One of the many weird things about me is that ever since I was a kid, I’ve woken up pretty much every day at 4am. In my childhood days it was to spend quality time with my Dad, who was also an early riser and would use that time to work on one of his books.

In my 20s, when I had a PR and publishing company, it would allow me to get into the office by 7am so I could have a couple of hours to work on things uninterrupted before everyone arrived because for much of the rest of the day when I wasn’t in meetings or at lunch, one or more of them would be at my desk with ideas, questions or just for a chat. It worked well until one day Danielle, an ambitious advertising sales rep for one of our two magazines, found out that I did this so she too started arriving earlier in order to gain favour and then anyone who didn’t have kids to drop off to school followed suit.

So then the whole point of getting up early backfired. I wonder if my Dad felt the same.

I then did what many business owners did when remote access to a company server became a thing and started the working day from home but again I hadn’t got my tactics right because with an espresso by my side, I would fire off e-mails at the crack of dawn about some of the various things on my mind so that when people on more normal hours got in, they could look at them then and respond accordingly.

But when it came to mailing work colleagues, they took to switching on early too because they must have thought they needed to reply straight away whereas my intention was to purely be in send mode for a few hours. Getting into receive mode disrupted my flow.

Now when I get up at 4, I resist looking at emails for a couple of hours until I’ve trawled, now with green tea rather than an espresso, social and news media and played an unhealthy amount of computer games. My socials know I have a mild obsession with boxing and today I was treated to an older Mike Tyson being interviewed by a young kid.

After some routine answers like “Never give up” when asked what his best piece of advice was, he finished off with this killer answer.

Kid: “Who’s been your toughest opponent?”

MT: “Me.”

That answer gave me my espresso buzz for the morning because that response, given without hesitation, speaks volumes. I did a search of what people made of that response (hey – it’s Sunday) and plenty came up, most notably this from a Pastor:

“That exposes a fight most people never see. At times, we become our own worst critic and our own worst enemy.

“We tear ourselves down in private, fight battles in our own mind and carry pressure no one else sees. The truth is the hardest fight. It isn’t always external, it’s internal.

“And if you don’t learn how to win within, no victory on the outside will ever feel like enough. Watch how you speak to yourself because the voice you listen to the most is your own. The strongest voice in your life is the one in your mind.

“Don’t be your worst enemy. Be your biggest advocate. Because what you allow in your thoughts will eventually show up in your words.”

Well said, that Pastor! Tyson’s face has always look troubled to me. Mohammed Ali’s didn’t. Steve Jobs’s did. All three are legends but only one looked as if they enjoyed life.    

I don’t think I’ve got demons in my head, though the way I’ve conducted my life to date with an unerring conviction that I can achieve whatever I set out to do could easily have placed some in me as I don’t often see through to conclusion something I fully believed to be possible.

A friend of mine once asked how many concept papers for businesses I’ve cooked up over the years are lurking on my pc which haven’t seen the light of day. There will be plenty but that doesn’t get me down because I add one small word: they haven’t seen the light of day – yet.

In my bookish late teenage year a book I read, re-read and bought copies for my friends of was Candide by Voltaire. Central to it is the character of Dr Pangloss whose optimistic view of human nature was captured in his catchphrase “All is for the best in the best of all possible worlds”. Interestingly, Voltaire wrote the book to ridicule this view rather than elevate it which suggests he, like Tyson, had his own demons to deal with.

I imagine that if they’d lived in the same era, they’d have similar lifestyles like the bloke you see in your local pub always on his own, always looking angry. It makes you wonder what they would say if asked what the point was of achieving greatness if you can’t enjoy it.

I imagine, in Tyson’s case at least, failure would be ruinous whereas for us Dr Panglosses of the world, failure is just something that has yet to be achieved.