at these notifications, as I am training myself not to be a magpie and look at the next shiny new thing

Anyway, I replied with ‘thanks for following, can I ask why do you do what you do? replying in 140 characters might be a challenge’.

The response from Amanda was ‘help people build their dreams. I am on a mission to help 1 million people leave a legacy so I can leave mine’.

She asked me the same, my response ‘I am on a mission to create an alternative world based on putting people first and values. A world for the many not just a few’.

Today we met for the first time. I had a great conversation, realised that we had common values, had other things in common and agreed to connect further, and who knows what will come from it.

So the point of this, had I just followed back or replied with ‘thanks for following, what do you do?’. She might have replied ‘I’m a coach’ and when Amanda asked me, I might have replied ‘I run a coworking space’.

The meeting probably wouldn’t have happened.

If you want a different outcome, ask a different question.

My 30 day challenge – day 1 by Philip Dodson

Posted on by philipdodson

Inspired by listening to a talk at a 4Networking event in Camden last week, by Paul Lomas of Energy Centric, who despite his football allegiances, is a great bloke. He talked about “30 day” challenges and some of the amazing ones that he had done.

We all have things in our lives that are habitual, like eating chocolates, or watching too much TV and so on. The only way to change these habits or start new habits, is to do something regularly and repeat for as long as possible, so a new habit forms. You have to stick at though, for at least 30 days for this to work.

So I had a few habits I wanted to break and few new habits I wanted to create, so today I have started. So far so good just 14 hours in from waking this morning.

One of my 30 day challenges was to take a picture each day and then write a short piece about that photo.

So here is day 1

30 day

I travel through Euston Station at least twice a day for most days of my life, so I thought I’d take a picture. What strikes me is, there is always an endless stream of people, like ants in a nest, scurrying on a journey. Where did they come from? Where are they going? Do they pass through here everyday? Will our lives ever cross?

It’s amazing that sometimes we connect with randoms from somewhere else in the world, yet people we may see everyday, we may never know.Wouldn’t it be amazing to get some of those people together, just once and share stories, who knows what could have happened or what opportunities are missed, simply because you never talked.