DELIBERATE
igniting the spark of human potential to live, love and work in a deliberately fulfilling way
the best way I can tell anyone about Glas is through sharing a little of MY own STORY
DELIBERATE captures just a small part of the journey I went on personally to develop and create GLAS. It all started, as many things do, with a personal need. From its early beginnings GLAS unlocked potential; for me and for my family and in time, for businesses and entrepreneurs.
I hope that in reading why it was important and a little more of the philosophy behind it, it will spark a thought or two for you. I’d love to talk to you about this and how I can support you and your own journey - as a business, team, family or personally.
DELIBERATE - An introduction
Ten days after closing the doors permanently on my family’s 106-year-old business, I walked into a networking event.
“So, what do you do?” the stranger opposite me asked, completely unaware of the anxiety this question would provoke for me. Previously, I would have reached for my business card and word-perfectly recounted this well-rehearsed introduction:
“I’M THE CEO OF A MANUFACTURING BUSINESS –
WE PRODUCE ARCHITECTURAL METALWORK AND SHOPFITTINGS.”
But my hand was empty. The words weren’t forming. I had no business card to fall back on or job title to hang my introduction around. Because there was no business. No job. And this, I now realised, threw my whole identity into question.
I no longer had an answer to this simple question. And this shook me to the core.
Looking back at this awkward moment, I can see I wasn’t ready to face a room of strangers that day. The emotions of closing my family business 10 days earlier were too raw. Too painful.
But rather than feeling regret for walking into the room of strangers, I’m grateful I was cajoled by a contact into going along. Because when I look back now and remember this awkward exchange, I see how it threw me off the treadmill of doing and forced me to focus on something I’d neglected – being me.
In the process of rediscovering my identity and purpose, I developed the GLAS framework. A Global Life Alignment System I designed initially to understand and make sense of my own situation. Along the way I became a better parent, a better leader, a better friend and wife. All the things that to me, were about choosing a life that mattered.
This book explains how my experience shaped the framework and gave me a more deliberate future.