At 43, Ray Martin’s world fell apart. His marriage ended, his business unraveled, and his father passed away, all within months. What looked like an ending became the beginning of his midlife transformation. In this episode, Ray shares how he went from broken and lost to discovering that “Ray the Businessman” was just a character he had been playing. Through an unexpected acting role, a six-month sabbatical that stretched into 14 years, and a backpack full of lessons on minimalism, meditation, and intuition, Ray learned how to align with his true self. His story is proof that when life implodes, it can be the opening to something extraordinary.

Guest Bio 

Ray Martin, aka The Daily Explorer, is an entrepreneur and award-winning business leader. As a coach, mentor, facilitator, speaker, writer, and mindfulness teacher, he is a torchbearer for greater human consciousness. Ray is also a marathon runner and fundraiser. He’s on a mission to empower people to live authentically and to bring more joy and happiness into the world.

Turning 40 and taking the next right step

At 43, Ray Martin’s seemingly perfect life collapsed overnight. A thriving consulting firm, public recognition as the United Kingdom’s “Business Leader of the Year,” and a marriage that doubled as a business partnership: all of it came undone when his wife walked out and his father died within months of each other. Suddenly, the man who had done everything “right” was standing in the rubble of his own blueprint, wondering if happiness was forever out of reach. What followed was a radical reinvention that took Ray from despair in London to the stage in Australia, to a six-month backpacking trip across Asia that turned into 14 years of minimalist living, marathon running, and meditation. His journey shows us what can happen when you stop playing the character others expect you to be and start writing your own script.

Highlights from this episode:

• How Ray’s life imploded at 43 despite having “checked every box” of success.
• The moment he realized “Ray the Businessman” was just a character he had created.
• Why listening to his gut, and asking for confirmation signals, became his compass.
• How a 10-day silent meditation retreat shifted his mindset from outside-in to inside-out happiness.
• The sabbatical that turned into 14 years of travel, minimalism, and discovery.
• The guiding principles he created to stop the cycle of negative self-talk.
• Building a foundation of trust in intuition that led him to running marathons, fundraising, and eventually writing his memoir, Life Without a Tie.

Ray Martin’s story is a vivid reminder that midlife is less about crisis and more about opportunity. When the life he had built fell apart, he discovered that identity is flexible, happiness can be cultivated from within, and alignment with your true self often means following the path that feels effortless. His journey from boardrooms to backpacks invites us to reflect on the characters we play, the voices we listen to, and the possibility of stepping into the role of author and director of our own lives.

If you enjoyed this episode, please rate, follow, and share The Big Four Oh Podcast so more people can hear these powerful stories of transformation.

Guest Resources

Get a signed copy of Ray’s book, Life Without a Tie

Connect with Ray on LinkedIn

Do you have the Midlife Ick? 

Download Stephanie’s guide to the Ick to diagnose whether you or someone you love is suffering from this insidious midlife malaise. www.thebigfouroh.com/ick  

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The Big Four Oh Podcast is produced and presented by Savoir Faire Marketing/Communications

Ray: Hi Ray. Welcome to the show.

Thank you. I'm glad to be here.

Stephanie: It's a thrill to have you. I just want you to know, this is a little preview for people who are listening that, and they can't see me, but I wore my scarf tied as a tie today for you. I used the actual tie tying technique, so I thought I have to do that for Ray because his story, has to do with ties and wearing of ties.

Ray: Yeah, I've forgotten how to actually tie a neck tie. It must be now at least 23 years since I wore one.

Stephanie: Yeah, Yeah, yeah. Well, I'm here for you. If you ever need to know, I can make you a little video and we'll get you, we'll get you sorted if you need it.

Ray: Brilliant.

Stephanie: which I doubt you will, and that's the point of the story. Alright, so let's start at the beginning. Your story be begins. Your midlife transition begins when your whole life implodes at age 43.

Ray: Who were you at that point in time, and how did you become that person? What were the forces that shaped you?

Yeah. I would describe myself as a classic product of, the society that I lived in. When I was at school, I grew up to believe that the way to happiness in life, you got married, you got a good wife, you got a good job and a career, and you got a house, had kids.

This picture was commonly understood even though it was never perhaps articulated explicitly, but this was the understanding that I grew up with. So I just very sort of diligently got on with getting a good education and getting a good job, which resulted in me starting my own business in my mid thirties because one of my mentors had explained to me, if you really wanted to generate wealth in your life, it was very hard to do that on a salary.

And if you wanted to take the risk and create your own venture, you had a much better chance of creating wealth. And I bought into that way of thinking massively. So my early thirties and everything before them was just a way of accumulating all the knowledge and experience needed to be a businessman, an entrepreneur.

And so at 42 years old, I was a successful businessman, at least on paper.Very well known, high profile, visible.And my business partner was the woman I was actually married to, so everything looked rosy until one day she came back from a business meeting and suddenly said, I'm leaving you, and I'm leaving the company.

And this just didn't fit with the script at all. It was actually mortifying when she told me that. It was like, felt like I'd been shot literally at point blank range. It was really awful.

Stephanie: Yeah.

Ray: I didn't see it coming. It was shocking. And about the same time, my father got quite ill and he shortly afterwards passed away.

And so within three or four months, oh, by the way, I'm just checking, I'm answering your question. Who I was at the start of the journey, 'cause I think I've gone into the messy middle part

Stephanie: No, not yet. Not yet. No. This is all the setup. Yeah.

Ray: Oh, okay. great. Great. And so there I was standing in what felt like a bomb crater of my life and just seeing all this destruction around me going, I can't believe this has happened to me and I'm never gonna be happy again ever for the rest of my life. That's how desperately broken I felt.

Stephanie: Yeah.

Ray: And so I think I stayed like that for about a year, to be honest, different degrees, but pretty broken.

Stephanie: I think it's really interesting how you characterized of those things as things that happened to you.

Ray: Yeah, I, that's right. Yeah. I had no understanding of that I have now, yeah. Yeah. We were very little of it, let's say. And I kind of had good friends around me to give me some support, much needed supportand then I can't remember exactly what happened, but one person said to me, you know when you are in despair and you can't see a way forward, 'cause that's where I was.

They said, one of the things you can do for a short while at least is go and help someone else. Just a hundred percent go into service to another person who's got a bigger problem than you just go and help them. And I had a friend in Australia who had breast cancer and she'd had a young son born recently, and her husband worked full time, so she really needed some care and help.

I contacted her and said, can I come over and just look after you and your family for a month? I'd like to do that. She said, yeah, that would be great. And while I was over there, something happened that really changed my trajectory completely. I dunno if you want me to go into

Stephanie: Well, before you go into that, this is my favorite part of your story, so I want to, I wanna give it all the space it needs. But before you go into that, you had also, a couple of years before all this happened, you had read a book, called Manhood.

Ray: Yeah, that's right. I forgot about that.

Stephanie: The prescription from this book was that men at midlife should take a sabbatical to sort of stop and look at the first half of your life and where you came from, and then think about the decisions you wanted to make in the second half of your life.

So this was already kind of in the back of your mind before your life blew up.

Ray: There's a TV show, I dunno if you have it in America. In England it's called Faking It, where they invite people from one walk of life and I give them a month to prepare, to pretend to be someone from a completely different walk of life. So you might get, for example, a priest becoming a bouncer at a nightclub.

And it has to be convincing in the new role that, you know, so and so they were auditioning for people to, be on the program. and I thought, well, I'm CEO of a consulting firm. If I can get on that program, that would be great publicity for the business. You know, people would remember me and it would be good.

So I went through the audition process and came down to the last three or four. I didn't get picked, but as a result of doing that, I had to clear my entire diary for a month for filming. So even though I didn't get picked, I now had a month to go off and I went and did a retreat in Portugal in that time.

So it was kind of like Steve Biddulph's advice, but it wasn't really, didn't go to the depths that I think he had intended in the way that he wrote it. So I did have that as a, something on my wishlist that I could do.

Stephanie:

Okay, so now you are in a place of despair, depression, and I have heard this advice as well, like, when you are depressed, one of the things that you can do is go help someone else.

Ray: Yeah. And the brackets on the end of the advice is, and by doing that you, some new thinking will emerge or some opportunity will come to you. Something will crack in your reality. I thought, great. Well, I'll try anything. I was just out of ideas. So I went and did this, and when I finished at my friend's home, I was still in the same mess. I'd put it to one side and I hadn't really thought about it, but nothing much had shifted. And I had a few days before I needed to fly home to go up to Cairns in Australia and see another friend there. It's such a long way from England, you make the most of these trips.So I went up to see her and she said, oh, me and my mom are going to the theater tomorrow.

We're going to see a play. Do you wanna come with us? I said, yeah, that'd be great. So we're at the play, and the interval I'm reading the program about the actors in it. And I see a notice saying we're gonna audition for the next play here, and it's about an English member of parliament, called Richard William.

I thought, oh, that's great. There's something about England. I turned to my friend and said, I should be in that play. Got the perfect accent. And they said to me, well, funnily enough, Ray, we actually know the director. we could get you into the casting and auditions if you want. I said, no, don't make you silly.

I, I'm not an actor and I've gotta fly back to England in a couple of days and what's the point?They said, well, look, you're still here on when the auditions are on. Why don't you just do it for fun? Don't try to be in the play, but just enjoy it. That's a good experience. I thought, actually, it's good. I like improvising and learning.

I'll do that. So I threw myself into this audition. You won't believe it. But to cut a long story short, the director actually came to me afterwards and said, we know you've not got much acting experience at all, but we think you'd be perfect for this part. We'd like you to play the part of George Pickman, the main character in the whole thing. And I said, are you sure you've got people paying for their seats every night coming into the theater? I'm a high risk choice. They said, no, we think you'd be really, really good at this Ray.

Stephanie: Yeah.

Ray: I said, let me sit with it for a bit and just think about it, because I was worried that a, i. my finances were in taters because I was living on my own now with the expenses of London, without my wife being there and had very high cost life. And I'd also committed to three or four clients to do consulting work for them, which I would have to put off for three months if I was to do this.

Stephanie: And you know what, I was in a moment, which I think a lot of people experience where you are, you're facing a difficult decision. There's one part of you, your head going don't be stupid. That's really irresponsible. That's crazy. You shouldn't do it. You everyone's gonna laugh at you. You think you are mad nuts. Just don't do it.

Ray: But your gut, like the voice that's coming from the Universe is saying, you have to do this. No matter what the consequences are in your life, you have to do this. You just know you have to, you know this is right for you. There's no arguing. You have to do this. So you've got those two conversations in yourself going on.

Stephanie: Before you go any further, let me ask you a question. Prior to this point, what was your track record of listening to your gut over your head?

Ray: In purely in the context of running a business, not bad because I had to make business decisions often and I'd say about got half of them right and half of them wrong. And the ones that were wrong were cost costly financially. But yeah, I was not bad about 50 50, I'd say. Yeah, I was, I had some experience of it, but only really in the business arena.

Stephanie: Okay. So you at least are, weren't somebody who was forever suppressing the gut instinct and always going with the mind. You at least had some

Ray: Some, but not when it not when it came to my life.

Stephanie: course,

Ray: And me as a human being, that was the hard part. And you could see that. I hadn't necessarily paid much attention to that, and as a consequence, my marriage had not really worked well.But so here was in this moment, and I thought, I remember when I was flying airplanes. I had trained as a pilot in my thirties, and we had navigational equipment in the aircraft that enabled you to sort of tune a frequency and a dial would point to the beacon at the place you were flying to, and you would just fly the direction of the needle and it was very accurate.

So the main problem with that would be that if you'd chosen by accident the wrong frequency, you would be flying in exactly the right direction, but to the wrong place. And so you had to have a secondary confirmation. And so they built in this morse code signal audio system. Once you'd selected the frequency, you could then ask for a confirmation signal, which made a five second beep in your ear.

And that five second beep was unique to that beacon, so you knew exactly what it was gonna be. And if it was different, you knew you got the wrong one. And so I asked the Universe in a prayer I made facing this decision. I said, I need a confirmation signal that if I choose to do this play, it's the right choice. What would it be?

And what came to me in my thinking was just go to those clients you've committed to and tell them this story exactly as it is. Don't fudge it. Tell 'em how you feel about it. Tell 'em what you're nervous of. Tell 'em everything like this. And if they give you their blessing to go, and say it's okay to postpone for three months, and they give their blessing, that's your confirmation signal.

I did that and next day I was on the phone to each of them. All of them gave me their thumbs up and said, if I was in your shoes, I would go. You must go.

And

Stephanie: Four out of four.

Ray: Yeah. So that absolutely nailed it. That was a confirmation signal. I was on the right track.

Stephanie: Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So now you spend three months studying acting and rehearsing and becoming this person, this character of the play. How did it go?

Ray: The play went brilliantly. I mean, I made some good reviews. I've still got copies of one or two from the australian newspapers. But yeah, I mean it was a huge amount of work. I mean, it was really, I was so outside my comfort zone every day. I was sweating. I was anxious, but I was doing what I needed to be on top of it.

But gosh, I felt a lot out my comfort zone doing it 'cause I've never done anything like it. But it was very satisfying and because I was the main character of the show I was the last on stage for the final curtain call every night, and it meant that the audience were on their feet clapping by the time I made it to the stage. I've never had an experience like that before or since.

So,

Stephanie: I can only imagine the energy that you're absorbing.

Ray: and it was just lovely. it it was absolutely lovely. Yeah. So it was a very, it was a real success and I thought to myself, well, I never got, I thought. I never got that piece of advice the Universe was gonna give me, but this was really good, fun and worth doing. So I'll settle for that and I'm going, I'm flying back to England next week to start again and pick up a business.

And what I noticed in that week that followed Stephanie was that, I didn't feel good about going back. I just kept noticing. I felt a lot of dread and anxiety and I felt contracted about the fact I had to go back to England, and become Ray The Businessman again, and not George Pickham, the character I was playing. And I was sitting on the airplane reflecting on that, and then suddenly a light bulb went off. It just it was like someone hit me on the head with hammer. It was like, hang on a minute, Ray The Businessman is a character.

I had never, ever thought of myself as a character until that moment, and I would never have thought of it if I hadn't actually become a character in a play.And that was the gift of that whole three or four month journey.

Stephanie: And the, when you first told me this story, my, my jaw dropped. Anybody who's seeing this can see that my jaw didn't drop this time. It's only 'cause I knew the punchline.

Ray: So many of these conversations about the transitions around midlife have to do with identity.

They do.

Stephanie: And who we are and who we thought we were, and who we were trying to be, and then who we become or how we become more ourselves than who society has told us to be.

Ray: Absolutely. Yeah, that, I mean, I'm speaking about this now pretty regularly with people, so yeah, you're right. But you've got a wonderful coach in America called Tony Robbins. I'm sure most people know who he is. And in one of his books, he describes the fact that you're not just the actor in your story, you are the script writer and the director as well.

And so you can, from those two other vantage points, you can change the story. You can either change the nature of the character. Can change their mood, their way of behaving. Or you can write them out of the script completely. Or you can kill the series off and say, that's it, that's finished. We're not doing that anymore.

Stephanie: Well, and that's the, again, that part about, when we get to this midlife junction for most of our twenties and our thirties, we have been following a path that we haven't necessarily set out for ourselves. You talked about it yourself at the beginning. There's a blueprint that we think we have to,

Ray: Yeah.

Stephanie: match.

Ray: It's what Bronnie Ware describes this in her book, the Top Five Regrets of the Dying. It's a brilliant book. I would recommend it to anyone. She says, when she asks people on their deathbed what they most regret about their life, and she's asked thousands of people this question, 'cause she works in hospice. They all say the same five things, no variation. And the number one thing is. I wished I'd lived my life true to myself and not the life that others expected of me.

Stephanie: Yes.

Ray: That's exactly what they say.

Stephanie: Yes. And that right there is one of the underlying pillars of the thesis for the entire podcast, is, becoming more yourself, trusting in your own decisions, and in your own needs and wants, and becoming true to who you really are versus who society or culture or your parents or your teachers or your mentors wanted you to be or expected you to be or thought you should be.

Ray: correct,

Stephanie: Your realization that Ray The Businessman is just a character is so profound.

Ray: I'd played that guy for so long, I'd forgotten I chose to become that character. I actually was him, you know?

Stephanie: Right. Yeah.

So now that you know that Ray The Businessman is a character, and George From Parliament was a character, and you spent all those months studying George's thoughts and his motivations and his choices, right? You kind of knew how to create a character.

Ray: Yeah.

Stephanie: What did you do next?

Ray: Well, this is the weird thing about the book Bronnie Ware, The Top Five Regrets is that, yeah, it's clear that living one's life true to oneself means not the life that others expected. But for me, I only knew what others expected of me. I didn't really actually know what living true to myself physically looked like, what it would be me doing.

I literally had no idea. So I, I thought I've gotta get some new input, some new data, some new information about life, because I don't have enough to make any kind of new decisions on.

Stephanie: At that point in time, your version of your life would've meant changing the decorations in the house,

Ray: yeah. Or maybe

asking. Yeah. Or maybe asking people in my own social network what I should do, but they were all people that were in similar jobs and lives and characters to me, and so they would've just told me them were more of the same stuff. So I didn't wanna speak much to people who were just like me. I wanted to speak to people who never thought like me at all.

Stephanie: And now we get to the sabbatical.

Ray: Yeah, because then a good friend of mine said, well, you know what you should do. What I said. Well, what they said, why don't you go traveling for six months, go on a sabbatical, go to another part of the world. Take a completely clean, zero sheet, look at life.

And so I thought, that's a great idea. That's the best suggestion I've had. And they said, well, go to Asia because you've got all those Eastern philosophies like Buddhism and you can do meditation and things like that. I thought, yeah, that's great. I don't do any of that stuff. That'll be interesting.

So I decided to take a six month sabbatical. And I scaled down my life. I sold my house in London. I'd read that book in the process of selling the house by Joshua Fields Melbourne and Ryan Nicodemus called The Minimalists, which is a very well known, they made a documentary on Netflix as well, I think. And in which they'd said, we all got too much stuff. We're all addicted to consumption. They put all of their contents of their apartments into boxes in their hallway for a month. And just took out what they actually needed to use for one month as an experiment. They used about 3% of what they owned. And, it made them realize that minimalism was something that needed to be, expanded upon in society.

And I got rid of everything except of 22 kilo bag of clothes and my laptop. Everything else went, got sold or given away. And I left myself with, with just those things. I thought I'm gonna go on a six month sabbatical with my 20 kilos of clothes on my laptop. And I'm gonna learn and find out whatever I need to know to start myself on the new path.

Yeah,

Stephanie: So a six month sabbatical, you were

Six months sabbatical. I chose Thailand to start with, but I thought I'll go to Vietnam and Laos and Cambodia and eventually work my way back to the UK. And that didn't quite go as planned.

Ray: No, no, I didn't. Because I could only think of that trip in logistical terms. So I had enough clothes for six months, enough money for six months, enough of those kinds of things. But I found after three or four months, not only was I not even, I was still agitated, I still had a lot of guilt and shame about being a failure in England.

I just wasn't at peace at all. My mind was noisy and I've got a very self-critical mind. And so I was telling myself every day I was not good enough, useless, not seeing the way forward. And if I'd spoken to myself, if I was an, if there was a, an external person who'd been a housemate of mine and spoke to me in the way I was speaking to myself, I would've kicked them out after a day.I just wouldn't have had someone speak to me in that way. But I was really speaking to myself in a very poor way.

Stephanie: Yeah.

Ray: And so I needed to do a couple of things. One was I needed to set myself some psychological guide rails, because I knew I was in a transition and I wasn't psychologically coping with it very well.

So what I did was I sat down quietly for a few days and I authored 10 guiding principles for myself, that I could follow. And I documented those in my book, so I could, if we've got time, I can tell you about some of those. But that was one of the things I did. And then the second thing, which I was given as guidance, go and do a vipasana meditation retreat for 10 days in a Thai Buddhist monastery.

And I didn't really know what that was or what that would mean, but I knew I had to be silent for 10 days. And you can tell from probably this conversation how much I love talking. So being quiet for 10 minutes was a challenge, but for 10 whole days it was like, oh my God, am I ever gonna get through that?

But I did it and it was amazing. It would change my mindset completely.

Stephanie: All right, so let's go to both of those things. Tell me, gimme an example or a couple of examples of some of these guiding principles. What kinds of things were you coming up with? Because this is again, at the beginning of your transition, mental, emotional transition. What kinds of things were you coming up with?

Ray: Well, a couple of the ones I can remember off the top of my head, well, first one was the principle of self-acceptance. I was really had enough of being, beating myself up about all the things I didn't do. So I decided to change the dialogue in my own head and say, I'm gonna stop thinking that way.

When I notice, I'm gonna do it. I'm gonna consciously stop, and I'm gonna say to myself, you are learning how to,get to the next stage of life. You are constantly improving and you're learning, and you're finding the new knowledge and wisdom that you need to be in a more peaceful place. And you're in that journey. And you might not be there yet, but you are on your way there. So just be okay about that. And I had to kind of literally reframe self talk. That was one principle.The second one was non-attachment, because as a business leader, especially running a company, you're very focused on targeted outcomes and financial targets and things like this. And happiness equals hitting the target, an unhappiness equals missing the target, and there's nothing in between. And so I thought, I can't live like that because I'm going into a world and a life where I don't know what the outcome's gonna be for half of these things, or what I even need as an outcome.

I'm gonna treat my life as an experiment, a laboratory, and I'm just gonna try experiments and collect the data and then analyze after what I've learned from it, and treat it more like a white coat lab technician than a, I must get this right. I must have this go well. And so that was another example.

And then there were others around frugality because I had a very limited amount of money and I didn't wanna be a consumer anymore. I had ones around making a contribution. I needed to use my traveling life as a way of still connecting and contributing with my network. And I started writing a blog so I can contribute what I was learning as I was going.

So I had these 10 guiding principles that became my kind of guardian of my psychological health.

Stephanie: Yeah. Yeah, Tell me. I have also in, in the past struggled with very negative self-talk and very mean, voice in my head. Do you know whose voice that was?

Ray: Oh no, I don't really, 'cause I, I say my parents were pretty kind. I'd, it's hard to pin it down to one person, let's say.But no, I think I, I dunno, I, it's really, I can't, the short answer is I dunno, exactly.

Stephanie: All right. Just curious. Sometimes people know, sometimes people understand where it was installed or where they picked it up, or,

Ray: Yeah. Yeah.

Stephanie: For me it was a, an achievement, maybe even perfectionism kind of thing where it was, if I wasn't, achieving at the, at really high levels, I was very mean to myself for a

Ray: Yeah. But I dunno where I got that from. Maybe I could even be from mythical characters or films and stories. I generally don't know, but something made an impression on me.

Stephanie: Okay. All right. Alright, so now let's talk about the 10 day silent meditation. How did that go?

Ray: Oh it was beautiful. I mean, it was such a change in energy and noise and everything, on every level. I wrote quite a lot of about this in one of the chapters of the book because the effect it had on me was deeply profound. I mean, I, the first time in my life I understood why we even suffer as people.

I never really understood why do we suffer? Why do we sort of crave for things to help us be happier. I have, I think a lot of us have this concept that we've grown shown as kids that it's what Michael Neil calls an outside-in experience of life. If you want to be happy, you need something from the outside to give you the reason to be happy, I need it. If I get a new house, I'll be happy. If I change my partner, I'll be happy. If I get promotion, I'll be happy, then. I'll be happy when this has happened. And so we go and then people say, why are you so happy? Oh, it's just, I've got, I've just got a new car. Or whatever it you, it's not. It's got to be explained by something outside in, and that's fairly common, I think.

But I was for the first time, invited to consider it the other way round. The monk said, you happiness is something within you and if you are radiating, that happiness from the inside out, whatever you need in your life is gonna come to you easily. And you don't need to be attached to what that is because whatever comes is gonna be perfect for what you need in order for your soul to evolve. So you can just relax.

Stephanie: Yeah,

Ray: Just be, just focus on the happiness you already have, which comes from Thich Nhat Hanh, who's an amazing Zen Buddhist monk. He said, you, the only conditions you need to be happy are that your heart is beating and you wake up in the morning and you see the sun shining. Everything else is luxury, apart from those things.

Stephanie: I remember years and years ago I went to a seminar. I follow Mike Dooley, who is

Ray: Yeah,I've listened to a couple of his talks.

Yeah.

Stephanie:

And I, it's funny, in the earlier episodes of the podcast, I talked about him a lot, and I, when I did, I said, I'd love to have Mike on as a guest someday, and I haven't talked about him in a year or so. So I'm gonna re, I'm gonna remind myself that I wanna manifest that 'cause that's all Mike. But anyway, I went to a seminar with him, I don't know, 20 years ago now. And, at one point in the seminar, he said something about, he was talking about manifesting and energy and drawing the right things to you. And then he gave us an exercise and he said, write down what you want.

And it got quiet and everybody's in there just writing and writing. And I, honest to God, thought I was doing it wrong. And I was at a weird point in my life and I just wrote, I just wanna be happy.

And everybody else is, writing. It's a three minute break and they're all paragraphs and I'm looking around thinking, oh my God, I did this wrong. And then he comes back on and he starts talking about how,what did you write? what did you ask for? What did you ask for?

And people are standing up and reading their, paragraphs about all the things they want. And it turns out that I accidentally did the exercise right, because he said, the more qualifications you give on what it is, is gonna make you happy, the less opportunity you have to achieve that, right?

If it has to be this model car and this color and it this year and all of these things, right? And if the house has to have this many square feet or whatever. All of those things you were talking about, the external thingsand I had just said, and again, I was in a really funky place. I said, I just wanna be happy.

And his point was, if you are, if you're trying to manifest more a feeling, then the Universe has infinite ways in which it could answer you, in which it could provide you something. I didn't say it had to be, a little orange kitten named, you know,

Ray: I get you.

Stephanie: I just wanna be happy. And the Universe could surprise me in so many ways and say, oh look, this makes you happy. And this makes you happy. And this makes you happy. And I'm reminded of that when you're talking about this inside out versus outside

It's lovely. I love your story. and the classic story that, that underlines, this is the John Lennon story. You must know. No,

Ray: Yeah, because, 'cause he,is well known for, having said that, when he was like eight years old at school, is one of his teachers said, right here's the assignment for the class. We want you to write a paper on, what you wanna be when you grow up. And he wrote, I want to be happy. And the teacher said to him, John, you don't understand the assignment. And he said to his teachers, no, you don't understand life.

Stephanie: Oh my goodness. Oh my. From a child too. That's profound. Oh my goodness.

Ray: Exactly.

Stephanie: Yeah. Yeah. Holy cow. Okay, so this meditation retreatwas able to help you change your outlook,

Ray: Yeah, calmed my mind down.

It.

Massively gave me clarity. It was a bit like, you know those when you go on holiday and you get a snow globe of Paris or something, and you shake it up and you've got all these flakes. It's only when you put it down and leave it, it settles and everything drops to the bottom and you can see a clear thing in there.

This is how it felt to me. It was like clarity descended by me just being still. And suddenly I thought, I think I've taken my first step on the right path, so I'm good. I know this is the path I'm walking for now.

And you know what, as well, I realized I wasn't ready to go back to the life in England. That was the first realization. 'cause that was right at the end of the six months of, I thought, I want to stay longer and I want to evolve this meditation practice. I'm gonna find a community here in Asia that I can join and belong to, and do more meditation until I feel strong in this practice, which is what I did.

I went to Chiang Mai, found a community, and I did work weekly meditations and did some at home and just worked on my practice.

Stephanie: And how long did that last for?

Ray: That phase, about six to nine months, that second phase. But by the time I'd reached the end of that, I'd integrated into that community. I'd made friends and I'd also, I started to get a sense that just being a travelerwas not quite enough for me.

I wanted to feel more useful somehow, sense of purpose. And I'd been to an elephant sanctuary in Thailand and I was headed towards Nepal and I was gonna run a picnic for some orphan children in Nepal an orphanage. And I, some of these things I was doing were really touching my heart deeply. And I was thinking, I noticed, I was thinking, how could I help these people? How could I help these people?

So I started to ferment this idea of starting a fundraising foundation, 'cause I had a lot of business skills I wasn't using, and I'd certainly had 24 hours a day of time. I thought I can do some stuff here. And I didn't know what to do. I just asked the Universe again. That's one of the things, a meditation practice really started to up the ante for me.

I started to trust that intuitive wisdom system, asking the Universe, I call it. I just asked or prayed or just said, just give me an idea of how to do this, that it would you let come to me.

Stephanie: What's so interesting is now that you've built the trust in that, the trust in the intuition, the trust in the gut instincts, you no longer need to get the confirmation beacon.

Ray: Yeah, less. Yeah, definitely a lot less. It's still nice to get that sometimes, but I didn't need it as much. And then one day I was traveling, like I was in Chiang Mai and someone said, we're gonna meet these people for dinner tonight.

And guy was called Matt Campbell. And I said, what do you do in your spare time? He said, oh, I love running marathons. I'm a marathon runner. He was about 10 years younger than me. And I said, oh, describe what it's like. And as he talked about it, I noticed my body was tingling with excitement. And that was a sure sign there was something there I needed to hear. I, and eventually I said, it sounds amazing. I said, do you think I could run Marathon? And he said, have you ever run before? I said, no. He said, well, I know why you wanna do it. 'cause I told him I was trying to find an idea to raise money.

Stephanie: Yeah.

Ray: He said, I'll tell you what, if you decide to live here for six months, where he lived, I will train you how to run your first marathon. I'll do it all the way through with you if you wanna do that. And I said, okay. It's a deal.

And so I decided to stay for six months and I started the foundation. I started. In the daytime, I was training physically. And in the rest of the time, in the evenings, I was on the phone or Skype, trying to raise money and get donations from friends and businesses.

And I managed to raise in that year, $15,000 for my first marathon. And the first one I did was the New York Marathon because it was the biggest in the world. And it would've been my dream just as a kid to do the New York Marathon And, when Matt said to me, what marathon do you wanna run? I said, well, I'd like to run the New York Marathon. I said, but it's a dream. I don't think I'll get a place. 'cause you had to be in the ballot. And there was millions of people who

Stephanie: And I said, but if I put my name in the ballot and I get a place, I know that's a confirmation signal. I'm meant to be doing that one. I put my name in the ballot within a week I'd got a place. It was amazing. I just couldn't believe it. I and I, it was a, it was brilliant.

Well, that's another thing that I have found. When you are walking the correct path,

Ray: Yeah.

Stephanie: things become easy.

Ray: Yes, they do.

Stephanie: When you're walking a path that's not meant for you, things are very hard. The Universe will throw challenges or, roadblocks or it will always feel like it's hard.

Ray: Yeah. Why do you think that is? I mean, it is effortless, isn't it? When you are on the right path. Why is that?

Stephanie: Because I think you are, you're going in the correct direction. I mean, I typically like to think of those as guidance, right? If things are hard, then you know, then that's probably not a direction I'm meant to go. And I don't mean that I give up at the first sign of struggle because some things are hard work and they're meant to be hard work. But when, when random or,there's another word I'm looking for when things just seem to be, let me tell you a quick story.

Ray: Yeah, maybe the word is,what's the synergistic?

I dunno.

Stephanie: Here, let me, here's a great example. My husband and I lived in a condo for many years, and then we were gonna buy a house. This is seven or eight years ago. And a house came up for sale next door to the museum where we got married. It was two blocks from my parents' house. My dad had died at this point and we went into this house. And it was perfect. It was delightful. It was all the things and there were so many signs. First of all, there was a pet turtle in the house. And I had a turtle for 18 and a half years. And in fact, the only tattoo I have is of a turtle.Then there were, I forget, there were others. And then there was a set of books in the living room that was like the, the elec, electrical engineers, handbooks from the early 19 hundreds. My dad was an electrical engineer.

Like it was like, check, check. This is our house.

Ray: Yeah, so there's a lot of confirmation signals there.

Stephanie: Well, here's the thing. We go through the, we start going through the process and it's like, no roadblock, roadblock, roadblock. Different things in the process, different things and all of a sudden we had to, I think we had a getaway or vacation coming up a week or two later and we just, with my realtor, I just said, I'm leaving it in the Universe's hands. Let's see what happens. We're going on this getaway, and what happened was it slipped through our hands and it went to someone else.

And I was like, god, all these signals that were telling us we were doing the exact right thing, that this was the house and it didn't work.

So we get back and I don't know, a month later we were in the habit of going to open houses. A month later, we we go to an open house and it's a house on a street that I told my husband I would never live on 'cause it was a one-way street, two lanes. It was like a highway. I was like, I will never live on this street. Again, still about two blocks from my parents' house. We go through the open house, we come out, we're standing on the front stoop and my husband said, well, that was it. And I went, well, yeah, that was it. And he goes, no, no, no. That was it. That's our house.

And I couldn't see it 'cause it was on the street. So I called my realtor. We go back in, we look at it again. My mom comes with us like, oh my God, no, this house is perfect. It checks every box except the street. And then, wouldn't you know, Just all of the roadblocks that had been in the first house, gone, gone, evaporate, evaporate.

And we got to the point where there were two people. Our bid and somebody else's, they were the same.And so my realtor said,write a letter. And so I wrote a letter and I said, I'm from this neighborhood. I grew up here. I, I love historic homes and, I can't wait to take care of this house. And apparently I said all the right things. And we got the house.

Ray: Brilliant.

Stephanie: And so it was like the difference between the house we weren't supposed to have and the house we got. My husband and I, we cannot imagine living in that other house, even though it's lovely and it's across the street from the museum.

Well, wouldn't you know, a year and a half after we moved into the house, something happened with the city and now it's a one lane street with a bike lane. So my one thing, I will never live on the street because,

Ray: yeah.

Stephanie: taken away.

And so I, again, these challenges, these roadblocks, it's like I could have fought for that first house. I could have fought harder. I could have pushed harder, but there was something that said, no, listen. Listen. And so with a very heavy heart and probably some tears, I said, I, we can't buy the house. And we ended up in the house that we love,

Ray: yeah. Great. Super.

Stephanie: So that to me is one of those examples of, these roadblocks, these challenges, these things that just seem to bubble up outta nowhere. It's like, how could that go wrong? They're signals for us to pay attention because it's not the path that's best for us or meant for us. Or So I can't tell you why other than if you listen, you'll end up in that road, the word that you said effortless. It will be effortless. Things will go well and easily and

Ray: That's my experience too. There's an effortlessness that comes with just aligning with the power of the universal intelligence of things.

Stephanie: But I think too, it requires, what you had already been through in your story, it requires that alignment with your true self.

Ray: You do need to know, have, without this deep self-awareness, it's not gonna happen.

Stephanie: Because so many times your brain can override all those challenges. It can explain away the roadblocks. It it can, conceptualize ways to get around the roadblocks versus listening and saying, I shouldn't. I shouldn't be going around these roadblocks. This roadblock is here for a reason. This is a sign for me to pay attention to.

Ray: Yeah, definitely. Without that foundation of self-awareness, it's much harder.

Stephanie: The next punchline of your story is that you left, England with a backpack packed for six months, and, how long did you live outta that backpack?

Stephanie: Well, I love it, 'cause that means you were, again, trusting. You followed your nose. You did the thing that was unexpected, that was not part of the blueprint, that was not part of the picture that we're all drawn.

Ray: Indeed. By the time I got back to England, I did have a couple of cardboard boxes, had to ship in the mail, but, because I, 'cause I had a couple of books and, a couple of things that weren't regular travel letters, but I needed for my work.

So yeah, I did have a couple more things, but still hardly anything relative to having a house or a home.

Stephanie: Yeah. The house full of stuff, as I well know.

Yeah.

Well, what I love about your story is that, your life imploded at 43 or exploded at 43, which is right in the middle of this midlife 35 to 45 kind of what am I doing with my life? And when we first spoke, you told me that you had peaked

Ray: in your former life.

Stephanie: Yeah. I thought I had, I thought, well, no. What get, what's better than being business leader of the year? I mean, you had checked all the boxes. There were no more boxes to check, and so to continue on that path would've been just more of the same.

Ray: Yeah. That's what it felt like.

Stephanie: 20, 30, 40 more years.

Ray: And that's what people said to me. They said, why are you giving all this up? You've built, you put all these 25 years of working this, why don't you just carry on doing it? And I thought, God, no. I can't. I can't. I just had it, had a feeling of death about it if I did that.

Stephanie: Yeah. and it's so hard. It's so hard to give that up, that security, that stability, all of those things. You were fortunate in that things broke down around you because I wonder, had they not, if you would've made that choice yourself.

Ray: It is. Yeah, that's a great question. I've been asked that a lot and I, the truth is, I don't know because I was just dealing with the circumstances I was in, but when it came to choose, sometimes people say to me, God, you were really courageous to let go of that. I say, no, I don't think so. I say, it would've been more courageous to have chosen the life I was in and kept going with that.

That would've been much more difficult because I so didn't feel energetically aligned with that life. That would've been, that would be like trying to eat some food you don't like the taste of, and trying to swallow it. I, that would've been tough. And so I knew I couldn't do that, but I was lucky that I didn't have to think about, how I was gonna financially survive for a couple of years. I had savings and that was really gave me the space to try the sabbatical and know there was nothing riding on it.

And then the third thing I did when my sort of rational assessment, I thought if I take a risk here and go right off piste. If it all goes badly, I can just come back to being a CEO. I know how to do that. I'm not really at risk here. I could easily do this again.

Stephanie: Yeah.

Ray: I, in my assessment, there wasn't much at risk.

Stephanie: I just wanna pick up something you just said and you went by it quickly and it's, I think it's important. You said, I was gonna ask you what energetic alignment felt like, but you said it's like eating something you don't like the taste of. I think that's such a beautiful description of being out of alignment energetically.

Ray: It's horrible, isn't it? I mean. I got, remember when we were kids, we were, bless her. She used to say, you can't leave the table till you've finished this. And we ha hated the taste of it. So it was all have to, oh, have to eat it. It's horrible.

Stephanie: Yeah, but that's a, just a great description for being out of alignment with your true self because anything that you have to force yourself to do, or you're doing with dread, or you're doingonly because you have to, those things are not lighting you up.

Ray: No. No, and it's tragic because some people keep in that they think they don't have, see any other option. And I have a lot of empathy for people. I'm not saying, it's a, it's easy to get yourself out of those situations sometimes. Because, especially when you've got others dependent on your income.Your kids to feed and things like that.

I mean, this is, I don't wanna make this trivial or say it's easy 'cause it sometimes it really isn't.

Stephanie: Yeah.

Ray: But you've gotta start with knowing what's actually true and what's going on, and then perhaps you've got some possibility of seeing a way forward, but if you're not even admitting it to yourself, that's the hard part.

Stephanie: It really is. It really is. Yeah. Well, in understanding that revelation you had about being a character in your own life, that was probably something that really was helpful for you in setting you up to have some of these transitional experiences, in Thailand, and then, during your sabbatical.You could try on different characters. You could try on Ray The Meditator. You could try on Ray The Fundraiser. You could,

Ray: And Ray The Runner, the marathon runner, and then after. What was really interesting, and I never expected this ever. Three or four years into this journey, I met lots of travelers and we had long conversations into the evening, some nights, and they would say, how did this journey start for you? And I'd tell them a lot of the things we've shared here.

And at the end of a couple of hours, people sometimes said to me, can I give you my email address, Ray? I'd say, why. They'd say, well, because if you ever write a book about this journey you are on, I'd like to read it. I said, I just laughed, said, you're kidding. I said, I'm just doing this to heal myself. I said, I'm doing this to write a book or anything. They said, I know, but if you ever do, just let me know. Well, after about four years, I had about a hundred email addresses.

Stephanie: Jeepers creepers.

Ray: One day it just suddenly dawned on me. I didn't know how I missed it before, but I suddenly went, oh my God. The Universe is constantly telling me to write a book about this journey. And I never even got the message somehow. But then it suddenly dawned on me and I thought, that's the next thing I need to do. I need to find a way of writing. And I didn't know what writing a book meant or what it involved. And as I was having this thinking, you won't believe this. I looked on Facebook that day, 'cause Facebook was only about a year old at this time. And, There was a woman coming from New York, a literary agent and published author, a really successful big shot person saying, I'm doing this five day writer retreat in Chiang Mai where I happen to be staying, and you could sign up on this course for $1,200 if you wanted to do it.

So I wrote to her and I said, this sounds great, but I've got two questions because I'm not sure if this is right for me. Like a confirmation signal question. First of all, it looks like it's designed for writers who have experience, and I'm not. I'm a total novice, so I don't wanna be the dunce in the class or get in the way. Is it suitable for someone who knows nothing? She said, yes, you'd be great.

I said, the second thing is I'm a fundraising backpacker, got no real income. I can't really afford $1,200. The most I could pay is $500. Would you let me do it for 500? She wrote back and said, that's fine. You can do it for 500 bucks. So I knew that was my confirmation signal.

Stephanie: Just another example, I'm gonna go sideways of, you never know what you can do if you don't ask the questions.

Ray: Yeah. And so then immediately within a month, I was on a five day writers course, and out of that, what came to me, crystal clear was the book I want to write needs to be a memoir about this actual journey, not like a fiction or a fantasy novel or something. It just needs to be, and that's where Life Without A Tie came into my mind.

But I didn't actually, I've gotta be honest, I didn't start writing the first pages until four years after that workshop, so it wasn't immediate, but I got, that's where the spark of it was.

Stephanie: Yeah.

Ray, I love your story because I just feel like it's such a great illustration of taking the next right step.

Ray: Yeah.

Stephanie: Believing and trusting yourself. And to your point, with a bunch of these things we've talked about, they didn't all pay off immediately, but taking the next right step helped you find a path that was 100% your own, and 100% true to you, and made you more of who you are, the best parts of you.

Ray: Yeah. That's a good way of looking at it, taking the next right step. That could be good, good catchphrase.

Stephanie: Yeah. Maybe we'll call this episode that Turning 40 and Taking The Next Right Step. I

Ray: Yeah. Brilliant. Brilliant.

Stephanie: Aww, Ray, thank you so much for joining me today and so much for sharing your story. I really appreciate it and I've enjoyed our time together. I.

Ray: Yeah, me too. Me too. It's been wonderful.