Like a cheeky bargain? Me too – just don’t do what Brian Robson from Cardiff did…

05/05/2021 By Lee

Like a Bargain?

<a href="https://www.vecteezy.com/free-photos/ornament">Ornament Stock photos by Vecteezy</a>

Most people like to find a bargain but Brian Robson (not the football one!), now, a 75-year-old from Cardiff took it to a whole new level. When he was 19 he was desperate to come home from Australia. He’d gone there with work, but he was feeling really homesick and he wanted to come home. But in 1965 the fare from Melbourne to London was £700 and the newspapers report that he only earned £40 a month.

So one night he had an idea.

He decided to send himself as a parcel!

He bought a small crate about the size of one of those hotel room mini-bar fridges, minus the whiskey. And he persuaded his new friends Paul and John (no, not one half of The Beatles!) to strap him in and pack him up along with a ‘water in’ and a ‘water out’ bottle, a pillow and his suitcase. The flight was supposed to last around 36 hours, but it ended up taking three days and unfortunately, he didn’t land in London, he only got as far as Los Angeles.

When he landed in the US, an eagle-eyed customs worker found him after thinking he was a dead body. He told the BBC that a man had “looked through a hole in a wood knot in the chest and we caught each other eye to eye”.

It was a miracle he’d survived. He’d spent a day upside down even though there was a sticker saying “THIS WAY UP” and he’d almost died of extreme heat and cold while in the plane’s hold. Once the U.S. authorities realised he wasn’t a spy he was released, found his way home and resumed his life in Wales, hobbling from sore muscles and exhaustion.

Like most Northern blokes I like to save a bit of money, but I also realise that sometimes I have to pay someone to do things.

I paid a guy to fix our lawn the other day, my Facebook friends told me I could do it myself, but I chose to use an expert instead.

Both at work and at home, when have you wished you’d hired someone to help you rather than do something on the cheap?

Remember: your time is valuable, and, whether you like it or not – you, like me, are not an expert in everything.

Because of strict copyright, I can’t use a good photo for this article so please go here to see them all:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-northern-ireland-56648439

https://www.smh.com.au/world/europe/crate-stowaway-who-spent-four-days-in-cargo-could-have-flown-for-free-20210409-p57hrt.html

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/14/world/australia/brian-robson-crate-australia.html

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P.S. Brian is trying to track down his old friends, so Paul and John, or their relatives can contact Mr Robson at brianpms@hotmail.com

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5 ways to really enjoy Christmas this year…

11/12/2015 By Lee

Christmas – 5 ways to really enjoy Christmas this year…

Things I love about Christmas:
Turkey and cranberry sauce, slightly mad Christmas lights, food, seeing my family, food, time off work, great TV specials, food and a drop of Port with good friends, oh, and, err food!

Things I hate about Christmas:
People buying stuff they don’t need or can’t afford, presents that go straight to landfill, the over-hype of “the day”, hearing of people I know being on their own at Christmas, people who say it’s just for kids, Christmas pudding!

What do you love and hate about this time of year?

Sure, there are things that I love and hate about Christmas time like most people do – but I certainly wouldn’t ban it, like some have said that they would on Martin Lewis’s new online poll.

He says: “…20,367 voted on whether they’d cancel Christmas if given the choice. Perhaps unsurprisingly, parents of school-age kids were most festive, with 64% of those mums and dads happy to celebrate. Of the rest of voters, 55% would choose to press the cancel Christmas button if they could. Bah humbug!” See the full results of the poll here: http://is.gd/jgjQ78

People who want to ban it may well be in the majority, but why is that?
Maybe they are reacting to the over-hyped season of shopping?
Maybe they have a different religion, like my old neighbour who was a Jehovah’s Witness?
Maybe they have bad memories of certain events at Christmas time?
Maybe it’s an expense that they just can’t afford?
Or maybe they are just a bit grumpy?!

But for most semi-Scrooge’s, maybe they don’t realise the power of a celebration. Christmas is good for us, in fact any good holiday or celebration is good for us. But we in our British culture often just don’t celebrate very much. And some make not celebrating an artform! It always makes me laugh that anti-Christmas type people still go to Christmas parties but they sit there with a “Bah humbug” hat on while there! Or as I saw the other day at a hotel where a works party was taking place – everyone was wearing a Christmas jumper. i never saw the party as it was behind closed doors but one by one people were popping to the loo looking very sheepish wearing a really embarrassing jumper at a 5 star hotel! Their faces were a picture as they mumbled under their breath “please don’t see me please don’t see me” in their rush for the loo! I think they’d had an email from the boss to wear a light-up Christmas jumper, none of them were doing it by choice.

But amazingly it can be good for you…

5 reasons Christmas is good for you
(taken from The Mirror’s article)

1. You sing more at Christmas.
Singing is good for us, it lifts our spirits and makes us feel part of a community. Why not get to a carol service or start a sing-song at home? A study for the annual Sing for your Heart campaign by Heart Research UK found singing is a “great aerobic exercise, giving your heart and lungs a fantastic workout”.

2. You give and receive.
Studies show that when we give and receive gifts, the brain releases the feel-good chemical dopamine. Giving also releases the “cuddle” hormone oxytocin.

3. We spend more time together.
The average family manages just 36 minutes of quality time together a day, according to recent research, yet a separate poll reveals 95% of parents believe the key to happiness lies in spending quality family time together.

4. We make family traditions that will last.
“Whether it’s buying a new tree bauble every year, leaving a mince pie out for Santa or watching It’s A Wonderful Life, family traditions unite all generations”. We always watch National Lampoons Christmas vacation as our start to Christmas!

5. Err and lastly,
“The Christmas holidays are the most popular time to conceive, according to one US study, probably due to a combination of socialising more and the long, cold days of the Yuletide period when, for many, there isn’t the distraction of work! Condom sales also double in December, showing that sexual activity in general rises. And extra sex is good news for your health. As well as giving your heart a boost and relieving stress, its great for your self-esteem and wellbeing – and even makes you look younger!”

Here’s my 5 ways to really make the most of Christmas this year:

1. Take time to stop and think, reflect on the last year, write down the positives, learn from the negatives, then throw them away.

2. Don’t buy tit-for-tat presents for the sake of it, buy presents for those you want to, maybe even make a present or two yourself, a tin of homemade mince pies is much more meaningful than a bottle of talc! Or just send a text, have a Skype chat or send a card to someone you’ve lost touch with.

3. Write down a gratitude list. What are you thankful for this Christmas? It’s proven to make us feel better. Maybe also write down a task list for work too, so you can forget it and relax.

4. If you are not in the emergency services, then switch off your phone for a while (it’s so rare to do that these days) and put an autoresponder on your email too for a while, use it as your winter break.

5. And lastly, when you are at a party or get-together – be in the moment, enjoy the random conversation, games or cheesy TV, you’ll enjoy things so much more. Just go with it. Work can and should wait every now and then.

Have a great Christmas holiday, however you chose to celebrate it.

merry christmas lee jackson

Lookout for culture creep!

15/09/2015 By Lee

It’s been an eventful few weeks for the Jackson’s, we kept our house in an endlessly minimalist / tidy state (with cupboards bursting full of stuff) as we tried to sell our house, and at the same time we are preparing to move house. Obviously these two things have to happen at the same time, but it would be easier if they didn’t! While trying to keep the house tidy for viewings, we got rid of 17 years worth of rubbish from our loft and cupboards. This strangely therapeutic tidying process turned up a few surprises and some great memories along the way, including old records, lost photos and my bronze ballet medal, that i sometimes talk about on stage – i was aged five and there were only three people in the competition!

But the biggest news of all, is the most trivial first world problem I’ve ever written about – our fridge-freezer stopped working! Now, this seemed like an easily solvable problem in my activist head “my fridge freezer is broken – I’ll go and buy a new one.” I thought. Oh how naïve I was! We went to Curry’s and it dawned on us very quickly that in the 12 years that we’d had the fridge freezer, the world has changed! Seriously changed. Not only have smartphones become the norm and cloud computing has revolutionised the way we do business but 12 years ago fridge freezers were white and had no nationality. Now they are black, silver and grey and are ‘American or French style’. My 45 year old brain was, as they say – flummoxed. There wasn’t a good fridge freezer that would fit into the fresh new gap that had opened up in our kitchen. So, we had a big gap in our cupboards and nowhere to keep our milk cold. Tricky.

Not only that but we are moving soon so we had to think ahead and get the right fridge freezer for our new house kitchen too. It was a conundrum worthy of Carol Vorderman. So we opted for the new house solution. We bought a Stateside-style fridge freezer ready for our new house, with one small drawback, it doesn’t fit into our current kitchen. So we’ve got a fancy new silver fridge freezer that’s stood in the middle of our kitchen. It has sadly made that strange throwback from the 80’s, our breakfast bar, unusable. It’s weird but it’s not a bar and never eaten breakfast there, anyway I digress. It’s a big old thing and its in our way, but we’ll put up with it for a few weeks until the big move happens and we move a mile up the road. But the new appliance, has had quite an impact.

(Not actual fridge contents!)

We have noticed in the last few days that this fridge freezer is cold, really cold! Yeah I know – not a great shock to you I’m sure *|FNAME|* but to us it is. The freezer is very cold -18C to be precise and the fridge is about 5C or so it says, and because we have more space now I think we have realised that 1. Having more space in the fridge keeps things cooler and 2. Our old fridge freezer has been failing for months, and we didn’t even notice. The kids have said “Dad this is really cold” at least half a dozen times now, our new silver member of the family has changed things.

Look out for culture creep

One of the things that i love about my job is that I get to go to dozens of schools, colleges, businesses and organisations and see things from ‘fresh eyes’ all the time. I get a visitors perspective on an organiations attitudes, values and culture. A view that people who have worked there for years, often don’t see anymore. I can often learn a lot just from the reception staff and seating area, as I spend a lot of time there waiting to be ‘shown through’ to the hall or training room. I did some presentation skills a few months ago for a very big organisation and I asked as I arrived if me and the people on the course could get a coffee to start the day. I was told that the only coffee available was a dodgy machine, three floors up and through four sets of double doors. In the end I paid for a Costa instead. This organisation is being turned around slowly, but hospitality obviously wasn’t a value that they hold dear, just yet. In other places I’ve been to, I’ve been treated like a king, where my clients couldn’t do enough for me. I genuinely don’t expect the red carpet treatment, far from it, thats not my style, but its funny how companies in the same sector can have such different culture and values. I’ll work with almost anyone, as I like variety, but I do remember how people treat me, as I’m sure you do. It’s only human.

Look out for culture creep

The issue we need to be aware of at work though is ‘creep’. ‘Creep’ in our personal and professional life can be dangerous. Our old fridge slowly got less efficient and we didn’t even notice, until we got the new one that actually worked! Organisations are just the same, bad values and practice can creep up on us without us even noticing. I heard a story a few weeks ago where a 15 year old had done work experience in a company and did really well, so well in fact that a few weeks later the boss sacked a member of staff because they realised how slow and inefficient they’d been in comparison. Fresh eyes, made their business better.

So, here’s a few big questions for you this week:

If you are a leader – when was the last time you had a fresh set of eyes on your workplace and culture, to find the good, the bad and the ugly? If you choose the right person, it can only help make you better.

If you present up front – when was the last time you asked someone to give you feedback? Someone you permission to really tell you the truth? I do this a lot when I’m teaching and coaching presentation skills and I’ve seen people become engaging speakers, with just the right amount of encouragement and honest feedback.

And lastly, the big one – what about your personal life? We all love friends that we can have fun with and those who comfort us too, but do we have friends who tell us the truth when we need it? It’s a tricky one, we don’t like it, but can make a real difference. I knew a guy who had a ‘donkey’, this ‘donkey’ was one of his friends who he told his wife she could call anytime if he was being a ‘donkey’. “She never called him” he said, “but she did pick up the phone a few times”. I’ll always remember that.

How to pass exams – Part 20 – Superman, Muhammad Ali and the air steward!

18/03/2015 By Lee

How to pass exams – Part 20 Superman, Muhammad Ali and the air steward!

The heavyweight boxer Mohammed Ali was amazing,

I saw him in a Leeds bookshop a few years ago.

He is probably the greatest sports star of all time and was known to be quick witted. Interviewers loved him as he bragged about being the greatest, or “the champ”.

At the height of his career, he was on an aeroplane in First Class, with his people around him. Everyone was excited that Mohammed Ali was on the plane. The air steward was walking up the aisle checking that everyone had fastened their seat belts. She walked up and down the aisle, staring at everyone’s lap, double-checking the seat belts.

As she walked past Mohammed Ali she said

“Excuse me Mr Ali, can you put your seatbelt on please?”

Mohammed Ali said to her

“Superman doesn’t need a seat belt”.

Ouch!

But the air steward came back quickly and said

“Yes, Mr Ali, but Superman doesn’t need an aeroplane”!

I wish I’d been there!

She was super quick and left Muhammad Ali lost for words.

Superman’s a fictional alien from another planet – a made up comic character – he doesn’t exist and Superwoman don’t exist either.

We don’t have super powers – we can’t do this school/college thing on our own.

We must always take responsibility for our own success but we are also responsible for each other’s success too.

We can succeed together.

Because we contribute to everyone else’s success, the way you act in school; the way you behave in lessons; the way you are with your mates; the way you encourage your mates instead of putting them down, makes a big difference.

You and your mates are in this together.

You’re a team…

[ Based on years of research you can read more about Lee’s work at http://leejackson.org/education/howtoenjoyandsucceedatschoolandcollege – How to pass exams ]

Do you remember the rescue of the miners in Chile?

33 men got stuck 2000 feet underground.

It was 17 days before their families even knew they were still alive.

Then hundreds of people worked, prayed and hoped they would get back to the surface and on the 13th October 2010 (69 days later) the first miner Florencio Alvalos came back to the surface to hug his wife and his son.

It was truly amazing to watch. The world fixed its gaze on Chile as we saw every miner rescued safely.

Florencio said he didn’t want to celebrate until all 33 of them were back safely.

Probably the most amazing news story of recent years and it was filled with such hope, a real break from the doom and gloom of the normal news.

They all made it because they all got involved and even the engineers and families on the surface were just as much part of the rescue as the miners were themselves.

It’s like the whole of Chile contributed to their rescue.

They made it out because they were a team.

Hope kept them alive when many people said they wouldn’t make it.

You can make it too!

Honest 🙂

This an excerpt from Top UK motivational School Speaker Lee Jackson’s book “How To Enjoy And Succeed At School And College” Available in paperback and on Kindle (for only £1.99 during pre-exam time) here now.

How to pass exams – Part 19 – The 3R’s

17/03/2015 By Lee

How to pass exams – Part 19 – The 3R’s

“At the end of the day it’s really all about people.”
Will Smith

Before we come in to land, there’s just one more tip to help you, one more thing that you may not hear very often, it’s what I call the 3R’s. The 3R’s aren’t Reading, wRiting and aRithmetic, (spelt wrongly as they used to be in the 1950’s), but they stand for Relationships, Relationships and you’ve guessed it…Relationships.

Life is basically a network of relationships.

It doesn’t matter where you go, what you do, life is made up of relationships.

If you go to a shop and see a t-shirt that you want in blue but they only have it in black, you have to ask someone.

You don’t have to marry them or anything but you need to have a relationship with them to ask, it’s the same at home and with your mates in and out of school. Then of course there’s ‘going out’ with people – holdy handy, kissy kissy! Even when you go out to a restaurant, it’s always best to be nice to the waiter or waitress because if you aren’t, your food might come back with some “added extras!”

Life’s like Blackpool Rock… Kinda crunchy and bad for your teeth?!

[ Based on years of research you can read more about Lee’s work at http://leejackson.org/education/howtoenjoyandsucceedatschoolandcollege – How to pass exams ]

If you chop Blackpool Rock in the middle what does it say?

If I chop it two thirds of the way through what does it say?

If I chop it four fifths of the way through what does it say?

That’s right. “Blackpool Rock”.

Wherever you chop life and however you look at it, it will always be about ‘relationships’.

There will always be a relationship that makes all the difference, ‘cos relationships are life, and if you put your relationships first, amazing things start to happen.

I’ll give you a cast iron guarantee right here, right now.

If you get on better with the people around you at school – you’ll do better in school.

If you can get on better with the staff in school then I guarantee that you will do better in school.

You will be more successful.

But, hey, don’t panic. No-one’s perfect, you’re not perfect because I know I’m not perfect, but if you prioritise your relationships what happens is very powerful, everything else seems to fall into place.

That’s how it’s meant to be, it’s how life works.

If I am getting on better with my wife and daughters at home I have a better day/week/month.

Relationships make a BIG, BIG difference to your life, in and out of school.

Challenging but true.

Relationships do seem complicated but they’re not really. We don’t have to be an expert we just have to be honest, learn to say sorry and try to be a fun, reliable person.

Two quick tips for your life at home, help around the house every now and again and tidy your room! Your life will be soooooo much quieter and enjoyable if you do these sorts of things.

The best thing I learnt in my marriage was to wash up!

Sorry to sound like a Dad – but I promise those tips will make your life much more fun.

Try it!

More to come…

How to pass exams – Part 18 – Keep on going! #keepongoing

15/03/2015 By Lee

How to pass exams – Part 18 – Keep on going!!

“Consider the postage stamp: its usefulness consists in the ability to stick to one thing till it gets there.”
Josh Billings U.S. funny man (1818 – 1885)

In all the years I’ve been in education this one above all is important;

When wartime prime minister Winston Churchill visited Harrow, his former school, he made a famous and simple speech. After a year of war in which Britain had been bombed mercilessly by Adolf Hitler he said:

“…surely from this period of ten months this is the lesson: never give in, never give in, never, never, never, never in nothing, great or small, large or petty – never give in except to convictions of honour and good sense.”

About a year earlier many people wanted to give up as it looked like Britain was losing the war, Winston Churchill’s guts was one of the reasons Britain made it through those tough years.

Now is a bad time to give up on your education.

[ Based on years of research you can read more about Lee’s work at http://leejackson.org/education/howtoenjoyandsucceedatschoolandcollege – How to pass exams ]

Sometimes I meet people in Year 11 or 13 who look ok but really some of them have given up inside.

After almost 14,000 hours of schooling some people seem to give up at the last hurdle. Sometimes just keeping on going is how you will be successful, it’s not magic, amazing or spectacular, it’s just about getting out of bed, going to school, putting one foot in front of the other and keeping on going.

It’s obviously important to work smart and get our priorities right but for many of us it is just about putting one foot in front of the other.

One of my favourite stories is the amazing resilience of a woman called Cha Sa-soon from Seoul in Korea.

In November 2009 she passed her written driving test, nothing spectacular but she had taken it 950 times! That means that 949 times she paid her money and faced nothing but rejection and frustration. But on the 950th time she passed!

She has not actually been in a car yet!

That’s just the exam so she can have a licence and now she’ll have to sit a practical driving test so she can drive. Speaking after her 775th failure she said: “I believe you can achieve your goal if you persistently pursue it…so don’t give up your dream…be strong and do your best.”

Great advice from someone who has done well.

My mum took 12 driving tests to pass. I’ve been in the car with her and that was about the right number!

I wonder how many tests Cha Sa-soon will take?

It’s just about keeping on going.

The left hand side of the above diagram might be where you are now, your goal might be to go to university or start the career of your choice. Some people will tell you that life travels easily in a happy straight line… but that’s not how it works. Sometimes we have a good day and a not so good day, a great week and a not so great week, a bit of dip here and there, but eventually you make it to your goal. Ultimately the difference between people who succeed at school and those who don’t is simply this, it’s what you do on your not so good days when things aren’t going quite so well that makes all the difference.

Don’t give up. You can do it!

Honestly you can!

More to come…

How to pass exams – Part 17 – Join in the opportunity to serve and see your job prospects rise!

14/03/2015 By Lee

How to pass exams – Part 17 – Join in the opportunity to serve and see your job prospects rise!

Over the summer and in the holidays what are you going to do which isn’t all about you, but is about serving others too?

Simon Glass is a former pupil of Allerton High School in Leeds and up and coming film-maker, but how did he get into it?

“I went on loads of work experience trips during the summer, I didn‘t get paid but I got to work on some short films and through that I met a famous Oscar winning film director called Anthony Minghella and I went to work for his company.”

Simon went to serve for free but it also helped him to get the next step on the ladder.

He gave his time away and look how that helped him too!

I don’t fully understand it, but it seems to work.

[ Based on years of research you can read more about Lee’s work at http://leejackson.org/education/howtoenjoyandsucceedatschoolandcollege – How to pass exams ]

This is me on a clean-up day – three or four times a year youth groups from around Leeds hire a few skips and go to the toughest parts of our city, we clean up a few streets and serve the area, it’s great messy fun.

We don’t get anything for it, there’s no newspaper coverage, we just change a street for the day.

No-one talks to us at first but gradually people come out of their houses and talk to us, we put sofas in skips and pick up all sorts of unmentionable rubbish!

Why?

Because I believe that serving people makes us better humans, and that helps us to be the best we can be.

Who can you serve this week, in and out of school?

More to come…

How to pass exams – Part 16 – Serve

13/03/2015 By Lee

How to pass exams – Part 16 – Serving your fellow adventurers

“If there is one secret of success, it lies in the ability to get the other person’s point of view, and see things from that person’s angle, as well as from your own.”
Henry Ford (the first person to make mass produced cars)

Gordon Brown was one of the most ridiculed and hated Prime Ministers of recent times, the media were always having a go at him saying crazy things like “He’s Scottish, he’s got a wrinkly face…and he can’t even smile properly!’ Poor man. Whichever way you may want to vote no-one can help what their face looks like! He was trying to steer us through the worst financial crisis since the Second World War but everyone seemed to hate him. It was a tough ride for him, but when Gordon Brown eventually resigned as the Prime Minister, he said ‘It was a privilege to SERVE as the Prime Minister of the UK’.

A privilege to serve? Eh?!

He didn’t have a go at anyone he just said, “It was a privilege to serve”.

I was amazed.

When Richard St. John did his research into ‘successful’ people, he found out that they all served others in some way.

What?

Aren’t successful people only out for themselves?

Serve wasn’t really a word I expected to see in his list, and to be honest it’s kind of unfashionable these days. Rarely mentioned, never mind promoted. Serve? What did they mean?

[ Based on years of research you can read more about Lee’s work at http://leejackson.org/education/howtoenjoyandsucceedatschoolandcollege – How to pass exams ]

In order to be a successful human being we have to serve others in some way. I charge for what I do, that’s business, but I also give free advice too, because when you give something away I believe it is returned to you.

I speak at schools and businesses now, where in the past I helped them for free.

“What goes around comes around.”

“What you sow you reap.”

Imagine your favourite shop where the people serving you were only focused on themselves and not on you as a customer. What a horrible shop that would be. Rude and aloof staff; no returns or even help – maybe we’d buy something once from them, but we’d probably not go back there.

‘..I asked Ben Cohen (the co-founder of Ben and Jerry’s ice cream) what led to his success and he said “ I think I’m good at being able to put myself in the shoes of my consumer (i.e an ice cream eater!)’
(Ben comes up with all their new flavours)

Extract from “8 Traits Successful People Have In Common: 8 to be great” by Richard St. John 2010 ISBN 9780973900972

“put myself in their shoes…” sounds like serving to me.

When people are messing about in lessons and giving the teacher hassle, what would happen if they put themselves in the teacher’s shoes?

How would that make them feel?

Where do you serve?

Have a think.

More to come…

How to pass exams – Part 15 – Get good!

06/03/2015 By Lee

How to pass exams – Part 15 – Get good!

“A genius! For 37 years I’ve practised 14 hours a day and now they call me a genius!”
Pablo Sarasate (1844-1908) Violinist and composer

I was speaking at a school assembly once, as I walked into the hall there were flyers all over the place and a real buzz in the air. It turns out that Jay Sean the R&B star had just been in to do a gig and I’d missed him by 5 minutes. I was up next, how was I gonna follow him?! Then I read an article about Jay Sean and found out that before he had a major record contract or anyone knew him, he’d done 2,000 free gigs, maybe one in your school.

But why?

Because whatever it is we want to succeed at, we have got to get good.

One of my favourite TV moments was the Britain’s Got Talent episode when Susan Boyle auditioned. It was jaw dropping TV. She spoke to the camera about her cat Pebbles and then to Ant and Dec about how nervous she was, then as she walked out onto the stage looking cheerful (but slightly confused) she answered a few of Simon Cowell’s questions.

The interview was awkward and a bit embarrassing to be honest, the whole nation expected to see ‘train wreck TV’.

Everything was stacked against her, she’s a middle aged single woman from a small village in Scotland with a bad dress made out of curtains and a mono-brow. Everyone thought this isn’t going to go well, but then she started to sing, “I dreamed a dream in time gone byyyyyyyy”

And we were all blown away, even Simon Cowell.

She was amazing.

[ Based on years of research you can read more about Lee’s work at http://leejackson.org/education/howtoenjoyandsucceedatschoolandcollege – How to pass exams ]

What I love most about Susan Boyle is that she’s changed Simon Cowell forever!

The unchangeable, high waist-banded man has been changed at last! Simon Cowell said afterwards ‘I will never treat someone with such disrespect as I did with Susan Boyle.

It’s changed the way I think about auditions’, and I reckon that Simon Cowell is a lot nicer now than he was previously all because of a lovely shy lady from a village in Scotland.

Someone we all wrote off.

The papers the next day said “SUSAN BOYLE, OVERNIGHT SUCCESS!”

But she wasn’t. Why? ‘Cos she’d been singing since she was 12, in her bedroom, her bathroom, her kitchen, in the church choir, in the village hall – that’s 35 years of practice! Then at 47 she managed to get her break. There are no shortcuts. Sometimes you just have to get good at stuff over time.

Practice doesn’t make perfect but it is essential to success. When you hand in an assignment or you take an exam and it comes back graded ‘D’ – you’ve got 2 choices

The ‘Whatever’ choice; “It’s a ‘D’ ‘Whatever!”

Alternatively you can decide, ‘Do you know what – I’m gonna redo that, and get a ‘B’

It’s a choice that you have to make, no-one can make it for you.

You decide.

You have mock exams/assessments for a reason – ‘I didn’t get quite the results I needed this time but you know what I’m gonna work hard and I’m gonna do it better next time, I’m gonna work smart and I’m gonna make it happen.’

Susan Boyle and Jay Sean weren’t overnight successes and neither will you be.

But if you GET GOOD – just think what you can achieve.

More to come…

How to pass exams – Part 14 – Generating ideas and writers block

05/03/2015 By Lee

How to pass exams – Part 14 – Generating ideas

“Ideas light the way to success.”

Even though I can remember a whole talk lasting an hour or more, I can’t remember a fleeting thought and I bet you can’t either.

And now, a quick word about generating ideas.

My technique is simple:

Use some blank paper or a blank whiteboard or flip chart. I meet loads of people who try to generate ideas using lined paper or a boring blank Word document.

Don’t do it, it’s all about the blank paper or whiteboard.

Write your subject idea in the middle of the paper and do a quick mind map writing down anything that comes to mind that’s related to the subject, don’t put them in any order just enjoy the creative process.

Once you’ve got all your ideas down, then put them into order and start writing.

Easy.

You may even find it helpful to stand up while doing this.

Ever wondered why basketball shorts are so long?…

“Michael Jordan had a problem, he wanted to wear his North Carolina College shorts because he felt they were lucky. It wouldn’t normally be a problem except Michael played for the Chicago Bulls.

Boing!

He got the idea to wear baggier and longer shorts than other players so he could hide his North Carolina shorts under his Chicago Bulls uniform.

This idea set him apart, it started a craze and soon every player was wearing longer basketball shorts, which opened up whole new opportunities for sportswear.”

[ Based on years of research you can read more about Lee’s work at http://leejackson.org/education/howtoenjoyandsucceedatschoolandcollege – How to pass exams ]

Activity: Writer’s block

How to get writing when you’re stuck…

If you are having trouble writing for a project or a piece of homework – try this technique: Get a blank piece of A4 paper and write your subject at the top of the page. Then set a stopwatch to countdown for five minutes. Press start and just write on that subject without stopping, don’t worry about punctuation, grammar or neat handwriting – just write. Let it flow – don’t edit. Keep doing it until you’ve got enough to use and edit. I’ve learnt that the only way to write is to actually write and not to just talk or think about writing.

More to come…