nick is an internationally renowned speaker, mentor and...
TRANSCRIPT
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Nick is an internationally renowned speaker, mentor and the best-selling
author of eleven books. His passion is helping others to step into leadership
and to be inspired and inspiring. He is a former Director and Trustee of
Alternatives at St James’s, London – a leading venue for authors and workshop
leaders from around the world. He has spent over twenty years as a coach and
spiritual advisor, offering encouragement to leaders and emergent leaders in
the areas of business, the media and entertainment, the law, personal and
spiritual growth, academia, retail and the NHS. He is also the co-founder of the
‘Born To’ Global Community. His books have been translated into seven
languages, and he has so far been invited to speak in seventeen countries. He
has been featured widely in the media as a leading authority on the world of
work and leadership. See his website for more information:
www.iamnickwilliams.com
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By the same author:
The Work We Were Born to Do
Unconditional Success
Powerful Beyond Measure
The 12 Principles of The Work We Were Born to Do
How to Be Inspired
Passions into Profits
The Business You Were Born to Create
The Book You Were Born to Write
Resisting Your Soul
Please Quote Me!
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Pivotal
Moments
My stories of courage, inspiration and vulnerability
Nick Williams
Author of The Work We Were Born to Do
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Copyright © Nick Williams 2015
The author would like to thank the following for permission to use the
copyright material: Bantam for material from The Wisdom of the Enneagram
by Don Richard Riso and Russ Hudson; and Pan for material from The Artist’s
Way by Julia Cameron. While every effort has been made to contact all
copyright owners, if any have been inadvertently overlooked, the author will
be pleased to make the necessary arrangement at the first opportunity.
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‘The world is not left by death but by Truth.’
A Course in Miracles
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Contents
Acknowledgements 10
Introduction 12
PART ONE: THE CALL (BIRTH TO AGE 31) 21
1. Broken-hearted 22
2. Three traumatic experiences 24
3. Visiting the enemy 26
4. I couldn’t escape myself 28
5. Lost and lonely 30
6. I was meant to be there 31
7. He took me seriously 33
8. Four words that changed my life 35
9. I don’t want another job, I want to be inspired 37
10. The day I discovered what I was born to do 39
11. Discovering men’s work and reconnecting with my soul 42
12. The day I eventually resigned 44
PART TWO: INITIATION AND TRIAL (AGES 31 TO 41) 46
13. The right words at the right time 47
14. Choosing to live 49
15. Not in Kansas anymore 52
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16. Pretentious, moi? 53
17. Work is love made visible 55
18. Helen 57
19. A moment of grace 58
20. I’m not crazy, I’m a visionary 61
21. The shadow artist 63
22. Becoming a gracious receiver 66
23. A lesson in valuing 68
PART THREE: RETURN AND ATONEMENT (AGES 41 TO 51) 69
24. Daring to live the dream 70
25. The power of asking 74
26. Trusting the process 77
27. Building a new relationship with money 79
28. The Pea Fair and how we give our gifts 81
29. At home with Salvador Dali 84
30. No easier second time round 85
31. Live in Las Vegas! 87
32. Learning to commission myself 89
33. What I was really afraid of 91
34. A day in Auschwitz 94
35. Any place can be a holy spot 97
36. The power of being mentored 99
37. The magic of showing up 102
38. Inspiration in unexpected places 104
39. Three unexpected words in the same sentence 107
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40. Coming out of denial 109
41. A golden day 111
42. Ministering to my father 113
43. Unlovable? 116
44. Deep-sea diver of the human psyche 120
45. Moved to tears 122
46. A new world of possibilities 124
47. The power of letting go 125
PART FOUR: THE FREEDOM TO LIVE (AGES 51 TO 57) 129
48. Mentoring the mentor 130
49. Why I nearly pulped my own books 133
50. The gift of illness 135
51. The power of being bold 138
52. A heart-breaking decision 141
53. Meeting Desmond Tutu 143
54. Coming full circle 145
55. A moment of softening 146
56. Discovering I was born to bowl 148
Final reflections 150
Resources 153
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Acknowledgements
Thanks, as always, to my partner, Helen, for nineteen years of love, support
and silliness. And to my mum, for the lessons I am learning from her journey
with dementia.
There is one person in particular to thank for this book, and that is
Beverley Glick, the story archaeologist. Beverley joined my community after
hearing me speak on a tele-summit series run by my friend Sandy Newbiggin.
Beverley and I have now become friends and collaborators; she has helped me
understand the power of story and encouraged me to tell my own stories.
Without her questioning, coaching and encouragement, this book simply
wouldn’t exist.
Thanks to Ed Peppitt for friendship and inspiration, and for being my
publishing partner. And thanks to Sue Lascelles for her wonderful editing skills
and for making my words shine and sparkle a little more than they would
otherwise.
Thank you, Liz Trubridge: you have no idea how significant you and your
presence have been in my life. Thanks to Robert Holden for two precious
decades of friendship. Thanks to Matt Ingrams, Adam Stern and Martin
Wenner for twenty-three years of loving support in our men’s group. To Cat
Knott for coming into my life and for being my guardian angel, easing me into a
new phase of life and work, and gently holding my hand – all the way from
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France! To Peter Carey for pool, friendship, support and conversation. To Art
Giser for your amazing work in the world.
As ever, I feel a deep gratitude to A Course in Miracles for illuminating
my mind and helping me make sense of this at times seemingly crazy world,
and for reminding me that there are only ever two choices: love or fear.
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Introduction
‘A good life is one hero journey after another. Over and over again, you are
called to the realm of adventure, you are called to new horizons. Each time,
there is the same problem: do I dare? And then, if you do dare, the dangers are
there, and the help also, and the fulfilment or the fiasco. There's always the
possibility of a fiasco. But there's also the possibility of bliss.’
Joseph Campbell, mythologist
I am pretty sure that in the introduction of each of my books, I’ve said, ‘This is
the hardest book I’ve written so far.’ And I have meant it. And I mean it now,
too! In this, my eleventh book, I am going to share many of the experiences of
my life that I have actively kept secret in the past.
So why share these stories with you now? I haven’t courageously
climbed Mount Everest, saved a nation, found a cure for any disease or
brought about world peace. But what I have done is to let myself be guided by
the inner wisdom that we all possess, and set out on a journey to face all
aspects of myself, light and dark. I have gone on my own version of Campbell’s
hero’s journey in pursuit of my true Self, the love, gifts and inspiration that lie
deep within in me; and, in doing so, have also come face to face with my own
negativity, pain, self-criticism and even self-hatred. I have tried to develop a
heart that will hold all of me, the strength and light of my spirituality and the
weakness, vulnerability and flaws of my humanity.
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Most of the stories in this book are about what has happened as a result
of listening to and following that small voice in my heart – the voice that has
prompted and inspired me and nudged me forward. I have always been driven
by a deep impulse to embrace and express my true spiritual power, and to
immerse myself in the full flow of spiritual and creative expression. Yet the
training ground for this process has sometimes been rough and challenging
terrain: it has often meant feeling weak, scared, vulnerable and powerless.
My upbringing, which was dogged by co-dependent relationships, meant
that I felt scared and powerless a lot of the time when I was young. In the first
half of my life, I was fuelled mostly by self-judgement and self-flagellation,
berating myself and being tough on myself. I never felt I was good enough, so I
pushed and punished myself. I made myself endure great suffering by doing
things I didn’t want to do. While I found success, this came at a high price and
it certainly didn’t make me happy. In contrast, during the second half of my life
I have been on a journey fuelled by self-love, inspiration, open-mindedness
and self-care. But there has still been so much to undo from the damage
caused by those formative years.
After saying Yes! to my calling and quitting my corporate career in 1989,
I have had many adventures around the world. I have travelled, done amazing
things and met remarkable people. I’ve written eleven books and counting,
been invited to speak in seventeen countries, built an international coaching
practice, and, in many respects, enjoyed a blessed life. But those external
achievements don’t reflect my personal experience of myself and my life. More
powerful than the experience of the outer journey has been the inner journey,
which has meant facing my fears, demons, insecurities and inadequacies in
search of my true Self and the best of me.
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The discrepancy between my outer achievements and my inner
experience of them lies within my own thinking: my fear and resistance, my
low self-esteem, my lack of self-love, my downright self-hatred at times. I have
at times felt a chronic sense of insignificance – as if I hardly have a right to be
here, to exist and take up space on the planet. The real problems have been
my own inner demons, which have meant I’ve had some significant outer
problems at times too. I have nearly gone broke a couple of times and needed
to borrow money to keep going. I have fallen out with people and had
fractured relationships.
My shameful secret has been how ‘un-grownup’ I have often felt during
my life. I might have achieved some amazing things on the surface, yet inside I
have often felt small, weak and vulnerable – occasionally barely able to cope.
Many times, despite all of my seeming success, I have felt worthless, like I’ve
been hanging on by a thread, close to giving up. If any of this resonates with
you, I hope you will find inspiration in the stories that follow.
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How the idea for this book was born
On 30 July, 2014, I was at Heathrow Terminal 1, waiting to board a flight to
Zürich. I was very excited. The week before, I had received an email from a
woman called Antoinette, writing from Switzerland. She told me, ‘It’s my
husband Andreas’s fiftieth birthday next week. He loves your work and your
books, and I wondered if I could buy a couple of hours of your coaching for him
as a gift, as he’s been struggling a bit recently.’ At the end of the email there
was a PS, in which Antoinette added, ‘If you happen to be free next week,
would you like to be a surprise guest at his birthday dinner, and then stay and
spend some time coaching him the next day?’
Well, I don’t get many invitations like that! I was able to free up my
schedule, so I spoke with Antoinette that evening and we agreed I would fly
over. She transferred some money, and there I was – heading off on another
amazing adventure.
But besides feeling excited, privileged and honoured, I was also feeling
quite choked up, which didn’t make sense in the circumstances. While I waited
for my flight to be called, I got a coffee and asked myself why. Then I began to
realise that this invitation coincided almost exactly to the day with the date on
which I’d left my corporate career to start my own business twenty-five years
earlier. As I sat and drank my coffee, I reflected on how difficult I have found
my journey through life on many occasions: how inadequate I’ve felt, how
desperate I’ve been, and how close I’ve been to giving up and giving in.
I realised I was simply proud of myself for still being here. I was proud of
finding the courage to keep going. Even when things had become terribly
difficult, I hadn’t given up on myself. Even when I’d felt useless and defeated, I
hadn’t given in. The result of this was that my life had opened up in so many
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amazing and beautiful ways. Wonderful opportunities had come my way, and
with them beautiful ways to serve and contribute to others.
I had often told myself that I wasn’t committed enough, but I began to
realise I had actually shown tremendous courage and commitment, frequently
in the face of great suffering, challenges and difficulties. Despite everything I
had experienced, I had simply stayed in the game. Stayed alive. Stayed on my
path. I had found the courage to unearth, feel and heal vast amounts of pain
that I had buried, rather than continuing to repress them.
Twenty-five years earlier, I nearly didn’t start my business. After I left my
corporate career, instead of fanning that initial spark of inspiration into a
flame, I fell into a deep emotional hole for nearly twelve months. I signed on to
the dole and I didn’t want to live at all. What changed things was a simple but
powerful moment in which I simply chose life, and committed to saying yes to
the adventure of my own existence. (Story 14 is about this.)
In the end, I had a wonderful trip to Zürich. Andreas was completely surprised
when I arrived at his house and was so grateful to his wife for organising the
surprise. I joined twenty of his friends on the terrace outside his and
Antoinette’s lovely home, where we enjoyed a fabulous dinner under the stars.
When friends toasted and praised Andreas, I could see how loved he was and
mentioned this when I made my speech. After dinner, we lit lanterns and sent
them up into the sky with good wishes for the year ahead.
The next day, I sent several hours with Andreas, coaching him and
helping him find a deeper sense of purpose. Then I talked with Antoinette as
she showed me around their farm, where I met the horses she loves and with
which she works in courses designed to help leaders develop their authenticity
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skills. After lunch, Andreas drove me back to the airport and I flew home. It
was a magical time.
When I settled back home and reflected on my experience, I decided to
write down the story of what had happened before I started my business, and
to explain candidly how depressed and suicidal I had been. Even though this
had all taken place twenty-five years ago, I still felt tremendous shame about
that period in my life and had hardly spoken to anyone about it. While simply
choosing to live marked a pivotal moment, my suicidal tendencies remained a
secret I had largely hidden away.
Well, I wrote the story but was very reluctant to publish it on my blog for
fear of people’s responses. Four months later, in January 2015, I emailed my
friend Beverley Glick, a writer, journalist and story archaeologist, and asked
her, ‘Would you read this and tell me whether you think publishing it would be
a career-limiting decision?’ She read the story, and said that, on the contrary,
she believed sharing such a deep level of vulnerability might be very career
enhancing!
Nevertheless, I procrastinated a little more before deciding to share the
story on my blog and to let people know I had done it. I took a deep breath and
hit the ‘Publish’ button. Although I did my best to pretend I didn’t care what
response I got, deep down I was terrified.
Within minutes, people started leaving comments, saying how much the
story resonated with them and thanking me for writing with such honesty. But
a bit of me still didn’t get it – why would my story about feeling suicidal
resonate with people?
After a couple of days, there were close to one hundred comments
about my story on Facebook and on my blog – all positive and validating, none
shaming. I was quite blown away.
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When I saw Beverley a few days later, she said to me, ‘So where do you
want to go next with this, seeing the amazing response you’ve had?’
I didn’t know straight away, but then the answer came: ‘To share more
stories about pivotal moments in my life.’
As I began to cast my mind back, I thought of other key moments that
could be turned into stories. In fact, they were like stepping stones occurring in
every different phase of my life.
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The structure of this book
The stories in this book are divided into four parts or periods:
Part One: birth to age 31 (the call)
During this period, I felt like I was living the life I’d been scripted to live
because of my family upbringing and societal education. By the end of this
period, I had gone into therapy and eventually found the courage to resign
from my corporate career to start my own business and follow my true calling.
Part Two: ages 31 to 41 (initiation and trial)
This marked the stage when I began to say yes to the work I was born to do
and to the adventure of my life – setting out on my own hero’s journey. For
much of this period I was involved in running Alternatives, a centre in London,
and I was immersed in the world of personal and spiritual development. Yet,
while I was beginning to follow the call of my heart, I was still living in the
shadows to some extent.
Part Three: ages 41 to 51 (return and atonement)
I became an author at the age of 41 and my world opened up as a result. I
started to build my own brand and platform, moving further out from the
shadows into the realm of my true calling. I found my true voice and was
invited to give talks around the world because of what I had written.
Part Four: ages 51 to the present, age 57 (the freedom to live)
During this stage I decided to leave my spiritual ‘home’, quitting Alternatives at
the age of 51 after twenty-one years involvement with the centre. It was time
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to stand firmly on my own two feet and consolidate my brand. In many senses,
this marked the beginning of my journey into ‘elder-hood’.
As I wrote down the stories in this book, I somehow felt I was becoming more
complete. The writer Maya Angelou once said, ‘There is no greater pain than
an untold story,’ and here I was, sharing untold stories and feeling better as a
result. I was owning my experiences in this life – the joyful and inspiring, as
well as the painful. All of which have shaped me.
Although I love to motivate and educate, the stories in this book are not
designed to teach or to make a point. And yet I hope they will help you too in
some way; that they will touch something in you and perhaps inspire you. As
you read through, you might find yourself considering the different phases of
your own life and your pivotal moments. Through good times and bad, many of
us face the same challenges and share the same problems, which means that
none of us is ever completely alone on life’s journey…
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PART ONE
The Call
(Birth to Age 31)
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1. Broken-hearted (1973)
When I was 15, Ros was my first girlfriend and my first love. Until then, I had
been quite shy and withdrawn, but I threw myself into our relationship
wholeheartedly and came out of my shell. Ros opened up my heart and my
sexuality; it was like my soul blossomed in the warmth of this first love. I felt
full of energy, full of passion. I started writing poetry, I made art, I listened to
music in new ways. I felt alive. Life seemed to be bursting with beauty and
meaning. I remember feeling that life was exciting, and I wanted to give myself
to it fully and hold nothing back.
Then after a few months it all began to unravel. Ros’s mum read her
diary and her parents barred her from seeing me. I was devastated, so I turned
to my own family for support. But my mother only told me how ashamed she
was of me for having a sexual relationship. My sister didn’t seem supportive,
and Dad had nothing to say.
I felt ashamed of being alive and enjoying beauty and sensuality. I felt
like I was being punished for being myself and that I could no longer be me. I
went from being wholehearted to feeling broken hearted. That tender heart,
which had so recently opened up, was now filled with shame. My world
seemed to collapse. I wanted to die. In fact, I did cut one of my wrists with a
razor blade. It wasn’t a serious attempt to kill myself, but a scream to let
people know how unhappy I was, in the hope that someone might hear this
call for love and rescue me. But no one did.
I started to feel flawed and faulty – as if something were seriously wrong
with me. As result of these emotions, I buried a lot of myself away and
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grudgingly committed myself to a life spent doing what was expected of me.
Yet secretly, I became very angry and resentful. Around the same time, we
watched Franco Zeffirelli’s film of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet at school. I
connected strongly with the energy of the tragedy and the drama of the love
story. This was me: I was tragic! And I started writing a tragic life script for
myself.
For reasons I still don’t fully understand, I came away from the
experience with Ros feeling like a loser, which was incredibly painful. I think it
set up a drive in me to overcompensate by trying really hard to be a success.
As I retreated into my shell, I started to create fake personas that I presented
to the world. I became more afraid and untrusting, believing people just
wanted to hurt me. I abandoned the idea that life loved me and that I could be
happy. Instead, I started telling myself ‘life doesn’t love me’. I believed life was
actually quite cruel; God didn’t love me, and life was designed to deny me any
pleasure: I would only lose what I enjoyed. I started to cast myself as a helpless
victim. I had put my heart out there only for it to be stomped on.
It still seems to be part of my life’s inner work to heal that initial
heartbreak and find a way back to being wholehearted about myself and
existence.
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2. Three traumatic experiences (1979–80)
At the ages of 21 and 22, I experienced three events that helped shape me.
First, Aunty Olive, Dad’s sister, developed ovarian cancer and ended up staying
in our family home for palliative care until her death. This was the first time
that someone I knew and loved had suffered from a severe illness and died.
Then my parents moved from Hornchurch to the outskirts of Braintree in
Essex, and I moved to Brentwood to share a house with some friends. One of
them, Adam, had been a fellow student on my Business Studies degree course
at North East London Polytechnic. One day, Adam complained of chest pains
and got himself admitted to the local hospital to be checked out. When I
visited him he seemed OK and expected to be sent home. I went in to see him
the next day and he wasn’t in his bed, so I assumed he had been discharged
and had gone to stay with his parents. Instead, a nurse took me to one side.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said, ‘but your friend has died.’ I felt shock and disbelief. How
could Adam be dead – he was only 21? It turned out that Adam had a genetic
disorder called Marfan syndrome, which had fatally affected his heart.
The third pivotal event occurred a few months later, when I was driving
home from my job in a wine bar. I was travelling down a country road over the
brow of a hill when suddenly a car appeared in the opposite direction,
overtaking. It was on my side of the road and hit me head on. My car spun
round and ended up in a ditch, a total write-off, but amazingly I got out of the
vehicle with no physical injuries, just grateful to be alive and thankful to have
been wearing my seatbelt. I didn’t even go to hospital, but afterwards the
shock of having nearly been killed kicked in. And I have suffered from back
problems ever since, which I guess were caused by whiplash from the accident.
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These events only reinforced the urge I had to be appear ‘strong’ and to
hide my hurt, suffering and vulnerability. I buried away the pain of all three
events, as I had done with other traumatic events in my life. I believed I wasn’t
really worth caring for; I didn’t really matter and my feelings certainly didn’t
count. I built defences over my pain and covered up my unhappiness by trying
to appear strong, invulnerable and successful. But the drive to keep up
appearances also meant pouring a lot of my energy into performing roles –
with the result that I often felt dead inside.
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3. Visiting the enemy (1983)
As a child of five at the height of the Cold War, I remember watching the May
Day parade in Moscow on television. The parade across Red Square
represented an annual opportunity for Russia to show its military might – and
provided an enemy for everyone in the West to fear. I remember thinking, ‘I
bet that they aren’t really that scary. I don’t think they are my enemy. One day
I’ll go and see for myself.’
Fast forward twenty years to March 1983 and there I was, flying to
Russia for a seven-day trip. As we got off the plane in Moscow, soldiers with
machine guns greeted us at the bottom of the steps, looking very scary. (This
was several years before glasnost and the transparency that Gorbachev
introduced later in the decade.) My visa was for the environs of Moscow and
Leningrad. Our Intourist guide explained that if we moved beyond these city
limits, or got off the train between the two places, we would be arrested. It
wasn’t the warmest of welcomes!
So why on earth would I want to put myself through this? Why did I
want to go to Russia and see the enemy?
I think it’s because I’ve always felt compelled to confront my fears and
bridge the divide between them and reality. I’ve always had a desire to
understand things, a deep sense of spirituality and an interest in psychology. I
want at least to try to understand my ‘enemies’; and I don’t want to be afraid
just because I’ve been told to be afraid.
The night I arrived in Moscow, I went for a walk after dinner. I felt
excited. I met some other tourists and we sang and danced together in Red
Square. As the midnight bells rang out from St Basil’s Cathedral it was snowing
lightly. Then, at around 12.40 a.m., I looked around and realised that – apart
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from the guard at Lenin’s Tomb – I was the only person in the square. For all I
know, dozens of KGB officials might have been being covertly watching me, but
the experience was still thrilling. I had made a dream come true, and there was
something about being at the ‘heart of the enemy’s territory’ that appealed to
me.
Although I loved the sightseeing – visiting the Hermitage in Leningrad,
watching Ballet Rambert and an incredible circus perform within the Kremlin –
I have never been back to Russia. I have no desire to return. Sometimes, when
we are willing to confront what we fear, we meet with wonders instead.
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4. I couldn’t escape myself (1985)
I was on a luxury holiday in Antigua. I’d won the trip for selling lots of word-
processing systems. It was a week of lobster barbeques on the beach, Red
Stripe beer, sailing trips and snorkelling. I did enjoy a lot about it, so I’m not
asking you to feel sorry for me! But at the same time as I was supposed to be
enjoying myself, part of me was suffering. The criticising side of my mind
wouldn’t switch off. It kept telling me, ‘You don’t deserve to be here, you’re a
fraud. You just got lucky. How’re you ever going to top this? The only way is
down for you now…’
I still felt like there was something missing from my life. I’d thought it
was success; yet here I was, very successful and I still wasn’t happy. The voice
chided me, ‘What on earth is wrong with you?’ Although I looked successful on
the outside, I didn’t really know who I was on the inside. Who would I be
without the trappings of success? I was terrified I might be nobody.
I’d once heard a Buddhist teacher say, ‘Wherever you go, there you are.’
And here I was, in paradise, yet I’d bought some of my own hell with me. My
inner and outer worlds didn’t match up. At that moment, I heeded the call to
take my inner life seriously rather than to keep trying to override it.
Most of my colleagues seemed relaxed, able to chill out and be
themselves. I began to see that whilst the sales environment was stressful,
maybe the greatest pressure was the pressure I was putting on myself. I knew
something had to give. Perhaps I could change how I operated; perhaps I could
change myself and my relationship with myself?
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So when I returned to London, I started to see a transactional analysis
(TA) therapist called Juliette Pollitzer, and I have been working with her ever
since. Our work together set me on the path of self-transformation that I am
still on today and that I will be on for the rest of my life. It led to my making a
sideways move into a less stressful sales job, and then out of the corporate
world entirely in 1989, before starting my own business in 1990.
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5. Lost and lonely (1986)
After living in Brentwood, I moved back to Hornchurch, the town where I’d
grown up. But I realised that there wasn’t much to keep me there. My parents
no longer lived in the town, my sister had gone to London and most of my
friends had moved away. The local jobs I’d had loved as a teenager were long
over. As I travelled extensively around Greater London in the course of my
computer sales job, I really only came back to Hornchurch to sleep. In fact, I
had very little connection with my hometown anymore.
I actually felt quite isolated, but I kept myself busy as a way to blot out
my feelings of loneliness and unhappiness. I had taken to drinking a lot. I
wasn’t dealing well with my pain – but I was nevertheless feeling emboldened
by the support of therapy; I knew something needed to change and I was
beginning to believe I could make it happen. So I found myself taking the
decision to cross another threshold: to leave my old familiar hometown, move
up to London and start a new life. I decided to sell my house and move on
physically as well as emotionally, in the hope of creating a fresh beginning with
a new circle of friends and activities.
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6. I was meant to be there (1987)
So often we only understand how pivotal an event is in retrospect, and then
we are able to see how invisible hands seem to have been orchestrating our
lives without our fully realising it. I had an experience like this when I was still
selling computers in London, but using the evening and weekends to explore
and expand my interest in spirituality, personal and spiritual growth.
My dad had many loves, including literature, and we shared an interest
in poetry. He saw an advertisement for an evening to celebrate the launch of a
book called The English Spirit – The Little Gidding Anthology of English
Spirituality. He asked if I would like to go and said he would treat me to a
ticket. The event was to be held at St James’s Church in Piccadilly, central
London. I had heard of the venue but had never been to it.
Around the same time, I came across a lecture series called ‘Turning
Points’, which were also held at St James’s Church. The lectures explored
various spiritual ideas but were non-denominational and sounded as if they
might be right up my street. An interesting coincidence.
So I duly went along to the book launch. It was a good evening and I
bought two copies of the book, one for my dad and one that I still have today.
But what was even more significant was that I met Malcolm Stern at the book
launch, one of the founders of the Turning Points programme. We chatted and
he explained that Turning Points was in transition – ironically at its own turning
point! It was closing down and would be starting up again under a new name:
Alternatives. He also asked whether I might like to become involved with
Alternatives. Of course I said yes!
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So that evening marked the beginning of my fondness for, and
involvement with, both St James’s and Alternatives – a connection that would
last officially for twenty-one years, but which in truth will last my whole life
long.
When my dad invited me to go to that launch, little did I know that it
would lead to my co-leading a project within St James’s, having my own office
and giving talks there, working with the clergy, meeting my partner and
becoming part of the fabric of that amazing church for many years. Many of
the most important relationships in my life today have their roots in my
involvement with Alternatives and St James’s. Yet, at the time, I had no idea
just how pivotal that evening with my dad was going to be. It’s incredible how
even small events can have enormous repercussions in our lives.
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7. He took me seriously (1987)
How can a cup of coffee play a key part in somebody’s life? Well, obviously it
wasn’t really about the coffee, it was the context. This is a story of how a cup
of coffee proved pivotal for me because of the gift of time and attention that
went with it.
After that fateful evening with my dad, I soon became a regular
audience member and volunteer at Alternatives. I went to a talk there by Peter
Russell, an author and lecturer on consciousness. He also worked with
managers and leaders, and had written a book called The Creative Manager in
which he taught managers how to meditate. So much of what he said during
his lecture resonated with me. In particular, he talked about sharing our
knowledge, wisdom and experience with each other, as by helping each other
we help the evolution of the world itself. Something about that touched me
deeply.
So I bought his book and a thought formulated in my mind as I read it. I
decided that I’d love to meet Peter Russell, just to buy him a drink. A part of
me probably also wanted to test him a little to see if he really walked his talk.
Would he share himself with me? As this was in the days before email,
LinkedIn and Facebook, I penned him a good old-fashioned letter asking if I
could buy him a coffee. He replied and we arranged to meet at a café near his
flat in Primrose Hill.
I don’t remember much about the conversation itself, but I do
remember how I felt. I felt honoured that this successful man in the field of
consciousness should agree to spend time with me, listening to what I had to
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say and offering encouragement. At that moment in my life, that cup of coffee
was precious and a blessing. In a way, Peter Russell mentored me: he gave me
hope that the possibilities I was considering weren’t crazy; they were
achievable. He validated my plans and personal aspirations with his time and
attention.
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8. Four words that changed my life (1987)
It was a beautiful spring day – and I couldn’t wait to get away from my desk. I
was in my third corporate job, but I seemed to be living for my time outside
work. My heart sank whenever I walked into the soulless office in Holborn.
What was wrong with me? Why couldn’t I be happy like everyone else
appeared to be? Why couldn’t I at least go through the motions?
The upside of job was that I had a lot of autonomy, some of which I
probably abused. I would make up just about any excuse to get out of the
building. Attending fictitious meetings and having to deliver brochures urgently
were two of my favourite reasons. After dealing with anything urgent I often
left the office to go for a walk.
This particular day, I walked down to Embankment Gardens where I
would sometimes grab a coffee, sit on one of the benches and think about life.
As I went to buy my drink, I suddenly heard, ‘Oi, cheer up mate!’ I looked
around and saw a couple of homeless guys. One was nursing a tin of beer, and
they both had the carefree air of those’ve had a drop to drink. – But smiling at
me and encouraging me to cheer up? Surely something was wrong with this
picture! There was I: successful, nice flat in Fulham, company BMW, fancy suit,
cashmere coat, foreign travel, well paid and pretty secure job. Yet a homeless
guy with next to nothing was telling me to cheer up! It seemed like another
message from the universe: my outer success was not making me happy.
It struck me then that I had gone about as far as I could go down this
particular route – a route of unhealthy independence and of overriding my
inner voice; of pretending I didn’t really care about much; of never asking for
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help but thinking I had to do it all on my own; a route that meant keeping a lid
on my feelings in the attempt to appear strong. But I could no longer keep on
refusing to listen to my true calling.
Those four words shouted out by a stranger were pivotal in my
realisation that there had to be another way.
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9. I don’t want another job, I want to be inspired (1987)
As a result of my therapy with Juliette, I slowly began to change my life script.
Our work together amplified my dissatisfaction with my corporate career,
which didn’t sit comfortably with the newly emerging, more autonomous
person I was becoming. All the same, I couldn’t help wondering if I was crazy
to leave behind a good career, and I would look through the jobs section in the
newspapers and start to panic! I wondered if I would ever be happy, if I would
ever be able to fit in and be like everyone else.
A new thought slowly began to surface, and it has shaped the rest of my
life. I can only guess that it came straight from my soul. It said: ‘You don’t want
another job, you want to be inspired. You are looking for your purpose. You
want to create your own work. You want to bring your own work into
existence and create your own path. You won’t find that work anywhere; you’ll
create it yourself from your own imagination.’ This was a big and scary idea,
but also exciting and inspiring.
I discovered that the Latin root of the word create is creare, which
means ‘to bring into existence’. I loved the bold new idea of bringing my own
work into existence rather than doing a job that someone else had created.
However, I didn’t know anyone else who had moved off the conventional
career path, and, as I had no role models, part of me suspected it would be
career suicide. Yet at the same time I knew this was the way to go. And it was
the way I went and that I continue to go.
I had heard my own call to adventure, a call to fulfil the unlived life
within me, the life that wanted to be lived. I began to see that I was uninspired
39
by the form of work on offer. What inspired me was the content or the essence
of work. I wanted work that was of service and which drew out the best in me.
I actually wanted to create my own ministry: an integration of heart, mind and
spirit.
And so began a new adventure in which I started to take the inspiration
and ideas in my heart and turn them into work and a source of income in the
form of various businesses. I don’t think I would have had the words to
describe this process in 1987, but I now know that I was experiencing the
impulse to embody the spiritual dimensions within myself.
I had often hated my jobs selling computers because they never allowed
me to give enough to the world. And that’s all I’d ever wanted: to give my best
self and play my best game. The computer industry had never allowed me to
fully give what I thought I was capable of. Deep within me, I was driven by the
impulse to unify my work and my love.
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10. The day I discovered what I was born to do (1987)
It’s said that the two most important days in your life are the day you are born
and, second, the day you discover why you were born. I didn’t feel I had been
put on earth to sell computers to foreign banks, yet I still didn’t know what I’d
put on earth to achieve or whether there was any kind of reason for my being
here. Then, in October 1987, I discovered why I was born and what I was born
to do.
The TA therapy with Juliette continued to be extremely helpful. The
insights and understandings I got from our sessions together were incredibly
illuminating and helped me make sense of my experiences and upbringing. I
wondered how to apply what I’d learned to my working life, and so Juliette
told me about Julie Hay, who taught TA in the world of organisations and
management. I got in touch with Julie and started training with her one
weekend a month.
During one of our training sessions, Julie asked me if I was going to the
TA national conference in October. She added, ‘I think you should come, and
it’d be great if you could present a workshop there.’
I nearly choked! Me – present a workshop to all those experienced
therapists, counsellors and consultants? ‘No way!’ I protested. ‘I’m a student,
not a teacher; I’m not ready for that!’ My resistance kicked in big time; I didn’t
feel grownup enough to do something like that, even though I was 28 years old
at the time.
But Julie persisted, as good coaches do. She didn’t buy into my self-
limiting stories and kept suggesting I consider it. Eventually I capitulated and
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submitted a proposal for a two-hour workshop to the committee, which I
secretly hoped they would reject. But they accepted it, which caused me to
feel even more terrified.
‘Ah, but I bet no one will sign up for the workshop, so I won’t have to run
it,’ I reassured myself.
So that October I travelled to the conference, where I was due to
present the workshop on the Saturday afternoon. I couldn’t sleep the night
before, I was so anxious. I was convinced that either no one would turn up, or I
would have to run it and I’d screw it up and humiliate myself. I spent much of
the night preparing and over-preparing.
Come the Saturday afternoon, I walked into the seminar room and
waited. One by one, twenty-four people arrived and took their seats. Shit! I
was really going to have to run this thing, and I cursed myself for agreeing to
do it. But there was no way out, so I took a deep breath and started to speak.
Within minutes, my nerves had gone and I felt confident. I found my
energy flowing and I began to really enjoy myself. I began to experience myself
in a new way; a ‘me’ that had probably always existed but which had been
hidden away began to surface. People were smiling at what I was saying, taking
notes, asking questions, and participating willingly in the exercises I suggested.
The group and I were truly engaged with each other.
And then it dawned on me: this is what I am on earth to do. Not
specifically to teach TA, but to inspire, to teach, educate and communicate life-
affirming and life-enhancing ideas, encouraging people to discover and
blossom into their full potential; to offer them thought leadership. This is what
I was born to do. It seemed like less of a decision and more of a remembering,
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a growing realisation: ‘Ah, this is what I promised to achieve; now I remember.’
It was a moment of inspiration in which my soul moved from being a numinous
entity to a discernible presence in my life. I awoke.
After the workshop I felt on a fabulous high. The feeling didn’t last long,
though! My perfectionist streak soon kicked in and I focussed on all the things I
didn’t get to say or that I could have said better. But however hard my ego
tried, it couldn’t erase the memory of that taste of how I’d experienced myself
for the first time. I couldn’t deny what I had experienced.
That talk entailed something else of great significance: in giving it, I beat
my own resistance. My fear, doubt, lack of confidence and insecurity didn’t win
the day. My inspiration and courage did. And I learned something else that has
stayed with me ever since: I very rarely feel absolutely ready to achieve what I
feel inspired and called to do. So these days, I make the effort to proceed with
my vulnerability and my fear. This is one of my keys to happiness, success and
fulfilment: to ‘show up’ and take a step forward before I feel ready, and to
keep unfurling my wings as I go.
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11. Discovering men’s work and reconnecting with my soul (1988)
Through my involvement with Alternatives, I heard about the American poet
Robert Bly and read his book Iron John, which is about reclaiming the ‘Wild
Man’ (or woman) in each of us. It had become a New York Times best-seller
and I learned that Bly was being sponsored to run a residential retreat for men
in Dorset in the UK. I felt the call to be there.
Initially, I found the prospect of being in the company of nearly one
hundred men for three days quite intimidating. But it turned out to be a
profoundly moving experience, full of ritual, storytelling, drumming, poetry
and sharing. One of the main ideas behind the retreat was based in the
tradition of older men initiating younger men and boys. The elders blessed the
youths and showed them ways to channel their energies constructively,
thereby making the emotional and spiritual transition to becoming powerful
men in their own right, able to contribute to their own communities. Bly’s
thinking was that in the absence of this blessing and initiation, most men in
Western society never really grew up, but stayed immature in some respects,
and this had resulted in ours being a society of competition rather than one of
honouring and mutual celebration.
For me, it was a transformative experience to share a space with other
men in which it was OK to start letting down our facades and masks, and talk
about real feelings such as joy and even pain. Bly talked a lot about how grief
can be a gateway for a man to get back to his heart, and I found this
profoundly validating: I had suppressed so much grief and pain, but during the
retreat I started to let out tears that I had long kept locked away; I started to
pierce the shame that had kept my pain shut in. And I was honoured for my
44
courage in doing so by the others, rather than made to feel ashamed for being
weak and sensitive.
After the retreat in Dorset, I started attending various men’s groups in
London. These were popular at the time, although – like many things – their
popularity eventually declined. One of the groups I joined was whittled down
to just the four of us. But we – Martin Wenner, Adam Stern, Matt Ingrams and
myself – still meet to this day, over twenty years later, even though Martin
now lives in Manchester, Matt in Brighton and Adam spends half the year in
Johannesburg.
In 2000, I attended the New Warrior Training Adventure run by the
Mankind Project (MKP). It entailed another men’s initiation weekend and,
again, it was a very powerful experience. I told the others on the course how I
felt like I’d got a bit of my soul back that weekend. Then, when I turned 50, I
joined an MKP ‘elders’ group in North London, which I still belong to and find
valuable.
I continue to find men’s work empowering and challenging. I still find it
difficult to let down my defences and to trust others; to let people into my
inner world, where at times I still feel ashamed, not good enough or
inadequate.
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12. The day I eventually resigned (1989)
April 24, 1989 is probably one of the most important days of my life. This was
the day on which, at the age of 31, I finally took the decision to resign from
corporate life. This was the day that, after years of inner turmoil and soul
searching, I finally printed, signed and handed in my resignation letter, which I
had composed eighteen months earlier. This was the day, even though I felt
riddled with self-doubt and fear, I committed to doing the ‘work I was born to
do’. I took the decision as I sat at my office desk in Holborn, where I had been
employed for nearly three years. So my heroic journey started in a cubicle!
My father had stayed with one company for forty-nine years, and my
upbringing had programmed me for safety, conservatism and security – to do
as I was told and to follow rules. But I didn’t want to remain a hostage of my
fears. My soul was un-programmed and urging me to adventure, to
experience a different destiny. It was time to dare, to be bold and audacious
on my own behalf. I wanted to see where my soul would take me. The real
reason I wanted to leave my corporate job was to find out who I really was; I
felt if I didn’t make a bid to satisfy that curiosity, I would die of boredom. And I
wanted to find out whether I had a dream in my heart, or whether it was just a
fantasy.
I probably could have stayed in corporate jobs for the rest of my life. I
was a good communicator and generally well liked. But I felt I was putting my
communication skills in the service of a shadow purpose: telling the story my
employer wanted to tell and building their dream. I wanted to give voice to the
thoughts and feelings stirring in my own heart and soul. I wanted to build my
own dream, not the dream of my employers.
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I already dabbled with speaking and coaching, and found I loved these
activities so much that now I wanted to try to do them fulltime, even though I
had a precious little idea how I would ever get paid for doing them.
I finally left my job on 21 July, 1989 and spent the three months before
that wondering whether I was being courageous or crazy. I was still riddled
with fear and anxiety – yet I was proud of myself for answering the call to
adventure in my heart. I had decided to dedicate my life to the dream that was
whispering deep inside, but I didn’t know if I was embarking on some stupid
and hopeless endeavour or being truly inspired and courageous. In
mythological terms, it was the day I finally said yes to the hero’s call to
adventure after refusing it for so many years.
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PART TWO
Initiation and Trial
(Ages 31 to 41)
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13. The right words at the right time (1989)
I had bought a round-the-world plane ticket and, after leaving my corporate
career, planned to take three months out before starting my own business. I
rented out my flat to a friend and a week later flew off to New York, where I
stayed for a while before boarding a Greyhound bus to San Francisco and
stopping off along the way in Washington, Nashville, Albuquerque, Santa Fe,
Las Vegas, Reno and Oakland. All those cities in fourteen days! Mixed up with
my excitement and sense of adventure were moments of loneliness, intense
fear and vulnerability, as I wondered whether I had done the right thing in
leaving my job. I felt quite desperate, lost and full of self-doubt at times.
I had arranged to attend an international Transactional Analysis
conference while I was in Oakland, where I planned to meet up with friends
from the UK and immerse myself in TA and personal growth for a few days.
While I was there, I met two lovely women who were both TA therapists and
educators, and who struck me as being particularly wise, confident and
supportive. I was magnetically drawn to spending some time with them.
One of them, Jean Ilsley Clarke, was the author of a book called Self-
Esteem, A Family Affair. When I talked to her about my plans to start my own
business as a speaker and coach, and maybe even write a book of my own one
day, she was very encouraging. She said, ‘Your plans sound wonderful. People
deserve to hear you.’
At that moment in my life, those five words ‘people deserve to hear you’
fell like water onto parched earth. I cried with gratitude. Those encouraging
49
words constituted one of the most validating things anybody had ever said to
me up to that point in my life. They confirmed that I did have something
useful, relevant and inspiring to share with people, and they kept me going
through some dark times. Hearing those words uttered by Jean meant they
had a real authority and juice to them. She offered the sort of sound parental
advice I needed and I felt as though she had been assigned to me.
In that pivotal moment, Jean nurtured a spark. Instead of telling me to
be sensible and not get ideas above my station, she encouraged me to dream
and to overcome my self-limiting thoughts. Through her, I came to understand
the simple power of a few words of encouragement and validation – both how
much I need them and just how much a few words can mean to others.
And I’d like to offer the same gift to you today: know that people
deserve to hear you too.
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14. Choosing to live (1990)
After my time in San Francisco, I flew from Los Angeles to New Zealand, then
on to Australia, and finally came back to London via Singapore. At the TA
conference in Oakland, I’d met Irma, a Canadian woman who joined me in
Australia for a holiday together in Cairns. After my return to London, I delayed
starting my new business for a few weeks and made a couple of trips to see
Irma in Toronto instead. The romance ended in January 1990, but instead of
being inspired to start my business, I fell into a big emotional black hole. I felt
totally inadequate.
I had been very driven in my corporate career by the need to succeed,
but I’d never been that far away from feeling crap about myself. Now, here I
was in my lovely flat in Fulham with too much time on my hands, starting again
at the age of 32. Although I was free to create a fresh start, the lack of
structure in my new life also meant I was free to become totally depressed. As
I sat there, dwelling on my situation, I started to believe that I had made a
terrible mistake in leaving my corporate career. I beat myself up. All the bad
feelings that I’d attempted to avoid by keeping myself busy began to surface.
The best way I can describe it was that it was as if the lid of a sewer
could no longer contain the pressure, and everything came rising up: all those
feelings of hurt, shame, pain, grief, self-loathing, disappointment and failure.
The fragile facade that I’d constructed and presented to the world crumbled.
Stripped of my mask of success, I believed I was just a nuisance and that
nothing I did mattered. But what choice did I have? Go back to a job, start my
business – or give up and die?
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I felt overwhelmed by pain, and my ego insisted that the only way to
escape that pain would be to kill myself. Part of me believed that the world
would be better off if I were not in it. I felt extremely toxic, and spent days and
then weeks walking in Kew Gardens and Richmond Park, near where I lived,
just crying. Suicidal thoughts stayed with me for months. My levels of self-
rejection were very high; so much of me seemed to be pitted against myself.
So, instead of starting my business, I signed on the dole, full of shame
that the State had to take care of me. But I felt defeated by the hostile forces
within myself. ‘There are so many people doing what I’m thinking of doing.
What’s so special about me?’ I’d asked myself. ‘Who is ever going to want to
listen to me?’ I felt helpless and useless, and hated myself for feeling like that –
and so the spiral of self-loathing continued.
I was still drawn to the idea of starting my own business, but to do so
felt like climbing a mountain – Everest, at that. I believed I just wasn’t up to it.
Until that period, I had got through life by toughening myself up. Some parts of
my upbringing had been dysfunctional and abusive, and, while I wasn’t macho
as such, I had put defences in place so that people couldn’t hurt me anymore.
But those defences had left me feeling dead inside. I’d been keeping up the
appearance of being successful, of holding it all together and not needing
anything, while actually feeling like an utter failure and simultaneously hating
myself for feeling so weak.
Deep down, I sensed it was time to tend to my inner landscape and find
my true Self. A voice inside said that there was a purpose to all this, that it had
a meaning, and that in effect I was dying to aspects of my ego so that I could
be re-born. I chose to trust that inner voice. And I got help in therapy from
Juliette.
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After I’d spent many months on the dole, debating whether to die or
live, a shift occurred. The dark night gave way to a new dawn and I started to
become aware of the green shoots of a new life. I took the decision to live –
and to go for it. There were no trumpets, no choir of angels and no public
declaration; just the simple decision to live.
On 4 November, 1990, I signed off the dole and, in an act of faith, I
opened the doors to my first business, which was called Personal and
Professional Development. I started from scratch. I had no connections, no
privileges, no reputation, not much experience and very few entrepreneurial
strategies. I just had a dream in my heart, a little inspiration, a little renewed
self-confidence, and a lot of fear, doubt and anxiety. It was a slow start.
I didn’t know then if I had what it would take or whether I was deluding
myself. But I decided to say yes to the adventure of my own life. In
mythological terms, I truly accepted the call. I embarked upon an adventure to
discover the real and authentic me – the Self that I felt I had largely lost
contact with. I said yes to the as-yet-unlived life in my own heart. I started
living the life I was born to live instead of remaining trapped in the life I’d felt
programmed and conditioned to endure.
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15. Not in Kansas anymore (1992)
I realised how far I’d come one evening at St James’s Church, where I was now
co-leading the Alternatives programme. That particular evening, I was hosting
a talk given by an author who was channelling a disembodied entity – a being
existing outside time and space. The author was sharing the wisdom of this
entity with the audience and the whole thing felt quite strange to me. And that
wasn’t all. When the channelling session came to an end and the author had
fielded questions from an audience of two hundred, the refreshments were
provided by a café run by Hare Krishna devotees, with shaved heads and robes.
Part of me felt very naughty. This wasn’t how I’d been brought up!
It was all very weird and a long way from my upbringing. I began
to contrast my life now with how it had been only a few year earlier.
A far cry from my Holborn days, my office at Alternatives was
situated in a world-famous church designed by Christopher Wren, where
the mystic poet William Blake had been baptised. The whole Alternatives
programme was welcomed by and under the protection of the rector of
St James’s, the Reverend Donald Reeves. Donald himself was quite well
known, and had once been described by Margaret Thatcher as ‘a very
dangerous man’, a description he seemed to relish. After a day in the
office I went home to my great new flat in Parsons Green.
As the Dorothy says in The Wizard of Oz, ‘We’re not in Kansas
anymore!’ I had definitely come a long way from my Methodist and
grammar-school suburban upbringing in Hornchurch, and from selling
computers to Japanese banks in the Square Mile. As hero’s journeys go, I
knew I had entered a whole new world, for sure – a world I generally felt
I belonged in.
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16. Pretentious, moi? (1995)
As part of my work with Alternatives, I attended a networking event for
spiritually-minded people at the Samye Ling Buddhist community near
Lockerbie in Scotland. I felt a bit out of my depth, but after a while I began to
enjoy myself.
On the second day, I was queuing for lunch next to a monk in orange
robes. The monk turned to me and asked politely, ‘And what do you do?’
I felt flustered. I hadn’t come across any Tibetan Buddhist monks when I
was growing up in Hornchurch and was at a loss for a suitable answer. So I
came up with a line that I reckoned would sound impressive: ‘I’m trying to
bring spirit into business.’ Which sounded pretty good, I thought.
The monk smiled and said, ‘That’s interesting – we’re trying to bring
business into spirit.’
I was flummoxed.
He went on to explain that his monastic order had only recently left
Tibet. As a new operation, one of the first outside their home country, while
they were great at meditating, entering higher planes of consciousness and
clearing karma, they were still learning about management, finances,
organising staff and volunteers, marketing and fundraising.
I began to suspect that my answer might have been just a tad
pretentious.
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Then a realisation struck me that has since guided the course of my life’s
work: that existence is not divided strictly into business or spirituality, the
material or the ethereal; life is about creating the marriage and integration of
both. Let heart, spirit and inspiration lead the way, but use your head as a
great servant to deal with the how-tos and to solve the many problems you are
likely to face. Use inspiration, feeling and practical reasoning together. A
robust ego is a great servant, but a lousy master.
That conversation with the Tibetan Buddhist monk burst a little bubble
of pretentiousness and ultimately set me on a path of greater humility.
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17. Work is love made visible (1995)
After my visit to the Samye Ling monastic community, I got a lift over to the
Findhorn centre in Forres, northern Scotland, where I was going to spend a few
days. The Findhorn Foundation was one of the inspirations for Alternatives, so I
thought I would visit the source. Findhorn was founded by Eileen and Peter
Caddy and Dorothy MacLean, and its impact has been felt globally, with
thousands of people travelling to the centre each year to attend programmes
and share life with the community that lives there permanently.
I had no idea what to expect, but my few days were to prove
transformative. Everyone who visits Findhorn is invited to work in the
community so as to experience the inner spirit of the Foundation. I
volunteered to work in the kitchen, helping to prepare a couple of meals. My
experience of work generally up to that point had been that it was a fairly
disconnected activity, something largely done in return for money. I believed
that work’s major purpose was financial remuneration, rather than emotional
or spiritual gain.
There is a line in The Prophet by Kahlil Gibran that says, ‘Work is love
made visible.’ And I was about to experience this for the first time. Before we
started work in the kitchen, we did an ‘attunement’. This involved standing
silently in a circle and holding hands with the other kitchen staff as we
dedicated our work to being of service to each other and the people we were
going to feed. We thanked nature and the earth for the abundance of food. As
we stood there, we consciously connected to our own inner spirits and
acknowledged the spirit in each other. We asked that our work and the food
we were preparing be infused with love. Then we checked in with our feelings,
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as anyone who wasn’t feeling brilliant would be offered a little support and
given some TLC by the others.
Wow! This short ritual blew my mind. I could actually feel the intention
in the room. I wasn’t doing work that was impersonal: I was going to be
feeding the people I’d met, as well as those I would soon be meeting. It was
beautiful – I had a tangible experience of the inter-connectedness of all life. As
a result, I experienced real joy in simply cutting carrots and chopping cabbages.
And it’s an experience that has stayed with me to this day. Even now, I say a
little prayer before I write, speak or coach, in which I ask to be of service. I
never know what impact something I say or do might have.
One day, I visited the centre’s bookshop, where I noticed that although
quite a few people were reading books, not so many were buying them. When
I asked the assistant whether she and her colleagues minded this, she told me,
‘We consider they’re blessing the books by reading them.’ What a concept!
I spent an evening at Findhorn in the mediation room, where I
experienced a sense of profound peace. Over the course of several hours, I
meditated on my friends and family – as well as various people who either
made me angry or irritated – and then sent them gratitude for being in my life,
and blessings for their own happiness. It was a wonderfully liberating thing to
do.
I’ve been back to Findhorn for a couple of short visits since and enjoyed
the spirit of the place and the natural beauty of the surrounding area. If only
we could all carry a little bit of Findhorn in our hearts!
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18. Helen (1996)
One evening at Alternatives, my fellow trustee Mary bought along a friend who
wanted to join us as a volunteer. Mary introduced Helen, who asked, ‘Is there
anything I can do to help?’
I said, ‘How are you at humping?’ I meant whether she could help us
move some boxes of books, but I said it with a cheeky grin and I could see she
was a little embarrassed. Anyway, we chatted during the evening and got on
well. A few weeks later, we had our first date at an Italian restaurant in
Tottenham. Bryan Adams’s tune ‘The Only Thing That Looks Good on Me Is
You’ was big at the time, and became our song.
I was in the process of selling my flat in Parsons Green, and within a few
months Helen and I had moved in together. She was at the end of a career in
dance, having trained classically before performing on the chart show Top of
The Pops. Although dancing still meant the world to her, it’s a physically
demanding profession and so Helen had trained as a psychotherapist and done
some acting work in preparation for transitioning to a new career. We were
both at a crossroads.
It’s difficult, sometimes, to appreciate how much a chance meeting can
change a life. Love can find any of us even in the most everyday of
circumstances – such as shifting a stack of boxes – and transform everything.
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19. A moment of grace (1996)
When I first discovered the human potential and personal-growth movement, I
instinctively felt my soul was at home in this way of thinking. It felt like where I
belonged. That’s why I began attending the Alternatives programme when it
started in London. I became a volunteer, then joined the management team,
and eventually co-led Alternatives for several years. I immersed myself in the
world of self-development and self-improvement.
I enjoyed the work a lot, but, although I loved it, I was secretly a little
embarrassed that, ten years on, I continued to struggle with self-love, was very
tough on myself, and felt like I still had many of the problems I’d identified at
the outset of my work in this area. I had attended Unleash The Power Within
workshops run by life coach Tony Robbins, walked on hot coals in personal-
development exercises designed to help a person face their fears, and made
lists of goals as long as my arm. Yet two weeks later I’d become disappointed
when nothing radical seemed to have changed and I’d feel as though I was
back at square one.
Knowing that I had recently become a newbie student of A Course in
Miracles, my friend Dr Robert Holden introduced me to a couple who were
visiting from Hawaii. Tom and Linda Carpenter were both teachers of A Course
in Miracles and we got on like a house on fire. As we parted, Tom and Linda
said, ‘If you’re ever in Hawaii, look us up.’ I immediately thought, ‘I’d love to
get to Hawaii!’ not really believing it would ever happen.
Fast forward a few months and there Helen and I were, being met at
Lihue Airport by Tom and Linda. We ended up staying with them for ten days.
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The island of Kauai was stunning, one of the prettiest places I have ever been,
their home was beautiful and our conversation inspiring.
One evening after supper, Tom and I were sitting on the deck of his
home, watching the sun go down, when I shared with Tom how I’d been on a
path of self-improvement for many years but still found inner peace elusive. I
said, ‘There seems to be so much wrong with me that needs fixing. I feel like it
could be a lifetime’s work.’
Tom looked me in the eyes. With a wise smile, he said, ‘Nick, the only
thing wrong with you is your belief that there’s something wrong with you. It’s
your very quest to fix yourself that’s causing much of your suffering. Would
you consider giving up on self-improvement and embracing self-acceptance?
There is nothing about you that is unlovable.’
I felt no judgement in what Tom was saying to me; indeed, I remember
thinking, ‘Tom sees beyond all my neurosis and all my stories, and sees who I
really am – which I can barely remember myself. He’s reminding me of some
deep truth.’
I was stopped in my tracks, but it was a moment of Grace. Tom was
looking at me through the eyes of love, and I tangibly experienced it. In that
moment, I realised unconditional love isn’t just a nice word or sentiment, it is
real. Rarely had I felt so deeply accepted in my life. It was as if it wasn’t just
Tom talking to me, but Love itself speaking to me through Tom. I had often felt
judged while I was growing up and, in turn, had learned to judge myself pretty
constantly. In that moment, I felt I was beginning to be rewired. Tom was
asking me to consider the possibility that there existed a whole Self already
within me that needed no fixing or improvement. I simply needed to accept
that part of myself, and also to accept all within myself that I considered to be
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unlovable. I opened up to the belief that I really was worth loving just as I was.
I realised that no amount of self-improvement could ever make up for my lack
of self-acceptance.
That moment with Tom touched my heart deeply and initiated a process
of deep inner transformation that continues today and which will continue for
the rest of my life.
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20. I’m not crazy, I’m a visionary (1996)
I have often felt insecure at the beginning of new projects, and in need of
some external validation to get me across the threshold, to reinforce my
decisions and help me trust my inner promptings and inspiration. I received a
crucial piece of validation while Helen and I were staying with Tom and Linda
Carpenter in Kauai.
I had been giving talks on inspiration and work for several years by that
point and I was wondering whether I might be able to write a book, but wasn’t
sure if I was fooling myself. Whenever I went into a WHSmith store in London,
there were no sections for ‘Inspiration in work’ or ‘Spirituality in work’. So I
thought, ‘Maybe it’s just me – I’m a misfit and a lone dreamer who just
couldn’t hack the corporate world.’ Maybe everyone else was happy, and there
was something wrong with me.
But when I walked into a Borders bookstore on Kauai for the first time, I
felt like I was in heaven. Firstly, it was so much bigger than any bookshop I had
ever seen in the UK. Secondly, they had a massive section in the bookstore on
work, inspiration and spirituality! So maybe I wasn’t on my own. Maybe I was
just a bit ahead of the game, more of a pioneer than a misfit as I went through
my own metamorphosis.
After Kauai, Helen and I spent three days on Maui, where the Borders
bookstore was twice as big – with an even bigger section on work, inspiration
and spirituality! I felt so buoyed up. In fact, I pretty much bought up half the
section, and actually had to buy another suitcase so I could carry my purchases
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back to London. I read and derived great comfort from these books, and they
strengthened my resolve to write my own book one day.
Seeing, buying and reading that selection of books helped me cross an
inner threshold and acknowledge my inner visionary. I could see clearly now
that my purpose in life wasn’t to moan about ‘what is’; I was here to write
about what could be and to inspire other people to discover new possibilities.
It gave me the hope that my inner promptings had value and that I was OK, the
world was OK: there really was a place for me and my dream in the world. I
began to believe in earnest in the dream of having my own voice and being a
writer – and that there may just be people in the world who would welcome
my efforts. Sometimes we simply need to look for a sign that we are on track.
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21. The shadow artist (1997)
Before I knew it, I’d been co-running Alternative for two years, and had really
enjoyed myself during that time. In many respects, I was ‘living the dream’,
which in my case meant being immersed in the area of personal and spiritual
growth. There I was, co-running the top weekly platform in London and getting
to work with the leading names in the field such as Deepak Chopra, Wayne
Dyer, Susan Jeffers, Shakti Gawain and Robert Bly, as well as many lesser
known but equally good authors and speakers.
And yet I started to feel a nagging boredom and even found myself
making judgements about some of the speakers, along the lines of: ‘I’ve heard
that before. That’s not new; even I could tell people about that.’ I tried to
ignore the feeling and told myself I should be grateful for the position I had,
but secretly I feared that maybe my dream wasn’t the right one after all; either
that or – yes – there really must be something wrong with me.
Anyway, I went on holiday to Lanzarote with Helen, and I took with me
Julia Cameron’s book The Artist’s Way, which several people had
recommended to me. Ostensibly, I took the book so that I could type up some
of the great quotes it contained for my growing collection of inspirational
quotations. As I was flicking through it, though, I started to read the text more
closely and was drawn in particular to a short section about ‘the shadow
artist’.
As I read through those few paragraphs, I was shocked by how Cameron
described the shadow artist:
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Shadow artists often choose shadow careers – those close to the
desired art, even parallel to it, but not the art itself…As a rule of
thumb, shadow artists judge themselves harshly, beating
themselves for years over the fact they have not acted on their
dreams. This cruelty only reinforces their status as shadow artists.
I had what I now affectionately call an ‘oh shit!’ moment. I had come
such a long way, but it suddenly occurred to me that I was still living a shadow
life. I was supporting inspiring and creative souls, frequently leaders in their
fields, and often organising sold-out talks for them. But then it hit me: I didn’t
want to be the organising talks for speakers any more. I wanted to be a
speaker. I didn’t just want to support authors, I was inspired to become an
author.
For a moment, I felt clear, uplifted and inspired – but it didn’t last long.
My resistance kicked in and I suddenly started to feel vulnerable again. By that
stage, although I had begun to give a few talks and workshops, I hadn’t yet
tried to write a book. I couldn’t see how I would ever make a living from
speaking or writing. The gap between where I wanted to be and where I was
seemed too massive to bridge. And who would want to listen to me or read my
books when there were already so many other eloquent people out there?
What was special or different about me? Would I find a place in the world if I
wasn’t leading Alternatives?
But it also made sense. Co-leading Alternatives had been a wonderful
training ground, but there was a new chapter waiting for me. However, I
lacked the confidence to believe in myself and my own voice. I still felt
uncomfortable about investing in my own success. I felt more comfortable
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living vicariously – investing in the success of others. I was more at ease when
hiding out and allowing others to shine rather than shining myself.
But I could no longer deny that voice of inspiration, which was yet again
prompting me to move forward and write a new chapter in my life.
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22. Becoming a gracious receiver (1998)
I grew up believing that it is holier to give than to receive, and that ‘good’
people don’t need anything for themselves. As a result, I always felt guilty
about needing or receiving anything for myself.
I’ve mentioned how, while co-leading Alternatives, I was very blessed to
meet many of the big names in the worlds of personal development and
spiritual growth. I hosted Marianne Williamson, the spiritual teacher and best-
selling author of A Return to Love, several times. The first time, we had a pretty
full house of around five hundred to six hundred people.
Marianne is a true pro, and before the talk we discussed how we would
handle book signings. Her talk was due to finish at 8.30 p.m. and the
agreement with St James’s Church was that we would have cleared up and
vacated the church by 10 p.m., as the vergers were only paid until then. Ninety
minutes wasn’t a lot of time in which to sign many books and chat to a lot of
people. But Marianne said to me, ‘I understand you have to be out by ten, so
I’ll do my best to sign all the books by then.’
I doubted that she’d be able to manage it, as when the talk finished
there were around two hundred people wanting to have books signed. But at
around 9.55 p.m. I looked over and there was Marianne standing alone, with
no one else waiting to have their copy signed. She had achieved an amazing
feat.
I felt a bit sheepish as I would have loved to get my own copy of A
Return to Love signed by her, yet I didn’t want to hassle her after such a busy
evening. But I also knew I would kick myself if I didn’t get it signed. So after
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some internal conflict, I asked Marianne if she would mind signing my copy,
and she said she’d be delighted.
As she signed it, I thanked her: ‘Marianne, I’m so grateful for you writing
this book. It was my introduction to A Course in Miracles and I’m very grateful
to have found the Course. Thank you for your work.’
She handed my book back to me and looked me in the eyes. ‘Thank you,
Nick,’ she replied. ‘That means a lot to me. Thank you for taking the time to tell
me.’
I felt great. Now, I know that I was probably the 200th person to say
something like that to her that evening, and maybe the 200,000th person to
have said that to her in career, but in that moment she made me feel like I was
the first person ever to have expressed gratitude to her.
I reflected on the experience on my way home, and was curious about
why it had felt so significant. Then it began to dawn on me. Marianne had
generously received my gratitude and appreciation. She was a gracious
receiver.
So began another chapter for me: to be willing to become as gracious a
receiver as Marianne was. To let people enjoy and appreciate me and my
work. To let people give me what they wanted to give me. To receive
graciously and honour people’s gifts to me – even when I felt awkward and as
if I didn’t really deserve them.
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23. A lesson in valuing (1998)
Not long after my lesson in receiving from Marianne Williamson, I hosted an
event at a London hotel for Nancy Rosanoff, a teacher of intuition and author
of the Intuition Workout, a practical guide to discovering and developing your
inner knowing. She was over from New York with her husband, John.
A ticket to the event cost £20 and she asked if John could attend too.
When John arrived, I welcomed him in, saying, ‘Please be my guest,’ but he
replied, ‘Actually, I would really like to pay you the £20. I value the work you’ve
put into making this evening happen for my wife, and I value my wife and her
work. Even though we’ve been married for twenty years, I still learn so much
from her. So I would like to pay you.’
I took the £20 and something about the transaction felt very precious.
I’d grown up in a family where we didn’t seem to value each other very much.
As a consequence, part of me had always enjoyed the sense of getting
something for nothing. And yet here was John, valuing Nancy and effectively
saying to me, ‘I don’t want to get something for nothing; I want to value you,
your work, and my wife and her work.’
That evening, I made a little vow to myself that I would do my best to
value people – and to let them know I valued them. And to let myself be
valued, although that one often proves a little more difficult.
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PART THREE
Return and Atonement
(Ages 41 to 51)
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24. Daring to live the dream (1998)
Ever since I was a child, I’d dreamed of writing a book. When I was 8 years old,
whenever people asked me what I wanted for Christmas, I’d say, ‘Pens!’ which
was my young way of saying, ‘I want to write.’ So I got a lot of pens that
Christmas, but I didn’t start writing seriously for another thirty years. Although
I am best known for my book The Work We Were Born to Do, I nearly didn’t get
it published. I nearly sabotaged that life-long dream.
By my late thirties, I had begun to give talks and run a few workshops on
the subject of ‘The Work We Were Born to Do’ in London and abroad. As these
were well received, I wondered whether I might fulfil that childhood dream of
mine by writing a book on the same subject. So I started jotting down a few
ideas, fleshing out a chapter or two and worked on putting together a book
proposal. At the time, it was all unknown territory for me. But I’d had my
shadow artist moment of revelation (see Story 21) so I knew I was ready to quit
hiding and show up more in my own life.
Through my involvement with Alternatives, I knew who the major
publishers in the mind, body, spirit area were. I took a deep breath and sent
the proposal to half a dozen of them, pretty much expecting to be laughed at.
But to my great surprise, several expressed interest, and I had meetings with
two of them. Then, a short while later, I received a letter in the post from Julia
McCutchen, MD of Element Books, offering me a contract to write it. As I read
the letter several times, my internal dialogue went something like this: ‘Oh,
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shit, Element really mean business. But I’m not sure I was that serious, I was
only curious.’
As I’ve said, all my life I’d dreamed of writing that book. And here, at the
age of 40, I was being offered a contract to write it – and instead of being
excited, I was mostly terrified. Part of me wanted to run away. My thinking
went a bit like this:
What if the book bombs and no one’s interested? I’ll look stupid
and feel guilty – and feel obliged to pay back their advance. What
about all the trees that will have to be cut down to print it? What
a shame to be the cause of trees being cut down.… And what if
people take my advice and then blame me for their lives not
working? What if they even sue me? And what if I can’t actually
write it, if I can’t actually deliver? What if I’m met with massive
indifference? What if, by writing the book, I no longer find myself
needed? Because no one will need me to speak, coach or teach, as
it will all be there on paper.
My resistance was having a field day.
It was one of those moments when I felt as if Life had called my bluff:
‘OK, you said you wanted this, so here it is. Now what are you going to do
about it?’ For a few days, I did nothing and went into some sort of denial about
what was on offer. I kept checking to see if I’d received a contract with
someone else’s name on it. No, definitely my name. I was definitely being
offered a healthy advance to write a book that had been germinating in me for
years. If I signed the contract, Element would definitely want me to deliver the
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text in three months’ time, and they’d already provisionally scheduled to
publish it in September 1999. This was suddenly very real and very grownup. I
had the choice to become a published author with one of the UK’s most
successful independent publishers.
I sensed deep down that my life could change significantly if I decided to
sign the contract. It was like an initiation, an invitation to cross a threshold and
make a conscious decision to alter the trajectory of my life. With my head still
spinning, I took the time to be quiet and ask my own soul what to do. If souls
shout at us, mine did, although kindly! ‘Of course you should sign the contract,’
it seemed to be saying. ‘You’re a communicator, that’s one of the reasons why
you’re here. Please sign and send the contract back, now!’
So with a deep breath, I did sign it. I put the paperwork in an envelope
and walked briskly to the post box outside the home in Tottenham I shared
with Helen, where I posted it before my resistance could come back with yet
another wave of fear and doubt. But something miraculous happened as I did
this. In the process of committing to write the book and have it published, my
anxiety lifted and a wave of peace seemed to flow through me. It was as
though the act of commitment – signing and posting the contract – had put
flight to some of my demons. At the same time, it felt like a door had opened
in me, a door to inspiration that had been closed for a long time.
Over the next three months, that door to inspiration stayed open and I
spent between three and thirteen hours writing each day. I completed and
submitted the manuscript on time; the book was published, gradually gained a
following (this was in the days before social media) and gently became a best-
seller in its field, a book for its time. It has become my signature work and I
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continue to attract invitations to speak, coach and teach around the world
because of it.
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25. The power of asking (1999)
I am often asked how I managed to get such great testimonials for The Work
We Were Born To Do. The process of getting these endorsements proved quite
pivotal as it introduced me to one of the most simple and powerful ideas I
know: the importance of simply allowing yourself to want something, knowing
clearly what you want and allowing yourself to ask for what you want.
From the outside, anybody might have guessed that co-leading
Alternatives would put me in a good position to meet the leaders in the field of
personal growth, such as Wayne Dyer, Deepak Chopra, Susan Jeffers, Marianne
Williamson, Alan Cohen, Chuck Spezzano, Paul Wilson, Bernie Siegel, Dame
Anita Roddick and Robert Holden. And it did. But in my mind, I was only the
guy putting them on for a talk, not their equal. I felt I could credibly ask them
to say nice words about my organisational and promotional skills, but not
about my writing skills, because I hadn’t written much at that point.
But as I got closer to finishing the book in 1998, I allowed myself to be
really bold and audacious. I wrote down a list of the names of twenty-two
people who, in my wildest dreams, I would love to write a testimonial for my
book. I would have been thrilled if just one of them said yes. Although my
inner resistance to approaching anyone for a testimonial was massive, I
thought, ‘What the heck have I got to lose? The worst that can happen is they
say is no!’
I’ve always liked the idea of leverage, so my plan was to start with small
wins and raise my sights. So I had a think about who was most likely to say yes,
and began by approaching them. I sent out parts of the manuscript and waited
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for responses. When I got my first positive replies my confidence rocketed, and
I raised my sights. Gradually, I got on a roll. All the people I knew and had met
seemed to be saying yes!
Then another idea came to me. Who haven’t I met that I would love to
say something? Dr Stephen Covey came to mind; I loved his books, especially
The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, but had never met him. I looked up
his office address in Salt Lake City and sent him a copy of the manuscript, along
with a cover note in which I said: ‘Here is my book, and here is what Wayne
Dyer, Deepak Chopra, Anita Roddick, Susan Jeffers and Paul Wilson have said
about it. Would you like to add your thoughts to the book cover?’
I half expected to hear nothing, but as the publication date loomed, I
rang his office to ask if anything might be forthcoming. A very nice lady told me
that my manuscript was with his book-endorsing committee and someone
would get back to me about it shortly. Shortly afterwards, I got an email from
his office saying, ‘Yes, Dr Covey is happy to say this about your book: “Beautiful
sequencing of proven principles bursting with passion and wisdom.”’
As the book went to print, I was thrilled and amazed at the testimonials I
had managed to pull together for the cover and the opening pages.
There is a nice postscript to this story: a few years later, I received an
email from Susan Jeffers, explaining that she was looking to ramp up her
speaking career in the USA. As I had hosted her several times through
Alternatives in London, she wondered if I might be willing to give her a
testimonial about her speaking prowess and her ability to bring in an audience
and engage them. I was amazed: now Susan was asking me to endorse her! It
was fantastic that our connection had come full circle and I was able to help
her in return.
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Similarly, several authors who’d become friends asked if I would be
willing to give them testimonials and endorsements for their new books. Over
the years, many of the people that I’ve coached and mentored have asked if I
would like to write a foreword to their books or say a few words for the cover
– something I am always willing to do when I feel I authentically can.
I love that we can all be friends helping friends.
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26. Trusting the process (1999)
In March 1999, I caught the train to Element Books in Shaftesbury, Dorset. I
was carrying two supermarket bags, which contained the manuscript of my
first book.
A few days later, it was such a relief to receive a call from Sue Lascelles,
my editor, telling me they were happy with what I had delivered. This meant
that I wouldn’t have to pay back the third of the advance I’d already received;
in fact, I would be getting some more money shortly! But then my heart sank
when Sue said to me, ‘Could you reduce the text by about 30,000 words?’ I sat
there for a while, then went away to think about it. I needed to cut around 25
per cent of the words!
After much thought, I explained, ‘No, I’m sorry, I can’t. I’m too close to
it. I can’t see it clearly enough anymore to tell what could go.’ I felt very scared
and vulnerable saying this, but it was the truth. I’d done the best I could in
writing the text, and I had no idea how to edit it, as this was beyond my
competence at that time. So I asked Sue if she could do it for me. She said
she’d have a go at the introduction and the first chapter, which she would send
to me so that I could see what I thought of her editing.
I was terrified about what she would do. I had poured my heart and soul
into that book, and my greatest fear was that she would somehow rip the heart
out of it and reduce it to an uninspiring shell of what I’d originally written, but
which the publisher thought would sell. So it was with enormous trepidation
that I received an envelope from her, which I knew contained the sample edited
work. I took myself to the café over the road from where Helen and I lived,
bought myself a coffee and sat down to start reading through.
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As I began to read, my heart gladdened as I recognised everything I
wanted to communicate was still there, but somehow it seemed to be more
lucid and concise than it was when I first wrote it. To this day, I don’t really
know how the editing process works; it remains to me a magical art in its own
right. But I did know that Sue had somehow managed to make me and my
voice shine more clearly than I had been able to do myself. She hadn’t changed
what I’d said, she just made it even clearer. It was an odd and wonderful
experience. I nearly cried with joy in the café. At that moment, I fell in love
with the art of editing and treasure great editors to this day. And I learned that
sometimes it’s OK to let go – to trust the process and other people’s expertise.
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27. Building a new relationship with money (2000)
After The Work We Were Born to Do was published in September 1999, I
stepped back from my operational involvement in Alternatives and joined the
board of trustees. I was very grateful that Element Books had faith my book
would sell well and had paid me a healthy advance to write it. Publishing
advances aren’t the same thing as a fee; they are paid ‘in advance’ of any
royalties earned through sales, with paperback royalties falling typically in the
region of 7.5 per cent of the cover price of the book. Publishers usually pay an
advance in three stages: a third of the total amount on signing the contract, a
third on delivering a completed manuscript and the final third on publication.
Apparently, the majority of books never earn their advance back.
So I had received all three parts of my advance. Then, about nine
months later, I had a wonderful surprise when a cheque arrived in the post –
for more royalties. I was getting paid again for something I had already done! I
found this whole concept strange and exciting, and very agreeable. It was a
pivotal moment because it challenged my deeply ingrained Protestant work
ethic, which told me I had to put massive effort into all the money I earned.
Until then, I’d always believed that money had to be struggled for, suffered for
and sacrificed for in order to be deserved.
My first royalty cheque represented an invitation to form a whole new
relationship with the way I earned money. I could be paid for doing what I
loved and enjoyed, and it could be easier than I had experienced until that
point in my life. I even dared to believe that generating income could come
with ease rather than struggle.
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I have been receiving royalties for The Work We Were Born to Do now
for many years, although today the payments are relatively small. But it still
thrills and excites me to receive those little bits of money, and to know that
something I wrote all those years ago has been an income stream for all this
time. The experience was key in opening my mind to new ways of earning
income. And it also opened my eyes to the realisation that our work has a
bigger and longer impact than most of us can imagine. It got me thinking about
the longevity of the work we are born to do.
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28. The Pea Fair and how we give our gifts (2000)
I was running a course at Atsista Bay on Skyros, when I experienced just how
powerful and life-changing the human desire to share our gifts can be.
As part of the holistic holiday centre’s activities, it was announced that
there was to be a ‘pea fair’ that evening. Hardly any of us knew what one was,
but we learned that we were all invited to set up stalls that provided some sort
of gift or service. It would be a bit like a big car boot sale, although the purpose
was not to make money. Everybody would be given fifteen chickpeas as a
currency with which to purchase whatever was on offer. The concept sounded
strange but interesting, and I was curious to see how the evening would pan
out as the participants started planning what their personal contributions
would be.
After supper, as the sun went down, we were keen to see what shape
the fair would take, and we were stunned and touched when we saw what
people had decided to provide. Especially when their only reward took the
form of raw chickpeas – and the opportunity to give! There were people
offering relaxation, offering to sing if you paid them (and then offering not to
sing if you paid them more!), crystal healings, tarot readings, massage,
cartooning, even a five-minute art lesson. One man was offering on-the-spot
Haikus, a Japanese form of short poem, on a subject of your choosing. Another
woman offered to play cupid, writing and delivering love letters. There was
such a buzz as people gave so generously, offering things that were fun,
beautiful, outrageous, naughty or simple.
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Helen and I set up a stall too. We put up a sign on which we’d written
‘Complimentary Therapy, first one free, then two chickpeas each’. Many
people were intrigued and some asked for their first treatment, even though
they didn’t know what they would be getting! Helen or I would look at each
person who came to our stall and find something that we could honestly,
sincerely and uniquely appreciate about that person and compliment him or
her about. We’d say something such as ‘your hair is really beautiful tonight’ or
‘that colour really suits you’, ‘you have a beautiful smile’ or ‘I’ve enjoyed being
with you on this holiday’, and generally our customers would break into a huge
grin. Amazingly, most of them would then pay us more chickpeas for more
compliments! We had quite a queue at the stand at one point, as word got out
about what we were offering.
Our therapy consisted of nothing more complicated than noticing and
complimenting people on something about their appearance or personality.
Yet it was such as source of joy both to be able to give people genuine
compliments and to receive their gratitude in smiles (and chickpeas) in return. I
went to bed that night inspired by the variety of people’s gifts and their
generosity in sharing them for no ‘real’ reason.
The next day, everyone was full of gratitude for the evening. Over
breakfast, we all remarked on how beautiful the fair had been, how incredible
it was that people had so much to offer and how much we had all enjoyed
giving and receiving. It seemed that for a couple of hours, people’s hearts and
souls had opened wide and they had let the best of themselves pour forth.
It struck me that this was the best of community, with people giving,
receiving, sharing, shining and appreciating. It struck me how much people
want to give, to be seen and to contribute what they have to offer for no other
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reward than the joy of it. It reminded me a little of Patch Adams, the clown,
doctor and author who was the subject of a film in which he was played by
Robin Williams. Patch Adams has created a hospital based on love, community
and laughter, and he told me that every week he gets hundreds of letters from
doctors, nurses and other medical professionals offering to come to work at his
hospital for free. People wanted to give their gifts in a spirit of love, service and
appreciation.
That experience on Skyros reinforced my belief that what really makes
us happy is finding, developing and sharing the unique gifts that we have been
blessed with in our creation.
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29. At home with Salvador Dali (2000)
I was thrilled to be invited to run two seminars in Spain, after which I enjoyed a
break in Cadaques, a beautiful coastal town that is relatively unspoilt and
which enjoys a long artistic history. Both Pablo Picasso and Salvador Dali lived
and worked there for many years, and I found it a very stimulating place. One
of the main attractions is Dali’s old home, now a museum. The building has
been restored to its original state, with the artist’s studio and its work-in-
progress left as they were when Dali died. The whole house is filled with
evidence of Dali’s creative expression. Apart from the many drawings and
paintings, there are pieces of art made from bits of tinfoil and cans; even
rubbish and car parts have been transformed into garden furniture.
As I walked around I had a strong sense of the spirit of the man – that
here was an individual who had given himself complete creative freedom. If he
had an idea or felt inspired, he simply tried it out. He didn’t stop to wonder
whether people would like him or not, approve of him or not, or whether the
work was any good. He didn’t censor his urge to create, he simply followed
through out of curiosity.
One of the greatest gifts that goes hand in hand with creativity is the
sense of freedom and spontaneity it offers us. Actual creative ability may play
the smaller part; giving ourselves creative permission and freedom can be in
many respects more important. Each of us possesses a rich vein of creativity,
yet so many gifts never see the light of day because of our limiting self-
judgements.
In Dali’s house that day, I decided to give myself permission to be more
creatively free – a permission that I believe we should all grant ourselves.
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30. No easier second time round (2000)
I felt jubilant at having completed the creative process of writing my first book,
then enormous pleasure in getting it published, followed by an even greater
sense of triumph that people seemed to like it! I was proud of having broken
through so much of my own resistance to achieve this. I thought I was home
and dry – and beyond resistance.
Wrong!
In 2000, several publishers were interested in me writing further books,
and I met some of them. Then I began to register what seemed like a very
rational voice in my head, saying to me, ‘You know what, Nick? You’ve done so
well with your first book, earning yourself lots of critical acclaim and great
fulfilment. How would you feel if your next book wasn’t so good and wasn’t so
well received? You’d be seen as a one-hit wonder and might be written off. So
why not stop at one book? That way, people will always think you’re capable of
more, but you don’t have to run the risk of failing and looking stupid.’
This way of thinking seemed to make sense, and I nearly fell for it. Then I
realised it was resistance and self-sabotage talking. My soul was telling me I’d
barely got warmed up with my creativity, and there was plenty more where
that had come from. But the self-undermining voice didn’t go away, and I
actually found my second book, Unconditional Success, a lot harder to write
than my first, mainly because of resistance – the voice telling me I’d fail, not
because of any shortage of ideas. The smarter I was becoming, the smarter my
resistance seemed to be becoming.
The reality is that I am still working on matching the success of The Work
We Were Born to Do. Maybe one day soon I will write something else that’s as
successful and impactful, maybe not – it doesn’t really matter. What does
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matter is that I know I love to write and share ideas, and that I serve through
writing, helping to awaken myself and others, and that I will be doing this for
the rest of my life. Today, I am inspired by more writing projects than I have
ever been.
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31. Live in Las Vegas! (2001)
I’ve mentioned how I first visited Las Vegas in July 1989 when I travelled across
the US after quitting my corporate career. At the time, I had a plan: to spend
forty-eight hours in Las Vegas, judge it, hate it, vow never to go back again and
tick it off my list.
What actually happened was that I quite liked Las Vegas. I loved the
huge breakfast buffets for a few dollars. I enjoyed all the entertainment. I even
liked some of the tackiness of it. I went to see Tom Jones live at Caesar’s Palace
and loved that too. (And, yes, women really did throw their underwear at him!)
After forty-eight hours, I’d enjoyed myself so much and had many of my
prejudices thrown up in the air that I wondered if I would ever get to return.
Fast forward to 2001, and I had become friends with the American
writer and educator Barbara Winter, author of the best-selling Making a Living
Without a Job. She was living in Minneapolis at the time, but we had run
events in London and Denver together.
Then Barbara invited me to her sixtieth birthday party. There was only
one drawback: it was in Las Vegas. It was an unusual invitation. Did I really
want to go back to the city? And did I really want to fly all the way from
London to Las Vegas for a birthday party? I had never done that before! But
when she offered to use some of her air-miles to help me get there, I consulted
Helen and said yes.
I had a lovely few days in Las Vegas with Barbara and her friends, and
discovered that it was almost literally a new city. A whole area had been built a
few miles from the old city that I had visited twelve years earlier. Now it was
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even more grand and glitzy with new hotels, even more entertainment, and, to
my delight, several Cirque du Soleil shows. I fell in love with the fountains
outside the Bellagio Hotel where we went to see the Cirque du Soleil show ‘O’.
And I got to see Céline Dion perform live at the new Caesar’s Palace.
As we wandered around, Barbara said, ‘Wouldn’t it be fun to run a
programme together here?’
Fast forward another six months – and Barbara and I were back in Vegas
running a three-day programme with each other. We attracted a group of
students mainly from the USA, but a few came over from the UK and Europe
too.
On Day One of the programme, it suddenly struck me: for the rest of my
life I would be able to say ‘I was live in Las Vegas!’ The thought made me
giggle. If I could go back and talk to the young boy I’d been and tell him that
one day he would be ‘Live in Las Vegas!’ he would never have believed me. I
felt thrilled.
Barbara and I ran three more programmes in Vegas. While I had no
interest in the excesses of drinking, gambling or drugs, there something pivotal
about my visits to that city. And it was this: Las Vegas awakened something in
me. Coming from my British, suburban, restrained background, I enjoyed the
boldness and audacity of the place, the sheer size of the creative expression
there. People didn’t censor themselves in Vegas or play small. My visits to
Vegas helped me see that so many of my limits were self-imposed and self-
perpetuated. No one had ever encouraged me to be bold or audacious – quite
the opposite. But Las Vegas is no place for dreaming small. The city woke in me
the concept of dreaming big and encouraged me not to limit my dreams.
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32. Learning to commission myself (2001)
I was in the process of completing the second part of a two-book contract with
Bantam, a division of Transworld Publishing, and I was actually feeling very
proud of myself (and slightly surprised) because I was hitting all my deadlines.
At the same time, though, something kept niggling at me. I had started
recording most of the live talks I gave with a mini-disk recorder, intending to
turn them into CDs as I wanted to reach more people and create another
income stream. However, although I’d recorded the talks, so far not one of
them had become a CD. This was bugging me and I started asking myself why.
What was the difference? How come I had no problem delivering books, but
not CDs?
Then it dawned on me. I was hitting my book deadlines because I was
being commissioned to write them: Bantam wanted me to deliver the texts on
schedule and I was under contract to do so. But nobody was asking me to
create a series of CDs; no one was commissioning me. And I wasn’t
commissioning myself either!
In that moment of awareness, a part of my inner character began to
surface and emerge even more strongly: this was the enterprising individual
who took initiative, who commissioned himself and who felt inspired to show
up whether he was being asked to do so or not. Then and there, I decided to
publish my own CDs. I felt I was being very bold and audacious and busting a
layer of my ‘but who am I to…?’ story.
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This represented a major transition: I had been deeply conditioned to
seek permission from others, to do as I was told to do by those in authority,
and not to do anything that I hadn’t been asked to do. I realised that I had
mistakenly believed my projects were only really valid when they are
commissioned by an outside agency. Anything I commissioned from myself I
considered a ‘vanity’ project. I even felt a little arrogant about it: ‘I can’t just do
what I want to do and feel inspired to do. What would happen if everyone did
that!’
It took a great deal of courage and self-sovereignty to choose to
bring my own work into a world that wasn’t yet asking for it, and which didn’t
know whether it needed or wanted it.
So what did I do next? Well, I sat down and had a meeting with myself,
during which I turned my vague idea into a definite project. I appointed a part
of myself ‘Commissioning Director’ and then commissioned the rest of me to
create the CDs. I got sound-editing software and I found someone who could
turn my audio files into physical CDs. I found somebody else to create a
gorgeous image to go on the CD label. Finally, I appointed another part of me
‘Shipping Director’ to ensure that I actually launched the CDs, let people know
they existed and marketed them.
Over the next twenty-four months, I created a series of thirteen CDs,
and sold thousands of them all over the world. It was a great income stream; I
served more people in more places and I had the pleasure of people telling me,
‘It’s great to be able to listen to you in my car now/on my MP3 player/on my
computer…’
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33. What I was really afraid of (2001)
In February 2001, I began making preparations for my second speaking tour in
South Africa later that spring. My trip to Cape Town in December 2000 had
been a great success and I’d loved it: I loved the place, the people and I felt
very free there. A friend of mine, Pam Carruthers, is an astrologer and had
mentioned something about ‘astro-cartography’– which basically entailed
looking at where on the planet would be good places to work. She drew up a
chart for me and said that South Africa was a place where I could really shine.
That figured.
This time, as well as returning to Cape Town, I would be speaking in
Johannesburg. My promoter, Helen Burton, emailed to say I’d be doing a
breakfast presentation in Johannesburg, and asked me to put together an
outline and send it to her, which I quickly did. About two weeks before I was
due to leave, Helen emailed to confirm that all was going well and there might
a couple of hundred people at the Johannesburg breakfast event. I felt slightly
anxious so I dug out the presentation I had sent her. I had called it ‘Love is the
Most Powerful Force in Business’.
I suddenly had another ‘oh, shit!’ moment. What had I done? How naïve
and stupid of me. I was going to be standing up in front of hundreds of
Johannesburg’s top business people and talking to them about love in
business. It had seemed a good topic when the event lay months ahead, but as
the day approached, it didn’t seem like such a great idea after all. ‘They are
going to crucify you!’ my inner critic kept telling me. I broke out in a cold
sweat. I had visions of myself being heckled, judged and criticised.
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This went on for a couple of days, and then I grew curious and asked
myself what was really going on. Thinking about it carefully, I realised the
problem wasn’t that the people in Johannesburg might judge me; it lay in the
fact that I was already judging myself before I’d even got on the plane.
This was a pivotal moment of realisation: what I was afraid of other
people doing to me, I was already doing to myself. I suddenly understood the
whole concept of ‘projection’ in a more concrete way. I had been attributing
my negative thoughts to those who would be at the event, when actually I was
simply projecting my own self-criticism outwards. I was judging myself and
consequently anticipating that other people would judge me. It was a real
‘Aha!’ moment.
So I did some inner work and healing, during which I saw just how tough
I was being on myself, and how judgemental.
And the result?
Everything went well in Cape Town. Then, when I entered the
conference room in Johannesburg the next morning, I thought I must have
stumbled into the wrong event – around four hundred people were waiting! I
was about to speak to four hundred people about love being the most
powerful force in business!
I actually felt very peaceful as I walked onto podium to speak. I was no
longer so afraid of being judged or criticised, because I had made friends a
little more with my inner critic. I talked confidently, I took questions, I was
challenged a bit by a couple of people, but I responded well rather than
reacting defensively. Afterwards, many people thanked me for inspiring them
and I signed around three hundred books.
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Sometimes, it’s not what other people might think about us that counts;
it’s what we’re already believe about ourselves.
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34. A day in Auschwitz (2001)
That November, after finishing a tour of the UK to promote my second book,
Unconditional Success, I was tired and I needed a break. So my partner Helen
booked us into a spa in a town called Krynica Morska, in the north of Poland. It
was described as ‘The Pearl of Polish Spas’, and it sounded good.
The reality was very different – at least for us. When we arrived, we
discovered that no one else at the spa spoke English, and rather than enjoying
a relaxing and reviving experience, we seemed to have found ourselves in a
museum dedicated to the heyday of 1960s communism. While our stay had its
funny side, after a few days we decided to leave for Krakow and spend the rest
of our break there.
On the bus on the way to Krakow, I saw a signpost marked ‘Salt Mines’
and then another one marked ‘Auschwitz’. It hadn’t dawned on me that we
were so close to Auschwitz. A thought formed in my mind: ‘Shall I suggest that
we visit?’ Helen was born Jewish and I didn’t know what her response might
be, so when I suggested it I was slightly surprised when she said, ‘Yes.’
So we signed up for a trip to Auschwitz.
The first thing I noticed when we arrived was the enormous sign above
the gate that read ‘Arbeit macht frie’, which means ‘work sets you free’ in
German – but which in this context was about as far away from the idea of ‘the
work we were born to do’ as you could get. As we walked from the coach to
the first building, Helen and I were struck by how eerily quiet the place was. It
was snowing heavily, yet there seemed a deeper hush.
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We were escorted by a guide who, without any dramatization, conveyed
the stark facts about the camp and its purpose. I was surprised to understand
that the first 100,000 people killed there had not been Jewish but artistic,
creative and political Polish people.
I wondered how my spiritual beliefs would stand up in this situation. The
easiest and most natural thing would be to condemn it all, but I wanted to be
able to see the place with different eyes. Yet, when I took a step back, I started
to feel guilty for not condemning it, fearing I was somehow condoning it
instead. But I know that’s the ego’s ploy. It says that you are either for or
against, friend or foe – no middle ground.
Why was this experience pivotal? It entailed coming face to face with
one of the biggest shadows of humanity. While it’s one thing to have heard
about the gas chambers, it’s quite another to stand in them and see the gas
canisters; to look at the piles of hair, the suitcases, glasses, shoes and
belongings of those thousands who were murdered.
As we stood in the gas chambers, I asked Helen what she was thinking
and feeling. She responded, ‘Everyone here was in hell, both the Jews and the
Germans and everyone else. It was hell being played out.’
There was obviously so much hatred here, for sure. And it is easy to
condemn the hatred that was being played out. Yet, from a spiritual
perspective, I believe the greatest gift is not to add to that condemnation. This
was the answer – somehow to make the experience holy, to play some part in
turning an ancient hatred into a present love. So the pivotal aspect, for me,
meant not adding to the condemnation, but adding to the love and the
forgiveness. There is a section in A Course in Miracles that says:
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Grace is acceptance of the Love of God within a world of seeming
hate and fear. By grace alone the hate and fear are gone, for grace
presents a state so opposite to everything the world contains, that
those whose minds are lighted by the gift of grace cannot believe
the world of fear is real.
As I stood confronted by the evidence of so much horror, I asked that my mind
be lifted by Grace.
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35. Any place can be a holy spot (2003)
During a check-up at Ashford hospital, near Heathrow, my dad was diagnosed
with renal problems. He was told that, without dialysis, he would have at most
two years to live. It wasn’t completely a shock. He was 83 and had never been
into physical exercise or looking after himself. He loved his food, and in some
respects it was a miracle he had lasted as long as he had.
We talked it through as a family, and Dad decided not to undergo
dialysis, saying it would be too much hassle and decrease his remaining quality
of life, so we knew his time was definitely limited. Knowing that the clock was
ticking, I decided that by the time Dad died I wanted to feel at peace with him.
Overall, we’d had a good relationship, but I felt there was nevertheless a gulf
between us that I wanted to bridge. I didn’t know how to do this, but I did
know that the most important thing was to be willing to try. I didn’t want him
to die with anything left unresolved between us.
I started to try to have ‘deep and meaningful’ conversations with Dad.
Although he was willing, I never seemed to be able to find the right words.
Perhaps I didn’t really know what I was trying to achieve, and I was reminded
of those lyrics in ‘The Living Years’ by Mike and The Mechanics: ‘Every
generation blames the one before.’
One day, my mum had an appointment of her own at Ashford Hospital. I
offered to take her. While she was inside, Dad and I sat in the café in a massive
Tesco superstore nearby. I think what I was really wanted Dad to answer was
my question, ‘Am I lovable?’ I bought us both a breakfast.
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Over egg, bacon, hash brown and beans, I choked back my tears as I
asked him, ‘Are you pleased with me?’ It took such courage to ask the
question, I felt so insecure.
He answered, ‘Since the moment you were born and I held you in my
arms, I loved and I have always loved you.’ Paraphrasing the Bible, he added,
‘You are my son in whom I am most pleased.’
Then I understood. It wasn’t so much Dad’s love for me that was the
problem; it was more my own perceived lack of worthiness to receive his love.
That’s where my pain was coming from. I felt so unworthy of my father’s love,
of anyone’s love really. I felt that I had been so judgemental of him when I was
younger – attacking him, at least in my mind – that now I believed I could
never be forgiven. I thought he would want to punish me for judging him so
harshly.
And I began to understand that Dad wasn’t punishing me, I was
punishing myself – precisely for being so judgemental. I needed Dad’s
forgiveness much less than I needed my own forgiveness. He didn’t seem to be
holding any grievances against me. He had never bought into my belief that I
was unlovable. He loved me and always had, and now I really began to feel his
love and allow it in.
A precious and holy moment, in a café, in a Tesco superstore.
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36. The power of being mentored (2003)
I’ve been consciously mentored three times in my life. The first was when, at
the age of 15, I got a Saturday job in a local hi-fi shop, which was run by two
guys, Mick Bick and Eric Barber. I loved the world of work, and I loved audio
and hi-fi equipment and spent most of the money I earned buying new
equipment for myself. More importantly, Mick and Eric trusted me to run the
shop when they weren’t there and I took to that new level of responsibility
straightaway. I found working in the shop a lot more inspiring than my home
life.
At the age of 21, when I was on my placement year as part of my degree
course, I was assigned to work at Berger Paints. There, Bryan Ryan, the
commercial manager, became my mentor. He took me with him to the
company’s plants all over the country and involved me in projects.
Then, in 2003, I met Rick Arrandale (also known as Rick Thorne) and our
relationship proved pivotal. Rick came to me initially for coaching, having read
my first book. He had been a member of staff at the University of Kent in
Canterbury but had resigned to broaden his horizons. Although he loved
academia, he felt like he needed a bigger playing-field and wanted to start his
own business.
Initially, I struggled to ‘get’ Rick – I heard was he was telling me, but I
couldn’t really understand it. Then, in one coaching session, partly out of
frustration with myself, I said to him, ‘Why don’t you do “your thing” for me
and to me. Let me be on the receiving end of what you do and I’ll tell you what
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I experience.’ So he started coaching me, and within a few minutes I
understood what he was about.
Rick’s brilliance lay in ‘democratising teaching’: he loved teaching and
believed you didn’t need a qualification to teach, you just needed a shift of
mind-set. With a few skills, anybody could teach what they knew. I suddenly
saw his brilliance and felt excited about his work – and in turn he felt seen and
acknowledged. A whole new relationship developed between us, and we
ended up collaborating for several years, running events together on teaching
and learning. I also helped Rick develop several e-learning programmes, the
most popular being ‘Inspired Teaching’, and we had several conversations that
we recorded and turned into CDs.
Rick also ended up mentoring me. He saw in me the potential to become
a good teacher, and he said he would commit to supporting me to realise that
potential if I was equally committed to the journey. I was committed but I
didn’t find it easy. I became incredibly frustrated with myself because,
although I knew a lot, I found it hard to make the mental transition and teach
what I knew.
A very powerful phrase lay at the heart of Rick’s Inspired Teaching
programme, which was this: ‘think student’. Too many teachers, Rick argued,
loved showing off their own knowledge, and enjoyed feeling superior and
having power over their students. Great teachers, he argued, saw themselves
as being in service to the learning, growth and development of their students.
Great teaching was actually quite egoless. Inspired teachers, Rick argued, were
motivated by how they could most effectively help their students learn
whatever they needed to know.
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Rick was a tough cookie, he didn’t suffer fools gladly, and I was
sometimes quite afraid of the seeming harshness of his approach. But I knew it
was accompanied by great love, support and encouragement. All the same, I
really struggled with the ‘think student’ element for quite a while. I found it
difficult to put myself in a student’s shoes, to imagine that I didn’t know what I
knew and to see clearly what a beginner would need to know. This was made
even more difficult as my father was so ill.
But Rick hung in there with me and for me. He never gave up on me,
even when I felt like giving up on myself. The amount of energy, love, time and
tough love he invested in me were pivotal. I eventually did make the transition
and now I am a good teacher, both in mind-set and skills.
Sadly Rick developed cancer and died in June 2008. I am eternally
grateful for his investment of love in me. He helped form the person that I
have become.
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37. The magic of showing up (2004)
Amazing, even miraculous things can happen when we simply make the
decision to follow through on what we are inspired to do; even when, perhaps
especially when, we have not felt like doing it.
I had been invited to give a talk at a new organic food and health show
taking place that September in Alexandra Palace. Having accepted the
invitation, I heard from colleagues that they thought the event wasn’t going to
be a great success and there might not be many people there. As the day
arrived, the weather was raining and miserable, and I wondered to myself, ‘Is it
even worth going? I’m not being paid, my talk is only a couple of hours after
the show opens and there’ll probably be hardly anyone there. Why am I
bothering to do this?’ My resistance and apathy kicked in, and I nearly talked
myself into staying home, but in the end I drove over to the venue to give my
talk.
And I was nearly right! As I stood up to give my talk at midday, there
were about four people and a dog waiting to listen to me. It was noisy as there
wasn’t a dedicated area for talks, and people were constantly milling past.
Again, I felt justified in abandoning it. But I persevered and gave the forty-five-
minute talk anyway. By the end, the audience had swelled to twenty, and the
dog had wandered off. I think I sold one book. All the same, I noticed that once
I’d got going I’d thoroughly enjoyed myself, and I was reminded of just how
much resistance can prevent me from showing up to do my work.
As I was packing up to leave, an American woman came over to
introduce herself to me. ‘Hi, I’m Shari,’ she said, ‘and may I introduce you to
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Mr Kessleman?’ She gestured towards the distinguished-looking man at her
side. ‘He owns a vitamin and health-food company based in New York. We
enjoyed your talk, and wondered if you might be interested in coming to give a
similar talk for us at our conference in California in January?’
I tried to look cool and as if I was giving my decision some serious
consideration. But it was a no-brainer: why on earth why wouldn’t I want to be
paid to go to California in the middle of a British winter? Trying hard to keep a
straight face, and not to respond too enthusiastically, I smiled and said, ‘That
sounds interesting. Let me check my diary…Yes, I could be available.’
Fast forward four months, and I’m in Santa Barbara Municipal Airport,
where I’m picked up by limousine and taken to a stunning 2,000-acre luxury
ranch near Santa Ynez, close to where Michael Jackson used to live. For the
two days that I was there, I was looked after wonderfully; I drove around in my
own golf-buggy and gave a two-hour talk that was well received and for which I
was paid handsomely. I then went on to enjoy a few more days hanging out
with my friend Barbara Winter and some of her family who lived nearby.
This demonstrated to me the power of showing up to do and be what
you are inspired by and passionate about!
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38. Inspiration in unexpected places (2004)
For my fourth trip to South Africa, I was working in collaboration with Richard
Nefdt. Soon after I arrived, he said he wanted to take me to meet his friend
Sidwell Nxumalo who lived in Soweto, an urban settlement or township of
Johannesburg. Soweto? Why on earth would I want to go there? And why
would Richard want to take me there? I was afraid of going, but didn’t want to
appear cowardly. Richard insisted that I would find Sid inspiring. So I became a
reluctant adventurer and went along with his plan.
Now, my only images of Soweto were those I’d got from watching TV
while growing up, and were of the protests, violence, burnings and shootings.
While I had yet to be convinced that our trip was a good idea, I trusted Richard
as he’d been there before. At the time, officially just over a million people lived
in Soweto, but unofficial estimates put the figure at more like four million,
increasing daily.
Sure enough, Soweto was busy and crowded, but better than I’d thought
it would be, although I was still concerned for our safety. As we approached
Senokonyeana Street in Orlando West, we passed the world’s largest murals
painted around the sides of a decommissioned power station, and there was a
real atmosphere around the place. But then Richard muttered the words I least
wanted to hear: ‘Sorry Nick, I think we’re lost!’
A quick call to Sid’s mobile and we were on track again; and as we
entered the Ubuntu Kraal, it was as if we had entered an oasis of calm amidst
the city bustle. Even in the darkest days of apartheid, Sid had wanted to build
something beautiful for his community, and he had certainly achieved this
here.
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Richard, Sid and I were soon deep in conversation, like soul brothers,
and Sid taught me about ubuntu. He told me, ‘The Zulu word ubuntu translates
roughly as “humanity towards others”. But it means much more than this. The
spiritual foundation of African societies, ubuntu involves a belief in a universal
bond of sharing that connects all of humanity, a unifying worldview best
captured by the Zulu maxim umuntu ngumuntu ngabantu: “a person is a
person through other persons.”’
As he spoke, I wondered if apartheid had been motivated by the very
opposite – to dehumanise and disconnect.
Sid told me some of his story. He had become the first black master
builder in South Africa and, using his contacts and resourcefulness, managed to
buy an ash dump from the government. Over a period of twenty years he had
literally transformed this ash dump into the sanctuary in which I was now
standing. It was green, lush and wonderful. There was a conference centre,
community centre, a place for weddings, a swimming pool, kitchens, beautiful
flowers, birds. I was astonished.
I then discovered that Sid had helped dozens of other people in Soweto
to start their own small businesses. Later, as he drove us around, it became
obvious that he was a well-known and much loved leader within his
community, but he had chosen not to go into politics as he believed he could
achieve more without that incumbency. He showed us the only street in the
world where two Nobel peace prize winners had lived – Desmond Tutu and
Nelson Mandela – and drove us past their houses. I subsequently learned that
over 20 per cent of the people who visit South Africa each year – about
250,000 tourists – include a trip to Soweto as part of their stay, and that
Soweto sets trends in politics, fashion, music, dance and language.
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We drove back to the centre and thanked Sid for his time and care. As
we hugged each other goodbye, another thought struck me. Richard was
white, and had been in the army, so during apartheid he would have been
responsible for implementing the regime. Fifteen years previously, these two
men who stood before me now, embracing each other as brothers, would have
been enemies across a divide of colour. Yet today they were friends united in
building a new country together. From my initial fear, Soweto had moved me
deeply, and I came away feeling touched and inspired.
I felt humbled too. I often find it all too easy to judge, to decide in
advance where I will or won’t find inspiration. Here, in a place I’d never
dreamed I would find inspiring, my heart had been opened wide and my spirits
lifted. I was reminded of the words of the psychiatrist Elizabeth Kübler-Ross:
‘People are like stained glass windows: they sparkle and shine when the sun is
out, but when the darkness sets in, their true beauty is revealed only if there is
a light within.’ So often the worst of situations can reveal the best of our
humanity.
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39. Three unexpected words in the same sentence (2004)
One afternoon, I received an unexpected call from a man in Switzerland. He
explained, ‘I’m Head of Learning and Development in the Zürich office of
PriceWaterhouseCoopers and I wondered whether you’d be interested in
coming over to talk to our Swiss auditing team about the importance of
inspiration in the workplace.’
It took me a couple of seconds to absorb what I was hearing. I’d never
expected to hear the three words ‘Swiss’, ‘auditing’ and ‘inspiration’ in the
same sentence. Part of me wondered whether it was April Fool’s Day, or
whether I was on ‘Candid Camera’, being filmed to see how I would respond to
this unusual request. I composed myself and was able to come up with a
question to check whether it was for real: ‘That sounds really interesting,’ I
said. ‘Can I ask you what the business case and justification is for wanting me
to run a session on inspiration for you?’
He replied, ‘The team we want you to talk to are auditors with several
years’ experience, who are about to become managers and leaders of other,
younger auditors. We know that these younger auditors have different values
and it’s a competitive market. These young people want to work for someone
who they find inspiring and they want their work to be meaningful. Otherwise,
quite frankly, they’re likely to leave. So we want you to talk about why
inspiration is so important. Can you help?’
Wow, he really had thought this through. I asked a few more questions,
and then said, ‘Yes!’
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A couple of months later, I travelled to Zürich and ran my session. It
went very well, so I was invited back to run a module on their in-house course
for the next two years.
Why was this experience pivotal?
For many years, I had found it difficult to reconcile the spiritual side of
myself with my more worldly business side. They didn’t always seem to sit well
together. I told myself stories about business only being interested in results,
not in inspiration, and I was just too naïve to think that business might be
interested in other ways of looking at the world. However, as I prepared and
then delivered that programme in Zürich, I could feel the dots joining up. Some
sort of inner reconciliation and integration took place between those two sides
of myself. The idea of inspiration seems to satisfy both my commercial and
spiritual sides.
Earlier in the year, I had read an article in the Sunday Times newspaper
about ‘Top 100 Businesses to Work For’. The writer of the piece concluded:
‘Inspiration rather than perspiration is the key ingredient for a successful
company with a motivated workforce.’ Maybe somebody at
PriceWaterhouseCoopers had read the same article?
40. Coming out of denial (2006)
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My business partner Niki Hignett and I were in the process of establishing our
Inspired Entrepreneur Community. Niki and I lived fairly close to each other in
North London, and we would meet up at least once a week for lunch to share
ideas and plan what we were inspired to do next.
To give you a little context, Niki is nearly twenty years younger than me
and studied software engineering at university. He nearly joined the team that
sent a rocket to Mars. He is bright and has grown up with the internet; he’s
used to thinking digitally. Even though I sold computers for years, to my secret
shame I’d never really understood them, and I was quite resistant to engaging
with the newly emerging online world, including social media. Neither my
mum nor my dad had ever touched the keyboard of a computer in their lives. It
wasn’t a world I felt I knew at all.
So during one particular lunch, I found my eyes glazing over. Niki was
sharing ideas about how to develop our business online and I realised I simply
didn’t understand a lot of what he was saying. I was interested but felt
inadequate, ignorant and overwhelmed. I went home feeling awful, a bit of a
dinosaur.
When I had started my first business in 1990, the internet and
worldwide web hardly existed. In those days, my marketing strategy mostly
involved stuffing leaflets into envelopes, sticking on stamps and walking to the
nearest post box with carrier bags full of the envelopes. Now the conversation
was all about clicks, getting traffic, converting traffic, building databases and
creating sales pages and sales funnels.
So when I got home after lunch that day, I literally had to lie down with a
damp flannel on my forehead and try to re-centre myself! I felt like I was far
outside my comfort zone and adrift in an alien world. I realised I needed to
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make an important decision: would I remain a dinosaur and a Luddite, judging
this online world and refusing to engage with it properly? Or would I step up to
the plate and be willing to embark on a whole new learning curve? A large part
of me didn’t want to have to do it; I wanted to stick with what I knew and not
have to deal with my own ignorance. And another part of me could see the
inevitability of having to join the online world. Most importantly, if Niki and I
were going to work well together, I had to join him in the sphere in which he
was already immersed and at home.
I managed to centre myself, and decided to accept my own ignorance of
the online world and to become a beginner again. I made a vow to myself,
though, that at the same time I would do everything within my power to stay
true to myself, my authenticity and my integrity. I wouldn’t lose myself in the
hype, or blindly follow whatever the so-called ‘experts’ were saying had to be
done to secure online success. I would learn and understand what they were
saying, and then use my own inner wisdom and my intelligence to decide how
best to apply what I had learned.
One of my first steps was to create a Facebook page, and Niki sent out
an email inviting people to become my friends. At the end of the first day, I
suddenly had around two hundred friends, and I said to Niki, ‘I’m now friends
with bunch of complete strangers!’
I am pleased to say that, ten years on, I’m much more comfortable and
happy interacting with the online world. Little by little I have engaged with it,
enduring discomfort after discomfort in order to become at ease and create
success online. I would even say that today I embrace it wholeheartedly. But
this was choice I had to make – and I am glad I did.
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41. A golden day (2005)
In 2004, I signed up to receive a series of emails called Randy’s Rants written
by Randy Gage, an author and guru specialising in wealth and prosperity. I
found some of his rants a bit offensive, but in one of them he praised a book
called The War of Art by Steven Pressfield.
My intuition told me to read the book, so I immediately ordered it.
When it arrived I dipped into the first three pages, and I had a strong sense
that without doubt this book was going to be the cause of great and good
change in my life. Whenever I get that feeling, I listen. And my intuition didn’t
let me down. The War of Art has become of the few books I’ve read over
twenty times, and each time I dip in to it, even today, I am still reminded of
great wisdom.
But why was reading The War of Art so pivotal? Through reading
Pressfield’s book, something softened in me. Steven let me know that
resistance was normal and that there was nothing wrong with me for
experiencing the resistance I held inside. The book helped me illuminate more
clearly the workings of my mind, aspects of which I hadn’t been aware of, and
to understand my hidden thought processes. As a result, Pressfield gave me
hope, both personally and professionally. His rallying call was, ‘Yes, we can
beat our resistance, but we have to understand the enemy in order to defeat
it.’
He also validated the mental model that structured my own way of
thinking, suggesting that we are each servants of a greater mystery, a portal in
time. Each of us is here in this earthly realm in order to bring ideas and
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projects into existence from a formless realm. Without us, those things simply
wouldn’t exist. We are each here to bring a little bit of Heaven to Earth.
Soon after I read The War of Art, my friend Terry Malloy got in touch. He
wanted to create a monthly video magazine and asked if I would help him do
some interviews for it. When he wondered if there was anyone I’d particularly
love to interview, my immediate answer was, ‘Steven Pressfield!’ Steven lived
in LA, but Terry was prepared to go the USA to conduct interviews.
So, on 1 February 2005, Terry, a film crew and I found ourselves driving
through Malibu Canyons in California on our way to interview Steven. As we
approached his home, I had a sudden ‘oh, shit!’ moment; I thought, ‘I haven’t
really done a film interview before! I hope I can actually do this!’ But I soon
discovered that Steven hadn’t done many interviews either at that point, and
we got on fine.
Steven was gracious and welcoming both on and off camera, and was
clearly a man who lived up to his principles. It was delightful to spend time
with him in his fabulous home overlooking the Pacific, and I didn’t want to
leave. In fact, I wanted to move in! When the time came for us to go, I went for
lunch with the crew in Malibu, which was wonderful too.
It was one of those wonderful, golden days – a highlight of my life. I
guess we all have days like that: where everything falls magically into place and
exceeds our expectations. Wouldn’t it be great if we could distil the essence of
those special moments and take some every morning?
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42. Ministering to my father (2005)
It was 12 August, a Friday – a week to the day before my dad died. I was doing
my evening shift, sitting with Dad in his room at the hospice in Weybridge,
Surrey. He’d been quite peaceful, and really seemed to appreciate the love and
attention he’d been getting from the staff and his visitors.
Dad had been admitted to the hospice two weeks earlier because of his
progressive kidney failure, and we knew he was unlikely to return home. When
he arrived, the nurse has said to Mum, my sister and me, ‘This is where you get
to be family again, and let us do the caring.’ I had been to visit Dad every day
since. That evening, he was only semi-conscious, and we didn’t speak much, so
I sat and wrote on my laptop while he dozed.
When he woke up, he was unusually agitated. He looked upset and a bit
scared. I asked him what was wrong, and he said he was feeling a little afraid
and didn’t know what was going to happen to him.
For most of his adult life, Dad had been a lay Methodist minister and
preacher, alongside his forty-nine-year career in insurance. Many of my
childhood memories are of him working on ideas for his sermons, then
preparing and delivering those sermons. So I had always considered him the
minister in the family; in my eyes, he had always been the one who was closer
to God. I felt no great pull to the Methodist faith; my spirituality was much
more eclectic, not even specifically Christian. Indeed, I had been quite
judgemental of organised religion in the past.
Yet, in that moment, I felt inspired to say to him, ‘Shall we pray
together?’
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‘That’s a good idea,’ he said.
‘Shall I lead us?’ I asked.
‘Yes, please.’
I wasn’t really sure what to say, and waited for inspiration. Then it came.
‘Why don’t you put your future in the hands of God?’ I said. ‘Imagine
that Jesus is looking after you and is there to meet you, making things safe and
peaceful for you. Ask that he take away your fear for you.’
‘That’s lovely,’ Dad responded.
After a few moments of our sitting together in silence, he settled down
again and seemed much more restful.
‘That was nice,’ he murmured, before drifting off to sleep.
The next morning, Dad was lucid and fun, alert and present; he laughed
and was tremendous company. Family came to visit and he was at his best.
Sadly, he lapsed into unconsciousness the next day and died five days later.
Needless to say, that Friday was one of my most intimate moments with
my 85-year-old father, a precious moment of love and closeness, and one in
which I took a loving spiritual lead. I ministered to my father the minister. The
differences in our beliefs were melted away by the love between us. It was as if
he’d passed the baton to me, and I in turn was able to pick up the mantle of
minister in my own way. Our praying together seemed to give him a spiritual
and energetic boost to have one more lucid, conscious and precious day before
he died.
Dad took his last breath at 4 p.m. on the Friday 19 August, with Mum
and I holding his hands, stroking his head and telling him that we loved him
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and that he could go now if it was time. And it was his time. To be with him as
he transitioned from this life, knowing how loved he was and surrounded by
love, was a moment I will always treasure deeply.
Within minutes of his death, one of the hospice nurses came into the
room to comfort us.
‘He was such a lovely man,’ she said, with tears in her eyes.
That was my dad: people only had to meet him a few times to care
deeply for him. He exuded a passion for life, great humour and immense
gratitude. He touched people’s hearts and allowed them to touch his. He
expressed his love openly and frequently.
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43. Unlovable? (2005)
On the morning after Dad died, my sister and I convened at our mother’s home
to comfort her and discuss funeral arrangements. While I obviously felt grief-
stricken, I was aware something else going on. As we sat there, my heart was
sinking and a thought crossed my mind: ‘This is your close family now.’
I had been very close to Dad; to the extent that I often felt like we were
soul-playmates. We laughed a lot, shared a wicked sense of humour, and had a
mutual love of comedy, poetry and music. In some ways, he wasn’t always a
competent father, but we enjoyed a deep bond.
However, I didn’t feel much of a connection with my mum or sister. As I
was growing up, I felt mainly disapproval and shame from them. To my mind,
they seemed to focus more on enduring suffering, self-denial, self-sacrifice and
martyrdom, not on valuing joy, inspiration and happiness. I knew they
represented a side of me too, and I didn’t like it.
However bad I might have felt about myself at times, I’d always known
Dad loved me. Much as I might have tried to deny his love, and fought against
him and judged him at times, I know he’d never stopped loving me. His love for
me felt pretty close to unconditional. Dad had been the heart of the family; he
had a lot of heart. And now he was gone, and I was left with my mum and my
sister, whose love for me seemed to me to be very conditional at best. At times
in the past, I’d felt they treated me like I didn’t really matter.
A hidden and ashamed part of me suspected that, once the funeral was
over, I would be content never to see them again. Dad was very lovable – he
liked and loved who he was; whilst neither Mum nor Amanda really seemed to
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like themselves very much. Indeed, to my eyes, they often seemed to attack
and martyr themselves.
So this represented a pivotal moment: now that Dad was gone, I needed
to begin a new chapter in which I learned to love myself. It’s not easy for me to
say, but in some ways Dad had saved me from my self-hatred in the past. His
love and appreciation for me had been a real life-line. And now he was gone. In
Dad’s absence, I would be left with my own thoughts about myself – and many
of those thoughts were not kind.
So began a new chapter in which I worked on healing my sense of not
being lovable. It was difficult: the darkness that sprang from my lack of self-
love seemed almost impenetrable at times. My conditioning about feeling
guilty, sinful and bad seemed to run so deep that I didn’t know how to escape
it. Well, that is not true. From being a student of A Course in Miracles, I knew
intellectually that the way through was going to be the practice of forgiveness.
Not so much forgiveness for my remaining family for what they had or hadn’t
done, but forgiveness of myself for my judgements about them. And another
part of me truly believed that, on a soul level, I chosen my family in order to
learn, grow and forgive. But now I thought that, whatever cloud I’d been sitting
on when I decided to incarnate into our family, I needed to have my head
examined!
A few months after Dad died, Mum started to fall apart. After fifty-eight
years together, she was lost without Dad and said she didn’t want to go on
living. Mum seemed so weak and helpless that I struggled to know how to take
care of her and support her. To make matters worse, several of her elder
siblings (she was one of eight) also died, and quite soon she was the last one
standing. I felt so inadequate; part of me just wanted to walk away, because,
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as well as supporting her through her grief, I was struggling with my own grief
and work worries. I was on my knees.
I had some bereavement counselling, and in time I began to see my
mum differently. As I began to feel a little better about myself, I could see
more clearly how little my mum thought of herself, how deeply lost in her own
guilt she was, how much she considered herself to be just a nuisance. She
believed she didn’t really matter. She was programed to sacrifice herself.
I glimpsed more of her vulnerability, the self-loathing she carried and the
lack of self-love that she constantly lived with, but covered up. It began to
dawn on me that instead of being angry with her for not showing me much
affection and attention, she’d never actually had supplies of these to offer in
the first place. What I’d desperately needed from her as a child simply wasn’t
in her repertoire. I could see now that she had given me all she could, all she
had. My heart began to open to her a little more.
So I took to calling her twice a day, and stopped by to see her two or
three times a week, when I would take her shopping and do chores for her.
One night as I was leaving, she said, ‘You and God have got me through this.’ I
suddenly felt her love and appreciation for me in a way I hadn’t before. I felt
that she had been broken open too by my dad’s death. She was telling me how
much I mattered to her.
A while later, I made Mum a promise. I said, ‘For as long as you live, I will
stick with you. I won’t abandon you.’ This was no easy commitment for me to
make, given the complicated feelings I had about her. But I know now that
making that promise has opened the doors to new levels of healing, love and
understanding for us both.
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And I have followed through. Today, I still speak to Mum every morning
and every evening, and see her at least once a week. Now every time we
speak, we both say ‘I love you lots’ to each other. We have never expressed
our love for each other as we do these days. We tell each how much we matter
to each other. That, to me, is some kind of miracle.
What has made the biggest difference? Willingness to let go of my
grievances and resentments. Wanting to be free. Forgiveness, and
remembering that I am lovable. The more I have been able to love myself, the
less I have ‘needed’ love from others, but have enjoyed receiving it
nonetheless. I have attended many of my friend Robert Holden’s courses on
love, which have helped a lot. And I continue to practise the lessons from A
Course in Miracles.
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44. Deep-sea diver of the human psyche (2008)
As a fiftieth birthday present, my friend Robert Holden offered to do my
Enneagram profile for me. The Enneagram is an ancient personality profiling
system. I turned out to be a Type Four, which will mean nothing to you if you
don’t know the Enneagram model, but when I read the following passage in
the book The Wisdom of the Enneagram by Don Richard Riso and Russ Hudson,
I took a sharp intake of breath:
Fours are the deep-sea divers of the human psyche: they delve
into the inner world of the human soul and return to the surface,
reporting on what they found. They are able to communicate
subtle truths about the human condition in ways that are
profound, beautiful and affecting. In fundamental ways, they
remind us about deepest humanity – what which is most personal,
hidden, and precious about us but which is, paradoxically, also the
most universal.
And it went on to explain:
Remember that unhealthy Fours are filled with self-reproach, self-
destructive tendencies, and tempted to despair that can become
self-defeating patterns for you.
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Another piece of the jigsaw fell into place and suddenly many of the painful
experiences in my life began to make a bit more sense. I wasn’t simply being
crazy to go to those deep, dark places within myself during my periods of
depression and self-loathing: the urge to do this seemed to be a fundamental
part of my psychological make-up. I do this for myself and I do it to help others
not to be afraid to confront their own shadows and transform themselves. By
charting a pioneering course in my own life, I help create a path for others to
follow safely.
When I made the choice over fifteen years earlier to live, this
represented the beginning of a new journey – of winning back my heart and
developing what I now call ‘a heart that holds it all’: all the joy, love and
inspiration, and the pain, difficulty and suffering of being human. Some wiser
aspect of myself knew at the time that the temptation towards death was also
a smokescreen – that I was actually being invited to a whole new birth. But my
ego didn’t want me saying yes to the new chapter my soul wanted me to
enjoy.
As well as the general qualities, the Enneagram lists the basic fear of
each of its nine ‘types’, and the basic fear of a Type Four is the feeling of having
no personal significance. Again, the Enneagram has proved pivotal in helping
me make sense of my low self-esteem. Yet the relationship I have with my
depressed and even suicidal side can still be problematic. On a bad day, I can
still feel like giving up when things get tough. My life resembles a series of
deaths and rebirths, and sometimes the call towards death can still seem
stronger than the call to new life. Counteracting this entails making a
continuous re-commitment to life, and also deciding to live with heart and with
meaning – to feel alive in your life.
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45. Moved to tears (2008)
During this particular visit to South Africa, I was sponsored by the University of
Cape Town (UCT) and had five speaking engagements lined up during my ten-
day trip. At the end of my first speaking engagement, a woman came up to me
and explained that she worked for the Raymond Ackerman Academy of
Entrepreneurial Development. Raymond Ackerman founded Pick and Pay, the
biggest supermarket chain in South Africa, and he was supporting this
collaboration with UCT.
The woman politely explained that the Academy existed to ‘empower
young people on their entrepreneurial journey’ and that it ran a six-month,
fulltime training programme to help build their confidence and skills. The
participants were all aged between 18 and 30, generally came from
disadvantaged backgrounds and hadn’t received a formal education.
She asked, ‘Would you be willing to teach a class on inspiration and
entrepreneurship for the Academy while you’re in the country?’
My soul gave an immediate ‘Yes!’ but my mind’s response was a little
more cautious. ‘Yes,’ I thought, ‘but what’s a white, middle-aged, relatively
privileged British man going to teach a class of disadvantaged youngsters?’
There seemed to be a big divide between my life experience and theirs. But I
agreed all the same, and found myself looking forward to it.
Come the afternoon of the class, I went along to the lecture room in UCT
where twenty smiling faces were waiting for me. I spoke, shared stories, asked
them questions and we had a great time together. At the end, one of the
students stood up to thank me and gave me a gift. In return, I donated several
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books to their library. I was touched, and yet a part of me still wondered
whether their course leader had told them to be polite and say nice things to
me – whether I hadn’t really reached them.
A week after I’d returned to London, I received an e mail from the
course leader thanking me again for the presentation and attaching a
document with a message and thank-you from each of the students in the
class. As I read the messages, I was moved to tears. Instead of being worried
about whether I had reached them, they’d reached me! One particular
message from Kevin Khusu really landed home. He wrote:
I must say that I have never been that motivated in my life. Mr
Nick Williams gave me the strength to go out there and
implement my purpose, because I believe that there are people
out there who are waiting for me to serve them with my purpose.
Kevin had really got it, and he had really got to me – I cried some more.
Again, I felt really honoured to be able to do what I do, and that I had allowed
myself to be inspired by them. Something universal had gone on in that lecture
room – something beyond age, race, class, income or status. We had simply
touched each other’s hearts and inspired each other. I was reminded of how
easy it can be to live by labels – the labels I put on others and the labels I put
on myself; but in that situation I’d experienced a real meeting of souls and the
labels seemed to melt away.
I love the idea that, as each of us lives our own inspired life and does
whatever it is that we are ‘born to do’, many others can benefit from the
bounty of our actions.
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46. A new world of possibilities (2009)
It dawned on me that 2009 marked ten years of my becoming a published
author. I felt proud, because over 90 per cent of published books go out of
print soon after they are published – so ten years represented a real
accomplishment. I wanted to celebrate and wondered if Thorsons, who had
taken over the publication of The Work We Were Born to Do, might print a
tenth-anniversary edition of my book. Instead, I received a letter from them
saying that sales were too low to justify keeping the book in print. They were
letting the book go out of print and I could apply to have the rights reverted to
me.
I felt devastated; it seemed like the end of an era for me as a successful
author. I acquired back the rights and Thorsons duly sent me a disk with the
book on it as a PDF. They told me that I was now free to do whatever I wanted
with it. So what should I do? Just let it die gracefully? Try to resuscitate the
book?
I spoke (well, moaned would be more accurate) to a few friends and
colleagues, one of whom suggested I try speaking to a guy called Edward
Peppitt. Ed had worked in traditional publishing and now ran his own boutique
publishing house, Balloonview. Apparently, he specialised in republishing
‘previously best-selling’ books.
So I contacted Ed and we had a chat. He was a delight and told me he
would look into the costs of reprinting and get back to me. To give you some
context, The Work We Were Born to Do is nearly 350 pages long, and the
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Thorsons edition had a cover price of £14.99. I had been able to buy copies at a
50 per cent discount, but that still meant a cost of £7.50 per book.
Ed came back to me to say he could redesign the cover and could get
2,000 copies printed in India; and the cost of the book, including shipping,
would be under £2 a copy. I thanked him and said I would have a think about
it. The possibilities began to sink in and I started to get excited, my mind
whirring with possibilities. Under £2 a copy? Wow, I had recently run a seminar
for which the accompanying handout had cost over £2 per participant. A nicely
produced brochure could easily cost well over £2 per copy. But with these low
costs, I could afford to bundle in a book with every talk I gave. And when I had
meetings with people I could afford to give them a book as a gift, so that it
would act like a business card. I could get this book reprinted and then write
more books, producing them in collaboration with Ed…
To cut a long story short, a whole new world of possibilities opened up,
and continues to flower following that initial conversation with Ed. He
reprinted both The Work We Were Born to Do and How To Be Inspired, and has
published two brand new books of mine, The Business You Were Born to
Create and Resisting Your Soul. He has also helped me produce several audio
products and a programme called Passions into Profits. He has made many of
my existing books available on Kindle and is currently helping me understand
how to publish new books on Kindle under my own steam.
Meeting Ed proved empowering as he helped me create my own
publishing and broadcasting platform. It goes to show that, with a little
creative thinking, it’s possible to harvest gold from the ashes of any situation.
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47. The power of letting go (2009)
In 2006, Alternatives organised a weekend away in Brighton for its operational
directors and trustees. The purpose was to look at the future of Alternatives,
as we all felt that – after twenty-five years – the organisation might be growing
a little stale and could benefit from some fresh energy and new perspectives.
As a result of that weekend, we set up a working party to look at what
Alternatives could do next and how it might evolve, as well as how to engage
more with the online world. One of the directors, another trustee and myself
were on this working party. Quite soon, though, a split seemed to open up.
Whenever we came up with an idea, the other directors appeared to rebuff it.
Perhaps, deep down, they were nervous of change. All in all, it wasn’t a very
productive state of affairs.
Looking back, I know I didn’t handle matters as skilfully as I might have
done and instead I became upset by the directors’ seeming intransigence.
However, it is now obvious to me that you can’t force people to change: they
just dig in their heels. And perhaps it was a little arrogant of me to think I knew
best. Anyway, after many attempts to resolve the situation, it all came to a
head just before Christmas 2009, when the directors sent me a letter asking
me to resign from the board. At the next board meeting, we spent a long time
talking the situation through and in the end I reluctantly agreed to leave.
The whole experience left me feeling very hurt, bitter and disillusioned. I
had been a member of the Alternatives from the very beginning, and it had
been a spiritual home for me for over twenty years. The incident also fed into
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my sense of victimhood and my deeply-held beliefs that I didn’t matter, I was
insignificant – I was just a nuisance to be got rid of.
A Course in Miracles teaches: ‘You never hate your brother for his sins,
but only for your own. Whatever form his sins appear to take, it but obscures
the fact that you believe them to be yours, and therefore meriting a “just”
attack.’ So I knew I needed to look closely at the negative emotions I held
towards the remaining directors and see how these might relate to my beliefs
about myself. It wasn’t easy. It has taken me several years to work through
what happened and to free myself from those toxic feelings.
Perhaps even more importantly, leaving Alternatives led to my
recognising that I had been immersed in a drama, and that I had played my
own part in creating and perpetuating that drama. I had effectively taken up
arms in a power struggle. At the back of my mind, the words of my teacher and
mentor Dr Chuck Spezzano kept echoing: ‘Every conflict in our life is a delaying
tactic, because we are afraid to take the next step in our lives.’ I had certainly
been in conflict and afraid of my own next steps.
In truth, I secretly knew in my heart that I had outgrown my role at
Alternatives, but I had been terrified to leave. I was holding in and hanging on;
I was very attached to the organisation and to being part of it. But the time had
come for me to create a bigger platform for myself.
Within weeks of resigning, I started writing my first book in four years,
and moved forward other projects that I had not paid much attention to while
I’d been battling the board. I freed up a lot of pent-up energy, which meant I
had more energy to move my own life and business forward. Three more
books followed within three years.
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It was a powerful lesson in the power of letting go. I now have a more
mature relationship with Alternatives and its team, and still attend some of the
events there. And I can honestly say I am glad I’m no longer involved in running
it. I’m glad the organisation exists and does what it does, and I am proud to
have helped write a chapter in its history and am deeply grateful for all the
gifts and blessings I received from my involvement. Getting involved with
Alternatives was one of the best things I ever did – and so was leaving.
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PART FOUR
The Freedom to Live
(Ages 51 to 57)
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48. Mentoring the mentor (2010)
I still feel quite embarrassed to say this, but – as I mentioned in the
introduction of this book – one of my lifelong challenges has been to ‘feel like
one of the grownups’. However, the older I get, and the more I talk to others,
the more I realise that most of us feel like this to some degree.
My friend Judy Piatkus and her husband Cyril invited Helen and me to
Sunday lunch at their lovely flat in Hampstead. Among the other couples were
Sue and Kent. Sue had co-founded The Academy of Chief Executives and now
ran the Global Leaders Academy (GLA), mentoring CEOs and leaders in small-
and medium-size companies, and catalysing breakthroughs in their leadership.
I felt suitably impressed and quite intimidated by her! Sue was obviously a big
hitter.
We swapped business cards, and a few months later Sue and I met for
coffee at her home in Hertfordshire, where I helped her explore themes for a
book she felt inspired to write. She then invited me to become an honorary
member of the GLA and attend some of their circles. I felt very intimidated at
the thoughts of being surrounded by all these powerful, ‘grownup’ leaders.
And yet a part of me deeply wanted to belong there. I ended up being part of
the GLA for two years.
I attended a few meetings and then it struck me: there was nothing
particularly ‘special’ about these people in the way that I’d fantasised there
might be. They were not superhuman, they were not invulnerable. Indeed,
many of them brought their vulnerability to Sue’s circle because she held it as
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a safe and confidential space for them. They brought with them the issues and
challenges that they couldn’t necessarily talk to their colleagues or family
about. Quite quickly my heart began to open to them all and I became less
intimidated. All the same, when Sue suggested that I might like to make a
presentation to the circle one day, I was apprehensive. ‘Blimey,’ I thought, ‘I
don’t feel anywhere near ready for that!’
Then, at the beginning of December, less than forty-eight hours before
the next GLA meetup, I got a phone call from Sue. It was snowing heavily in
London and the scheduled speaker couldn’t get to the next circle because of
the bad weather. Would I step in and present instead, as I lived in London? The
circle would be meeting at the Earls Court Conference Centre. Gulp! Me –
present to these leaders that I was only just beginning not to be intimidated by
and in awe of? I said I would have a think and call her back shortly. It was a no-
brainer really. Why wouldn’t I take up her offer? So I agreed and decided to
run a session on ‘Inspiration, Resistance and Purpose’.
I had another pivotal moment to come. When we assembled on the
Thursday morning at Earls Court, Sue started to introduce me to members of
the group, most of whom I had already met. As she thanked me for stepping in,
I heard her say, ‘Nick is one of my mentors.’ I had to do an internal double-
take. So I was a mentor to the woman who mentors leaders? What did that
make me? Obviously something good, or I wouldn’t be here now! Her
comment was an enormous boost to my confidence and I went on to facilitate
a three-hour session that went really well. I shared ideas, invited enquiry and
conversation, coached and gently challenged the group.
But it was Sue’s words – describing me as one of her mentors – that
stayed with me the most. Those six words, not even directed at me, but about
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me, helped me across yet another threshold: I truly was a grownup working
with other grownups.
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49. Why I nearly pulped my own books (2011)
I felt very proud of beating my resistance and writing my eighth book, Resisting
Your Soul. Proud that I written the book in the first place and then worked with
my publisher, Ed Peppitt, to get it published. I organised a book launch in
London that December to celebrate.
With only two days to go until the launch, I arranged to meet Ed at the
Holiday Inn Hotel at Brentwood so that I could collect the first batch of books.
We chatted over coffee and I was delighted when Ed handed me a copy of my
book for the first time. Having never had children, this is about as close as I will
get to having them: my books, products and programmes are my legacy.
When we’d finished our drinks, I put the boxes of books in the back of
my car and drove home to Finchley. Gradually, though, strange thoughts
began to enter my mind on the drive home, disguised as rational and clear
thinking. These thoughts went something like this:
Only you and your editor, Sue, have actually read this book. What
if Sue really thought it was crap, but was too polite to say so? And
you’ve shared an awful amount of yourself in this book… Are you
really going to show the world just how neurotic and messed up
you are? You’re going to be really exposed! What if people are put
off by what you’ve written? What if you actually depress people
rather than inspire them? Maybe you’ve crossed a line into self-
indulgence rather than self-disclosure? Perhaps you should call off
the launch just in case – and pulp all the books to be on the safe
side.
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Now, I am sure you can recognise this sort of negative thinking. While the
thoughts themselves were bad enough, the real problem was that I was
starting to believe them! I seriously did consider pulping the entire print run of
my book! My ego did an incredible hatchet job on me; I felt blindsided as this
resistance seemed to have some out of nowhere.
I now call this process ‘resisting with awareness’! I was caught in the grip
of my ego but felt helpless to do anything about it. I could see clearly what I
was doing but I still found it hard to stop myself. The thoughts seemed so real
that I found it really hard to enjoy myself during the evening of the book
launch, although eighty of my friends and community attended and seemed to
be having a great time.
I have since received great feedback for the book, with many people
telling me it’s been life-changing for them. So publishing Resisting Your Soul
proved pivotal in that it gave me an opportunity not to believe my own
thoughts! What my ego tells me isn’t usually true; instead, it’s often based in
detrimental judgements and fearful thinking. The whole experience reinforced
the importance of continuing to develop a different relationship with my
thoughts; to keep cultivating a sense of perspective and question the validity of
some of my thinking.
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50. The gift of illness (2012)
I had been invited to give a keynote speech in Karthoum in the Sudan at the
annual conference of the Arab Association of Microfinance Practitioners, and
was staying at the Corinthia Hotel, on the banks of the Blue Nile, where the
conference was being held. It had been a difficult few months. Helen had
experienced the death of a number of close friends and family, including her
best friend just a couple of months earlier. She had been experiencing intense
grief and I was feeling the strain of supporting her. At the same time, I was
concerned that I had plateaued in my life, and was perhaps even slipping
backwards.
So although the view from the hotel was stunning, overall I felt utterly
exhausted. I had never been in a completely Arabic environment before, and I
found it a strange experience, all very alien to me. I felt like an outsider and,
unusually, I didn’t enjoy giving the talk very much. I felt a little ill while I was
there, and didn’t feel good on the flight way back, so guessed I had picked up
some kind of bug.
When I got home, I went to the doctor, who gave me some blood tests
and antibiotics, and I felt a little better. Helen and I travelled to North Cyprus
for a short break away, but within days of arriving home I felt terrible and had
to go to bed. I went back to the doctor for more blood tests and a course of
stronger antibiotics.
Helen was already at a low ebb and she started to grow angry with the
doctor: she’d had hepatitis in the past and suspected I might have it now, but
the doctor didn’t listen when she suggested it. The stronger antibiotics made
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me feel even more ill, and sick too, throwing up and hardly able to walk or go
to the bathroom. I began to feel very scared; within days my life had shrunk
from being an international speaker to being barely able to function, let alone
get out of bed and answer emails.
When I eventually did manage to crawl out of bed and make my way
back to the doctor, he held up his hands and said he must have misdiagnosed
me. I was admitted to the Royal Free Hospital in Hampstead, where they have
a tropical diseases unit. There, the consultant took one look at me and said he
thought it was hepatitis. He carried out some blood tests, but – as it was a
Friday night – warned me it would take at least forty-eight hours get the
results.
Although I was 54 years old, this was my first ever stay in hospital and by
now I was very scared; I felt incredibly unwell and quite helpless. To add to
this, I was put on a cancer ward with terminally ill people. It wasn’t at all
pleasant. At the same time, I sensed this wasn’t just a physical illness but a
transformational process. I’d come across the phrase ‘shamanic test’ earlier in
my life and understood it to mean that some part of a person had to die so
that new aspects could be born and emerge. While I didn’t think I was going to
die, I sensed that some aspects of me needed to be let go – that this illness was
going to precipitate a death and rebirth of some sort.
That Monday, the blood test results came back – and, yes, I had hepatitis
A. I was put on an isolation ward, which felt even scarier, and the diagnosis
triggered a public health alert. Helen and I received calls from the Department
of Health, explaining that I might have inadvertently spread the illness, which
made me feel even worse!
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The consultant explained that there was nothing much I could do to aid
my own recovery. There was no medication, but luckily I would get completely
better with time. He explained that I was likely to feel quite debilitated for a
while, as the liver is in charge of over four hundred functions and when it is
compromised with a disease such as hepatitis, it takes a long time to recover.
To be honest, I felt absolutely miserable. When we say someone has a
jaundiced view of the world, we mean they are very negative – and it’s perhaps
no coincidence that jaundice is a liver disease. That’s how I felt: as though any
sense of joy or happiness had been sucked out of me. I was scared that I might
never feel happy again. I seemed to have lost any sense of connection with
inspiration or spirit. It was horrible. I felt I was so far down I couldn’t see how I
was ever going to get back up again.
After six miserable days in hospital, I was allowed home just before
Christmas. And so began a long process of recovery and getting my energy
back. I could barely get out of bed during the first few weeks and had to be
taken care of. Understandably, Helen found it tough having to look after me
when she was feeling so low herself.
My recovery has been a step-by-step process. As I write now, nearly
three years later, in some ways I feel like I am still getting better. I would say I
am about 80 per cent recovered, but there is still a way to go. Yet my illness
was pivotal in that it made me stop in my tracks, in a way I don’t think I ever
would have done consciously or voluntarily. I don’t think I wanted to
acknowledge that I had ‘plateaued’ in my life; I had still been enjoying life, but
at the same time I was playing safe and hiding out to some extent. My illness
heralded yet another death and rebirth. In this way, it was a gift.
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51. The power of being bold (2013)
This story is about the amazing things that can happened when we have the
courage to be bold and audacious on our own behalf. It’s a tale in three parts.
Part 1:
When I was recovering from hepatitis, I could hardly leave home I was so
weak. Nevertheless, my intuition made me reach out to some of the people I
knew and respected, and ask them to give me some feedback about who I was
‘at my best’. I was feeling really crap physically and emotionally, and needed
some validation.
I asked several people I saw regularly, but I also reached out to Liz
Trubridge, whom I hadn’t seen for a few years. I had supported Liz when she
was in the career doldrums as a TV producer and she was now the Executive
Producer of the hit period drama Downton Abbey. I dropped her a line to
congratulate her on her success, and she responded within an hour with a
wonderful testimonial for me. She also wondered if I would like to visit the set
to see how the show was made. So that February, I made two trips to the set
of Downton Abbey, one on location at the Criterion Restaurant in Piccadilly and
the other at the studios in Ealing. I loved catching up with Liz, and enjoyed the
whole experience immensely.
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Part 2:
For months afterwards, I kept feeling that I ought to contact Liz again, but I
ignored the urge because I knew how busy she would be, filming series four of
the show. That November, I attended a workshop during which everyone was
invited to look at where they might be playing safe and not taking risks. I
immediately thought of Liz, so decided I would send her an email and offer to
buy her lunch. At the same time, that really horrible voice inside whispered,
‘Why would she want to have lunch with you? She’s busy woman; there are
probably loads of people she’d rather have lunch with.’ I am sure you can
recognise that voice. But I sent the email anyway, and Liz responded, saying
she’d be delighted to have lunch. So we fixed on a time and place.
Part 3:
Liz and I met for lunch soon afterwards, and she seemed genuinely pleased to
see me. We fell straight back into our interesting conversations about
authenticity, leadership and spirituality. She asked me what I was up to now,
and I told her about my new ‘Born To’ projects and authentic leadership work.
Then Liz leaned across the table and asked, ‘Do you think we might do
something together around authentic leadership?’
It was the best I could do not to spit my food out! I’d been worried she
wouldn’t even want to have lunch with me – and now here was one of the
most powerful women in British television asking if I might want to create a
project with her!
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These days, Liz and I meet up regularly to look at what we might do
together, but that lunch was a pivotal moment – teaching me the valuing of
pulling yourself up instead of putting yourself down.
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52. A heart-breaking decision (2013)
Since the death of my dad in 2005, my mum had been coping well, living on
her own and taking care of herself much better than I’d thought she would.
But she was becoming less interested in eating and less motivated to do things.
I subsequently discovered this was a symptom of her dementia. She was also
becoming frailer; after one fall, I spent a night with her in Accident and
Emergency.
Some time later, Helen and I were away on holiday when I received a
text from my sister to say Mum had gone into hospital. With no further details,
I was worried. When Helen and I arrived home, I opened an email in which
Amanda explained that Mum was now at home, but someone would be visiting
her to discuss whether she should go into respite care for a few days, where
they would assess Mum’s capacity to continue living on her own.
I went straight over to see Mum, and met Carol from the care home.
Carol talked things through, and Mum decided to go to the home for a few
days to be looked after and assessed. I drove Mum over and we were shown
around and introduced to the staff and other residents.
We went to the room where Mum would be staying and had a cup of
tea. As we chatted, I tried to be supportive and encourage Mum to stay. But
when I got up to go, Mum started to cry and begged me not to leave her. It
was one of the most heart-breaking moments of my life. What should I do?
Should I cave in and take her with me? Should I drive her back to her own
home and stay with her there? That just didn’t seem sustainable in the long
term.
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I could clearly see that she would be much better off where she was
now, at least for the time being; if she stayed she might even cross a threshold
and start to enjoy living there. But in that moment she didn’t want to be in the
care home; she wanted to return to her own home. I felt guilty and torn apart,
as though I was being cruel to her. It was awful and I feared she would hate
me. But in the end I decided to leave without her.
I had a good cry in the car park before I drove home. I prayed Mum
would be OK and that I wouldn’t continue to feel so guilty. It was a pivotal
moment in which I had to play the role of parent for my own mother, knowing
that she wouldn’t necessarily make the best decision for herself. At the same
time, I was scared I wasn’t making the best decision for her either. In the end,
it turned out to be the right thing to do and Mum only returned to her old
home in Egham a couple of times to sort through her possessions. She moved
from respite care to becoming a full-time resident, and lives in the care home
today.
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53. Meeting Desmond Tutu (2014)
On 31 January, 2014, I met the Archbishop Emeritus of Cape Town, Desmond
Tutu. How did I get to meet him, though?
Five years earlier, my friend Howard Carter introduced me to Mike
Dickson, a lovely man. One of Mike’s claims to fame was being the inspiration
behind Whizz Kids, a mobility charity that has so far raised over £100 million.
Mike then went on to found the Rainmaker Foundation, whose purpose is to
make the world a better place for all, and I had become a Rainmaker, one of
the organisation’s members who shares its ambitions. Mike had managed to
persuade Desmond Tutu to become the patron of the foundation.
This year, one hundred Rainmakers and others connected with the
community were invited to an evening with Desmond Tutu – or, as he likes to
be known, the Arch – at the Haymarket Hotel in London. I was excited; I have
known about the man all my life but wondered what he would be like in the
flesh, especially now that he is 84 years old. I had read his book God Has a
Dream and loved his messages.
Before he spoke that evening, we were invited to sit and chat with him. I
thanked him for being who he is and doing what he does. The Arch was very
gracious, and we talked for a moment about love and inspiration.
When he stood up to speak, I was shocked but in a good way. For the
first five minutes, I thought this man had actually missed his calling – he should
have been a stand-up comedian! He was so funny, he had us all in stitches;
partly, I expect, because we didn’t expect him to be so entertaining, especially
while wearing full clerical garb.
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But what touched me most deeply about my time with him?
He wasn’t just a speaker, he was an orator – which means, in my eyes,
that he is his message rather than that he has a message to impart. I was
inspired by his humour, graciousness and his genuine positivity, which had
been born out of considerable personal suffering and from witnessing
suffering. He had experienced so much prejudice, hatred and evil in his life, his
country and around the world, yet he had come out speaking and teaching
about how wonderful human beings are.
As I’ve mentioned, I am a student of A Course in Miracles – a work that
has deeply influenced my own spiritual path – and one of my favourite lines in
the Course is this: ‘The holiest spot on earth is where an ancient hatred has
become a present love.’ To me, the Arch personified that hope of
transformation, moving from fear, pain and hatred into understanding and
ultimately love. He has taken a stand for love in the world rather than standing
for condemnation, revenge and retribution. He inspires people to change
rather than tries to force people to change through judgement. His light has
helped kindled my own. His stand for higher purpose leadership and love in the
world continues to fuel my own desire to stand up for love too.
The final piece in the jigsaw didn’t fall into place until a couple of months
afterwards, when I met up with Mike again. Mike said, ‘Have you seen the new
book the Arch has written with his daughter Mpho? It’s called The Book of
Forgiving.’ Suddenly it all made sense. That’s why he is able to be who he is –
he actively practises and teaches forgiveness. The Arch is a living example of
the power of forgiveness that is available to all of us.
They say never meet your heroes, because you’ll be disappointed – but I
certainly wasn’t.
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54. Coming full circle (2014)
In December, I saw a Facebook post by my friend Malcolm Stern, who I had
known through Alternatives for over twenty years. It was a eulogy to his
daughter, Melissa. She had committed suicide aged only 35. I hadn’t known
her, but I was very concerned for Malcolm and contacted him. He invited me
to come to his sister’s home for the first day of the shiva, the mourning period
in Judaism. The whole occasion was incredibly sad and moving, with close to
one hundred grieving friends and relatives sharing stories about Melissa and
her life.
As I listened, it occurred to me that if I had taken my own life back in
1990, I too would have caused devastation to my friends and family. This
realisation really challenged my story that ‘I don’t matter’: I do matter to a lot
of people. I am connected to a lot of people. Many people care about me.
However bad I might have felt about myself, other people did not feel bad
about me, quite the opposite. And this is true of all of us – yet when we are
blinded by pain and swamped in toxic suffering, it can be very hard to realise
how much we mean to those around us.
I am so glad I chose to live.
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55. A moment of softening (2015)
I’ve mentioned how I enjoy my lunchtime conversations with my friend Liz
Trubridge, the producer of Downton Abbey. We talk about spirituality,
vulnerability, leadership and authenticity, and I always come away from our
conversations feeling validated and enlivened.
I asked Liz if she would ever be willing to go public with our
conversations and she said yes, so we arranged to have lunch at Ealing Studios.
After lunch, I recorded our twenty-eight-minute conversation – and I loved
every second of it.
When I asked Liz about the challenges of operating in a world where big
and fragile egos are often quite apparent, she answered this way:
What I have learned over the years is this: anyone who is willing to
put their creativity in a public domain has to be willing to be
vulnerable, to be brave enough to say, ‘This is who I am and this is
how I would like to interpret this.’ What will come with this is a
degree of fragility and fear, and that can often manifest itself in an
ego. I think as a producer I have to be a little bit of a psychologist,
to hear and understand the fear behind the behaviour, and allow
people to feel safe and valued.
Something about her words had a powerful impact on me; then three weeks
later it dawned on me exactly what it was. Even at the age of 57, there was a
part of me that was still waiting for the day when I didn’t feel vulnerable any
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more, and in the meantime I continued to be tough on myself, often judging
and punishing myself for being ‘weak’.
But here was Liz, producer of an incredibly successful TV period drama,
effectively saying that dealing with vulnerability was part of her daily job
description. She was working with some of the top people in the world in front
of and behind the camera, and realised that all of them felt vulnerable at
times. She still felt vulnerable herself occasionally. Yet she didn’t see that as a
weakness, but something to be managed in order to create an environment in
which people felt safe enough to give of their best.
Who was I to be worrying about my vulnerability, then? At that moment
I realised: the problem wasn’t just that I felt vulnerable, the real problem was
the relationship I had with my vulnerability. I wasn’t particularly kind to the
vulnerable aspects of myself. I was tough on them, judging myself as weak and
even useless for being so vulnerable. I had criticised myself for not being much
of a man because I experienced a lot of fear and vulnerability. I had an
antagonistic relationship with my own vulnerability. It was a bit of a shock to
understand this at last – but also liberating. I needed to create a happier,
healthier and friendlier relationship with my terror and vulnerability.
That was the key realisation: I needed and wanted to have more
compassion for my own vulnerability, to be kinder and more compassionate to
myself when I felt weak and afraid. Not to keep saying to myself, ‘What is
wrong with me? Why aren’t I over this yet?’ At last, I was ready to give up the
search for that mythical day when I would no longer feel vulnerable – and to
stop being unkind to myself for not getting there.
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56. Discovering I was born to bowl (2015)
One of the many joys in my life over the last year or so has been joining the
Finchley Victoria Bowling Club. Going for my first bowls lesson and joining the
club were important moments.
Our next-door neighbour Ralph died on 29 June, 2014, at the age of 88,
after a series of illnesses. Helen had known Ralph and his family for over fifty
years; in the eighteen years that I had known him, he had become a bit of a
surrogate dad to me after the death of my own father. Ralph and I shared a
sense of humour, and he always welcomed us in when we knocked. We looked
out for him after the death of his beloved wife, Mil.
After Ralph’s funeral, Helen decided to go away for a while to deal with
her grief, but I felt a need to stay home. Ralph had been an anchor in our lives;
it had been lovely having him live next door. Now I felt I was in need of another
anchor, but had no idea what that might be. Since becoming an author, I had
spent many years travelling, but in the last few years I’d felt a pull to put down
stronger roots where I lived and to travel less.
Every morning, I go for a walk in Victoria Park in Finchley. On this
particular day, I noticed a sign offering free bowls coaching on Wednesday and
Saturday afternoons. I had a hunch that it might be worth investigating. The
weather was nice and I thought it would be fun to do an outdoor activity –
although I was reluctant to acknowledge that learning to play bowls might be
another sign that I was getting older! All the same, I decided to give it a go and
to try out Finchley Victoria Bowls Club.
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So I plucked up my courage and went along. The coach, John, kindly gave
me a lesson and I really enjoyed myself. I even played a few good bowls. I
sensed I would like to play more, so started going along regularly. I wasn’t sure
how I would get on with the strict dress code, rules and etiquette, but I already
had a white shirt, found a pair of grey trousers and bought some second-hand
white shoes from the club for a few pounds. Then I began to notice that I was
planning my work and other activities around Wednesday and Saturday
afternoons, keeping these free so I could go along and play!
Sadly, the season finishes at the end of September, and for the whole of
the winter I found myself glancing lovingly at the greens every time I walked
through the park, looking forward to resuming play at the end of April. I
starting playing again this spring, and found my enjoyment of the game even
stronger than it had been the year before. I have even started playing in
matches for the club. In fact, I was part of the three-man team that won the
prestigious Coronation Cup against other North London clubs. We were
featured in the local paper with a photograph of us and the trophy!
This new hobby has brought me immense pleasure and it all came from
having a free lesson – and the willingness to try something new.
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Final reflections
As I finish writing this book, I am reflecting on the idea of ‘recovery’. There is a
whole recovery movement out there that I’m still discovering. I have also
attended several workshops in London with Julia Cameron, in which she talks a
lot about ‘creative recovery’ – and in some respects her The Artist’s Way
programme is her contribution to the field.
The idea of recovery resonates with me. I feel like I lost so much of
myself when I was growing up, and have spent the second half of my life
recovering what I lost. I’ve mostly enjoyed being on this exciting journey. There
are always more gifts to recover, a greater sense of wholeness to enjoy, more
gifts and capacities to welcome.
These days, I have more faith in myself and trust myself not to screw
things up. I don’t feel so flawed. I have come to appreciate that my self-
sabotaging tendencies aren’t really my enemies, but that they spring from
well-intentioned if misguided strategies designed to keep me safe in the past. I
feel more worthy, more significant and more valuable than ever. I feel more
hopeful than ever.
Publishing this book has been pivotal for me. In writing and publishing it,
I am making a conscious choice to let you into my inner world in a way that I
have never done before. I still don’t feel very comfortable in being so open, but
one of my mottos has been: ‘The less you hide, the safer you’ll feel.’ So I have
practised what I teach here. I still fear being judged, and I am taking that risk in
these pages.
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The pivotal moments I’ve described in these stories have been like
stepping stones on the journey to discovering my true Self. These days, I feel
more strongly that it is OK to be me and to exist more fully – to choose to
stand out rather than fit in. I feel able to take the world a little more lightly, to
express my sense of humour and to laugh at it all a little more.
I hope my stories inspire your own personal transformation, and
strengthen your capacity to liberate yourself from your fears and limitations,
so that you can let more of your true Self shine through in this world too. As I
finish, I am reminded of the opening lines in one of the first personal
development books that I ever read, The Road Less Travelled by M. Scott Peck:
Life is difficult.
This is a great truth, one of the greatest truths. It is a great
truth because once we truly see this truth, we transcend it. Once
we truly know that life is difficult – once we truly understand and
accept it – then life is no longer difficult. Because once it’s
accepted, the fact that life is difficult no longer matters.
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Why?
Finally, the question I have asked myself as I finish writing this book is, ‘Why
have I done all this?’
Where does this impulse to keep going come from? Why have I kept on
facing in the direction of my fear? Why have I gone through these difficulties?
Why, in the second half of my life, have I faced so much of what I spent the
first half avoiding? Why not just play safe and stay inside my comfort zone?
And for me, the answer comes down to two things:
1. Growth
2. Contribution
My life has most meaning when I know I am growing spiritually and
emotionally, and learning new things, and when I know that I am contributing
to the good of others. I love liberating myself from old patterns and the
conditioning that has limited me. I want to express my love and gifts as fully as
I can in this lifetime. I want to give voice to my inner music, rather than die
with it still locked away inside me; I want to fulfil my potential. I want to give
expression to all that lies within me already, but which has been imprisoned
until now.
And when doing these things for myself also gives hope to other people,
helping to awaken and inspire them in some way, then I feel truly fulfilled.
So here’s to a life full of pivotal moments!
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Resources
‘Many others live off the bounty of you being inspired
and living what you were born to do.’
Speaking and mentoring
If you would like me to speak to your group, company, organisation or team,
please look here: www.iamnickwilliams.com/speaking
If you think I might be able to help you one-to-one with coaching and
mentoring, please look here: www.iamnickwilliams.com/mentoring
Or contact me direct: [email protected]
For daily inspiration and videos, search Facebook: I am Nick Williams author
Twitter: nickwilliams1
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Join the conversation and the community
I created the ‘Born To’ global community in August 2015 as a support system
for those of us devoted to living the lives that we know in our heart we were
‘born to do’. I know this work is not always easy, but it is possible.
There are two levels of engagement with the community, which are
designed to suit your desired level of engagement, your budget, where you live
and where you are on your journey. The levels of engagement are:
Core level – offering immediate access to my whole body of work and
membership of an active Facebook group, where you can connect with
me and your ‘Born To’ family, for £17 a month.
London Immersion – offering immediate access to my whole body of
work and membership of an active Facebook group, where you can
connect with me and your ‘Born To’ family, and an invitation to a live
London talk each month. Also one day consisting of three sessions for
the community, all for £57 a month.
Find out more and join now at www.iamnickwilliams.com/community
As noted above, I continue to accept speaking engagements and have the
occasional slots available for coaching and mentoring. Please contact me at
[email protected] for more information.
‘Being with your soul family allows you to shine a little brighter in this world
than you probably would do on your own.’