This process was incredibly exploratory. The more playful I became, the more opportunities arose. I realized that while the process was enormously valuable, it was the way I approached it that was key to making it work. As time, space and focus worked their magic, I learnt a lot about myself and some of my personal beliefs with regard to how my life ‘should’ be. It turned out it was these beliefs that were keeping me stuck.
Up until that moment, my career and my life’s focus had essentially been fun and rewarding, but it always felt as if I was doing one thing to achieve another: getting promoted in order to build a really significant profile at work, so making me able to create some heavy duty impact and so get a really big job …
I came to understand that deep in my subconscious there was a belief that by following all these stages eventually I would achieve some sort of Nirvana, an ultimate life state, a place where I could be happy. There would come a time when I had achieved the next big goal and horns would sound, fireworks explode, and the wise and the beautiful of the world would surround me saying: ‘Chris, you’ve done it! Stop that toiling, it’s now time to party. Enjoy life, the rest of it is yours.’
I know this may all sound ridiculous, but is this belief really so foreign to you? Whether it’s getting the next promotion, buying a house in the country, waiting for the kids to grow up so you can travel or just getting a bit more cash in the bank; we all mortgage our happiness. It was for that very reason that I wasn’t doing something that I loved, and that was what had started the itch.
When I was travelling, tomorrow didn’t exist. I wasn’t working towards anything. There was only the present. If I had become attached to an output there would always have been the chance of disappointment. For example, if I was planning a trip out on a boat and all I imagined was calm seas and clear blue skies, then I would only have been happy if nature provided those precise conditions. But as we all know the beauty of being alive is that we cannot predict the future. I learnt that by all means I should make a plan, but then I must let go of it, detach and see what happens. I soon discovered that when the bus didn’t show, the heavens opened and there was no room in the inn, I would often have a much more fulfilling and adventurous day than when it went like clockwork.
When travelling, I remembered what it was like to enjoy every day regardless of the weather, the reliability of the buses or the lack of dry places to rest my head. Every day became an adventure and the less attached I became to an outcome, the more fun I had. It was a wonderful game. What I realized was that back home, life hadn’t felt like a game for some time. I was taking it all too seriously. And, worst of all, I was taking myself too seriously. I now knew that any opportunities that I wanted to take had to be as much for the moment as for where they might possibly take me.
A LIFE LIVED FOR TOMORROW IS CRAPPY
We all have a choice. We create our own reality, so if we are having a bad time, it is likely to be our fault and nobody else’s. We can’t control the world but we can control the way we perceive it and react to it. This belief is core to creating freedom through opportunities. When we feel that we have become victims through circumstance, and believe that people are ganging up against us, we remain stuck.
When at last I realized that every day is just perfect and that my challenge is to be able to see it as so, my whole perspective changed. Each day may be perfect in creating motivation, perfect in teaching me something or perfect in restoring energy; in any case it is still perfect. It is neither wrong or right; good or bad. It just is. With this in mind, I made the decision to be engaged, energized and optimistic about my opportunities. I was in control, I had choice. The game had begun.
I had managed to get off the merry-go-round and this helped me to see things with clarity, realize the world’s immense possibility. I learnt that we all have the gift of creative imagination, but we have never been taught to use it properly.
Creativity has to be of some benefit. Some impact. All too often our imaginations are only employed in the field of dreams. By dreaming we don’t advance our lives, we just live in an escapist world. What I was now doing was applied dreaming, creating a focus that meant my creative efforts were not merely whimsical but productive. I was creating my options for the next stage of my life – my future!
As I considered my options, sometimes I would become distracted by shiny, pretty things; opportunities that looked attractive but when I dug a little deeper, I would realize that their attraction was superficial. For example, the worlds of film, television and music have always seemed incredibly sexy to me, but if you look beneath the surface, those industries are no more rewarding than hundreds of others. For every person in these businesses who enjoys the ideal life of glamour, fame and pure self-expression, there are countless others on the hamster wheel of life; doing what others want them to, working harder than they’d like to, with colleagues they wouldn’t ideally choose and feeling thoroughly unfulfilled. Having said that, it is possible to have a fabulous life working in any career, as long as you are in it for the right reasons, where you can be true to yourself, where it is not just another stepping stone towards happiness.
Energy IN is key to energy OUT
For myself, sitting on an island on the other side of the world, I found it difficult to know what my range of possibilities looked like, so I did some homework. I read books, met people, watched films and talked to others about my interests. In doing so, I slowly started to fill in the detail. It was a bit like painting by numbers. While I might never finish the picture, by getting some colours in place, I could get a good feel for what it might look like.
Once I knew what it was that I wanted and what it was that excited me about my opportunities, the key to creating exciting ideas for my future was to fill my life with stimuli and be playful with them. I just experienced these stimuli and noticed what reactions they created in me, without analyzing or trying to understand them. Every reaction gives us some information. Either we want more of it or less of it. If we want more of it, then create it. It’s as simple as that.
Life is complex, and we must listen carefully to what our feelings tell us. If I was to spend all my life sailing, a part of me would be ecstatic, but other parts would be unfulfilled. Life is dynamic, balance is never achieved; it’s about moving towards what is right for us at any given moment. Balance will never be achieved because ‘it’ doesn’t exist.
On my travels, as time went by I noticed that my beliefs were slowly shifting. I came to know that I was in control, that there was no perfect life state that I had to strive for – ‘it’ was now. I learnt that big questions needed to be chunked down into smaller ones in order that I could bring a creative focus to bear on them. The more I experimented the more I realized that if I tried enough approaches, exercises, experiences, I could always come up with new and inspiring possibilities.
This whole journey began with an itch. I knew I had to change course because of that unsettled feeling. I equally knew when I had created an opportunity that inspired me because I felt it, I really felt it. This time it wasn’t an irritating itch that was little understood. It was an ache. It felt like a yearning that had a clear direction. I now knew what I wanted to do and my entire body felt compelled to do it. Once again, this was beyond simple logic, it was visceral.
For some years I had felt annoyed by work being a discrete area of my life where I became somebody else. It was as if I put on the ‘Business Chris’ mask in the morning, adopted new and frankly bizarre language patterns and became the cultural stereotype that I believed would be successful in my business. I noticed the same with my friends and other colleagues. Then every now and again, I saw them become themselves. On those occasions they appeared to be more happy, creating better work and developing better relationships. They seemed whole.
After much exploration I was ready to return home and start my next journey, helping people within businesses to really be themselves in all their