Everybody loves a change story. Better still if it's encapsulated in a proper hero's journey narrative: the call to adventure, meeting a guide, overcoming challenges, death, rebirth, transformation…
It's standard fare not only for the world of personal change, but is also weaved into pretty much every novel you've read and film you've watched, because in a way, it's all our journeys, through life. That whole before-and-after thing, with uncertainty and obstacles laid out between them – it really resonates!
I've been peddling my own story for the last god knows how many years, and if you've heard me speak on a podcast, or at a conference, or on one of my courses, it all sounds quite neat and tidy. Somewhat dramatic, perhaps. A bit inspiring (hopefully).
Giles’ life changed completely when he came across the 3 Principles, over the course of 17 days… and yours can too! 🙌🏻
(It's catnip to an ego, I can tell you.)
I even alluded to it the other day, when I was talking about insights, referring to Four 🎉 Realisations 🎉 That 🎉 Changed 🎉 My 🎉 Life 🎉
LOL. And of course, it's a lot messier than that. And in a way, more normal. And boring.
But as I listed those four insights the other day, I realised that while I've certainly talked about them a lot, I'd not ever actually written about them (which, for a writer, is a pretty poor show), so I'm going to set the record straight over the next few days.
I'll let you know what happened, so that you can see for yourself, just how accessible change is. How available. How anything can happen, even when we're not expecting it to (in fact, precisely when we're not expecting it)!
But there's one big elephant in the room that needs addressing first.
46 years and 17 days
It just so happens that when I was going through this period of change, I was keeping a daily journal. (I was a bit miserable and had been attempting to make myself feel better with ‘gratitude journaling’ – it didn't work.)
But it means that I've got a timeline laid out in front of me. Sitting down with it, to figure out what happened when, I can see that there was a 17 day period—from when I first picked up Jamie Smart's Little Book of Clarity, until I had a really humbling and life-changing experience up on stage, speaking at a conference—over which I started to see life very differently indeed (and have done, ever since).
That's pretty exciting, isn't it? 17 days! Isn't big change supposed to take longer than that?!
Well, of course, it did. It took just shy of 46 years and 17 days. Those seventeen days were just when I was pointed in a different direction from what I'd been used to.
So a lot of big stuff had already happened: many changes, many insights, many highs, many lows, much learned, much seen…
- I'd got pretty far through a surgical training career, and seen that money, status and fulfilling work was no guarantee of happiness (which, frankly, was a bit disappointing)
- I'd left medicine entirely, which was epic and scary at the time (I'm really proud of Giles circa. 2002, for doing that!) to embark on a different career
- I'd eventually created a portfolio career lifestyle that, on the surface, ticked all the boxes: well-paid, flexible consultancy work, freelancing as a features writer for a cycling magazine part time, riding lots, writing lots, travelling, being creative… but still with a chronic, low-level dissatisfaction I couldn't shake
- I'd been on the most gargantuan personal development journey—for years!—joining groups, attending seminars, doing audio programmes, reading ALL the books, trying all the diets, the yoga, the meditating, journaling, visualising, exercising, fasting… and eventually giving up on it all, because ‘I couldn't do it right’ and concluding that there was ‘something wrong with me’
- I'd been speaking at careers conferences for 11 years straight, laying out my insights from all that personal development, in my own ‘10 Principles of Career Change’ that I delivered to hungry audiences – an annual event that I used to look forward to more than anything else
- I'd already had a huge revelation, just 6 months prior to the 17 days, that I was going to wind down my health IT consultancy work and become a life coach, and indeed had done so, and was in the run up to delivering my careers talk once again, and officially ‘launching’ my coaching practice at the same time.
This is the backdrop to those 17 days (you've got your own backdrop), but none of that was what really changed things. If I'd got evidence of anything across all those career leaps, the years of self-help, and even the years of speaking about it on stage, it was maybe what didn't work in my accidental quest for happiness and peace of mind.
It was something else entirely—that I shall share over the next few posts—that arrived, completely unbidden, over 17 fairly ordinary, life-altering days, that showed me the way.
And it's something that, I have seen, since then, is available to anyone, regardless of what's come before.
You don't have to have been through anything like that; you might have had a similar journey, and still feel stuck. It really doesn't matter.
All you need is to be looking for change.
💟
Giles
p.s. incidentally, that ☝🏻 up there, is why I'm calling my book, Life in Focus: How to Kick the Self-Help Habit and Enjoy Life Without Being Told What To Do.
How I wish I could have read it myself, all those years ago! 😂
Related
Giles P Croft
Could be a good time to revisit this one 💝