This week, I’m promoting coach and business mentor Ankush Jain’s new book Awakening The Coach Within.

The book is jam-packed with insights which are impossible for any coach or up-and-coming coach NOT to take something valuable from.

But more than that, the book is also a breath of fresh air for anyone who’d like to find more ease and joy with their work.

Take the chapter in Ankush's book called “I Don’t Need to Take This Seriously”. A chapter whose ethos is close to my once-too-serious heart.

When I started out in the merry world of banking, I was VERY serious.

Banking was serious business, after all. The industry had a constant whiff of high stakes hubbub. Colleagues thrashed out deals with the intensity of a hostage negotiation and spoke about cross-department synergies as if they were holding together all of Western civilisation.

And I wanted to fit in. So I soaked up this seriousness like a dry Weetabix soaks up a bowl of chocolate milk.

Perhaps some of that seriousness seeped into other parts of my life too.

I’d bet my bottom dollar that Lauren would say I took life too seriously in the early days of our fledgling relationship.

I certainly took this newsletter very seriously when I started it. My emails had important, weighty, consequential ideas and woe betide anyone who didn’t treat them as seriously as I did.

Funnily enough, one of the reasons I enjoy writing these emails so much nowadays is that I don’t take them seriously.

Instead, I have a jolly old time frolicking around with unusual phrases, cheeky throwbacks, dodgy metaphors, quirky words, some Dad humour and even the occasional pun.

For instance, a subject line as simple as today’s would’ve been too jaunty for my liking three years ago. I would’ve had serious doubts about whether I was being professional enough.

Just a couple of weeks ago, I sent out an email about how the great Indian sage Sri Ramana Maharshi used his left butt cheek to help a stressed out exec find inner peace.

I never would’ve sent emails like that back in my serious phase!

But I’ve noticed that the less serious my emails, the more replies they get. The more they seem to hit home.

So I guess you really can hit the ground punning.

Of course, there’s a lot more to say about all this.

All of which leads me back to where we started:

If you’d like to read Ankush’s take on this same phenomenon and how he embraced his less serious side in his corporate life and coaching, Chapter 75 in his new book Awakening The Coach Within is where you’ll find his cheeky golden nuggets.

For my UK friends, here's where to go

Other Amazons are available too.

To fulfilment,

Tom

p.s. if you pick up a copy of Ankush’s new book Awakening The Coach Within and send me your receipt (a screenshot is fine) by 7pm UK Time on Friday 12th December, I’ll send you a one-time discount code.

You can use that code on one of Ankush’s trainings, The Secret to Radical Transformation.

This training usually costs £19.99.

But with the discount code?

Squadoosh!

That’s right. You can get the training for free.

You can read all about this training right here

To recap:

Buy Ankush’s new book Awakening The Coach Within and send me your receipt by 7pm UK Time on Friday 12th December.

In return, I’ll send you a discount code that lets you grab Ankush’s training The Secret to Radical Transformation for free.

Time’s ticking…