7 years ago I was the North East Area Manager for the company that ran the personal training brands for many of the large big-box gym chains.
And my eldest son (now 8) was a little toddler.
His mum had to go on a two day course in London and didn’t want to be away from him for that long.
So she went down for day one and we drove down late that night after I had worked and we had a boy day in London.
On arrival I entered the congestion zone, but it was after the hours of charge.
I parked in an off street car park and left the next day, again after hours.
I assumed this meant I wouldn’t have to pay anything so I didn’t register online as the signs suggested.
I was wrong.
Cameras had picked us up entering and leaving so knew we must have been in the zone during charging hours.
A year later I came home to a note on the door from a debt collection company.
It turns out the congestion zone people had sent a bill to our old address that we hadn’t updated at the time, having only just moved.
We had since, but they only collected the address once and continued to send progressively higher bills to the old address.
They eventually found us when a number plate recognition vehicle picked us up randomly at our new house.
By that point the bill had grown from £8 to………
£780.
Yup, seriously.
Each letter, etc had added £50 or so on.
Whenever I’ve told people this they are outraged.
“That’s outrageous” they’ll say.
“They should’ve rechecked your address”
“That’s not fair”
“You should contest it”.
And so.
Thing is, though, it was completely fair.
And, do you know who’s fault it was.
Mine.
Entirely, 100% mine.
I could’ve stopped it happening by checking the charging situation.
Or minimised the cost by updating my address immediately when I moved.
All my fault.
I rang up and paid.
Annoyed only with myself.
It never ceases to amaze me how annoyed some people get when they get parking or speeding tickets.
Despite the fact that they chose to speed or park illegally.
As a society we seem to be moving further and further away from personal responsibility.
Everything seems to be someone else’s fault.
Sure, some things are.
But lots of things that happen to us are our own doing.
And taking that on board is hugely empowering.
We’ve had countless people over the years who’ve struggled to get results previously……
At least in part because they blame others for what they are choosing to eat and drink.
And the choices they are making around exercise, sleep, stress management and so on.
And, one day, you can see the penny drop.
Those others have made the choices harder, sure.
No doubting that.
But when we take that responsibly that nearly everything that happens to us is a product of our decisions……….
That’s when the magic happens 🙂
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Much love,
Jon ‘Got a lovely photo of me and Oli ‘riding’ a shark, so it wasn’t all bad’ Hall and Matt ‘Tickets for the gun show’ Nicholson
RISE Macclesfield –
Serious transformations. Fun times!
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