Dreams being built and torn down

 Well what a week it has been for my beloved Leicester City.

On Sunday, the hallowed turf of Wembley Stadium, with 4000 so called neutral fans (although I did see a few blue shirts in there!), the mighty Foxes took on a good Southampton team in our first FA Cup semi-final since 1982. Unfortunately I am old enough to remember us losing that one to Spurs at Villa Park!!

King Kelechi once again came up with the goods in a tense and close affair, keeping his fantastic scoring run on the go with the only goal of the game. Jamie Vardy, in the midst of a goal drought, provided another assist, proving to the world that his overall game isn't just about running past the last defender and smashing the ball home. That is now 8 assists for him.

What it means is that for the first time in 52 years, Leicester have made the FA Cup final. Five years ago, we achieved an impossible dream by winning the Premier League, something that no Fox would have thought possible, so for years, our eyes have been fixed of the FA Cup as our prize. That hasn't changed. It is now the one domestic trophy that we have not won and it would be so special to achieve this dream.

However, as dreams are being made possible, they are also potentially being taken away from clubs like ours.

On Monday, the so-called Big Six of the Premier League, along with six other clubs from Spain and Italy, announced that they were breaking away from UEFA to form their own European Super League. As you can imagine, this has caused fury and anger across Europe as it would basically exclude most clubs from competing for the European honour, as it would be virtually a closed shop competition. All 12 founders would be guaranteed to compete each year, with a massive amount of money being invested by JP Morgan Investment banks as incentives.

As fans of the so-called lesser clubs, we see it as a cynical ploy to regain their grip on the top of the Leagues as clubs like Leicester have been closing the gap on them, and threatening their "privilege" of qualifying for the cash rich Champions League and Europa League spots.

There is already a nice compliment to my team going around twitter that ESL (as it is being monikered) actually stands for Ever Since Leicester, referring to the upset apple cart that the Foxes achieved by daring to win the Premier League with a team worth £35 million, as opposed to the hundreds of millions that the likes of Man City, Man Utd and Liverpool spend.

It will be an interesting few days as the Premier League, UEFA, FIFA and the other European Leagues sit down to discuss what action they will take against these clubs, and the players who represent them. Talk of international bans for the players, along with domestic bans for the clubs are being mooted.

Let's Keep the Faith that common sense prevails and the whole idea is scrapped.

Getting Motivated

 So I was having a think about the catch up posts and have decided that it is taking too long and distracting from current updates.

So in summary, Leicester had a couple of dodgy mid table finishes, before qualifying for the Europa League by finishing 5th last season. This season looks promising but we need to get a couple of wins under our belt. We are also in the FA Cup semifinal for the first time since 1982. I remember that semifinal (showing my age) and hopefully we can reach our first final since 1969. Leicester have never won the FA Cup so here's hoping.

Writing wise, I have now published all of my Alex Hayden Chronicles and my latest book is out with my editor. It's a behind the scenes book of how I wrote Alex and will be published once Bex has sorted out all of my deliberate errors.

The books are all listed on the "book page" so please go and have a look.

Before Christmas, I also joined a medium circle. Recently we have been doing motivational speeches so here is mine!

Motivation by Michael Andrews

 

People speak about self-motivation as though it is a thing that you automatically know about, or believe in.

Yet most people don’t know what it is.

A lot people think that self-motivation is getting off the couch to do their slob to 5k run. Or to write their book that they think is going to be a best seller. Or become the CEO of their company.

Self-motivation is a lot more than that. It’s a religion. It’s a belief. It’s something that makes you sit up and take action, whatever action that may be. But it can be hard to motivate yourself.

 

 The apocalypse has happened, but not to the extent where we go around killing each other, or that zombies roam around looking to eat our brains! These last twelve months will have tested even the most ardent disciple in self-motivation to the point where another catchphrase needs to be introduced. It’s no good telling people to self-motivate any more. It simply can’t help everyone. It needs people to go a step further than simply getting off the couch.

That catchphrase I am talking about is self-belief.

You have to believe in yourself to achieve your targets, even if that target is simply to survive yet another day, trapped in lockdown.

For me, there are two types of people with self-belief, and those people can choose to help others, or not.

The first category of person might seem like they are helping you, but they are not. They are better described as: -

Self entitled lying freak, bringing everyone’s lives into endless futility.

They look like they are helping but, in reality, they want to keep you down and get ahead of you. They can be difficult to spot but will soon expose themselves in their true colours. Here is one example of someone who looks like he is helping, but let’s face it, we can see past that lie.

 

Then there is the second type of person. The right type of person. They can be described as: -

Superbly energetic life force, bringing enjoyable light into everyone forever.

Be that second person. Be the one who helps others, but you do need to help yourself first.

Life at the moment looks difficult. Well, to be honest, it’s been a bit shit hasn’t it. But the way we cope, apart from with silly little memes, is to set yourself targets. They don’t need to be lifelong ambitions. They don’t need to be 5 year plans. They can be as simple as, get up – make the bed – tidy up a bit – make dinner. Yes, you can have loftier targets… go to work, complete that project/assignment, write that bestseller, renovate that old dollhouse, design that new tattoo, but what you need to remember is little steps are easier to climb than large ones, but you get to the end all the same. Another phrase rather than the “baby steps” is this.

Walk slowly but never walk backwards.

It does not matter how slowly you make progress towards your aims as long as you make progress. I monitor my word count when I am writing. A good day for me is when it has increased. It doesn’t matter if it has increased by only one word. I am one word closer to the end than I was when I started the day.

As long as we make progress, we should be positive that life will be better. After all…

Life is just like a willy. Sometimes it’s up, and sometimes it’s down but one thing I can promise is that it won’t be hard forever. Unless you overdose on Viagra that is!

There is light coming at the end of the tunnel. I truly believe that we are seeing the back end of this lockdown, and that we are coming to terms with the new way of the world. It’s still going to be a tough few months ahead as we ease ourselves out of lockdowns and reopen the world, but again, don’t get overwhelmed. Think about what you need to do today and whatever that is…

Do it with the confidence of a four year old in a batman shirt. Not all superheroes wear capes. This year has proved that. There are superheroes all around us. The keyworkers, frontline staff, retail and delivery drivers, macdonalds servers (and I thank you for my very tasty double sausage and egg mcmuffin on Tuesday).

All you need to do is

Believe in yourself. Look in that mirror and see the inner you. The strong person that has kept going through bad times as well as the good. I thank you for your time this evening and leave you with one last thought. Even the smallest amongst us can go on to become the strongest character.