There are roughly 250 working days in a year, meaning a 40-year career looks like 10,000 days of doing work of some description. 10,000 seems a big number, until you realise 140+ of those days have already passed since you sat eating turkey at Christmas.

Just pause for a moment. What have you done with the first 140 days of your working year and how would you assess the results they've created for you? Which version of you showed up to work?

It's easy to focus on organisational structures, corporate cultures and operational protocols and convince ourselves that it's external factors that determine the versions of ourselves that are active and present once we've clocked in, but the critical factor comes from within. It is our personal working mindsets and the ways in which we react while we do the jobs we do. And sometimes when we're working we're really not ourselves.

Think for a moment about yourself, operating at your very best; those memorable times when you were switched on, active and the things you delivered made a difference to the people and customers you work with. They've happened to all of us.


  • How were you thinking in those moments?
  • What beliefs were at play, that underpinned your focus?
  • How did you react to the people and circumstances around you?
  • Where, when you think about it, was your head at?


The chances are good that your mindset was positive, with your focus on a goal or aligned with an outcome and where you were able to apply your unique talents and abilities in that particular scenario, project or situation. And you probably grafted, hard.

Showing up is amazing. And too many of us aren't doing enough of it.

How can you take the elements of your best thinking, language, behaviour and reactions back then, and replicate them starting from Monday morning next week, over the rest of this month and through the next few decades of your working life on this planet?

Don't just go to work next week, show up.