by Craig Beck
Exercise
Stop reading and grab a pen. I want you to write down everything negative in your life that you believe is there because someone else put it there. Then next to each bullet point I want you to come up with a new positive spin that gives you 100% responsibility for the event. Now wait, lets be clear. There is a huge difference between blame and responsibility. I am not asking you to take the blame for the day you got mugged in broad daylight or the night your car got stolen. Fault and blame are pointless actions of the ego, blaming the mugger for attacking you doesn’t undo the act of violence that occurred.
What I want you to do here is accept the situation as being a part of your life. You may not have chosen to have it happen but for whatever reason you attracted it in. It’s a part of you and that means you are the only person who can heal it within yourself. Make peace with it and try to give yourself a point of view that does precisely zero finger pointing and has a high expectation that a positive outcome will arrive.
Next I want you to think specifically about what reasons you have for not having escaped the Rat Race already. You know, things like ‘I need the paycheck too much’ and ‘it’s hard to give up the security’. Write down as many excuses for you having not yet taken action as possible. One by one come up with a more empowering version and cross out the original statement in thick red ink.
Example: ‘It’s hard to give up the security’ might become ‘I now understand there is no such thing as security in the rat race. I am free to build my own secure life doing what I love’ etc.
These exercises are very easily skipped and forgotten about but please try to do them because they make a huge difference to the speed at which you can effect positive change in your life.
Rate Race Escape Example – Kelly Brooks:
"I was 29 when I decided that HR wasn't for me. I started doing yoga in my office gym because of a knee injury I sustained from cycling.
In my 9-5pm role I found myself drinking alcohol at the end of the week, as if I deserved it for working so hard. Once the yoga became a daily practice, I started to cut down my drinking in order to have a fresh head when I practiced.
I realized that I didn't have any passion for my job and I wasn't interested in the next step up the career chain. I had a conversation with my boss and I got a career coach to help me work out the next steps to make yoga teaching my full-time role.
It was a snap decision; one minute I was at my desk, the I next I was in India undergoing teacher training for yoga. I went from partying the whole time to a lifestyle that revolved around meditation and Teetotalism.
I had fantastic support from my yoga teacher and the career coach. They gave me the excitement that I need to carve out a career for myself in the yoga world; they convinced me that there was nothing outside of my reach.
I knew that I had found the right path in teaching yoga, but I felt vulnerable making the transition. I was moving away from a full-time salary in a fantastic company and after I returned from India, I couldn’t afford my rent. I stayed with friends for 13 months until I was able to make yoga teaching a full-time pursuit.
Teaching yoga doesn’t now feel like work - I can choose what hours and days I work, and it's varied enough that I never get into a routine. Last week, I was in Bulgaria filming yoga videos with a company from LA. Next week, I will be in Dalaman running my own yoga retreat. I get to run around London on my own timetable, working at The Third Space gym, and with corporate and private clients.
I used to drink a lot because I was trying to escape the pressure and now I hardly ever touch alcohol, which has caused a shift in my social network. I have never worked so hard with this venture, but equally it doesn’t feel like work because I am my own boss. I am more positive despite working longer, more unsociable hours.
You have the power to manifest and make your life whatever you want it to be; there are no limitations."
Hanna’s Story
“Success is no accident. It is hard work, perseverance, learning, studying, sacrifice and most of all, love of what you are doing or learning to do”, Pele
I mentioned my good friend Hanna Sillitoe at the start of the book. I didn’t actually occur to me just how much of an inspiration she is until I reached this section. I tend to think of Hanna as, well Hanna – just my friend. I forget sometimes just how much she has beaten the system into submission and succeeded at committing to living her passion.
I decided a short interview would be an invaluable addition to this book. It’s strange, but in the years I have known her I have never asked her many of these questions. I am genuinely excited to hear what motivated her to create the life she now lives.
I had to track Hanna down on Facebook to interview her. These days you never know where in the world she will be. She fully embraces the freedom and opportunities that the Internet offers and runs several successful businesses from anywhere on the planet she feels like being in. Recently she bought a very cool, pimped out camper van and drives it all over Europe skiing, surfing and paddle boarding – life is one big vacation!
As I mentioned before there is no ‘luck’ involved in Hanna’s journey. She saw a vision of how life should be and she went all in to go get it.
Q1. Can you think back to a time when you were working for the man? Doing the daily commute and working a 9 to 5 job. At what point did you know that it wasn’t for you and how did you plan your escape?
Written down on paper my ‘career’ looks rather bizarre! The only time I would ever class myself as stuck in a job was seven years ago when my first big business project went drastically wrong! Long story short I was importing electric scooters from China. The market was there for them with the eco-everything craze hitting the UK. Fuel prices were going up, electric vehicles were the future. Helped by the fact companies and councils were receiving grants and subsidies for ‘going green’. The scooters sold but as I very quickly found out, importing products with electrical and moving parts from China is never a good plan. They stopped working, broke down, didn’t like rain and failed to charge. The stress of repairing scooters and refunding customers got too much and I said to myself - life would be so much easier if I got a proper job with holidays and sick pay. So that’s exactly what I did.
I started working as a PR executive for the Guardian. As jobs go it was a good one. A great salary, nice colleagues, decent perks and something I was actually interested in. Nevertheless by day 3 I was bored. I found it difficult having to run things by a manager constantly, I hated the commute, being restricted to one hour lunches and sitting at a desk until 5:30pm. By the end of week one I began to plan my escape!
I decided the scooter import model worked as a structure. Bringing something into the UK from China and doubling the price. It’s simple and effective. The key, I decided, was to sell something without the hassle of moving parts! And so began a seven year business selling furniture.
Q2. Many people who see your book ‘Radiant: Recipes to heal your skin from within’ on the top of the bestseller charts may assume that the path to success is a straight line. Most successful people have experienced many knock backs and failures on the way. Can you think of any specific things you tried that didn’t work out but taught you some valuable lessons?
‘Radiant’ has been a three year project in total, although during the first year I had absolutely no idea that my story was to become a book. Out of all the jobs I’ve done and businesses I’ve built, this has felt the least like work. Having said that, it’s also the thing I’ve worked the hardest on! My scooter company taught me so many valuable lessons. It lost me my life savings totalling £15K at the time, but it’s most definitely the best £15K I’ve ever spent. I learned some really important skills such as how to build websites, how to import goods, how to set up a limited company and how to self promote. Sure it’s possible to employ other people to do these things, but I think having the skills to do them yourself opens up so many possibilities. It means you can trial anything at an
ytime for very little cost. If I had to pay a web designer each time I wanted to trial a new idea, the uncertainty would probably stop me experimenting with lots of new projects. Having the skills to do it myself means I lose nothing but time and a tenner for a domain name.
I didn’t set out to monetise my story. I just knew that my new found love of healthy recipes and understanding of skin and wellbeing was something I had to share with the world. It was also really important to me to tell my story in a beautifully photographed, hardback book. I wanted to create something that people would be proud to display on their kitchen worktop. Not a skin guide that people would hide away at the back of a book shelf, embarrassed to own. Had I not found such a brilliant agent in Becky, I would absolutely have self published. ‘Radiant’ really came from the heart and it was super important to me to get the story out there. As it turned out the universe came good and the whole process of getting the book published flowed beautifully from start to finish.
Q3. The doctors told you that your skin condition was essentially incurable and that the only thing they could do was give you steroid crèmes to reduce the symptoms. What made you defy the experts and decide to fight psoriasis anyway.
I spent twenty years trying different steroid creams and emollients to heal my skin. Non of them ever had a particularly astounding impact. Then three years ago I went back to my doctor because my skin had flared worse than ever. He suggested a medication called methotrexate. Methotrexate is used as a chemotherapy drug. My skin condition at that time was painful and debilitating but it wasn’t cancer! I was shocked. I understood the concept - we were trying to suppress my immune system to stop it attacking itself - but with the risk of numerous horrifying side effects, not to mention potential organ failure, I decided there had to be another way. I didn’t believe the body could be so badly screwed up and that there wasn’t a way to regulate my immune system again rather than suppressing it. The more I began to research the more I realised there was a whole community of people using diet and natural oils to heal all sorts of illnesses. I hate being told something is not possible, especially when in my mind that doesn’t seem logical. I guess a combination of the frightening medication options and stubbornness to prove the experts wrong were what made me decide to look for an alternative. It kick started an amazing journey.
Q4. What people didn’t see is the amount of work that went into your book. For years I watched you work on that project and for a long time without any recognition or income to show for it. What inspired you to keep going?
My motivation for this project has always been to share my story and help others. Because of my personal experience I am incredibly emotionally immersed in this part of what I do. That’s a very new concept for me because my work in the past has always been based on something which I could see would make money. But this is about much more than that. I started by sharing my before and after pictures on twitter and instagram. My skin had been horrendous so to be able to go out in short sleeves and share my photos with the world was amazing. That of course led to people asking how I’d managed to heal. It was feedback from the people I helped in the early days that kept me going. I began to receive emails and pictures from others who followed the free diet plan I share online and realising my story had the ability to change lives was just so powerful. I remember one day fulfilling at £70K office chair order. That same afternoon I got an email from a girl who was in tears because she’d read my story and finally had some hope to get well. I was much more excited by her email than confirmation of the furniture order! I knew in that moment where my priorities should be.
It was never about getting rich or creating a multi million dollar industry. If I could just somehow cover my bills doing what I love and in the process be able to change lives - that for me was enough. Trying to figure out how to do that and trusting the process initially was something I really battled with. On the one hand I had a successful furniture business turning over close to a million each year. On the other hand I just felt this huge pull to pursue something which was changing lives but if anything costing me time and at times money. I very much believe that the universe has your back when you’re working on something which has a greater purpose. I really believe that when you’re on track it shouldn’t feel as though you’re endlessly pushing hard against doors which seem to be unwilling to budge. Just a gentle nudge and they should fly right open. That’s absolutely how it felt. It’s not that I didn’t work hard or put the hours in - I probably put more hours into this than I had into anything else in my whole life. I just knew instinctively it was too important to give up.
Q5. What advice would you give to anyone with a dream to escape the rat race and follow their passion? But perhaps they are scared of losing the regular paycheck or the security of a regular job?
Do it! Fear is what stops us doing anything. We dream of starting a project or building a business or pursuing something we're passionate about and then our mind comes up with a long list of negatives. What if it fails. What if I lose my savings. What if I can’t get another job. If we were all to fearlessly follow our passions and do the things we love, the world would be a much happier place! There are plenty of ways to mitigate risk. Reduce your outgoings, set yourself a time frame such as 6 months off work to give something a try. If you’re worried about paying the bills, speak to your mortgage company and ask for a payment break or sell the house altogether if you have to! I often speak to people who say they could never make such dramatic changes to their lives but then look on with envy when I’m bobbing about around the world whilst they’re stuck in the same office job that’s made them unhappy for the past six years. It didn’t happen by accident. I absolutely designed my life this way and my advice to anyone is you most definitely can too.
If you want to find out more about Hanna Sillitoe and Radiant visit http://www.mygoodnessrecipes.com/
80% of Any Success is Confidence
“If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle.”, Sun Tzu, The Art of War
Many people come up to me and tell me that they have no confidence. Let me tell you that I have never met one of these individuals that were correct in their assessment of themselves. I remember a phone call from a lady called Mary Jackson from Delaware, she said “I need your help, all my life I have lacked confidence and it is really making my life something I don’t want it to be’. I asked her if there was anything in her life that she already felt super confident about doing and she replied ‘Oh yes, cake making and cake decorating – I am very good at that… But that’s different!’. But why is it different? If Mary and I had a cake making competition she would blow me out of the water. In bakery Mary is a master and full of self-belief and high self esteem, and yet she applies a broad label to her personality of being a person with no confidence. The fact is Mary already knows how to be confident, she has done it before – what she doesn’t know (yet) is how to apply it to all areas of life.
The same is true of you; there is something you do that you are very good at. It doesn’t matter what that thing is, perhaps you are a genius at knitting clothes or you can play poker like one of the high rollers in Vegas. There is already a strategy for confidence inside you, all we need to do is take it and apply it to other areas of your life.
For example, let’s imagine that your big fear is talking to members of the opposite sex, you really want to find the man or woman of your dreams but every time you get the opportunity to meet that special person you clam up, start blushing and find that your brain has turned into glue. What you have in this situation is a strategy for failure; there will be a specific series of events that happen in order for you to arrive at the end result. What most people do after this sort of painful moment has passed is to chastise themselves and demand that they don’t ever do that again.
This is not really going to help because while you have identified what you don’t want you have failed to come up with a plan to get what you do want.
If you came to me with this problem I would say to you ‘how do you know it’s time to blush’? You might say ‘well it’s when the other person walks up to me and I know they are looking at me waiting for me to say something’. This is the beginning of your strategy to fail, next I would ask you to think about something that you feel super confident about, and I would ask you to go through each step of the process. So let’s do that together now:
Think of a time when you really pushed yourself and you achieved something. A time when you stopped procrastinating and just grabbed hold of the task and did it. A time when you had a target, aimed for the target, gave it all your power and energy and hit the bull’s eye.
Perhaps you started off in a negative place, feeling frustrated, bored or unhappy with something in your life. Then that feeling turned into determination, a desire to do something about the situation. Then you got passionate and focused about taking action – try to remember all the feelings you felt, all the sounds you heard and everything you saw when this was going on. Next see the outcome and how amazing it felt – get a clear image of how it felt to be over the finish line.