Why Daring Is A Must And Why Routine Is The Silent Killer

Darkness.  My eyes tried in vain to penetrate its cloak, but all that I was able to discern were the vague shapes of the boats, that I knew were tethered to their mooring lines further out.  The quiet was interrupted only by the gentle swells that rolled in, becoming waves that broke upon the shore.  Into this darkness then, out into the deep water, did we venture.  What craziness was this, I wondered.  Crazy?  Perhaps it was, but it was something more than crazy to me, it was adventure and it was daring and it was something that I had wished to do for as long as I could remember.  Now, here I was, here we were, walking out into the depths of the black ink that was the ocean.  The cool water rose slowly up to my chest, I prepared to swim and I thrust my arm out, ready to take my first stroke.  In this moment, life decided to show us its magic and it presented us with a miracle.

Life is full of possibilities, it is full of opportunities, and it is full of miracles.  Every single moment, you are surrounded by them.  The first problem is perceiving them and it is not always easy.  Each of us becomes entrapped in the daily routines of our lives.  We do the same things, we perform the same tasks, and we do them at the same times.  Life begins to become a monotony.  Routine is the silent killer.  It stalks us, it sneaks up behind us and it ensnares us.  It is far too easy to be caught.  I know that myself all too well.

There are many moments in my life when I have a sudden realisation that I have become deeply entrenched in my routines.  Yes, some routines are necessary and helpful.  Take for example my own morning ritual.  I get up, I fire up the laptop (it needs a lot of time to run through its own routines), I put the coffee on brew, I wash my face, I do some push ups, some stomach crunches, I make my cereal with chopped banana and milk, and I pour out the coffee.  While I have been doing all of this, my laptop has become ready to use, so I sit down and catch up on the news, check my e-mails and Facebook happenings.  It's my twenty minutes of peace and quiet before I have to get myself ready and leave for work.  I need it to be able to function in the morning.  It's part of my wake up routine and because of it, I know that at certain times, I need to perform certain tasks and by doing so, I will be ready to leave for work just at the right time.  That all seems quite normal enough, so where is the danger in routine?

Let me use an example.  There are people who commute to London every day by train.  They end up standing in exactly the same spot on the platform and they sit in the same seat of the same carriage, with the same people, every day.  They have become so completely conditioned to their routine.  But that's good though, right?  These people get to hang out and talk with their acquaintances and friends, they know they'll have a seat and they know where that seat is going to be.  It all sounds so logical and it is, which is exactly the problem.

These people are missing out on the chance of making important and new discoveries.  No new opportunities will come their way, no new people will enter their lives, people who may bring with them an important message that could alter the course of their destiny.  These commuters have closed themselves off to chance and in so doing, they have closed themselves off to the opportunity to learn and to evolve.  Life begins to become dull and boring, always the same.  This is the danger with routine.  It prevents us from discovering the new because we seek comfort in all that is old, all that is comfortable, secure and known to us.  Routine blinkers our eyes, it deafens our ears, and it quietens the voice of our heart to all of life's opportunities and possibilities.

So, the first task in beginning to open yourself up to opportunities is to break some of your old routines and habits and to do things differently.  Be spontaneous.  Be a little crazy.  Say yes rather than saying no.  Take a different route to work. Sit in a different seat on the train or bus.  Leave ten minutes later or ten minutes earlier.  I recall a scene in the movie Dead Poets Society, where Mr Keating (Robin Williams) asks the boys to stand up on his desk and to view the world differently.  "You must open your eyes to possibility", he tells them.  This then is the trick.  You need to find your own desk and to look upon your world from another angle.

You also need to heed the voice of your heart and to be a little daring.  The moment that you do, life will reward you.  In order to achieve all that you wish for, it is necessary to step outside of your comfort zone.  Inside that zone, everything is known to you and it is safe.  You can spend the rest of your life in there and you might be content, but you will never have any chance of discovering what lies elsewhere, what incredible things could occur to you, if you were to just take a single step outside.  You will never discover your one true path from the safety of your comfort zone, you will never realise your dreams.  It can be scary, there is no denying it.  It can be a little overwhelming.  That too can happen.  But, it can also deliver to you the most rewarding experiences that will ever occur in your life.  In order to make discoveries we must be bold and we must be daring and we must follow the urges of our heart's.

There are times in my life when I chose to do exactly that.  The time I booked my plane tickets to New Zealand for my first solo vacation, taking that job in Budapest, giving up my career with IBM, booking those tickets to Bangkok, enrolling in university in New Zealand, going to Honduras and becoming a dive instructor.  Each time I have dared, I have been rewarded more richly than I could ever possibly have imagined.  Even in the times when things did not quite go the way I had thought or had planned, I was still rewarded with new experiences, new people and I learned.  Everything that I experienced was necessary.  It has helped me evolve my spirit.  This is how life works.  This is how we discover our true selves.  Each of us is far more capable than we can possibly imagine.

This is exactly what happened the other night.  I had an urge in my heart, I wanted to go night swimming but for some reason, I always knew that it had to happen in a certain way.  When that opportunity presented itself, when I heard the words that asked me if I wanted to take a swim, I could not deny the voice of my heart.  I knew it was this moment, I knew that it had to be right there and then.  I could have said no, it was too late, that I wanted to stay dry, that I wanted to get home, but I did not.  Instead, I dared.  And in the moment of my daring, I opened up myself to the possibilities of life.  There I was, in the water, at the moment in which I thrust my arm forward.  As my finger tips separated water from water, something extraordinary happened, the water exploded with a shimmering light that surrounded my hand and my arm.  I was stunned, amazed.  I did it again and the same thing happened.  Then I lifted my arm out of the water and hundreds of tiny drops of light fell from me, slowly cascading down to fall back into the black of the water and disappear.  Truly this was one of the most incredibly beautiful spectacles I have ever seen.  There in that moment, the two of us shared together a moment of pure magic.  It was a moment when life chose to reveal one of its miracles to us, as if it had been waiting there all of this time, for the right moment, for the moment when we dared.  And by daring we discovered one of life's miracles, we found an ocean of bioluminescence. 

Those same miracles await you too.  They are out there, all you have to do is to believe, to dare, to switch up your routines and to let yourself open up to the possibilities and opportunities of life.  Once you begin to see the miracles, you will never stop.  Once you hear the voice of your heart and heed its message, you can never go back.  Opportunities will come to you. Miracles will occur.  And with them, so too will you come to see and to know the one simple thing that connects every single thing in the universe: love.

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The Inner Strength We All Possess

There was a time in my life, when I used to look at other people and believe that they must possess an inner strength and quality that did not exist within me.  These people always appeared to me to be extremely confident and to have a clear vision of what it was that they wanted from life.  They seemed brave and courageous, having no fear of the consequences of their actions, no fear of where their decisions would lead them, and no fear of facing the unknown.  Luck and good fortune seemed to find these people with ease and it seemed to me that they were presented with amazing opportunities, almost as if all that they had to do was to reach out and take them.  They spoke of life with a joy and a burning passion, they seemed full of energy and vigour, and they spoke of love, as if they had uncovered some secret truth of life that I was unable to discover, and they seemed to know exactly what they wanted and where they were going.  It seemed that these people were able to achieve whatever it was that they set out to accomplish and they did it with apparent ease.  These people were the exact opposite of who I thought I was.

I cannot recall ever feeling jealous of anyone.  I think that it was just that whenever I met someone like this, I would feel inferior to them and perhaps a little overawed by them.  I would say things to myself like, "I wish I could be like that", or "They are so lucky".  I saw a person who had been presented with opportunities that I could never have.  They appeared to enjoy the luck of life, while I enjoyed the misfortune.  My own achievements paled into insignificance when compared to theirs.  I had literally done nothing to speak of, nothing worth telling, at least in my own opinion.  I could never do what they had done.  I wouldn't have known where to start.  Just thinking about it created a feeling of fear within me.  I felt that I did not possess the strength of character, the resolve, nor the courage.  I felt naive and ignorant of the world outside of my immediate social sphere.  My own life seemed ordinary and remarkably dull by comparison.

Yet, there was something that happened whenever I came into contact with a person like this.  I would hear their stories and I would feel a yearning to do something more with my own life.  I wanted to be like these people and have my own adventures.  I wanted to travel to new places, to seek out and experience amazing things in life, and I wanted to be as confident as I perceived them to be.  I would feel a yearning for a life that was less ordinary.  It created a stirring in my soul.  I could feel that there was something deep inside of me that craved release, that wanted to be free.  It was my heart calling out to me.  Screaming that yes Andy, you can do this too, if only you would believe in yourself.  But I chose to ignore this voice time and time again.  My heart called to me but my ears were closed to its pleas.

Why?  Why could I not be like the people that I saw?  Why didn't I receive any good fortune or lucky breaks in life?  Why didn't opportunities come my way?  Why didn't I have the courage or the strength to do what they did?  Why couldn't I have the life that I wanted?  Why didn't I have stories to tell?  There was only one answer to all of these questions.

Because I was scared.

I was scared of life and I was scared of myself.  I really didn't know how to go about changing my life.  It just seemed too huge a task.  When I watched a documentary and saw amazing scenes of nature, of mountains, or lakes, rivers and oceans, or the incredible acts of wildlife, I felt a compulsion to do something different, to go and see these things for myself.  Yet I did nothing.  I was afraid that if I tried, I would turn my back on everything that I had and I would lose it all.  I couldn't see my future down that road.  If I stayed in my job, then I was able to see prospects for promotion, I could see jobs that I would like to do if the opportunity came my way.  The other road was too unknown and too dark.  Yet slowly and surely my life did begin to change. 

I have said many times that I have been extremely fortunate in my life to have been at the right place, at the right time.  However, I have come to the realisation that luck is hardly ever just random.  It occurs because of something that we subconsciously do.  In my case, although I wouldn't have admitted, I am ambitious and driven.  My ambition and drive created opportunities and when I was able to recognise those opportunities, I seized them with both hands and never let go.  Those opportunities presented me with the chance to travel overseas on business, to see new places, to meet new people, to begin to broaden my horizons.  Eventually, I would have the opportunity to live abroad in Hungary, and that is when and where everything really changed for me.  It is the same for everyone.  Good fortune and luck come to those who dare to take the opportunities that are presented to them.  There is an expression, fortune favours the brave, and it is quite true.  My own version of this expression is this:-

"Fortune favours those of us who dare to follow our hearts."

For many years, I was never conscious of what was happening to me as I progressed though my life, I was just doing what felt right at the time.  What I have come to realise now, is that throughout all of those years, I had been subconsciously soaking up snippets of information and storing them away.  All of these pieces of random information began to arrange themselves into something coherent, something that would form the basis for my own plan for life.  I was storing things away that would create opportunities for me in later life.

As an example, I returned from an overseas business trip one Friday evening and had flown into Heathrow, London.  I had a taxi driver booked to pick me up and drive me the 65 miles back home.  As I came through from the baggage claim, I spied my driver holding up a small board with my name.  I walked towards my driver, and as I approached, I was sure I recognised him.  "It's Gary isn't it?", I asked.  "Oh my god.  Andy?"  Gary and I had worked on the same factory production line many years before and had not seen each other for the intervening fourteen years.  He was now a taxi driver for a local firm and I was a manager in a global IT services company, returning from an overseas business trip.  How different our lives had become in those years since I had last seen him.  During the journey, we caught up on those years and Gary explained to me that he drove the taxi only during the monsoon season in Thailand, where he was a scuba diving instructor.  The moment he said that to me, it occurred to me that Gary's life appealed more to me than my own.  In the taxi that evening, on the road from London down to the south coast of England, I must have subconsciously stored that information away.

Through my business trips, I got used to travelling overseas alone.  I had to attend meetings and I had to give presentations on a regular basis, sometimes to fairly large audiences and to senior levels of management.  Through this, I gained a confidence in myself that had never existed previously.  When I was working in Hungary, I was asked the general manager of the company to give a speech at an all employee meeting.  I found myself standing up on stage, speaking to an audience of some 800 people.  If you read any of my old school reports they will all say pretty much the same thing: Andrew is quiet and shy and he doesn't like to participate in class discussions.  I was scared and I was nervous, but I still did it.  I overcame my fears and I found my inner strength and courage.

Every single one of us possesses the power to change our lives.  No matter what you think of yourself, no matter how weak you think you are, or how lacking in confidence, or how scared of the unknown you think you are, I can tell you that this is not true.  You are no different to the person that I used to be, you are no different from the person that I am now.  And you are no different to any one else.  The only thing that sets us apart is that I, like many others, sought to change my life and to follow my heart.  I decided to no longer let my fears of the unknown stop me, I decided that I didn't wish to be scared of life any longer.  I figured out that if I wanted the life of which I dreamed, it was up to me to make it happen.  I discovered an inner strength that I never knew I possessed.  And when I discovered that strength, I found an unlimited supply.  By following your heart, you are tapping into the power of the universe, and the power of the universe is infinite.

I am no different to any one else.  I am extremely humble about my life and about the opportunities that came to me.  I always give thanks for everything that has happened to me, because I am truly grateful for my path.  You too can do this.  Your life is your life and it is no one else's.  Never think that you cannot do it.  Never think that you are different to other people.  You are not.  Every single person that has gone in search of their dreams has been scared and has faced the unknown.  We persevere because we know the rewards that await us, because our hearts urge us to carry on.  The inner strength that you see in others is only a reflection of the inner strength that resides in you.

You possess the inner strength to change your life.  You possess the inner strength to seek out and to grab the opportunities that come your way.  You possess the inner strength to free yourself of the chains that bind you to a life that does not work for you.  You possess the inner strength to spread your wings and fly free.  You possess the inner strength to be all that you dream.  You possess the inner strength to become the real you.  Your inner strength is unlimited.  There is nothing that can hold you back or stop you.  Unleash it.  Don't take my word for it.  Believe it.  Go and make your dreams happen.  Find your one true path.

One of the greatest secrets of our time is this:  You are stronger than you can possibly imagine.  Unlock that secret inside of you and see just how high you can soar.

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