Day 337: Ellie Stoneley

September 2, 2010 at 12:01 am, Category: Inspiration

“Rather than saying ‘stop the world’ and, you know, inspire it all in one go, would just be ‘Reflect on your day-to-day actions.  Reflect on what you do.  Listen to other people.  Learn from them.  And just think about the small things you do, because they will generate the big things.’”

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Toni Reece: Thank you so much, Ellie, for agreeing to be part of the Project today, and before we begin, can you please introduce yourself?

Ellie Stoneley: Absolutely, and thank you for having me.  I’m Ellie Stoneley.  I live in England, and I live and work to connect people, to bring people together, and to try and help people have more confidence in themselves, and to work more positively and to achieve their dreams and their goals.

Toni: Well thank you, Ellie.  When you think of that word inspiration, who do you think you inspire, and how does it happen?

Ellie: That’s just the most scary question, and it’s also incredibly humbling.  I often worry that I’m just a complete lack of inspiration to anybody.  Earlier on today, I actually Twittered to that question and said, you know, “Has anybody got any brain waves about this, who do I inspire and how do I do it?”  Somebody came back and said, “You inspire me with your infectious enthusiasm for what you do,” which I just thought was fabulous.  And that promptly made me burst into tears, because he is somebody I really admire, and who inspires me.

It’s also really caused me to reflect on me and how I am and how I work.  I try and live my life to the full.  I saw a film years ago that had the expression “carpe diem” in the film, which means “live for the day.”  And to be honest, I think that’s really, really important.  I think it’s important to be honest in the way that you live.  I think it’s important to listen.  I think that’s so important, because so many people don’t listen.  They’ll dive headfirst down a route without listening to the world around them and the other people and the small voices around them.

I think it’s incredibly important to love, and to be open to love, and I think it’s really important to have fun in what you do and to live life joyfully, so I think that’s all really important.  All that in mind, I hope I inspire my husband on a daily basis.  I hope I inspire my friends and the people that I work with.  That all sounds very cliché, but I think you’re not going to leave any kind of mark on life or help other people through their lives if you live a closed and narrow life.  So I try and give them something, but I also try and learn from them.

I try and encourage people to be reflective.  I think it’s very important to think that inspiration isn’t just a huge thing — inspiration isn’t just Barack Obama and it isn’t just Gandhi.  Inspiration to me is also a lovely old lady called Edna who works in a church that I go to sometimes, and she works tirelessly day in and day out to make sure that the older people in the church or the more fragile people are visited and looked after.  And that humbles me no end, because she works very hard on her day job, she comes home, and she still gives of herself to other people, so that inspires me.

I think what underpins it all is a wonderful song by Bruce Springsteen, who is somebody who inspires me hugely.  His song – I won’t sing it, because I sing terribly – but has the line, “From small things, mama, big things one day come.”  I would urge anybody to rush to YouTube and find a clip of it immediately, because it will make you grin from ear to ear.

And on that … yeah,  just the little things are important.  My husband has been terribly ill recently, but he now is sort of coming back to full strength, but he’s volunteering once a week at a local night shelter, and I find that incredibly inspiring.

So it’s that sort of gesture that I think is important, and I will try and relay that to other people.  Rather than saying “stop the world” and, you know, inspire it all in one go, would just be “Reflect on your day-to-day actions.  Reflect on what you do.  Listen to other people.  Learn from them.  And just think about the small things you do, because they will generate the big things.”

Toni: Ellie, when you live your life that way and you work with the people that you work with, how do you think that helps people to explore their own potential?

Ellie: Oh, crumbs.  I think, again the listening is important.  I think without listening and without reflecting and hearing what’s going on in the world, it’s very easy to just live a very arrogant life, a very uninformed life and a very narrow life, so I think that’s hugely important.

Gosh, a while back I used to run a website, and one day I was very bored.  I was sitting in a conference, and I was listening to a speaker that was just rambling on and on and on, and I was trying in my head to think of an acronym or sort of a way of talking about what we did and a way of articulating the vision in our mission and the way that we worked.

He said the word “anarchy” and I was doodling, and I came up with the acronym RIOTS, and I think that would be how I would help other people, by using this little acronym.  RIOTS – which isn’t at all anarchy, but it stands for Relevance Interactivity Ownership Trust and Sustainability.  I think it’s a really useful little kind of word when people feel their lives going out of control, to help them think about rioting and riots.

So in terms of their goals, they need to think about the relevance of what they’re trying to achieve.  They need to think about the relevance of what they’re doing, whether it’s in the corporate world or whether it’s with their friends.  Is it for their friends, or is it for them?  That sort of reflection is important.

The I is interactivity.  Obviously, that’s fairly self-explanatory with a website, but where it comes to people, it’s really important to be interactive, to be open to input from other people and also to be able to give as well.  A lot of people are very good at listening but not very good at advising or very good at helping, so it’s important that that becomes a two-way stream.

The ownership … I think it’s crucial that whatever you’re trying to do and achieve in life that you own that dream, and that you also again in a corporate world, if it’s a corporate mission, you allow the members of the company or the members of your team … or in a family, you allow the family to own the dream.  It isn’t just a closed dream.  It’s something that everybody can feel a piece of.

I think trust … obviously, it’s self-explanatory.  It’s so important that people trust you and that you trust them; otherwise, nobody will buy into what you’re trying to do.

Sustainability is a funny word.  The sustainability for a business … obviously to be successful, you have to be sustainable, so an idea to succeed, it has to have legs, it has to have grounding, and it has to have aims, which again make it sustainable.

So yes, that’s my motto, RIOTS.

Toni: I love that.  I think that is very … I think it’s very relevant as an acronym in today’s world and actually with work that is being done.  You’ve spoken about this a bit with how you believe you might inspire others, but Ellie, what inspires you?  In addition to what you’ve spoken to, what inspires you?

Ellie: My … I’m sure a lot of people have said this, but I’m very, very fortunate to have been inspired by my parents.  I find this a very emotional thing to talk about.  My father died a year-and-a-half ago.  He died of cancer very suddenly, four days before my wedding.  He died, then we had the wedding, and then we had the funeral all in the space of a  week, and that was the hardest period of my life.

After that happened, I was helping The Times – the English newspaper The Times did an obituary on him.  He was an amazing man, an Antarctic explorer who was very humble, very gentle.  He was a geologist, and he was very impressive.  He did everything for other people, and I was researching for his obituary, and the more I read about him, the more I just thought – and again, I’m sure it’s a cliché, everybody has the same feeling when they lose a parent – but I wish I’d known more of this when he was alive.  He was an inspiration but is increasingly more and more of an inspiration.

My mother is 83 now.  From a day-to-day basis, I never know where she is.  She might ring up and say, “I’m in Switzerland today” or she may – she lives in Cambridge – and she may ring up and say, “I’m covered in mud.  I’ve just fallen over in a patch of nettles, but I’ve planted the most wonderful tree.”  She’s just incredible.  Every day for her is different.  Everything she does is different.  So that sort of inspiration is important.

I think the real importance of inspiration is to be open to the world and open to opportunity.  Funny story, which led to an interesting story … I was in the hospital last year.  I have a really revolting autoimmune disorder, which isn’t good when it flares up, but I’d just come out of the hospital, I was wearing my father’s old overcoat.  I looked like a tramp.  I was on crutches, and I was very wobbly, and I took my mother to the theatre to hear a radio speaker.

At the end of it, he mentioned the charity that he has, and she was queuing up to get his autograph.  I was standing at the side looking like a scruffy tramp, and mummy asked for his autograph, and she said “Is it on the website?  Have you got a website?”  He said, “Yes, yes” and gave her the website address.

And then she just looked at me very pointedly, knowing I work with the internet and said, “Is it on Twitter?”  And this chap spat red wine all over my mother – and he’s a very eminent British broadcaster – then sort of looked at where she was looking and saw this scruffy individual in the corner, and just … you could see him looking for his security thinking, “Help, she’s mad!”

And he just sort of sat back and said, “Actually, it’s not on Twitter, and it really ought to be.”  The sort of the long and the short that came out of that story is – his name is John Humphrys, he’s a very famous British broadcaster – his charity, The Kitchen Table Charities Trust, helps tiny little charities achieve incredible change in people’s lives in very, very poor countries, and I’ve ended up doing all the social media for him and for his charity.

Based on that, I was bullying him saying I needed more information one day, and he put me in touch with somebody else.  He sent me a photo of Madagascar of a project, a little school that had been helped.  I just said, “Gosh, if you need anybody to hand over a check or to cut a ribbon or anything, you know, I’m your man.”

The next thing I knew, a month later I was on a plane to Madagascar thinking “What on earth have I done?”  I was just sitting on this plane thinking “How on earth did I get to this point?”  I think it was just purely the fact of being open to opportunity.

And as a result of that, I went there, I social media-ed my whole trip.  I worked with a very small charity out there.  I helped them to fundraise.  We started dramatically changing the lives of hundreds and hundreds of school children and bringing water into villages where they never had them, and all of that was because A) my mother was cheeky, and B) I let myself be open to the opportunity.

So I think – sorry, very long verbal answer to your question – but you need opportunity and you need to be open to it to be inspired, and that’s what inspires me.

Toni: Ellie, it wasn’t a long rambling story, it was an absolutely wonderful story about really being open, but also synchronicity at play, and it really …

Ellie: Yeah, that’s very true.

Toni: Just amazing; it’s really amazing.  When you find yourself needing to be inspired, what do you reach for?

Ellie: I go the opposite way when I need to be inspired.  If I’m having down time, I go the opposite way.  Sometimes I think for me I need adversity to inspire me.  I’ve achieved the things that I’m most proud of in my life as a result of illness or as a result of grief, or as a result of trauma in my own life.

I firmly believe that when people are faced with disaster … there’s a poem about treating plants and disaster just the same, but I think if you can survive disaster, you will always rise up stronger.  And so I worry for me sometimes that I sort of do my best after adversity.  But I think also I need discipline imposing on me, and so if I do feel myself floundering and I have an uninspired day, I will give myself structure, I will set myself goals, and I’ll also … I have people in my life that I can turn to that I know will reflect other people’s work back to me or will hold a mirror up to my own behavior, or I can just sit and listen to them in wonder.

Again, I don’t necessarily mean the amazing public speakers or the huge celebrities.  I might mean … I have a very wonderful, gentle friend called Suzanna.  She’s very shy, she’s very humble, and she’s the most genuine person I’ve ever met.  If I’m having a day of feeling sorry for myself or feeling low or feeling that I’m less of a person than I should be, I’ll phone her, and just her pragmatic approach to life and her very gentle approach to life is a constant inspiration to me.

So I’m very fortunate that I have these people around me, and I’m also fortunate that I can recognize it myself when I need a kick up the butt and I think I must pull myself together.  And I know how to help myself in that, so I think that’s important.

Toni: How do you explore your own potential?

Ellie: With other people.  Often as part of a team, I will sit down and consider as part of a team what we could achieve and then what I could do as part of it.  And then as an individual, I often go for a walk or just spend time alone and consider where I’ve got to in my life — again what’s important, what isn’t important.

Having been through a very serious illness, it really causes you to realize that life is short and life is very, very precious and that you want to be able to give the most of yourself that you possibly can.  I read, I reflect, I listen to music, and yeah, I’ll just generally go for a walk and just try and look for little moments every day, whatever you’re doing, whether you’re on a tube train and you see somebody standing up for a pregnant person or whether you see a whole group of people not standing up for an old lady.

It’s very easy to see inspiration or where inspiration should be, and it’s also very important, I think, to kind of look around you and realize that there is so much good in the world.  Because the media has a very negative approach, and it’s very easy just to see the world as a bad place, but I think a very important thing is to see it in a positive and the good news stories, so that’s the way I always help myself.

Toni: Ellie, you have given us such a wonderful interview today, you really have.

Ellie: Thank you.

Toni: I feel as though I have just sat with a very good book, and you could listen to the stories, how you tell the stories, the gentleness, and the honesty that you’ve spoken about.

I wrote the words “living legacy.”  I can imagine the way that you live your life or try to live your life would be to live the legacy that you want to leave, and that’s … I don’t know, that’s what I’ve gotten from you, and just … it’s a very gentle yet very powerful interview you’ve given today, and I thank you for that.

Ellie: I really hope so.  If I was nearer, I would be giving you a huge hug — that is also one of my trademarks.  I think there’s a lot to be said for hugs.

Toni: I agree with you.  Consider it done, and thank you so very, very much, Ellie, for being part of the Get Inspired! Project.  Take care.

Ellie: I’m absolutely thrilled to be a part of it.  Thank you.

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For more information about Ellie Stoneley:  www.justgiving.com/elliestoneley, mymadagascarblog.wordpress.com

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