The sun shone having no alternative on the nothing new said Sam. A great start. New Year & same old same old. Or is it? Opportunities to renew, rethink, reject & restart.

Observe the things I hoped to do this time last year. Some achieved, some started. Some not started, some strangled at birth; many failed & a few notable successes. Likewise for 2016 there are things I will do, things I won’t, things I’d like to do but won’t follow through. Successes. Failures. Always failures. Learn the most from those nut crushers.

I’m certainly not making any grandiose claims here. Hoist with your own petard is a very public humiliation. No, any resolutions will be made in the privacy of my own home, my own diary pages, my own mind.

The brilliant Nobel Prize winning mathematician John Nash said in an interview: “I began to tire of certain types of irrational thinking.” It’s an interesting concept, especially in the case of Nash. His struggle with schizophrenia almost certainly contributed to his brilliance as a mathematician.

He acknowledged the potential link between an unconventional mind & creative thought. Proving the age-old adage that madness & genius are closely related.

“Times I didn’t follow the norm, thought differently. But I can see there’s a connection between not following normal thinking & doing creative thinking. I wouldn’t have had good scientific ideas if I had thought more normally. One could be very successful in life & be very normal…”

In his autobiography Nash claimed he was able to ‘will’ himself out of his disorder. Is this possible? Is it possible to harness the power of our own mind to eliminate all sorts of negative thoughts, self doubt, irritations etc? If so, how can you train your dragon?

Nash said:

“I began to intellectually reject some of the delusionally influenced lines of thinking which had been characteristic of my orientation. This began, most recognizably, with the rejection of politically-oriented thinking as essentially a hopeless waste of intellectual effort. So at the present time I seem to be thinking rationally again in the style that is characteristic of scientists.”

Looking at all aspects of what we do, coaching, teaching, watching our children learn, it is the conventional that is the norm & the unconventional is increasingly frowned upon. That stifles creativity & non conformity.

Let 2016 embrace more non comformity & see where that takes us.