I get lots of calls from scammers and spammers.
I don’t know if it’s just me.
But hardly a day goes by without my iPhone buzzing as another chancer tries to talk me into buying life insurance…
Or sign me up for a monthly crate of leftover beer.
Hello Mr Grundy. Can I interest you in…
Heaven to Betsy! Not another one.
SLAM. No thank you.
It’s got so bad that I’ve stopped
answering calls. If I don’t recognise the number, I let it ring out.
Then I
Google the number to see who called. And most of the time it’s spam. So I block the number. And on it goes.
But a few days ago I had a bit of a wake up call.
I got a call from a number I didn’t recognise. So I let it ring it out.
And when I Googled the number, I saw it belonged to a local restaurant.
I knew why they were calling.
I had a booking. The restaurant
was calling to confirm the reservation.
Damn.
Now I needed to call them back so I didn’t lose the booking.
I should’ve answered the call.
Maybe some calls are worth answering after all.
I can think of a few other calls I should’ve answered too. Not calls from restaurants, but proper wake up calls.
Like sitting at my desk at midnight after everyone else had gone home…
Or hanging out with friends but only able to think about work…
Or a gnawing feeling that I was in the wrong job.
These were all wake up calls I should’ve paid attention to.
But I didn’t.
I
ignored them. I turned a blind eye.
A bit like letting the calls go to
voicemail. And then I never checked voicemail.
The wake up calls got lost to
everything else which was going on.
Like the volume of work which needed to be done. Or rushing from the office to the gym to the pub.
I was so busy I didn’t have the time or space to process what these wake up calls meant.
Plus it’s not easy to differentiate between genuine wake up calls and fake ones.
But there are some calls we really shouldn’t ignore.
So a piece of advice to my
younger self would be this:
Find more time and space for contemplation, reflection and perspective.
Give yourself a chance to hear the voice inside you.
And then listen to what that voice has to say.
That’s it for
today.
- Tom
p.s. Whenever you're
ready, here are the ways you can
connect with me