Learning To See The Opportunities

I think that over my life I have said ‘yes’ to opportunity on a number of occasions when ‘no’ would have been the easier answer. It started very early on in my working life. After just over 6 months I realised that my first job at Lloyds Insurance didn’t suit me at all so I went to the RAF Careers office and spent two hours one lunchtime doing the tests. 6 months later I was going to RAF Swinderby to start basic training. When I was invalided out due to the ankle injury picked up in basic training I took the first opportunity I saw to get myself completely away from the UK and my problems and spent a summer over in America. After that I worked in the civil service for nearly two years before a phone call at work asked me if I wanted to take a place at Staffordshire Polytechnic the following week!! I gave myself a whole 10 seconds before saying yes, a decision that wasn’t very popular with my fiancée! We’re still together 38 years later so you could say she ended up accepting it! My decision to take a PGCE in Economics and Business Studies and start my teaching career was another quick pivot which required a quick decision to move and led to 4 very happy years at Kidderminster. I left there to move to Japan, and from there things just snowballed!!

Have all these decisions worked? No! However I suppose even the ones that didn’t led me to something that did. From 1988, certainly after I made my decision to go to Stoke for my degree, my decisions were made with Janet who gave me the courage to take them even when I was really reluctant to do so. Interestingly when I started to write this I thought I might end up by saying that I needed to say ‘yes’ more often but looking back I said it far more than I thought I had.