Punch if you just want to fight, punch through if you want to win.

Martial arts, whether in practice or in philosophy, have been a fundamental part of my beliefs since I was a kid.

One principle Sensei would always emphasize when we were practising our punches or kicks against pads was that we should aim to kick not at the pad, but right through the person holding it.

This may sound extreme, but the experience was remarkable. If you were the person holding the pad, you would certainly feel the difference. It didn’t matter if the opponent delivering the punch was half my size, a through punch or kick would always be felt and was enough to displace me while holding the pad by a foot or two and often throw me off my spot. Whereas a punch or kick at the pad could always be resisted and the impact force easily absorbed by your arms.

When we set a goal, we naturally tend to work to the goal, not through the goal. In doing so we often loose the momentum that we have acquired leading up to it. How often do we hear of people tracking fabulously and then giving up or running out of drive so close to their goal!. They had their eyes on the finish line, not at the ground beyond it.

Punching through is different to a stretch goal.

A stretch goal is an ambitious target beyond the goal.

Punching through means not winding down to finish at the goal, to continue at full speed until the target has been passed.

Even a marginal pass is ok, the key is that you are applying the brakes only after you have reached it.

What tends to happen in reality is that this seemingly unimportant extra effort is precisely that what got you there. That little extra effort is what separates the finishers from everyone else.

Whatever it is you are seeking to achieve, whether you can see your goal or not, don’t slow down until you have passed it.

When you set a goal, know what it means to pass it:

   Is it a sales target?

      Is it a chapter completed?

        Is it an eating habit change or exercise program?

When you know what the turf looks like just beyond the finish line, you will know to keep going until you are standing on it.

Sensei always used to joke “Punching at someone will only get you into a fight, but punching through will overpower your opponent.”

Don’t spend your life fighting, live life winning.

3 Ways Power Suppliers are self-destructing.

You open the familiarly branded envelope and uneasily extract the notice. You already know it will be bad news: It is a power bill.
You look at the amount, and feel a knot in your throat. Immediately you think of some scheduled purchases that you had planned for this month, and that you may now have to tell your partner that perhaps those must wait another month…

For some this may already sound familiar. For some it may become a familiar scene when the predicted 20% increase in electricity prices becomes real in a few months!

Rising electricity prices are a blessing in disguise. They cause three important things to happen, three forces that are fatal for the power retailers.

1. They raise the error margin for disruptive innovators. In simple terms they will not have to try so hard to be competitive. They can afford to be more expensive than even the current alternative, and still be in the race. This exponentially increases the chances of a disruptive innovation (or several) entering the market. Marginal ideas suddenly become commercially viable.

2. They create a massive pool of customers for these innovations and new products. Some people will simply not be able to afford to buy from the conventional suppliers, some will simply look for better options because those have become available.

3. The power retailers will be unable to respond fast enough. The higher prices will invariably be linked with quarterly and annual profitability obligations. Those figures will be eroded simultaneously by both the loss of market-share and by the probable need to lower prices.

What will these disruptive ideas look like? What happens to the grid? The imagination is the limit, and over the next few blogs I will explore some of these ideas.

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