Richard Wain decided to become a mathematician instead of a rock 'n roll star. He made this decision on a whim with only a month or two of preparation, because it would bring him closer to his now wife.

Later, he and his wife left behind stable jobs with guaranteed contracts. Richard became a primary school teacher before setting up a business with previous guest Marcus Link.

These caterpillar-to-butterfly transformations and the lessons they brought have shaped him into the person he is today. He joins Ben to talk about radical transformations,

Links

• Richard’s website
• Vu Online
• Beginning the regenerative journey – Peripheral Thinking, with Marcus Link

Greetings and welcome back to Peripheral Thinking, the series of conversations with academics advisors, activists and entrepreneurs, all people working, championing the ideas on the margins on the periphery.

Why?

Because the ideas which will shape the mainstream tomorrow are hiding today on those margins.

And in these conversations we speak to those people who are doing the work, championing the ideas so you can bring them back to the day-to-day of your own work and life.

In this episode we speak to, I speak to Richard Wain.

Richard's an entrepreneur, uh, and, uh, increasingly a writer.

Actually, I took a little blurb from somewhere I found online, which is a good, good little telling of Richard's story.

He's a storyteller from South Devon.

He reg regularly publishes spoken word stories about navigating life's little dramas as a man, a father, and a reluctant businessman.

You can find all of this at the website, lifeslittledramas.com, which is a great name.

Uh, I really enjoyed this conversation with Richard, uh, as much because it was a really useful reminder for me that actually it's often in these conversations with people like you, like me, not the, not the kind of big and famous, not the rock stars of the world.

It's in these conversations where the real gold is buried.

A kind of reminder, which is something that Rich and I talk about in this, that actually.

Every life is a story worth telling.

Uh, and that's really what I got from the conversation with Richard or one of the things I got.

Uh, I hope you enjoy it.

And, uh, Richard, thank you for joining Peripheral Thinking.

Thanks, very much indeed for having me.

looking forward to having a chat with you.

Uh, certainly, uh, the idea of talking to people about courage and then broadcasting that, uh, to anyone, uh, requires a certain amount of courage.

And so, um, looking forward to it.

Yeah.

And it's good.

So we can sort of spring the idea of having to talk about courage on right at the end.

So there's no time really to think about it.

You just have to kind of wade in.

All good.

Um.

so I, I came to you, you came to me via another podcast, Guest, uh, Marcus, Marcus Link, who I've actually had a couple of conversations with, very Please do.

And what, what's your, what's your connection to Marcus For anybody, anybody listening.

So my connection to Marcus, um, I'm a very close friend of, uh, of Marcus's.

He actually turned up to my wedding, um, as a plus one.

Uh, I'd never met the guy before and, and Marcus is quite an imposing figure.

He stands out, I dunno, 6, 6, 3 or 4 or something.

A lot taller than me anyway.

Um, I'd never seen him, a big German guy.

Uh, I, I really didn't know he was gonna come and there he was, stood at the bottom of the stairs in the venue at my wedding.

And so I, you know, greeted him, uh, said hi, didn't say, uh, why are you here?

Cuz he was a lot bigger than me.

And, um, and really, uh, immediately hit it off.

Um, Marcus is a, a very thoughtful, a very bright and interesting guy.

And, um, we basically got talking and we, we found out we had a lot in common.

And before I knew where I was, um, I was in business with him probably within, uh, a, certainly no more than a, a year or two, we'd started a, a business and, and that business was a web design and development business, which I think as much as anything else was what we went into because we had a skillset that allowed us to do it.

And we both needed to make a living.

We both had, uh, either had kids already or had kids on the way.

so yeah, we found ourself at a point in life where we, we needed to use our skills, we needed to make some money, we needed to do a thing, and we felt like, let's take a leap.

And is so, is that that business?

Oh, I thought, although I don't, not with Musk, is that business, what your current day job, uh, if we could use, use such a phrase?

Yeah, we could, we can use that phrase.

Um, so the business is, uh, effectively an offshoot of the, uh, regional business that, um, myself and well Marcus set up and invited me on board.

Um, we, uh, were involved in that business, which was called Link and Co for about a year or so.

And then we merged together with a, a design business, uh, locally where, where we were based in, in tot ness at the time.

And that became View Online.

Now, view Online is, is my current, current business and, uh, we are still here, uh, about a dozen years or so after that,

which is a kind of mighty achievement in and of itself, even before we get to other things, isn't it?

That to still have a business more than 10 years

yeah, yeah.

Yeah.

To be honest, to be honest, Ben, with each, with each year, that passes well, with each week that passes.

I feel that sense of achievement more and more, especially the way that the world's been over the last few years.

I'm much prouder of the business being there than, uh, than, than I, than I certainly after five or six years I didn't used to think in terms of we've done really well to get here.

Um, but now, you know, uh, there are so many businesses that have come and gone around us over the years and that's, that's something that I do.

I I do take pride in the fact that we're still doing it.

We're doing it well.

because that's cuz the context is always changing,

isn't it?

And so within that, you know, the market in which we exist is changing the market in which we sort of exist up in our, in our, you know, in our sort of body, in our minds that is always changing.

These kind of changing contexts can make it a challenge.

especially when you've, you have, I, I've never been a sort of sole, um, owner, uh, running the business myself.

And so I, I've always been involved with other people, uh, as, as fellow directors of the business.

And of course that brings, you know, people have different mindsets of different points in their journey.

People have, uh, different kind of challenges in their lives.

And, and, uh, whether it's illness or whether it's, um, breaking up of a marriage or, or whatever it is, when you, when you have people that you're in business with you, you gotta get through these things together.

And, and so a lot of that has gone on, yeah.

Something you mentioned when you, you're saying, when you were first talking to, uh, Marcus, you were talking about, uh, the, the, the, the kind of the, the simple way you described it, and I can't remember the exact words used about the kind of skills you had, the kind of resources you had.

Try and say, do you remember what praise you?

You said Just cause I wanted, there was something in those words.

Okay, so we, we, we had a particular skill set at the time that we felt like we could, I didn't say leverage, but we felt like we could leverage.

Uh, I had, um, technical skills.

I'd worked in technical computing, um, for a few years, and Marcus, uh, had, had worked in a, in a kind of technically focused business, but he had the business brain.

And so, you know, it was, it was really, uh, more than a marriage of convenience because we got on enormously well, but we, we each benefited from e e each other's skillset.

So the thing I was curious about that is, cuz obviously the, the reason that Marcus, uh, had introduced us in a lot of, actually, we're talking about, so of course isn't about technical competency.

Um, but so the, the, that was the, that was one of the, the key things that you were bringing at that time was it was a technical competency.

was, that was right.

And I think that that's, you know, that's kind of the, paradox at the center of, of my existence and possibly Marcus's too.

I, I think the reason we came together as, as, um, as well as we did is because we are not, rooted in that kind of, uh, technical, way of being, I think e each of us kind of strives for, um, uh, to, to, to, to find a, a deeper connection to, to things, uh, and always did.

And, um, and part of our connection to each other came through that,

When I look back to the very early days of thinking about what I might do in the world, I had no sense that I would do anything technical or, or, or head in that direction even.

and I think when I look back now, it's interesting to, uh, to sort of look at the decisions and the, and the actions and the, the times when, of course you could have taken a different choice, but also to acknowledge that I really like where I am in a lot of, in a lot of different ways.

So when I first started out thinking about what I wanted to do, I really wanted to be a musician, and that that was my, uh, aim in, in life.

And, um, and I set up a band with a bunch of friends, incredibly talented friends, all of whom have, have gone on to be musicians and, and very good musicians.

one of whom has been nominated for the Mercury Music Prize and all of whom have gone on to play, uh, uh, Glastonbury at various points.

And, uh, uh, amazing guys as it as it was my, my ambition to be a musician, kind of abs outstripped both my talent and my effort.

Um, so I, I, I loved it, enjoyed it, and I did it for a year or, or two.

and then I decided, you know what, I'd, I'd like to do something else.

And the, the main driver for that was nothing to do with, um, ambition as such.

It was to do with love, really.

I'd fallen in love, um, with my, my now wife and she'd gone off to Liverpool to go to university and I needed to find an excuse to chase her to Liverpool because I was going crazy, living in South Devon, trying to, to sort of maintain this long distance relationship.

Literally driving to Liverpool and back in a van, uh, every weekend to go and see my, um, my, my girlfriend at the time.

So I, I kind of concocted this plan.

I'd sort of flunked my A Levels a bit.

I did a terrible job.

I didn't really study for the last year cuz I was trying to be a musician.

Um, but then my mom, who was a math teacher and a very good one, encouraged me to, actually pull my finger out for a little while.

And so for about two months, at the end of my A Levels, I studied like a.

like a man possessed and I managed to get from something like a U, which I was predicted for my math, say, level.

I managed to get a C.

So I, I, I scraped, uh, to the point where I could get into to uni.

And I, I did that.

I went to, uh, Liverpool, John Moores University, and I'd rocked up.

I didn't apply.

I just walked into the math department and said, hi, um, I, I'd like to come and do this math statistics and, and computing course that you've got on.

Uh, will you have me?

And, um, they said yes.

And I did that.

It was almost entirely, I wouldn't say Ill considered, but not considered.

It was, it was done because I wanted to be where my, where my, where my wife is.

Um, and as it turned out, I had a brain for it.

I was really quite good at it.

I got a first class honors degree and then, and then went on to do a, a, um, a year or two, well, actually four or five years working at a, um, research laboratory in, in Cheshire.

Completely forgot my creative self.

Completely disconnected from that part of myself.

I mean, to the extent that I, I don't think I even had, or if I had a, a, a guitar or had a musical instrument during that time, I, I barely used it.

And so I stepped completely out of that and into this technical world, and at the end of that period of four or five years, I came back to Devon to get married.

Marcus came to my wedding.

We get back to the start of the, the story again.

So it sounds like there, there was sort of, there was some necessity and or value in the poles.

So, uh, the kind of going from the extreme or sort of satisfying the creative urge to the extreme of the mass statistics part of your brain.

Uh, and then kind of between those kind of finding, sort of bouncing back in some form to a, to a middle way.

I think that's right.

I think, my view of it at the time was very much that, both of those things were a means to a different end.

And the, the, the end was, um, to, uh, find and marry the girl of my dreams.

First of all, I needed to find her and I found her by being a musician for a, for a couple of years.

And, and generally, Trying to look cool and, and, and, and, and appealing.

And then having found her, I, uh, decided to switch to a more pragmatic, um, uh, frame of mind and do something that meant that I could, um, could be where she was.

And I'd love to be able to put more behind it than that.

But I was very much led by, by that in my decision making at that point in my life.

I was completely swept away and I would've done anything, to be perfectly honest, to make sure that I was in the same place that she was.

Uh, so yeah, those two poles were there, but at the time, certainly I didn't think about how that would impact my life going forward.

No, but that's the beauty of Youth . We don't think about that.

You made, you made reference to, uh, and, and rightly so.

Oh, we done.

So, uh, you, you kind of made reference to like somebody who's always thought about things deeply.

And so what, what would be a couple of examples if you think back where, if you were sort of reflecting back on your life to sort of acknowledge that part of yourself when, you know, when, when have you noticed that?

When have you seen that?

I think the way that I would identify that is, is mainly around, a consideration of small things.

So when I was really very young, probably no more than five, six years old, my, my, my, my family would, would all for whatever reason, enjoy, identifying butterflies, finding and identifying butterflies.

So when I was really young, I got to, to know pretty much every variety of butterfly that there is in, in, um, in Europe and, uh, and some further afield as well.

And we used to go out with butterfly nets.

We used to go, um, down to, uh, just around the corner from where I lived, there was a big buddleja bush.

And on this buddleja bush you'd get, you know, at that time probably 50, 60 butterflies.

Um, and then when we went on holiday, we'd, we'd go and, and, and, and find and see these things.

But in doing so, and I dunno how conscious it was in my, my parents' kind of, uh, plan for, for us.

But, what that meant was that I was always, very much present and connected to what was around me when we were in, in, in nature.

But that kind of translated then into, you know, most circumstances.

I found myself quite deeply connected to the moment and really looking, really trying to understand what was in front of me.

And not just understand it from a, from a physical and uh, kind of scientific perspective in terms of, you know, what are these creatures and how do they evolve?

Um, how do they, you know, what do their lifespan look like and, and what do they eat?

And all of these kind of things.

But also, you know, in a way, what do they represent and, how can something so fragile and so, uh, kind of ephemeral and seemingly, some something that really seems like it ought to be blown away at the moment there's a gust of wind and, and not be able to live, how can something like that, Clinging on and go on for generation after generation when it has such an impractical way of being?

What, what is it that allows that, process?

And also how is that process aligned with our own?

in that sense, when you start thinking about the, the life, the lifespan and the, and the life, uh, kind of trajectory of, of a creature like that, it then made me think about scale in terms of, okay, so what's going on at a much smaller scale?

What, what sort of creatures and what sort of lifespans and what sort of things are going on when you get to something very, very small?

You know, when you get down to the level of, uh, the, the, the little bacteria that are involved in, in helping the, the, um, butterfly to digest, its, its nectar and all of that kind of thing.

And, and then, and then what's going on at the very, at the very big level.

And so that got me starting to think about scale and starting to think about time and how a relationship between that perspective of stretching time and stretching scale and shrinking and stretching these things completely changes your sort of viewpoint on life

And that's a, either intentionally or otherwise, a kind of brings a sort of beautiful and whole new meaning to the idea of the, the kind of the flap of the butterfly's wings, uh, reverberating through.

I know that is in the context of, of chaos theory or chaotic theory, but actually what you sort of, uh, what you sort of hung on that or, or what has grown from that, equally kind of has, has waves of all sorts of kind of, uh, new, new meaning and new depth.

Yeah.

I th I think that, um, certainly, you know, as a, as a child, the idea of, of a, of something being able to consciously or otherwise, transform to the extent that, that a butterfly transforms, I found just, absolutely captivating, you know, to the, to the point, my, my, um, my young children now, uh, not that young anymore, but they, they've had caterpillars in, in the, in the house that they've been keeping a variety of caterpillar, uh, called a giant peacock moth.

And the caterpillars have multiple stages of growth before they become a puer and then become a moth.

They, they change color on multiple occasions and the texture of their skin changes on multiple occasions.

And they actually go through, I think five very distinct phases of their life where they are radically different creatures.

And you would never, without the, the knowledge, uh, of them, you would never look at them and say that they were the same thing.

And that I think in relation to how we live our own lives is, um, is a very freeing thing to see.

And, and, various choices that, that I've made and that, that we've made as a, as a a family unit have felt like that, uh, much of a kind of, cliff edge of change.

That much of a right, okay, we're heading this way, let's head that way and see what happens.

And those decisions have always been right and have always led to extraordinary things.

One I mentioned earlier on, which is that I was, I was in the process of attempting to become a rock and roll star, and I decided to, I decided instead to become a mathematician and move halfway up the country.

That was a big tack.

And it was a big tack that had no, no more than a month or twos run up.

It was like, right, I'm doing this, but no, I'm gonna do that.

Uh, later on in my life, um, we got to a point where, uh, I'd been working at the laboratory in Cheshire for five or six years, and, uh, my, myself and my wife had a feeling that it wasn't right where we were, we had, we had jobs for Life.

We both had jobs until we were 60.

We had contracts, uh, that would've taken us to the end of our careers and we would've been paid well.

We, we could have continued to do that.

For whatever reason, at the time, it didn't feel right.

Um, I decided to become a primary school teacher.

My wife decided to, uh, just take a leap and see what she found when she landed.

And we moved back from, from Liverpool all the way down to Devin without careers, without jobs to go to.

And I had a, a training gig at a, at the local primary school, um, and spent a year as a, as a primary, uh, school teacher..

Now, you know, that was a big tack.

And within two years of that, I'd set up the business with Marcus, which was another big tack.

it's only in retrospect that you can see the things that you learned by doing the tacks, but I'm very confident that had I not done the tacks, I wouldn't have learned anywhere near as much.

that's, I I like that.

You know, I think back to like the, the, an idea of the caterpillar, which obvious you can sort of see in that, I think, you know, that there is a, that there is a device that helps us, sort of confidently make these tacks, make these changes, whether con, consciously or otherwise.

But you know, the helpfulness of those device that says, look, here is an example of one of the myriad things in nature, which is in a constant sort of state of change, a constant state of evolution, a constant movement, and actually having that as a sort of comfortable home base allows you to kind go on this journey of these tacks somewhat.

Yeah, I think that's, I think that's absolutely right.

There's got to be something that allows you.

at some level to make a decision like that.

And, and so you have to have the, the confidence or the security coming from somewhere to be able to, to make that decision.

But I'm curious, so in all the things that we've spoken about, so like I said actually the, The thing that Marcus connected us on is actually your writing.

So in, when you were talking about the, the sort of skills and the capabilities that you brought to creating business, obviously that kind of reflected that pretty well.

At no point have you spoken about the writing, uh, as a, as a part of that.

I mean, what were you teaching, first of all, your primary school?

So I, I was teaching six or seven year, six and seven year olds, and I was teaching them, uh, I was teaching them everything.

Um, you know, it was, uh, it was the whole, uh, primary curriculum and, and it was enormously rewarding from the perspective of, of, um, getting to know these 30 kids, amazing people, um, on their way to becoming, uh, incredible human beings.

But you know, the writing aspect of it was, was completely, alien to my mind at that point.

I was really, I, I had no grounding in, um, in grammar or anything else.

I, I hadn't learned any of it.

I was, I was having to read the day before in order to teach my six or seven year olds, grammar.

I really didn't have that, that education.

But at the same time, I always knew one of the reasons that I I started out as a musician was because I enjoyed, um, I enjoyed writing lyrics.

I enjoyed writing song lyrics.

I felt very comfortable in the world of words, and I, I felt like I could find flow there.

I could sit down and put pen to paper and feel like myself.

Now I effectively put a pin in that, and again, subconsciously, the side of my brain or the, the part of me that I had been working from when I was a musician, uh, got shut down for me to work as a, a mathematician slash scientist slash whatever I was then for a few years, and I didn't really turn that back on again.

Not until the last two, three years.

I really silenced that creative voice.

And, uh, and, and in doing that, I really limited my ability to engage with growth, engage with, potential, engage with, imagination.

And one of the things along with the butterflies that I, I have a, I have a very clear belief in is that at various points in your life, people appear for a reason and they're vital for your journey.

And you can sort of sense it.

You sort of know when those people emerge.

If you are, if you are listening, uh, if you want, if you want to feel it.

And, um, there's a, a guy who, uh, I, I met actually at a business networking event, a guy called David Buckley.

Very, again, similar to Marcus in main ways.

Very thoughtful guy, very, very intelligent.

Um, he's currently studying for a PhD at, at, uh, at university in, in, uh, Ireland.

And, uh, but he has a tremendous knowledge and awareness of psychology and, and very many other things and, and works as a, uh, mindset coach.

And I, I went to him.

I've been working with View Running View for best part of a decade, maybe not quite that much.

And I was lost.

I didn't know where to take the business, really.

I felt that I was not being myself.

I was trying to be something for, uh, for the business, but I didn't feel like I was really running by any set of principles that I could identify as my own.

I didn't really have a clear idea of what my values were that were driving me.

Uh, and I'd, I'd lost a sense of purpose.

You know, I, I, I only found that in my family life and, you know, I was spending five days a week doing this stuff.

So I spoke to this guy, David Buckley, who I'd, I'd, I'd found at this networking event and, and, uh, got on well with, and he said, well, look, you know, come along.

I have a, um, a kind of exploratory session and he, he took me down to a beach in, in, uh, south Devon.

We stood on a beach and he drew some diagrams in the sand and talked to me about mindset, talked to me a bit about psychology and about action research and about all kinds of things that I'd never really come across or engaged with.

And over the course of the last four or five years, he's, he's taken me on a, a journey, mainly one around mindset and engaging with growth and engage, engaging with all kinds of things, creativity and writing, being one of the main ones that has really just arisen from that process.

It wasn't something that I ever thought, Val, I would get round to doing, um, or had the confidence to, uh, share.

but now, now I'm in a different place.

Hmm.

Yeah.

I'm really curious what, what were some of the things that he shared that day on the sand?

Um, one of the, the key things, which, you know, in a way may sound like a very simple thing, but it was sort of news to me at that time, um, which maybe sh just shows how little I'd been considering the path that my life was taking.

But he drew a simple sort of Venn diagram on the sand, just drew two circles in the sand overlapping, and, and, and effectively just said, okay, so there there's two, there's two sort of parts of the world going on here.

There's, there's your perceived version of what's going on in the, in the world, and then there's the reality of what you are doing in the world.

There's your, your actions, your behaviors, your, your habits, if you like.

And what I'd like to do with you, if you are happy to, is to explore how we might affect one of these things with the other..

and in a very simple way, just, just kind of opened up the idea that, uh, small change, whether that's an internal change, a change to, um, some, some process or, or habit of the mind, or whether that's a small change to your external environment.

Uh, a change to what I, the way I have my desk set up, or, um, a change to, whether I do yoga in the morning or whatever it might be, that each of those small changes may have an impact on my overall, wellbeing, but also on my mindset and also on, uh, the amount of energy that I can bring.

And, you know, he, he shared many other things as well, and over the, the years, he shared many, many more, and has totally opened my mind to, the idea of, of potential in myself.

I'd always seen potential in other people and never really seen potential in myself.

So a lot of that was about confidence and some of it was about finding, uh, the, the courage to accept myself and, and also to express myself, which I'd never really had.

Yeah.

I guess there's a couple of things that come to mind as you're talking there.

One, the, uh, yeah, the, that value of the, the kind of the little habits, little changes.

I guess part of the thing with that is how much sort of intentionality we bring, cuz we may, I guess we may be making those sorts of changes, contributions, tweaks, whatever it might be all the time.

But oftentimes we're doing that kind of pretty.

And or not taking a moment to sort of reflect on what was kind of gained or what was changed or how that felt as a consequence of doing that.

So the importance, I guess, of some intentionality and some reflection in that, in that process.

Absolutely.

Absolutely.

And, and you know, I think that, in itself is, is is the key reason for me why, why I think it, it's so important for everyone to have some relationship that involves reflection.

And I what shape that takes is, is not for me to say.

You know, whether, whether you that relationship is sort of a therapeutic relationship or whether it's a coaching relationship or whether it's, just any, any kind of friendship where you have that feedback loop and where you are completely, you're able to reflect, without constraint, but not only, uh, to yourself.

I think that journaling and, and, reflecting, to yourself refl self-reflection is important, but self-reflection with some kind of, mirror provided by another human being, especially when that human being is trained and knows what they're doing is an incredibly powerful thing.

And, and, totally, totally changed my perception of my life, much more so than my life.

I, l my life is great, right?

And, and actually my life was great before I started working with Dave, but I was, I was not in a great place mentally.

Um, I wasn't in a bad place mentally in a way, but I certainly didn't look at my life and see how wonderful it is.

And I do that now.

And also I didn't look at my life and see what potential it had, and I do that now.

And I didn't look at the people around me and, and, and think, beyond the fact that I thought they had potential.

I didn't necessarily think, what can I do to help them unlock that potential?

That's my first thought.

And those things all come much easier through that reflective process.

And, and so what, what role has.

The, the writing played, in terms of your ability on that journey, essentially.

Cause how you're talking about sort of seeing the potential in yourself, starting to understand that, you know, seeing potential in others, being able to, you know, have an interest or a desire to help unlock that in them.

Where does all of this infused with the writing and what you are producing and creating and sharing?

So, the writing really initially came from a place of reflection.

So first and foremost, the reason I started writing, uh, poetry, which is, which is.

Everything I write, was to, to try and find a way of understanding what had gone on in my, in my life that I'd never really interrogated, but trying to do that in a way that was entertaining enough and relatable enough so that other people could potentially engage with that experience.

You know, some of the early.

Thought, I thought I, the earlier poems that I wrote, and we're only talking over the last few years, I've not been writing for long, but the earlier poems that I've, I wrote were around childhood experiences, largely or, or early sort of, um, experiences before I was.

18.

And they might have touched on things like, uh, there was a particular occasion where I had my pants pulled down by, um, uh, a friend of mine on the, on the, um, playground at school.

And, uh, it was during a particularly intense game of, um, American football.

Uh, and, and I, I literally just jumped up in the air to catch the, the football to, to, to sort of, uh, score the winning touchdown.

And as I touched down on the ground, my, my, my, my pants were pulled down.

And, and everyone in the whole school, in my mind, everyone in the whole school had, had, had stared at me.

And, and I'd lost my, my dignity and I'd lost my shape and I'd, and I'd run, uh, into the classroom crying and ended up having a kind of violent altercation with this, this boy who'd pulled my, my pants down.

And, and then he had ended up saving me from, from a fairly serious, um, intervention by, by the, the teachers because the teacher had found me kicking this boy on the floor, and he'd got up and, and said to the teacher, no, it's, it's fine.

We're just, we're just playing.

There's nothing wrong.

Taking me, uh, to one side into the, the, the, um, the, the boys' bathroom.

And we'd had a talk about it.

And, um, that experience was, uh, something that lived in me still.

Now, the writing allowed me to find those things that I didn't know were there, and, uh, to, to actually in quite a organized way, say, okay, what is it that has.

Generated some of these feelings that I occasionally have in certain circumstances.

What kind of experiences have led to me thinking this way?

and, and I just picked out more and more experiences that I've had, and tried to express them in a, in, as I say, in a way that felt like, you know, in a, in a quite old school way, a story with a, a moral or a story with a, with a bit of a connection to, uh, something that I would imagine, uh, that a lot of people experienced in their lives.

And, and most of that revolved around fear and, and courage.

Uh, when, when was I scared and when was I brave enough to do something about it?

And that, and that is, that is what really, what really kind of got me writing was exploring those two things.

Wow.

I mean, that's a super powerful story.

So I, I we'll add at this point, which will include, so all, all the writing exists now, uh, on a website.

That's right.

And that's life's little dramas.

Yeah.

Life's little dramas.com.

Um, that's where, uh, my, my, my work is, uh, at this point.

Yeah.

And there's, um, there's a, a, a book, uh, that I'm hoping to get out, um, in the middle of, uh, next year.

And that relates more to, so now my, my writing's heading in a particular direction.

I'm, I'm thinking much more about the planet thinking much more about the, the nature side of things and, you know, coming back to what I was saying about the butterflies earlier on and the fragility of the, of the world that we live in and, and the, and the courage we need in order to face the fears we all have about that.

So there's something that I'm working on at the moment that, that relates to that, which is, um, which is, uh, yeah, my, my, my next bit of work.

But, uh, all of that's going on to the same website at the moment.

So, I'm curious, I'm like curious what the, you know, whether there was a process.

So the, I like the story you shared there about the, the playground, which, how old were you after curiosity when that happened?

I was

Right.

God.

I mean, I can feel the sort of trauma in, in that for sure.

Like the kind of the, the sort of shock and horror of that, of that moment.

Absolutely.

Kind of feel that I'm, so, I'm curious, What's the kind of process you went through to kind of, you know, to, to dig around, to explore?

So there are, there are a couple of different things.

One is that I, I started to meditate, started to, to spend time Being mindful of these things, really.

Um, so I would, I would spend quiet and unoccupied periods of time where I would really do nothing with my mind other than let it be.

And I found that very, very helpful in then going into a process of, of more organized kind of self-reflection and an, and asking questions, simple questions, questions like when have I felt ashamed?

When have I felt exposed?

When have I felt that I had to lie?

The kind of questions that I think maybe I'd never asked myself before.

I have, I think a, a, a pretty positive mindset, generally speaking, and I don't tend to dig too far into, what could make me a bad person.

, if you see what I mean.

And, and actually that's where I wanted to go.

I wanted to ask myself, when was I most afraid?

What was I afraid of?

What, what was it that led me to that fear in the first place?

And, and those questions I didn't have before I, I gave myself time and space to slow down.

I don't think I could have recovered that information quite so easily, but actually it surprised me how straightforward it was to make a list of 50, 60, 70 times in my life where I could remember a specific circumstance with a, with an ex-girlfriend or a specific circumstance, where I'd done something that, that had really made me feel exposed.

You know, I, I remembered for the first time in, in many years, a, a, a situation where I, I was on stage at my, my old school, uh, and I was, uh, sing Singing Away, and I think we were doing a cover version of, um, Take That's, uh, Back for Good.

And, uh, I, I completely forgot, uh, everything.

Like, I, I completely forgot the words and the tune and, and, and everything in the middle of a song in front of everyone.

And I, I remembered the feeling, the immediacy of the feeling of, oh my goodness, look where I am.

And, and now what do I do?

How do I, you know.

And then I, I got to exploring what anyone else's experience of that moment might have been.

And, and you start to be able to reconcile things because you think, you know, nobody noticed that, or, or if they noticed it, they thought it was on purpose, or if they, if they noticed it and didn't think it was on purpose, they were probably empathetic to the fact that I'd forgotten the words, or if they noticed it and weren't empathetic to the fact that I didn't know the words, I don't know them now.

And, and nobody remembers this.

Nobody cares about me.

They were just there to listen to the music.

And, and that process, again, that helps through the writing.

You all of those, those reconciling thoughts come out.

And so what what I've found is that by the end of the writing, it's not there anymore.

I've, I, it's gone.

It, and the, the idea I think of, of, of poetry or writing, creative writing as, as therapy, I think is a very powerful one from my perspective because it's wor, it's genuinely worked for me, better than anything that, that I have come across before or, or since.

that's beautiful.

And it kind of answers a question, which was bubbling in my mind.

So I think one of the things I was curious about was whether the, I guess to use that phrase there, whether, whether the, the therapeutic value in it, It was in the writing or whether it was in the publishing.

Um, well, in, in the sense that, I struggled with the idea of sharing the writing even beyond the writing process, I, I did, hadn't really decided whether it was just for me or not.

And I had to again, find some courage to, to do the sharing.

That, that took a, a little bit, and I think that went back to again, uh, my, my feelings of, of perhaps inferiority generated from having been in a band with some really talented people and them all going on to be successful.

I think I'd found myself a little hole there, uh, that said, yeah, be, be careful sharing your creative stuff because it's not as good as other people's.

And, and so it took a little while for me to find the courage to do the sharing.

And I think really that just gave me some fuel to recognize that regardless of how much we go through this kind of process, there's always more, there's always more work to be done.

And, and there isn't a fixed mindset and there isn't a right in any of it.

There's only what works for me, and what works for you.

The, the thing which is coming up for me as you're talking about all of this is the importance of kind of finding, I guess these parts of ourselves being able to, uh, find ways of, um, letting those kind of parts of ourselves kind of live, whether it is through writing, whether it's through creating through, through some form of kind of creating, creating or contributing.

I guess there'll be kind of lots of people and, and I know from, from myself and lots of other people listening who kind of really conscious that you know, that maybe they can hear that voice too, uh, but not really clear what that voice is, but they can hear a voice themselves, which is kind of itching, pulling, willing them into a certain direction, willing them towards something which feels kind of risky or dangerous, or whatever it might be.

And a lot of what you are talking about is, is, is that, and I guess, and the value of creating space to kind of experiment that into the world a little bit.

Yes.

Yes, I think so.

I th I think going back to, um, to Dave Buckley and also sort of a, a little tangential thing for, uh, I, I, I read a lot of, um, Thich Nhat Hanh's writing and, uh, there, there are both through Dave who would, who would talk about sub selves, dave would talk about, um, you know, the various sub selves and you'd talk about seven and, and I can't remember them all always, but what, what the idea of these sub selves was, is that if you can start to identify which part of yourself is telling yourself something, you can start to play with the idea of whether or not you want to listen to that part of yourself.

And you can pot potentially interject another voice, and that voice can be a different part of yourself.

And you can start to have, actually quite nuanced conversations with yourself instead of listening to the voice.

The, the, the challenge of finding that voice is being, is being vulnerable, is really allowing yourself to step into a place where you feel uncomfortable and felt uncomfortable.

And I think that that is absolutely where you have to go in order to reconcile anything.

And it's not an easy place to go.

I have had effectively, by most measures, nothing particularly traumatic happen in my life.

And I found it difficult to go to that place.

I would imagine had I had really, uh, profound traumatic experiences, I would not have wanted to go to that place.

But what I do know is that, that, that going to the place of least, uh, comfort for myself, Has created a, a, a, a new space for me where I've come to terms with a lot of things that I didn't even know that I had to come to terms with.

I think there is also a component of that, which, which is worth mentioning, which is that I'm at a particular point.

I'm, um, in my early forties, there, there is some evidence and some suggestion that at that point in, in your life, there's a tendency to mellow out a little bit about things that have gone on in the past anyway.

But my experience has been that that has been driven through the, the creative experience and, and the exploratory, uh, reflective experience.

The, the, the publishing helps in that.

It helps it feel seen in some way.

but I don't think it's the point.

Um, in fact, I'm certain it's not the point.

Some of the things that I've written that I probably will never publish have been as helpful to me as many of the things that I have.

And, you know, I I, I won't publish them because their, uh, their, their events in my life that I feel are just private enough to me and the people involved that I wouldn't want to.

You know, they might involve, you know, intimate experiences.

They might involve things that are just, just don't feel right to put out in the world.

But the fact that I've written them down has already sort of done the work for, for, from a, from a kind of, um, personal growth perspective.

When you, when you talk about, um, the kind of needing to go to that sort of vulnerable place, uh, as the sort of, the sort of source material essential, the, the source point for that.

So, uh, by that you mean, uh, kind of go to the kind of places in memory or whatever, which are uncomfortable and not wanting to go to, is that what you mean by sort of going to that vulnerable place?

Yeah.

Uh, yes.

I think what I, what I mean is, as I say, trying to ask myself questions that I don't really want to answer.

So, I like to think that I'm not afraid of anything these days in particular.

I like to think that, but is that true?

Is that really true?

Let's have a think about that.

Let's dig into it.

What are the fears that I hold for my children, for my family?

What are the fears that I hold for, um, that I, that I hold for some reason that I can't quite put my finger on?

okay, and where did that come from?

I, I, I feel that those are really good questions to ask if you are in a, if you are lucky enough to be in a, in a place where that's not gonna take you somewhere dark.

And and, you know, so by, by vulnerable, I mean, that yeah, take, taking, taking yourself on a, on a, a journey that maybe you, you haven't done before in terms of asking questions that you're uncomfortable to answer.

And, and so one of the things we, we sort of spoke about at the beginning of the conversation, which wanted to come to this, this idea of courage.

And so, um, obviously, you know, it takes courage to, to be sort of, to be going to those places.

It takes courage to ask yourself questions that you don't want to explore.

It takes courage to, um, to hit publish and all of those, all of those types of things.

And it to say a lot of the writing that you got on or the, the exploration was about kind of reclaiming your courage.

I think there's a lovely bit you talk about on your website having kind of grown up around the kind of iconography of, of courage through film, through popular culture, all of those sort of stories of superheroes doing super hero things, uh, which is all obviously the language of courage.

But that, that was not, that, that was something which you'd kind of grown to and learned later on or, or more recently.

Is that fair?

Yeah.

To, to ab.

Absolutely, and completely.

You know, I, I grew up, in the eighties and to me, Indiana Jones and, and, and Marty McFly and, and, and Luke Skywalker and, all of these, you know, very well-trodden kind of hero characters, those were my mo were my kind of cultural reference points and my, and my world growing up.

You know, I, I wanted nothing more than to jump on a skateboard and grab on the back of a, a pickup.

That was like the absolute best that life could get.

And I, I kind of was aware always that I, I never, I never tried to do those things.

I, I always saw those things as being unobtainable in, in a way.

They, they were always these, these, these Hollywood things that were just like, oh, you know, to, to be that kind of, that kind of hero.

And I think, I've really don't believe in, in, in heroes now, and I don't mean that in a negative way.

What I, what I feel now is that in our own way, just to find, just to find our own, our own courage and to encourage others to find their courage, that's sort of, uh, enough that there, there isn't the, the, the narratives of our lives are not, they don't end in success.

They, they, they end in an ending.

And I think this is another thing about the vulnerability, but I think the acceptance of endings and the, and the ability to discuss endings with yourself, that's a vulnerable place.

And, and yeah, I, I think, so part of me has felt, does the world really need another, you know, 40, 42 year old, um, white male, uh, representation of, of, of, of anything?

Because my voice is a voice that's familiar and it's, it's, it's there, uh, it's difficult to shake.

And a lot of people don't need to hear that or don't feel they need to hear that.

But, uh, I think that so many people of my.

Generation and the generation before certainly, have accepted life and they've accepted less than they could, and they've accepted that without question, and have never had a chance to explore.

Um, never taken the chance to explore.

It's not had a chance to explore.

I could very easily have never taken the chance to explore my own, my own mental health, my own potential for growth, my own, uh, creativity.

I, I would very, very easily have spent another 30, 40 years not doing that and then died.

as it is now, I feel that if I can help anyone else to find that in themselves, life is very much brighter and very much more, more richer and, and, and the relationships that you have can be very much more, uh, mutually beneficial, uh, at, at the point where that is allowed to, to, to, to start happening, you know?

That's beautiful.

And actually a lot of what you speak about there is, uh, it's kind of, it's sort of really inspiring and affirming for me even just in having these conversations because like, you know, you know, we are to sort of un heroes, right?

This is not about people who are sort of conventionally, kind of famous or all of these kind of things, but it's just about the kind of the power of the everyday experience.

And I think a lot of what you're talking about there is, you know, the world of course is just made up of people like us doing things like us on the sort of, you know, the sort of scale with the same challenges, all of that similar kind of challenges or whatever it may be.

But of course, the value of just the individual kind of turning up, contributing, having a go.

And that's one of the things I'm kind of curious about is how do you, uh, invite somebody to step into their courage a little?

I think, um, by asking what that means for them, I think is, is probably a good starting point.

the idea of, of courage, I think is, is everyone knows what they're afraid of doing to an extent.

And maybe that, that's the question, you know.

What do you think would help you move forward that you're scared of doing?

It's just asking questions, I think.

Uh, and, and, maybe encouraging a little bit of, um, it might not be writing.

It might be taking photographs, it might be video, it might be whatever.

But I, I think that stepping into the creative space, really helps that, to, to, to start to see, oh, do you know what?

It's okay to use my imagination.

It's okay to play.

And when you're a kid, there are things you're afraid of.

Sure there are, but there are also a whole ton of things.

you just go straight for.

You don't worry about jumping off the, the, the big slide or you don't worry about whatever it is.

You, you're quite happy to, to just take the leap.

And I think that comes from a playful place.

Uh, it really unlikes society.

I don't, I don't believe that our, culture is particularly big on adult play that isn't like couched in some kind of sexual or, or, um, or some, you know, there isn't adult with a, uh, with that connotation.

Men I think are allowed to, play with Lego these days that seems more acceptable than it was.

We're allowed to play video games maybe, but only to an extent, you know, don't, don't do that too much, cuz Come on guys.

There are lots of things that we're sort of half allowed to do, but in a work context in particular, it, it's still play.

It might feel like it ain't.

And of course lots of people have stressful jobs and I completely understand that, but when you dig down into what you're doing, an awful lot of it is on some level, probably a little bit less important than a lot of us feel like it is, you know.

I mean, you know, I make, I make websites for it for a living and those websites make a little bit of difference to people's purchasing decisions and they, they, they can make people money and, and that's great, and, and that's the aim.

But at the same time, if we can't have fun doing it, then something's missing, you know?

And, and, and how could we have more fun doing it?

How could we have more fun doing all the things we do?

I think those are really important questions, and they start to eat into the idea that you need courage.

If you're playing, you don't need courage.

You're just having fun.

Yeah.

I mean, it's so true, isn't it?

We just, uh, we, we've come so far away from those ideas of kind of play because as soon as, even if you sort of say that I, I, I fully kind of, sort of understand what you're saying, kind of busy and I can see like having conversation with lots of people.

I know that Evo was even having the conversation around adding play into work, it would be totally mis at best.

It would be, or oftentimes really misunderstood as a contrived sort of thing to sort of kind of lend some sort of veneer of kind of okayness, on otherwise sort of shit sort of flow of a day rather than this idea that it should actually be, it should have actually some idea of play at the heart.

And I think the interview that for it to genuinely do that, there needs to be something of some sort of discomfort that needs to be, you know, or it is made richer with the, with the kind of discomfort of vulnerability.

Completely, completely,

Brilliant, Richard, thank you very much.

So where, where Will, and I'll include it in sort of notes where, where, where can people find the writing, which isn't for reading?

So, uh, people, people can find all of my stuff are on, uh, lifeslittledramas.com.

And, uh, be, be very happy to see you there.

You can find it all on YouTube as well.

Um, if you search for life's little drummers, uh, on there.

So the, the, the book, uh, is gonna be called Beyond the Brink, is the Beginning.

And, and that's, uh, that is due to be, uh, out, may of 2023.

Well, when that happens, uh, we shall have to have another conversation.

That would be wonderful.

I'd enjoy that very much.

Thank you Ben.

Thank you for listening to that conversation with Richard.

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Thanks.