Your Life, Your Story

There are days in our lives when it feels as if nothing is ever going to work out.  Sometimes, those days stretch into weeks or even months and the feeling becomes inescapable.  It seems as though there is no way out of the darkness that threatens to consume you, to overwhelm you, and to take you down to the bottom of the abyss from which there is no return.  When these times come upon us, and they surely will, just as the sun rises and sets each day, it is easy to despair, to blame ill-luck and bad fortune for all that has befallen you.  How is it then, that you can deal with the bleakness of these situations, how can you keep your head above the waters that threaten to engulf you?

The other day a thought occurred to me.  What if you were to imagine your life story as a novel that had already been written?  A stranger wanders over to a table in a cafe and picks up your book.  They leaf through the pages idly, stopping randomly at a certain point.  That point is now.  At this one point in the story, they know nothing of your past and nothing of your future.  All that they will know of your story is from the letters that they read, those words, lines and paragraphs that describe all that is happening right now.  The stranger in the cafe begins to read.  What will they find?  Who is the main character of your story? What type of story will they believe that they are reading - action, thriller, horror, adventure, romance, or tragedy?

This is exactly what is happening now, when you look at your own situation.  You are reading the chapter that concerns all that is occurring in the present moment.  Unlike the mysterious reader in the cafe, you already know the past, you understand perfectly all of those things, those actions, the decisions, those strange quirks and twists of fate, that brought you to where you are now and that made you into the person that you have become.  Only, just like our reader, you also do not know how the story is going to unfold, you can not know what the future holds in store for you.  If you could, would you even want to flick to the end, to read those last few lines, to discover how your story ends?

Life is like this.  You are here and it is now.  Ahead of you lies many more sentences that you must write.  How your story will unfold is not yet defined.  You hold the pen poised above the paper. The shapes that it makes are your own to make, those shapes create the letters that form the story.  There will be influences and occurrences that are out of your control, but all of these will be necessary to help you, to move the story forward.  Like now, as I write, thoughts come unbidden to my mind, that influence the direction of my writing.  So too will it be with your life, with the events that are yet to come.  You will subtly, subconsciously alter the fabric of the story, bend it to your will, to try to make it flow the way that you wish.  I know this to be true because it is exactly what I have done. I created my own situation through subconscious thought, through positioning myself so that I was more able to take the opportunities that came my way.  I was not aware of it until after, but when I looked back, it was obvious that that is what I had been doing.  I could not alter the events ahead of me, but I could ensure that I was in the best possible situation to take advantage of what came my way.  And in so doing, to reach out for my dreams.  Those events would have come to me, come at me, and perhaps I would not have been able to react in the same way.  I see this as the definition of fortune.  Fortune is the ability to see and to grasp opportunity.  No one, and I mean this truly, no one is born unlucky, no one sits with a dark cloud above their head.  That cloud is of your own making, the way that you view life.  And if you were the creator, so too can you be the destroyer.  You hold the key and you hold the power over it.  The choice is yours and yours alone.

I thought the other day about a very dark chapter in my own life, a time when I was utterly lost, when I could not see any way out of the black that had consumed me.  I was in despair.  Everything that I had cherished and loved was taken from me.  I didn't see it coming and it left me in a state of shock.  In this moment of my life, I thought I was cursed, I believed more than ever that nothing ever worked out for me, that I was unlucky, that there was little point in continuing.  Every night I went to bed, I did not want to wake up because I knew that when I did, the reality of my situation would dawn on my all over again, and it would take me down further.  Had I been in a cafe and picked up my own life story and begun reading at this point, I would have wondered how such a thing could have happened, why someone with a good heart, who always tried so hard for others, could have befallen such a disaster.  And probably, because I'm a sucker for an underdog story, I would want the foolish boy who believed so much in the promise of love, to succeed, to find his way out and to have a happy ending.  I needed that dark chapter of my life, as much as I need the light.  That particular chapter was necessary to bring me to here and to now.  All of these years later, my life has turned into a voyage of discovery and adventure.  I'm still looking for that happiness that can only be found in love, but as surely as eggs are eggs, I don't want my ending to come just yet.  I still have so much to do, so much more to write and so many stories to tell my children.   

And so do you.  There are pages upon pages of blank whiteness ahead of you.  What is behind is gone.  It is done.  Now, here you stand.  At your feet lie a shield and a sword, all around you are the sounds and sights of the raging battle that is life.  It is your decision on whether you fight for the life that you want, whether you raise your shield to ward off the blows that will surely come, whether your swing your sword to strike down your enemies that will try to stop you.  Write you own story.  Don't get caught up in the past, don't think about now.  Instead, look to your future, decide what it is that you want, picture where you wish to go, and then fight for it.  Each strike of the enemy parried by your shield forms a letter, each swing of the sword creates the sentence.  Your story, your book, your ending.  You are not defined by who you are now, you are defined by who you will become and the writing of that story is in your own hands.  So, go write it.

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Confidence in Self

Some people are just born lucky.  Good fortune and luck always seems to come their way.  They are the people who get the breaks, gain promotions, get the girl (or guy) and seemingly have opportunities fall into their laps.  There is a saying that fortune favours the brave.  But bravery alone is not the answer.  When it comes to matters of good fortune and luck, bravery has a partner, and that partner goes by the name Self Confidence.

When I reflect on my own life, it is absolutely clear to me that my self confidence has played a key role in two distinct areas of my life, those of work and love.  In terms of my self confidence, these two areas are poles apart, as different as night and day, and because of this, the luck and the opportunities afforded me, are remarkably different too.  In the one where I consider myself to possess a high degree of self confidence, I seem to have been blessed with some very good fortune and many great opportunities, which I recognised and seized upon.  In the other, where my confidence is low, if not lacking entirely, I consider myself cursed by ill luck and misfortune, where opportunities are few and far between. 

When I first started my working life, I suffered from a general lack of self confidence.  But what I found in the office and among my fellow colleagues, was that I was able to leave behind everything that had gone before and I entered a new world, a world where I quickly felt comfortable, a place where I felt I belonged.  More importantly perhaps, was that in the office, no one knew who I was.  None of the people who had been in my life, putting me down, teasing me, telling me I was no good, were around.  I was able to be myself, to start over with a clean slate.  I discovered that here was a place where I was respected, where I was able to learn and understand the processes and how things were done, and where my way of thinking allowed me to excel.  My confidence began to grow and as it grew, so I worked hard and pushed hard, and in return, so too did the responsibilities that I was given increase.  The more responsibilities that I had, the more my confidence in myself and what I was doing grew.  I entered a phase of positivity, where my success grew my confidence, which in turn led directly to further success.  I was able to see potential opportunities and I worked hard to make them mine.  With my confidence, I pushed and I made it known that I was ambitious, that I had the ability, and I proved it to my superiors and to myself.  I felt as though there was nothing that I could not do and I believed that I was just as able, if not more able, than anyone else.  In this guise, I possessed the confidence to stand up in front of 800 fellow employees and deliver a presentation; I could voice valid points and concerns at important meetings; I could dial in to teleconferences with some of the corporation's vice presidents and they would seek my opinions on certain subjects where I was deemed an expert in my field; I was offered and secured an international assignment overseas; and I held multiple management positions.  In short, from humble beginnings, I was able to enjoy a successful career, one in which opportunities arrived and one in which I feel I benefited from great fortune and luck to have experienced. 

Then there is my love life.  This is an area of my life in which I have zero confidence.  From my being overweight as a child and adolescent, and from asking girls on dates and being constantly rejected, my self confidence ebbed away and for many years, there was nothing that came along to replenish it.  With each new rejection, it became increasingly difficult for me to find the courage to ask again.  I began to believe that I must be ugly, worthless and offer nothing desirable to the opposite sex.  Even after I had my first girlfriend and first experience of love, this lack of confidence was so strong, I could do nothing to change it.  If I saw a girl I liked and was attracted to, I could not walk over to her.  I knew that if I did, I would not be able to find any words to speak, at least no words that I believed would be of any interest to her, and more than likely, my advances would be rejected anyway.  At a nightclub, if was dancing next to a girl I liked and another guy came along and began to show her interest, I would immediately back off, believing that the other guy had the better chance and that I should just save myself the embarrassment and humiliation.  Because of my actions in these situations, my chances and opportunities to find love remained low.  I did nothing to enhance them, nothing to grow my confidence.  So entrenched in my psyche was the idea that I was ugly and worthless, that I was unable to alleviate this way of thinking.  Every action that I took, served only to compound and exacerbate the problem.  And it remains this way even now.   


Let me use a recent situation from my own life to illustrate how confidence plays its part in luck and fortune.  Only a few weeks ago, there was a girl, Marie Claire, who came out diving one morning, and whilst I was giving the dive briefing prior to our first dive, I felt a strong sense of attraction towards her.  It was a powerful, overwhelming feeling, one that I had not experienced since the break up with my ex last year.  As I was in my work mode, I was confident, happy, and engaging, easily making conversation with everyone, keeping everyone entertained.  The attraction to Marie Claire continued throughout the morning and by the time we surfaced from our second dive, I had decided that I would ask if she would like to have a drink with me that evening (as I knew she was leaving Costa Rica the following day), when a suitable moment presented itself.  However, the closer we came back to shore, the more I felt my confidence beginning to ebb slowly away.  By the time everyone was back at the dive centre, my confidence, which had been brimming over back on the boat, out in the ocean, was now almost non-existent.  A perfect opportunity arose to talk to Marie Claire, as she was standing quietly and alone outside.  I looked at her standing there and I made the assumption that if she was interested in me, then she would not be standing outside on her own, away from where I was.  I wanted to act, but I froze, my self confidence was gone and with it, my ability to walk out to talk with her.  In this moment of self doubt, and in this moment of hesitation, so too was my opportunity lost.  Marie Claire left and I was left wondering what might have been.

A few days later, I needed to ask Marie Claire something related to the diving the day that she had been with me, and so began a conversation via e-mail.  After a few exchanges, I decided to let her know that I had wanted to ask her for a drink, because I knew now that since she was back home in the States, nothing could come of it and I thought it would be nice for her to know the impression that she had left on me.  Marie Claire replied that she had been thinking the same, that she too was going to ask me for a drink that evening, and that I should have asked her.  An opportunity was missed, a chance wasted, the curse of my bad luck had struck again.  And why?  Only because I severely lack confidence in myself when it comes to matters relating to the opposite sex. 

How many opportunities have I missed due to my complete lack of self confidence?  How many times could I have crossed the dance floor to ask a girl to dance with me?  How many times could I have asked a girl to have a drink with me?  Too many.  In the same way that I consider myself very lucky in my work life, I consider myself unlucky in the extreme in my love life.  But this is actually nothing to do with luck.  I have experienced just the same amount of luck and opportunity as the next person.  What separates them from me is our own level of self confidence, our ability to believe in ourselves.  The lucky guy who always gets the girl, is the confident guy.  Confidence breeds opportunity, since those people who are confident will push themselves and will take the opportunities that come their way.  A lack of confidence means less opportunity, and less opportunity inevitably is seen as meaning less luck.  It really is very simple.
If you find yourself cursing your poor luck or the lack of opportunities in your life, ask yourself whether that is actually the truth, or whether perhaps, the truth is more a question of your confidence in the given situation.  How do you build confidence?  The only way is to push through the doubt and the fear and to seek the truth for yourself.  Even if what you find is not that which you looked for, knowing that you sought it in the first place makes all of the difference.  And each time you try, each time you push yourself forward, you will generate opportunity and with that opportunity will come luck and success.  That is how confidence is created.  Through trying, we dispel all fears of failure.  We learn to understand that through trying, we create more opportunities, we increase the probability of success, and therefore reduce the chances of failure.

Watch a baby trying to learn to walk. It totters on its legs, takes a step, perhaps it falls.  It gets up again, totters, takes a step, then another.  Maybe it falls again. But the baby has learned something very important.  It has learned that it could take two steps, the next time it will try to make three.  Slowly and surely, the baby grows confident and learns to walk.  We each must do the same in our lives.  If you lack confidence, do not shy away from the fight.  Instead, climb to your feet, take a stand, and take a step forward.  Perhaps you will fall and be defeated.  But perhaps you will not.  Perhaps you will be victorious.  Unless you try, you will never know.  And from each step that you take, you will grow your confidence.  The journey along the one true path is just a series of small steps after all.

I shall not regret that I did not ask Marie Claire to have a drink that day, since regret is useless and wasteful, but I shall do my best to not let it happen again.  After all, fortune favours the self confident, right?

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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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