All great inspirational teachers and speakers have a story. It begins with something like “10 years ago I sat down and re-evaluated my life, created a vision of what my ideal life could be and amazingly my life changed”. I’ve never had a story until…
…10 years ago...
I was living what many would call a successful life. I had a large detached home, I was married to a pretty and loving wife with 3 wonderful children. I owned two cars, we had two incomes, as a family we regularly holidayed abroad. I was successful at school, achieved a degree, I secured a good job with great prospects and a career path. By 1994 I had successfully climbed the corporate ladder. To the outside world I had made it. I was a success. Having grown up in relative poverty, I had created a wealthy and secure home for my children that as a child I could only dreamed of.
I was a success, so why didn't I feel like one?
Despite my success, inside I was frustrated. I felt I was living someone else’s life, I was going through the motions of being a loving husband, dutiful son, responsible son in law, positive parent, loyal friend, ambitious, committed employee, friendly neighbor and 'good' person. For some reason I wasn’t connected to my life emotionally. I felt detached, like an observer, living my life on automatic pilot. It began to dawn on me that the life I was living was the direct result of the thoughts I had been thinking since my childhood. Wanting to escape my childhood life of poverty, the way I had been thinking had created, a stereotypical ideal of the ‘perfect life’ – the only problem was that this life was everyone else's expectation of me and didn't take into account my desires and my dreams. I had fallen into the habit of trying to please everyone else and forgetting about what I wanted. No wonder I felt so empty.
It was time to change...
I realized I had a choice. I could continue living someone else's life or I could start to live my own. Did I want a life by accident or a life by design? I began to study personal development books, listen to tapes and attended seminars. I learned that all successful people visualized their goals and aspirations and listed them down and somehow got what they wanted. I visualized myself self-employed running my own Personal Development business, I visualized earning twice as much money doing half as much work, owning a red sports car and working on TV. I visualized my family happy and healthy standing outside a big dream house waving to me. I envisaged swapping my stressful life in the office with a bottomless in-tray and rush hour journeys to and from, for open roads and a workspace surrounded by lakes, mountains, forests and beautiful peaceful landscapes. I wrote these goals down in a book and then over the next 10 years as a direct result of all this positive thinking and wish list, my ‘merry-go-round’ life turned into a rollercoaster ride. At times exhilarating and exciting and at others, it felt like riding Universal Studios ‘Tower of Terror’.
Everything I wrote down and thought about materialised...
Some were wonderful but some were not so great. Just a word of advice, when you visualize your happy healthy family and see them standing, smiling outside your big dream house, MAKE SURE YOU ARE IN THE PICTURE TOO!!
24 months ago...
I was living in the beautiful English Lake District running a work-life balance company surrounded by lakes, mountains, forests and beautiful landscapes. I could earn twice as much money doing half as much work - just not very often. I was again living the life I had previously visualized. But I felt isolated. I was under achieving and needed a new challenge. I was also feeling frustrated at the lack of British summertime and the abundance of rain and desired warmer climes. A friend sent me a clip of a motivational speaker with a great story. He’d worked in Saudi Arabia after deciding that he wanted to work abroad and had written a visualization list. He so inspired me that I decided to focus my attention East. Unknown to me at the same time in Abu Dhabi a frustrated training company owner was focusing her attention West.
Out of the blue...
January 2006 out of the blue I received an email from Abu Dhabi asking if I was interested in delivering training to UAE nationals. I googled Abu Dhabi images and the Sheraton beach club resort caught my eye. It was such a stunning picture of the hotel under a cloudless blue sky with a palm tree-lined, golden sandy beach fronting a beautiful deep blue lagoon, I felt compelled to put it on my screen saver. I responded to the email but heard nothing. I had almost given up on the idea when an email offering a meeting in London arrived. Although it was a long journey, short notice and I still had some doubts, I decided to go. We hit it off straight away and I discovered they used the Sheraton Hotel.
The Universe delivers…
A month later I flew out to Abu Dhabi, I was met at the airport and driven to the Sheraton Hotel. Within 24 hours of arriving I was sitting on the beach under the very same palm trees at the hotel on my screensaver.
Tingles up my spine...
There’s more, the sea looked gorgeous so I decided to go for a swim. The resorts lagoon was like stepping into a warm bath and the salt content in the water made swimming effortless. I lay on my back and floated on the surface looking up at the blue cloudless sky. Behind me was a diving platform so I swam over and climbed onto it and looked back at the hotel. At that moment the hair on the back of my neck stood up. I was looking through my own eyes at my screen saver picture. I was actually standing in the exact same place the photographer had stood when the screensaver picture was taken. A picture I found randomly searching the internet for information about a thought I had 6 months earlier. I had my ‘story’.
…10 years ago...
I was living what many would call a successful life. I had a large detached home, I was married to a pretty and loving wife with 3 wonderful children. I owned two cars, we had two incomes, as a family we regularly holidayed abroad. I was successful at school, achieved a degree, I secured a good job with great prospects and a career path. By 1994 I had successfully climbed the corporate ladder. To the outside world I had made it. I was a success. Having grown up in relative poverty, I had created a wealthy and secure home for my children that as a child I could only dreamed of.
I was a success, so why didn't I feel like one?
Despite my success, inside I was frustrated. I felt I was living someone else’s life, I was going through the motions of being a loving husband, dutiful son, responsible son in law, positive parent, loyal friend, ambitious, committed employee, friendly neighbor and 'good' person. For some reason I wasn’t connected to my life emotionally. I felt detached, like an observer, living my life on automatic pilot. It began to dawn on me that the life I was living was the direct result of the thoughts I had been thinking since my childhood. Wanting to escape my childhood life of poverty, the way I had been thinking had created, a stereotypical ideal of the ‘perfect life’ – the only problem was that this life was everyone else's expectation of me and didn't take into account my desires and my dreams. I had fallen into the habit of trying to please everyone else and forgetting about what I wanted. No wonder I felt so empty.
It was time to change...
I realized I had a choice. I could continue living someone else's life or I could start to live my own. Did I want a life by accident or a life by design? I began to study personal development books, listen to tapes and attended seminars. I learned that all successful people visualized their goals and aspirations and listed them down and somehow got what they wanted. I visualized myself self-employed running my own Personal Development business, I visualized earning twice as much money doing half as much work, owning a red sports car and working on TV. I visualized my family happy and healthy standing outside a big dream house waving to me. I envisaged swapping my stressful life in the office with a bottomless in-tray and rush hour journeys to and from, for open roads and a workspace surrounded by lakes, mountains, forests and beautiful peaceful landscapes. I wrote these goals down in a book and then over the next 10 years as a direct result of all this positive thinking and wish list, my ‘merry-go-round’ life turned into a rollercoaster ride. At times exhilarating and exciting and at others, it felt like riding Universal Studios ‘Tower of Terror’.
Everything I wrote down and thought about materialised...
Some were wonderful but some were not so great. Just a word of advice, when you visualize your happy healthy family and see them standing, smiling outside your big dream house, MAKE SURE YOU ARE IN THE PICTURE TOO!!
24 months ago...
I was living in the beautiful English Lake District running a work-life balance company surrounded by lakes, mountains, forests and beautiful landscapes. I could earn twice as much money doing half as much work - just not very often. I was again living the life I had previously visualized. But I felt isolated. I was under achieving and needed a new challenge. I was also feeling frustrated at the lack of British summertime and the abundance of rain and desired warmer climes. A friend sent me a clip of a motivational speaker with a great story. He’d worked in Saudi Arabia after deciding that he wanted to work abroad and had written a visualization list. He so inspired me that I decided to focus my attention East. Unknown to me at the same time in Abu Dhabi a frustrated training company owner was focusing her attention West.
Out of the blue...
January 2006 out of the blue I received an email from Abu Dhabi asking if I was interested in delivering training to UAE nationals. I googled Abu Dhabi images and the Sheraton beach club resort caught my eye. It was such a stunning picture of the hotel under a cloudless blue sky with a palm tree-lined, golden sandy beach fronting a beautiful deep blue lagoon, I felt compelled to put it on my screen saver. I responded to the email but heard nothing. I had almost given up on the idea when an email offering a meeting in London arrived. Although it was a long journey, short notice and I still had some doubts, I decided to go. We hit it off straight away and I discovered they used the Sheraton Hotel.
The Universe delivers…
A month later I flew out to Abu Dhabi, I was met at the airport and driven to the Sheraton Hotel. Within 24 hours of arriving I was sitting on the beach under the very same palm trees at the hotel on my screensaver.
Tingles up my spine...
There’s more, the sea looked gorgeous so I decided to go for a swim. The resorts lagoon was like stepping into a warm bath and the salt content in the water made swimming effortless. I lay on my back and floated on the surface looking up at the blue cloudless sky. Behind me was a diving platform so I swam over and climbed onto it and looked back at the hotel. At that moment the hair on the back of my neck stood up. I was looking through my own eyes at my screen saver picture. I was actually standing in the exact same place the photographer had stood when the screensaver picture was taken. A picture I found randomly searching the internet for information about a thought I had 6 months earlier. I had my ‘story’.
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