Six In

Morning friend.

I’m 46 today.

Sara and the boys have just disappeared out to pick up a few things for a birthday brunch.

I’m sitting at my desk writing to you.

Which, strangely, is exactly where I want to be.

There is something about knowing that tomorrow morning a few thousand people will sit somewhere with a coffee and read these words that still gives me enormous pleasure.

So writing this on my birthday doesn’t feel like work.

It feels like a pretty good way to spend part of it.

I started the day at 07:00 on the Jiu Jitsu mats, helping to teach 35 of my students before a few tough rounds afterwards.

Apparently allowing people to try to strangle you before breakfast is what passes for a proper celebration when you reach middle age.

Afterwards, Sara, Ziggy and I walked through the woods with a really good coffee.

Training. Family. Nature. Coffee. Writing.

Forty-six has started pretty well and I'm counting my blessings.

Birthdays have a habit of making us count other things too.

Years.

Achievements.

Failures.

What we have.

What we thought we would have by now.

And this morning I found myself thinking about one number in particular.

Six.

I am six years into my forties.

When I turned 40, I made a deliberate decision about what I wanted this decade to be.

I had spent almost twenty years in public service.

I was proud of that life, but when it ended I was starting again in many respects.

I wanted my forties to be the decade I built.

Businesses and financial security.

Work I enjoyed.

More control over my time.

Friendships I could really trust.

I knew I would have to sprint hard.

What I underestimated was how long six years can feel when you are still waiting to see where all that effort leads.

Because six years in, I am nowhere near finished.

Some things I started have failed completely.

Some ideas and relationships went nowhere.

Some cost money.

Others cost time.

A few probably cost more sleep than they deserved.

But there are things standing now that weren’t there when I turned 40.

Gracie Barra Leeds.

A speaking business I love.

MAN-1 beginning its own journey.

And this week our ROW4MND team completed our circumnavigation of Great Britain.

Fewer than 100 people have ever done that.

Together we have now raised £151,000 for MND, taking my personal fundraising over the last four years beyond a quarter of a million pounds.

I am enormously proud of that.

But none of it feels like arrival.

I still feel like I am building.

That difference matters.

At 46 I am also more conscious than ever that the road ahead is finite.

There may now be less of it in front of me than there is behind.

I don’t find that depressing.

I find it useful.

It creates urgency.

But urgency can be dangerous if it convinces us that anything which hasn’t produced the final result yet must somehow be failing.

Maybe that is where I have been getting it wrong.

Perhaps the first six years were never supposed to produce the finished picture.

Perhaps they were only supposed to produce evidence.

Experience.

Relationships.

Reputation.

Mistakes.

Confidence.

Brick after brick.

A wall of evidence.

Some bricks tell you that the direction you are heading is right.

Others teach you, often fairly expensively, that it isn’t.

And occasionally you discover that the thing you have spent six months building is in completely the wrong place and have to knock the bastard down.

That counts too.

Part of me wonders whether the final few years of this decade will produce more than the first six combined.

Not because some tidy 80/20 rule guarantees it.

Life rarely works that neatly.

But because foundations have a habit of looking unimpressive until you start building on top of them.

The relationships made in year two can create an opportunity in year eight.

The lesson from a failed idea can make the next one work.

Reputation compounds.

Experience compounds.

Trust compounds.

Perhaps progress looks slow right up until the moment that it doesn’t.

This week our eldest son received his GCSE results.

He absolutely smashed them.

But a feeling struck me before he even opened the envelope.

I already knew I was proud of him.

I had watched the work.

I knew the effort he had put in.

Whatever numbers were printed on that sheet weren’t going to change the evidence I had already seen.

And then an uncomfortable thought arrived.

Why am I so much worse at extending myself the same courtesy?

Perhaps I don’t need the final score at 46 either.

I don’t need certainty that everything I am building will work.

I just need enough evidence to know whether the next brick is worth laying.

And if the evidence says it isn’t?

To have the courage to stop.

Change direction.

Knock part of that wall down.

I still have things I want badly.

Businesses I want to grow.

Work I want to create.

A book I am still fighting to release.

Adventures I haven’t yet attempted.

Security I still want to build for my family.

I feel the urgency of that more at 46 than I did at 40.

But perhaps I also understand something now that I didn’t then.

The fact that you haven’t reached the destination doesn’t mean the road behind you was wasted.

Six years in.

Still building.

Still hoping.

Still occasionally getting it wrong.

No final score yet.

Just enough evidence to lay the next brick.

Let’s take a moment to debrief together:

What are you currently judging too early because you are demanding a final result?

And if you look honestly at the evidence rather than the outcome, what is it telling you?

Your mission this week (if you choose to accept it):

Choose one thing you have been building for a while.

Write down five pieces of evidence about where it is heading.

Then make a decision.

Stop.

Change course.

Or lay the next brick.

That’s enough for now.

More next Sunday.

Mike

Hold the Line · Do the Hard Things