Life can take unexpected turns, inviting us to reevaluate our priorities and make difficult decisions. When that happens, it’s up to us to listen to our inner voice, and take up the challenge of living a life in alignment with our true selves.

Ray Martin is an author and former management consultant. He embarked on a journey of self-discovery after the ties in his life – including his marriage and career – were unexpectedly severed. Ray traveled extensively, living out of his backpack for 14 years, learning and reflecting on his own identity and true desires.

He eventually shared the experiences and insights gained from his transformative journey in a book, which he discusses with Ben. The book, Life Without a Tie, explores the importance of living a life true to oneself and not being bound by societal expectations. Ray's story presents an opportunity to reflect on our life and make courageous decisions that align with our authentic self.

Links

• Life Without a Tie – Ray’s book
• Order a signed copy
• Connect with Ray via LinkedIn
• Top Five Regrets of the Dying: A Life Transformed by the Dearly Departing, by Bronnie Ware
• Ken Robinson

Welcome to Peripheral Thinking.

The series of conversations with academics advisors, entrepreneurs and

activists, people all championing those ideas on the margins, the periphery.

Why is this important?

Well, as the systems on which we've depended for the last 50, 60 stroke

thousand years, crumble and creek people increasingly looking for new stories, new

ideas, new myths, if you like, that might guide and inform how they live and work.

So in these conversations, we take time to speak to those people who are championing

the ideas on the margins, championing the ideas on the periphery, those ideas which

are gonna shape the mainstream tomorrow.

Uh, and our hope is that you are a little bit inspired, a little bit

curious enough to take some of these ideas and bring them back to the

day-to-day of your work and your life.

Ray, thank you for joining me on Peripheral Thinking.

You are welcome, Ben.

It is a pleasure to be on your show as a guest.

Oh, brilliant.

So actually we met, I think in a field, uh, in Sussex just over a year ago.

That's right.

Yeah.

At the Happy Startup School Summer camp.

What great event that was.

I was having a conversation with, uh, Carlos, uh, and Laurence a few weeks

before the summer, summer camp this year.

And, um, it was a kind of meeting of people who were running workshops there.

And, uh, I think the question that Lorin, uh, that Carlos asked was, you

know, what was our expectation of, of summer camp, uh, this coming years

of the year that's, that's just gone?

And I kind of, I realized that, uh, the way I sort of articulated was that

it was like a bit of a liminal space.

Uh, it's a kind of gap in which to sort of fall into where a lot of the

other sort of, uh, structures and sort of patterns and responsibilities

of life are not present.

So you're able to just sort of fall into this space and let what happens happen.

Was it cold in the sleeping bag though?

It was,

Do you know what.

it was bloody

The, the kind of the, the lingering trauma of the year before was like

this kind of mythic conversation.

Do you know, do you know what happened last year?

Do you know how cold it was?

'Cause that year when we were both there, my god, was it cold at night this year?

No, it was

not anything like

Thank God.

Um, but anyway, yeah.

So we kind of, we met then.

And um, you told me, actually, you were just in the process, I think of,

of finishing your book at that time.

Is that right?

Or had you just finished a draft?

I can't remember.

Where would you have

It was, it was finished, but the, the official launch was on the 1st

of November, which was just after summer camp, and I had this wonderful

launch event in London, you know, um, sponsored by one of my great friends.

It was really fantastic.

So I had, it was just before the launch.

Yeah, that's right.

Beautiful.

And so that is the ideal segue.

So you are an author, you have a book, um, what, give us a little, a little overview.

What, what is what, what is the book and why was the book?

yeah, I will do that.

And, and part of that is to say that I never, ever dreamed or

thought of I'd be an author.

You know, I was a CEO of a business, uh, in the uk based in London.

And, uh, as a result of some of the things we'll probably talk about, I

stopped doing that and went on a journey to find out really for me that what I

wanted to do from that point forward.

And it, it, it was a journey that I actually, my friend said, why don't

you take a six month sabbatical?

And I, I listened to those conversations and I thought, yeah, that's a good idea.

Six months sabbatical.

I'll work it all out, come back, start something new.

And that was where it kind of went off the rails a bit because I realized

in that six months that the process of reflection and reexamination is

quite a deep process for some people.

It certainly was for me.

And after six months I thought, I'm not ready.

I'll carry on and I'll carry, I carried on longer.

Then I started doing things I never dreamed of.

I, I ended up living out my backpack for 14 years and during that time

people obviously asked me How come I've been living out my backpack so long?

And I told them stories about it and why, and most of them said to me,

strangely, well, if you ever write a book about this journey, let me know 'cause

I'd be really interested to read it.

And I just laughed and said, no way.

I'm just doing this for me.

I'm not writing a book.

And then after about 50 people had said that, I thought, oh my God, the

universe is telling me to write a book, you know, so, so I wrote, I wrote the

book mostly for those people that had asked and my mom and a few others.

But seems like, you know, other people are, are interested in the story too

because a lot of people are reading it.

So, um, I wrote the book.

I finished it on the, the end of last year and it's been out for about a year now,

Yeah.

And so the book is called?

Life Without a Tie.

And that is because it occurred to me that before I went on that journey, my life

was pretty much defined by certain ties.

Like, I'm, the metaphor I used are like the guy ropes of a tent.

Now, I know tent designers changed over the years, but when I was

young, a tent had four corners that you tied down with pegs.

And the four corners of my life were my marriage, my career, my home, my actual

house, and my community of friends.

And those four things kind of governed every decision and determined who I was

being in the world and what decisions I made and what I did and didn't do.

And I had a really rare opportunity, I think it doesn't happen to that

many people, where all of those ties for one reason or another, got

cut in a very short space at time.

And I just found myself completely lost and bewildered

as to how to identify who I was.

So I had a chance to start, go back to zero and start with a clean slate

and redesign the life I was in.

Yeah, and that was why I called it life without a tie, because I realized as I

was in that reflection period, wow, these ties are much more powerful than I'd ever

consciously been aware that they were.

'Cause they were limiting my choices and stopping me from making courageous

decisions and decisions that would feed my soul and really be good for my heart, but

not good for my image, maybe or not good in terms of what others expected of me.

'Cause in the book by Bronnie Ware, who talks about the top five regrets

of the dying, she's a hospice nurse, this is a very famous book.

Um, she says she's, when she speaks to someone at the end of their life and says,

what do you most regret about your life?

They always say the same five things.

And the number one thing is, I wished I'd lived my life true to myself, not

a life that others expected of me.

And I was reading this book when I was in the middle of a divorce and my

father was dying, and I was thinking, God, wow, that really hit me hard.

The life that's true for me, not the life that others expected of me.

And I suddenly thought, wow, I have no idea what the life of true me is.

I know the life I've been living, which is a life that others expected of me.

I like some parts of it.

It was all right, but it wasn't me.

I thought, what does that life that is true for me, actually look

and feel like, I dunno, I'm gonna need to go and find out, you know?

Gonna need to work that out.

That's the highest priority.

Yeah, it's interesting 'cause I, I realized when I was reflecting on

the title, the idea of kind of life without ati, I kind of, and the one,

so my initial kind of was like, oh, it's quite an inspiring thing, like

freedom, like life without a tie.

And then kind of the realization that of course there's potentially

kind of negative connot connotations that too, because I guess it, but

it's partly the thing around kind of language in a way, isn't it?

Like this kind of, uh, it, because what you were sort of describing there in a

way was a bit of rootlessness in a sense.

Yeah.

The kind of the, the kind of familiar ties left, you kind of rootless,

uh, and in a, but in a sense, like actually to have all the kind of ties

of those things cut is it can also be a, a kind of sort of separation.

So I guess there's a, there's a bit of a kind of paradox in there.

A kinda opportunity to recreate, but also maybe some things

Yeah.

Well, bear in mind as I, as I said earlier, I was only expected to go

for six months, so I wasn't, in my head, I wasn't cutting any seriously

big ties, I was just getting out of London for six months and doing some

traveling and doing some reflection.

That was how it occurred to me in the beginning.

But it was, as the journey unfolded, I could see that there was so much

more to find out and discover in terms of the depths of awareness.

I, I kind of like, after six months, I went and did a 10 day vipasana retreat

in a Buddhist monastery in Thailand, and that just blew my mind, Ben,

because I'd never, I was 45 years old at this point, and never had I been

silent for more than a few minutes.

I mean, literally, I mean, so it sounds a weird thing to say, how

can you get through half your life and never sit in silence for a few

minutes, more than a few minutes?

It just seemed weird.

So the idea of even just sitting for 10 days and just observing my own mind, doing

its trickery and watching the thoughts pass through was a massive revelation.

I'd never had never been invited to do that.

And I learned so much from that experience.

I realized, wow, you know, my mind's running the show here.

Not my spirit, not my soul.

And, uh, that I decided to really work around that because I, I

really didn't want that to continue.

How far into the initial journey was that?

Was the

about six months.

Right.

Okay.

So that was sort of,

Right.

at the end of the, so-called sabbatical

So yeah.

So maybe just a little bit of context.

So, uh, what, what, who, what was Ray?

Who was

Ray

I,

Ray was, Ray was a, a CEO of a management consulting business.

He founded in 1997 with his wife as a business partner.

You know, all I knew in those days was how to drive a business to

get hard results and grow it and make, make quotas and targets.

I've done that all my life.

And so by the year 2001st place had entered the top

100 consultancy league table.

We had a reputation, we were making good profits and I was given the

Daily Telegraph Business Leader of the Year award as CEO of the company

because they were kind of inspired by the vision I had for how I

wanted to lead the business we had.

And II, I kind of loved that journey in some ways.

It was, it was like a big learning curve for me.

I'd never been in that position of responsibility before,

and so I was completely new a greenhorn, you know, had a mentor.

I was learning, growing.

But then I, you know, after the first couple of years and I was

sort of more comfortable in the role without some the need of needing to

push, I, I sort of started to sense, wow, you know, this isn't, I'm not

sure where this is going for me.

I don't, I, I kind of originally thought I would do it to help my

partner establish the business, and then go and do the thing I really

wanted to do, which I never identified.

I always had that, the deep, deep back of my mind, I'll do this for a while

because Charlotte needs the support and she's, it's her idea for the business.

I was there to support her to get it going.

And I always said to her, you know, once we we're got this business established,

I, I'm gonna go off and probably do something else, but I'm not sure what.

But there's something else never occurred to me, so I just kept on going because

it created a good lifestyle business.

Um, when you said in getting the award, um, you said because they recognized

there was something in the vision that you had, what was the vision that you

had for the business that you think that they, that they were drawn to?

Well, you'll laugh now because what I'm gonna say is so common in

the business language these days.

It's kind of like mainstream, but this was in the year 2000,

so this is like 23 years ago.

My vision was that businesses were not about profits and customers

and market share, et cetera.

Businesses were um, an opportunity to help people reach their full

potential and live their dreams.

And so my vision was very much focused on how do we attract and retain and build a

team of people who love coming to work, who absolutely adore being here, who

feel like they're growing prospering?

Um, their enthusiasm for life will just rub off on clients in a way

that beats any other sales pitch.

Um, and that when clients come to our office, if they're checking us

out to see can we give this company a contract to help us when they come

to our office, they'll just see this amazing group of people really loving

life and in working superbly, and they'll just feel it, they'll just

feel the vibe and go, this is, this is what we want in our organization.

That was my vision.

And so I set the company up from the outset to, to make that possible.

And we even, we did a thing in those days, which was a, we gave

people a scholarship of a thousand pounds a year on top of their salary

and said, use this for learning anything you want, not work related.

Just so that you can be growing outside of work as well as what

we're gonna train you to do in work.

And so people went off and learned languages, or they went rock climbing,

or they spent their scholarship on whatever they felt would help

them grow and make them braver.

Well, it's interesting 'cause I think we'll come in a little while

to talk about the idea of Kind of.

tremors like signals from your future self somewhat.

And knowing how the book goes is kind of really interesting, isn't it?

That your vision for what you wanted the company to be was to create a place

where people could thrive by embracing all the parts of themselves, which are

not catered for at work, essentially.

Uh, and that, you know, that became what you kind of lived through.

But we'll come back to, 'cause I think that's kind of important.

Yeah.

Uh, important sort of thing to, to, to come back to.

So all of this going on, you're at, you're gonna, you know, kind

of peak, peak ray business awards, recognition, all this thing.

But then, um, things start to fall

apart

I mean, I'd, I'd, I'd, had, um.

Conversations during those years with, with Charlotte, my business partner.

And she sort of sensed that I was slightly off, off the rails,

really slightly out of place.

She knew it, we never really talked about it or addressed it

fully, but she could sense it.

And then for her, there was her own journey going on, which I can't

really comment on that much, but she had her own journey going on.

And eventually, um, what happened was she, she met somebody and decided that was

the person she wanted to be married to.

And they're, they're married to as to even today.

You know, they've been married for 20 odd years and we've got

two lovely kids, et cetera.

So she, she had to leave and that was a massive shock when she

presented that to me and said, you know, this is what's happened.

I've met someone, I think that's where I want to go and I wanna

be out of the company as well.

And so it was one of those things where those tremors that had started

and I'd ignored or put to one side, now, I couldn't ignore it anymore.

'Cause the actual set of the theater that the actual stage was now falling apart.

So and so, it wasn't just like the, some of the audience members leaving, it

was now the stage was actually falling over and there wasn't gonna be a stage.

And my and then what on, on top of both of those things at the same

time, more or less, my father got very ill and he, he passed away.

And he'd been a massive advocate of travel.

You know, he was retired and loved to .Travel and he always used to say to

me, Ray, why don't you travel more?

I mean, you work so hard, you just work 24 7.

You know, when, when you actually gonna have a life, you know,

you, what you doing all this for?

I think, you know, go and do some traveling.

And so that had sort of stuck in my mind quite a bit.

And so then these circumstances all started to conspire to to, to

make me make a decision and say, right, I'm gonna go and do this.

Right.

And so essentially all of these things happening simultaneously means the

company is essentially ceasing to exist.

Uh, so kind of being forced to kind of, you know, explore what next

relationship, non existent relationship, familial sort of structures going.

Dad

yeah, the company had a life as an entity in its own right.

And so I looked at all the options for what to do at this point.

You know, should I get a replacement business partner was one option.

I ruled that out because, you know, when I think about the great partnerships

I've seen in my life like Torville and Dean and Morecambe and Wise and

things like this, you know, when you think of them, you, you just can't

imagine replacing somebody you've gelled so brilliantly with, with someone.

It's just, it was just out.

I just couldn't see myself going there.

Um, we looked at the possibility of selling the company to another

rival company, and, and I even had talks with one and they, they

made a decent offer to do that.

Um, but the terms and conditions of the offer meant that Charlotte

would be tied to the, to the business for another two years.

And that was gonna just be impossible emotionally.

It was just impossible.

So we both said we can't do that either.

So then we sort of said, how about a graceful tapering?

So we then just basically made the decision to stop taking on new clients.

And that gave us a sort of tapered, tapering out over a sort of 12

month period where all the revenue was delivered, you know, and

there was no new business coming.

And we had a way then, a chance to find new homes for all the

people that were working for us.

'cause that was important to me.

I really wanted people to have, uh, a next step in their careers if they wanted it.

And I helped them all find positions like that.

And, um, and just taper the thing out until there was

virtually nothing left, you know?

Um, and that's what I decided to do in the end.

And that worked out really pretty well, I'd say.

I guess the, the kind of symbolic image in my mind is that there is,

there's a point somewhere in this, which is kind of Ray in a dark room

where it sort of feels like the kind of all, all of these things are kind of

You've hit the nail on the head there, Ben.

I mean, it was,

I, I, there was a point where I was so low I didn't think I could

ever have felt as low as I did.

I thought this is the most worst time of my life.

And it was about six months into the separation and I

couldn't see the future at all.

And I liked being this successful businessman that people respected

me for, but I couldn't see myself wanting to do that anymore.

So I didn't quite know where to go.

And I was depressed.

I was really depressed and unhappy.

I felt broken.

And then a friend of mine in Australia, a really good friend

called Julie, she said again, you know, why don't you go traveling?

'Cause she had done that for a couple of years and it had

really changed her outlook.

And she encouraged me to consider it.

And another person said, you know, when you are in a place of despair and

you really can't see the way forward and it's completely bleak, one thing

you can do is for a period you take your attention off yourself and put

it a hundred percent on someone else.

Go and find someone else who's got a bigger need than you have, let's say,

and go and help them a hundred percent.

Just focus on them.

I thought, God, that sounds amazing.

I'm gonna do that.

So I started looking for someone I could do that with and that, and

bizarrely a really good friend of mine who'd immigrated to Australia

with a husband, had breast cancer.

And, um, I, I contacted her.

I said, I, I know you've got breast cancer and you're, it's in the early

stages and you're, you're gonna be starting your chemo and stuff.

Um, how do you feel about me coming out to Australia for a month and just

being with you and taking care of some of the things that you can't do?

And she said, oh, that'd be lovely.

That'd be brilliant.

I'd love that.

So I thought, great.

I'm just gonna go to Australia.

I'm gonna forget about my stuckness and despair.

I'm just gonna go and look after her.

Be with Matt, her and Pete, their little son.

And I did, I did that for a month and it was brilliant.

And at the end of that month, nothing had changed.

I was still stuck in the despair.

And I realized that the advice that my friend had given me had

no, they said some, maybe something will change, something will shift.

They didn't say how long the shift would I was expecting it to

happen the day I left or yeah, I was ready, but it didn't happen.

But then a, my friend Julie, who lives lived in Cairns, she said, you're in

Australia before you go back to, why don't you come up for a few days and

spend some time with me and my mum?

I said, that's a good idea.

I'll do that.

And I went up to see her and she said, me and my mum are going to the theater.

We're gonna see this play.

Do you wanna come?

I said, okay.

And um, she, we were in the theater watching this play.

And in the interval I was reading the program, and I could see this box in the

top right hand corner of one page saying we're gonna audition for the next play.

It's called Out of Order, by Ray Cooney, which is a British, he's a

British playwright, and it's like one of those white Hall farces, you know.

And I looked at it and it was about a British member of Parliament.

I turned to my friends and said, I should be in that play.

I, I've got a British accent, I could play the member of Parliament.

I was saying it purely for a joke.

I wasn't an actor.

I dunno why I was saying it.

It was just fill in time in the interval.

And, um, they both looked at me and said, Well, we know the director of the play.

You know, why don't you go to the auditions on Sunday?

You'll still be here.

So I laughed.

I said, that's crazy.

I've gotta go back to England.

I've got all these clients to work for and I need to pay the

mortgage, blah, blah, blah.

They said, well, don't try to get a part in the play, just

go to the audition for fun.

So I said, okay, that's a good idea.

I'll do that.

So on the Sunday I went and my, my brother's married to an actress,

a profession actress, and I was dating an actress at the time.

So, um.

I thought, I'm gonna give this a good shot.

I put my, threw myself into it.

And at the end of the auditions, the director came over to me

and said, can I have a word?

I said, oh my God.

Okay, yeah.

Alright, well, what have I done?

He said, uh, what's your situation, Ray?

Are you actually really living here?

You know?

I said, yeah, I live here.

This is my address in Cairnes.

I didn't tell him I was flying back to England in three days.

He asked me a few questions and I got this sense.

They liked me in some part or other.

And, um, I said, when are you gonna decide?

He said, oh, about a week's time.

I thought, damn, I'm gonna be already back in England.

So I flew back to London and I told Julie they were gonna call

and let me know, and they did.

When I got to Heathrow, she rang me and said, guess what Ray?

You're not gonna believe this.

I said, what?

They want you to play the lead role in the play.

This character George, he has 400 lines in the script.

He's the central comedic character, a bit like a sort of

Frank Spencer type character.

Very poppish idiot, but all the action revolves around him.

And I said, you're kidding me?

She said, I've given you 24 hours of breathing space.

I've told Wayne you won't be ready for a day.

So I called him and said, are you sure about this?

You know, I'm totally untried.

I've got no experience.

He said, I, we know.

We know.

We think you'll be perfect.

We're gonna support you.

You've got three months rehearsals to prepare.

And I thought, this feels like I'm being called to do this.

Like almost like God wants me to do it, or something weird.

And I thought, you know what?

I still don't feel I can do this until I get what I call a confirmation

signal, and I'm big on this now.

What would be my confirmation signal?

What would confirm to me this is the thing I'm meant to do?

Aha, right, I'm gonna ring each of the clients I'm obligated to work with,

who've been waiting for me to come back.

And I'm gonna tell them this story like I'm telling it to you.

Now I'm gonna say, I can't believe this has happened, but it has happened.

If you give me your blessing to postpone our work for another three months, which

is may not be great for you, but if you give me your blessing, I'm gonna go.

And if you say, I want you to stay and do the work, I'm gonna stay.

And you know, every single one of them said, if I was you, I would definitely go.

Go, go and do that.

They knew my situation, so they were quite sympathetic.

They said, go.

And so I got the blessing of every one of those and that was my confirmation signal.

I flew back two days later and I acted in the play.

And even then, I still didn't realize that this was the, the, the piece of

information I was waiting for this advice.

If you help a friend, a hundred percent something or change.

But it was as the play run came to an end and I was preparing to fly back

to London to be Ray the businessman again, I suddenly thought, Oh my God.

It just occurred to me on the airplane flying back.

I was going, I've spent the last three months consciously

becoming George, the character.

I've learned the words he says, the way he walks, the voice he

uses, which is his horrible voice.

I had to become this character George and take the direction of

the director and play the character exactly how he wanted him to be seen.

And I thought, do you know what Ray the businessman is a character.

It's not me.

I am playing the character.

But I'd sort of, I never thought of it until that moment that I was playing

a character in Ray, the businessman.

But I'd authored him.

Ray lived in a certain house, he wore certain clothes, he drove a Mercedes.

You know, he was a CEO.

This.

I never thought of that guy as a character.

I just thought that's who I was.

And then I suddenly went, oh my God, it's not who I am.

I'm a character.

The character and me are not the same.

And I thought, wow, that means I can modify the character.

I can change the script, or I can just kill the character off.

I can end the series and say, that's series is over.

It's not on tele anymore.

And so I decided to kill the character off.

That's what I decided to do.

So, ' uh, this point then you, the kind of realization that Ray, the CEOs an

actor, and it's really interesting you kind of, you talk about that because

when you were just describing it and you, you sort of say, you know, you're

saying to the guy, but, you know, I'm not an actor, and my first thought

was, you know, all of us, particularly in like in a business context, we're

all fucking actors really, aren't we?

So all we're doing is kind of acting in a, in a sense.

And so it's kind of really interesting that you made that link

Yeah.

I say, I say that 'cause less much laterally.

I went on a 10 day method acting course, and I started to realize,

wow, there's a hell of a lot more to acting than I had figured.

There's a massive amount of detail that actors do that I

didn't have any awareness of.

So, yeah.

So not, not to belittle it like we're all actors and whatever

you are doing is kind of nothing.

Clearly they have a depth of expertise, uh, that is, uh, beyond the pretender.

So this kind of realization, okay, I can, I can end the,

uh, I can kill the character, I can end the series, but you do.

have some kind of lingering commitments, uh, back in, back in the UK.

So I decided to kill the character and the character of Ray, the Biman being gone.

Ray didn't need a swanky house in West London anymore, 'cause that

character didn't, was, wasn't existing.

Uh, I decided on evaluated renting my house out for a while

and I was selling it, et cetera.

And all things being equal equal I decided to sell the house in London

and move down to a smaller property.

But because I hadn't yet gone on the six month sabbatical, 'cause the Aus

the play happened just before I made that decision, um, I, I thought,

well, I'll wait till I've done the six month sabbatical and I'll come back

and I'll get the new property then.

Um, so I, so I, I was able to wrap up my life.

I gave away all of the furniture and things that were in the house, or sold

some of it and gave most of it away.

I cleared my life down to a bag of clothes and a laptop, and that was all

I had left, and no character to play.

So I was completely undefined, anonymous Ray with a bag of clothes and a laptop.

And I went to, to Thailand.

And uh, I'd met, um, a woman called Annie in London who was really

lovely and she'd sort of invited me to travel with her as well.

And so, and she'd had quite a lot of experience of solo traveling

and so, and I hadn't had any.

So it gave me the confidence to start the journey because I would be with

someone who kind of knew the ropes and we got on really well and we liked

each other, and there was a romance budding, you know, it's lovely.

So to kind of just for the point of, uh, clarifying, this is a few months into

what becomes a 14 year, 14 year journey.

Um, so I, I'm kind of, I'm curious, so coming back to, to one of the things.

When you then are sort of looking back and obviously there were the kind of

very real, very large, um, sort of, um, shocks, which forced the change like,

kind of, you know, relationship falling apart, your dad dying, kind of forcing

this kind of big change on you, but also like you kind of acknowledged maybe, you

know, there had always been a kind of feeling that maybe you would do something

else, were there kind of, when you look back now, were there other markers,

other signals which were kind of, sort of felt seen or known before the big

markers came, which may be retrospectively you go, oh, maybe these were clues or

cues that something was coming down the

Yeah, there was like, you know, when I was married, the absence

of high levels of excitement about domesticity was a big warning for me.

You like my, my, my wife Charlotte was, would want to sort of talk

about the things we're gonna do to the house and her plans for that

and the garden and all those things.

And I just noticed, for me, it just made me feel heavy.

You know, it didn't bring any, I wasn't particularly interested.

I didn't have joy around it.

I wasn't sort of a nest builder, a homemaker, those kind of things.

And that troubled me because I thought, wow, I'm not gonna need to be, because

I'm gonna be a dad at some point.

You know, just assumed that I would go down that path like everyone does.

And Charlotte used to, was very skillful at asking me about that in a good way.

And I had, I came up with this, even had this character, I used to say,

oh, I'm turning into Fullham Man.

And Fullham Man represented something I didn't wanna be.

It was like a sort of overweight back, you know, kind of comfy middle class

guy, you know, with living in suburbia, living in the sort of fancy life.

And I never, ever dreamed when I was at school, I'd be Fullham Man.

And I was sort of turning into Fullham Man.

And I was, and that was another sign I was overweight.

I didn't feel attractive.

When I had photographs taken with me and my dad, I looked

like his brother, not his son.

I kind of was aging quite rapidly.

And if you see pictures of me from when I was in my forties and then pictures

of me when I was traveling, I look way much, much better and younger in, in

my fifties than I did in my forties.

I mean, almost like my aging started to reverse actually.

And so that was a telltale sign.

And then the, then another one was when we started to try for a

family, Charlotte had a miscarriage.

And then on top of all of that, I decided to go on a little retreat one

year when I was in, I just turned 40 and I went to Portugal on the retreat.

And my dad had gone into hospital already before for a,

for some kind of heart problem.

And the, about 10 days into the retreat, Charlotte called and said,

your dad's taken a really bad turn that the doctor said you should come back.

So I, so I flew into, he, he survived that.

But I flew into Luton airport and Charlotte came to meet me, and I

walked through the arrivals hall.

And as I walked towards her, she just touched me lightly

on my forearm to say hi.

And as she did, and when she touched me on my forearm, it was like an

electric shock going through my body.

My whole body jolted.

I didn't know why or what it meant, but it was the first time it had ever happened.

And I knew something fundamental was different.

When Na Touch, I knew it.

And we got home and I just needed to get to the hospital and look class my head.

So I couldn't really focus on it, but I knew it was in the back of my mind.

And I, later I said to you, you okay while I've been on the

retreat, has anything changed?

Is you, are you all right?

What's happened?

Oh, no, I'm okay.

I'm just a bit restless.

I'm just a bit restless.

And I, I knew it really was more than that.

I was scared to push because I didn't wanna know what it

was in one way, but I did.

And we, you know, after three or four weeks of very, very difficult

conversations, she'd admit, she admitted, she'd met someone and

it had started to change how she was thinking about her life.

We were having a conversation before we start recording about kind of

different people with various stages of kind of change, crises going on,

singles presenting in different ways.

Uh, and I guess I'm kind of conscious my, like on the one hand somebody

might be listening and go, well, I can't now cut all of these ties, right?

Maybe because, so like, what do I do then?

So maybe like, I recognize.

Some of these signals or like, not in the same way.

Not that my wife wants to leave me or whatever it, might be, but you know,

clearly, if I'm honest with myself, there are markers here, there are signs,

there are signals, I don't know, maybe it's illness, maybe it is just feelings

of exhaustion or whatever it might be.

Um, or just kind of feelings of dis-ease, you know.

There are kind of signals, but I guess part of the thing that

exacerbates that is people's feeling like an inability to act on it.

So it's like, oh, it's like easy Ray, he went away for 14 years.

But it's like, what can I do now?

Do you know what I mean?

I can't go away for 14 years.

I've got a 6-year-old or 10-year-old or a whatever, I

dunno, the, the kind of thing is.

For me, the I, the fact that I was a abroad and traveling,

that's a red herring.

That isn't the thing that changed my life.

What changed my life was having an opportunity to really examine beliefs

I was holding about how things are.

And really examine my patterns of thinking around certain parts of my life.

Now, I've coached hundreds of people in the last 15 years, and virtually none

of them have massively changed their circumstances, but they have really

deeply changed their thinking and, you know, looked at some of the beliefs

they've held for a long time and said, does that belief really serve me anymore?

Can I jettison it?

And I've seen some huge shifts in those people in terms of their

quality of life, their enjoyment, their pleasure of life with very

little change in their circumstances.

So the changes we are talking about here, that transformation of one's

life is not circumstantial, it's not dependent on location, geography, and

buildings, houses, or any of those things.

It's an inner journey.

It's a, it's the, the reorientation I would describe it in a simple way is

you shift from an outside in way of living to an inside out way of living.

That's the big shift that I'm, that I took myself, that I navigated

through that complete reorientation, and that's the shift I invite most

people I meet when I coach to take.

Because when you do that, you realize that your happiness is not dependent

on a new job or a salary increase, or a car or a house or a holiday in Mexico.

It's not dependent on any of that.

It's something you can choose in this moment now, but the only reason you

don't choose, it's you're holding a belief that is stopping you, or you're

holding a thought pattern that's stopping you, and you're not understanding

that that's what's stopping you.

It's not anything outside or money or any of those things, it's just not.

And what would be, what would be some examples of some of those

beliefs which are stopping you?

Yeah.

Like, you know, oh, I can't do that, and that's way too risky.

I can't take that risk.

I might never find a job again.

Or I'm not good enough.

No one would employ me.

Or if I had a gap in my cv, no one would be interested in me working with them.

These are all just limiting beliefs.

They're not, they're not absolute truths.

There's no, in fact, for most people, there's no truth to it at all.

You know, they, they're just, it's the guards that keep you in your comfort zone.

And anytime you go to the perimeter of your comfort zone and look about, think

about going up through the fence and out the guards go, Oh no, I wouldn't do that.

Yeah.

Could be a fear guard.

Oh, you know, you don't wanna do that.

You might run out of money and never get a job again.

Or like, who the hell are you to think that you could do that?

You know, you are nobody, you're not good enough for pride, you know?

Or, you know, I can't, it just, I break my heart to not be able to do this.

I, I'd be too sad.

There's lots of different versions.

There's tons, but there's a, there's a team of guards that protect

us from making those decisions.

And, and that's in our thinking.

And we don't know that's in our thinking until we start

to really deeply examine it.

Yeah.

And so, uh, what, what would, how do you kind of help people, first

of all, identify those things?

I firstly see the guard, and secondly, disempower the

Yeah.

Because you, you, by recognizing, you know, like the, I learned from the

Buddhist teachings in the monastery that I went on, at least 50% of the

work of transforming from outside into inside out is just simply awareness.

So heart, the heavy lifting is becoming aware of the

impact of your current system.

That's it.

You don't need to actually do that much once you start to notice that your own

thinking is what's putting the limits, just noticing that and keep noticing

that starts to actually evaporate.

It's a weird thing.

I dunno how that works, but that's what actually happens.

You start to shift it and you go, oh, you know what?

I'd normally say no to going to that invite, but tonight I'm gonna say yes.

Yeah, no, and I, I can echo that too, you know, from my kind of own experience,

the, uh, the sort of the, the liberate the liberating power of noticing these things.

Uh, and then the more you kind of are in a space where you are able to notice these

things, the more that you notice them.

And so the, you know, be they being the thoughts, the beliefs, the ideas, the

stories that we tell ourselves about how things are and how they need to

be, the, you know, these create tracks.

And, and in a way, like, you know, really usefully, they've created tracks

in our lives because it's kind of the thing which has sort of determined us

to kind of work in a certain way, be a certain person, do a certain thing.

But of course.

they become, they are then tracks.

Uh, and so, you know, it's like at some point it's worthwhile

kind of just reflecting.

Hold a second.

Are those rails heading in the direction that I actually want to

Well, they kind of work for a period, don't they?

You like, if you are, as a child, if you are wanting to avoid being criticized,

you, you develop a pattern of thinking and behavior that stops that from happening.

And that pattern, you think you've discarded when you get older and you grow

up to be an adult, but it's playing out when you're an adult, it's just, it's

an, it becomes an automatic reaction in certain trigger moments, and you don't

think, oh my God, I'm just reacting that pattern that I had as a child, right?

In this instance, I'm not under threat.

I'm not being criticized.

I'm actually been given some useful feedback here.

I could just put that to one side and accept this feedback

and use it to be better.

But we don't, we go, oh, no, no.

Don't criticize me.

Don't criticize me.

You, you, you, you're playing the same patterns out without knowing it.

And, and so this is where it no longer serves you.

It did serve you for a while.

It did protect you and it was good that you had it, but I.

We don't do this constant updating.

It's a bit like, like you are 40 years old and you're still running

Windows XP instead of Windows instead of the current version, you know?

I think lots of people, uh, either you know, really viscerally or just in a sort

of more, in a subtler way, are confronted with, like we are talking about tremors,

these ideas, the signals that something's not right, and you know, like maybe that

then presents in a sort of cataclysmic way, like with a personal illness or

sort of loss, familial loss or sort of company sort of crumbling, whatever it

might be, the, the sort of structures around which we've kind of depended

which force us to engage with this.

But, but oftentimes.

It's, you know, it's not that stark.

So we can sort of try and do the work of ignoring it for some time.

Uh, but one of the things I'm really curious about is the change

that's kind of happening in that, in that moment, in those times.

And it feels to me like, and, you know, I, it's kind of more

or less helpful as an idea.

I'm just really curious about it, that part of what's happening.

And I know, uh, Jung talks a lot about this in a lot of kinda his writing.

That there's the whole kind of first track of life, which is playing

out the, the structure of society, playing out the stories and ideas,

which we've kind of inherited from family and society and beyond.

Um, and I don't know if he articulates it this way, uh, or, or, or if I've just

made it up, or rather than made it, I mean, kind of bastardized his thinking.

But it is like this idea that, that if that's a first track, this is

the first path, but in a sense, something else is wanting to be born.

Something else is wanting to be both to both, which is bigger than us.

It's bigger than Ben, it's bigger than Ray, it's bigger than anyone

else on, on the kind of work that I've been scrambling to do.

'Cause like you, I was the same in running my company.

I also was just the driven guy who was just like, no, we push on.

And somehow my life and the company was like a sausage machine in the

sense of how hard the story, one of the stories I had was how hard, uh, how

hard we were determined how successful we would be, uh, because that is a

story of our culture too, which I don't think is a very helpful story.

But also how much, like, in a way, how much meat I stuffed into the

machine would determine how much sausage came out the other side.

And, and so, so that means it's like a constantly driving on.

And of course when you're doing that one, that's exhausting and it's very

difficult to sustain that forever.

And I think I got to the point where I was no longer able to sustain

that, which was like my, my kind of, uh, transition point in a sense.

But I'm curious about this idea that maybe something is trying to get our attention.

Something else is trying to be born, that we are more or less able to

acknowledge, uh, and, and if not hear..

And I'm kind of really curious about going back to the point you were talking about

this vision you had for the company, about people thriving in a way which is kind of

bigger, that I am bigger than work, or, you know, there is something much bigger

that I'm part of, that sort of touched on and relies on and pulls on this whole

kind of spectrum of sort of possibility.

And that vision that you articulated for the company in a sense was the vision that

you ended up playing out for yourself.

You know, like for me, I, I've, how it's come to me in my own belief

system now, and I'm speaking purely individually here, not to indoctrinate

anyone or to get anyone to agree.

I feel like I am a spirit living in a physical human body temporarily.

That's how I see my life.

The spirit is, you know, part of a universal intelligence, that

we're all connected because we know from metaphysics, we know quantum

physics, that we are all just one, literally one energetic whole.

You know, we're all, we, we have the appearance and the illusion of separation

because of our physical bodies, but actually we're just particles with

spaces floating in a big energy cloud.

We all know this.

We all kind of know this in our head, but we don't believe it.

We don't act as if it's really true.

And so I think there is a universal intelligence in play that is driving every

person towards their highest possibility.

And it's our job to recognize and get into alignment with that dynamic.

And the more that we can do that, the more we evolve our consciousness.

And when people say to me, we talk about purpose sometimes in my

coaching work, and you know, it's a delicate subject for a lot of people.

But I've come to think that my purpose, why I was, why was I born?

What am I doing here?

What's my life about?

Look, the answer I've come to with that is I've always been a torch

bearer for greater human consciousness.

In whatever job I've done, whatever friendships I've been in, whatever

relationships I've had, I've always, always been passionate

and interested about being awake, being conscious, being self-aware

and helping other people do that.

And myself.

And I still am.

I'm on that journey.

So I sort of feel like I'm a bit of a lighthouse for this.

and so I'm not too preoccupied with the form of my life, you

know, am I in this job or that job?

Am I living in this town or that town?

Because they're, they're important decisions, but they're not the big ones.

I, and more important for me is like, am I shining my, my lighthouse in the best way?

Am I serving humanity the best way I can?

And am I enjoying the journey of my own evolution?

And can I enjoy it more?

You know, what can I do?

So those are some of the things that I think, and I think that dry, that spirit,

that what I call the true self, the non-con unconditioned self, 'cause, our

personality is a programmed, conditioned version of ourselves, it's not really us.

In my case it was Ray, the businessman in London.

You know, but once you sort of shed that skin, who are you?

You know, who are you?

Who is your true self which is not defined by any circumstance?

One of the things which comes to mind, just as you were saying that

last bit, 'cause question was coming up in my mind, oh, you know, how, how

might we help somebody kind of get some objectivity to, so that they too

can just have their moment of going, oh, I'm not, you know, insert name

here, the person, you know, I'm not just that person as the businessman.

I'm not just that person.

You know, all of those things are, are a kind of role.

And I, uh, I was kind of wondering about ways we might do that.

The thought which then came to my mind is one of the revealing points for me,

one of my, another one of my tremors was when my son, who was then four, said to

me, and I appreciate kind of the, the value of these kind of questions is all

dependent on context so it doesn't really, uh, sort of transfer, but in a sense it

was, it was a useful revelatory for me.

In that totally innocent way a 4-year-old can do.

He said to me, um, why do you work, daddy?

And I was like, fuck, why do you work?

And it was like, and obviously the, you say this people, the

first thing is all for money.

And then it was like, hold on a second.

Right, so yes, we need money to be able to kind of function and

interact with the kind of world.

But it's like really?

Is that it?

Is that the reason that, that we kind of work?

And it was like one of, so for me, like one of the tremors was, was that

it was like this kind of invitation a question, the the kind of, you

know, beautiful in its simplicity.

You know, why do you work?

And actually that's also a question I sort of explore with

some of some of my clients.

You know, why do you do the work that you do?

And so something which kind of helps people reflect back on some of the choices

that they've made to help them understand that, you know, there are just these kind

of roles and maybe these roles are sort of clouding them, taking them away from

this idea of kind of spirit, whatever anybody's interpretation of that is.

Because like you are talking about, I, I, you know, that,

that resonates with me a lot.

And I think anybody listening to this, the types of people, you

know, whatever your interpretation is, whatever your understanding

is, it doesn't really matter.

But I think embracing the idea that clearly there's a whole lot

of stuff that we really don't know.

Uh, and so being kind of open to some of the kind of magic in that I think

is a hugely kind of inspiring thing.

'Cause like you are talking about, that's kind of led you to an ongoing inquiry

and ongoing invitation, which is sort of full of creative opportunity in a sense.

it is.

And there's a lot of, there's so many hypotheses and

theories around these things.

Like for example, why do we have individually the values we have?

They're all so different.

You and me, our values are gonna be different.

How can that be possible?

You can have so different values, even from your own siblings.

You're raised by the same parents in the same family, yet your

values can be massively different.

How is that possible?

Some people say, well, there's past lives to be taken into account.

If you, if you do any systemic constellation work, there's a whole

ancestral aspect to who we are that we, we are, we're totally oblivious

to because we're sort of not, we're not encouraged to think about

those things when we're at school.

We're processed through an education system which conditions us in

a very, very, very narrow way.

Um, I'm not a big fan of it.

Neither was sir Ken Robinson, who spent his whole life

rallying against that system.

And how it killed the creativity of individuals.

Because governments don't want freethinking creative individuals.

They want compliant, obedient workers who they can tax.

So there's a lot of forces in play in our society that are, when you

start to really examine it, you can sort of make sense of why the things

are in the status quo we're in.

And I guess a lot of the thing around that is, you know, it's

not even like that, that that is some sort of conspiratorial idea.

well, it's actually not even, it's plain, it's in it's, well documented

that these think tanks and foundations have steered the education system to

suit their, their corporate needs.

They have.

One, one of my, uh, boys is, uh, 12 now, and he's really suffering in

school actually, because, you know, for all of the reasons that we're sort

of talking about, and I, I really like all of, uh, Ken Robinson's writing too.

And it's such a sort of struggle thing to sort of look at

somebody who is also struggling.

Because basically what they're trying to do, you know, he's

very kinesthetic learner.

He learns by moving, like if you leave him to his own devices, like Ken Robinson

will talk about in the thing, if you leave him Felix to his own devices, he will

move things around, he will still create, play situations with different things.

And so he learns by moving.

That's his sort of way of processing the world.

And of course what school is making him do is basically sit down and shut

up, which is like a total nightmare.

But there was a, an interesting thing I read about the schooling system,

which was, it obviously birthed 250 years ago at the time, the col, the

colonial time, where um, to manage the empire, they needed a consistent set of,

basically people to write in a certain way and to account in a certain way.

So that I could count in a certain, you know, that people could count

and that people could record, right?

The three Rs.

Right.

Exactly.

And if, if there was the commonality of that, people who would come out

of the system and they could reliably be sent anywhere in the world

where the empire was and manage the affairs of the, of the state, right?

And it's really interesting that, and essentially that is the same system

that is producing tomorrow's people.

And it mirrors the same thing I was talking about as us as individuals.

We don't update our own operating system.

We don't, we don't get rid of beliefs that don't serve us anymore.

We've got a system that doesn't really serve humanity anymore,

but it's unexamined and it's also in the best interest of a

few people to keep it the same.

And they have a lot of power and sway with that.

So they're not really wanting to really change the status quo

that much, you know, really.

'cause it costs, it costs

Yeah.

It costs them their, their benefits substantially financially, you know, so.

And, and you know, a lot of our economies are built around consumption and when

people realize that most of our income is used for shit we don't need, you know,

to impress people we don't even like, you know, if that was to stop, the whole

thing's gonna collapse, you know, so.

So we're, you know, it's an interesting time for humanity

as well as us as individuals.

I'm really interested in the, in that, that kind of point around, uh, the,

the kind of how you kind of rug pull, because the sort of systemic thing

that we're, you know, essentially up against in a way, like the, the kind of

norms of our culture, which, you know, even before like AI was a thing, this

idea that, you know, it's like, the, the kind of culture basically performs

what it's programmed to do, right?

And or society performs what it's programmed to do in the same way

institutions perform what the institution is, is programmed to do.

And of course, we just sort of slot into that.

We become kind of nodes in that thing.

So if the institutions or culture at large is programmed to generate profit

above all else, then of course that's what becomes, and then it's supported

by laws and all of those kind of things.

And, and a lot of the problems that we sort of are encountering, you know, be

they ecological, be it climate, be it social, be it political, be it economic,

are because the system in a sense is a little bit kind of run out of control, uh,

and or not a little bit run outta control, but is kind of running out of control.

And, and a part of the thing around that is, uh, inability as participants in it,

like us, I'm trying to, was trying to avoid the word using individual, because

that is sort of reinforcing the point.

But to recognize our own complicity in serving the system through no ill

will, but it's just because these are, this is the stuff of our culture.

And then the, the difficulty that people have, like you were talking

about, about redoing the program.

So yeah, a 300 year old education system finds it very difficult to

reprogram itself because there's inertia, organizational, you know,

institutional inertia, there's vested interest, there's, you know, all,

all of those things kind of going on.

And also at the very heart of it all is the human mind, which is deeply unable to,

or finds extremely hard, rather to let go of one thing, which no longer serves it.

And step into something which might better serve it.

And I kind of often wonder whether maybe if we just focus on that.

You know, helping people let go of the thing which is not really serving

you anymore, to kinda step into something which might better serve you.

Maybe there's like this huge judo flip maneuver that happens that

just kind of orientates us into a, into a kind of different trajectory?

I, I dunno the answer to this.

I mean, but when we look back through history, you know, the, the thing that

sort of really inevitably happens, you know, 'cause no one agrees what

does really serve us or not, and everyone's got vested interests.

Usually it takes a, you know, a humongous conflict in which a lot of

people get killed for a reset to happen.

You know, that's normally what happens.

I was talking to somebody a a few weeks ago.

He was a really long-term, very, very long-term, deeply

committed climate activist.

And, um, his activism was really, has been really from a place of fear, uh,

very deep, deep fear about, um, you know, what's happening essentially.

And he, he's been an actress for over 20 years now.

So, you know, which is sort of, you know, kind of well transcends where

most people, most people's consciousness is around, has been around it.

And, and a lot of it has been from a place of deep fear.

All of his work then has been in, in around trying to get people to

notice, trying to get people to change.

And of course that is a sort of deeply sort of difficult place to be.

Because you know, like I talk about, you know, we talk about it's very difficult

to hold onto, you know, if I'm measuring myself on the outcome, I'm measuring

myself on the change, which happens as a consequence of my work, it's very

difficult because ultimately I don't have any control over whether, if I try and

make this campaign that gets people to think about something in a certain way, if

they don't, if nothing materially changes as a result of that, then I just feel

like my work in a way is kind of worthless if I'm kind of wedded to that idea.

And I think he's really sort of struggled with a lot of his work because.

He feels like he's basically dedicated the last 20 years of his life to trying

to get people to, you know, engage with these issues somewhat, and just feeling

sort of ever more frustrated that actually nothing seems to be changing and worse

things seem to be accelerating in, in the wrong, in the wrong direction.

And he was, uh, sharing this as part of a group that I was part of.

And, uh, just before that I'd had a conversation with a guy who, uh, was

actually, I was, it was a teaching also from a Buddhist, a Buddhist monk.

And he, he was talking about, um, there's a sort of branch of Buddhist book, the,

a Thai forest network of monasteries.

And it had been started in the 1960s by a teacher who became famous because he was

the guy who taught a lot of the people who went to America and brought Buddhism

to America in the sixties and seventies.

He was a teacher called Aja Char.

And, um, he sort of, so like I said, became sort of somewhat well known.

Anyway, he had set up this monastery network, which is called the

Thai Forest Monastery Network.

And, um, the network, you know, now has something like 300 different

monasteries which, uh, span four continents and 10 countries.

Um, and so the current, current day abbot of this monastery network, and so this

kind of hugely complicated organization, like I said, spans four continents, 10

countries, 300 subsidiaries, all reporting in thousands of people he's responsible

for all doing really important, deeply emotional work, difficult work, you know,

sort of managing a sort of crumbling, constantly crumbling real estate network.

And, uh, the guy in the student teaching was recounting how the abbot who leads

this is able to do this with this sort of like perfect sort of ease.

He doesn't have an iPhone even, you know like the horror of that.

No iPhone, no constant sort of stream of emails.

Seemingly no sort of army of support staff has just this man sitting in

his Hutt in Thailand, essentially overseeing this entire network.

And, um, he was, he was talking about this, and I flip the story often to

sort of talk to people I work with who are in senior business roles.

And so I say to him, like, if, you know, if you would imagine a CEO running an

organization, spans four continents, 10 countries, 300 subsidiaries,

all these thousands of people.

Yeah, he does this, you know, imagine without even a phone or emails, would

you like to learn from that guy?

To which obviously they all go Yes, yes, of course.

It's like, well, he's actually a Buddhist monk and he's the

abbot of a monastery network.

And the interesting thing about, um, how he has kind of how he does his

work, which goes all the way back to how Ajun Char set up that monastery

network, was based on two principles, two values essentially, which is personal

responsibility and community awareness.

Uh, and uh, there was a story about when Ajun Char first set up

the, uh, the monastery in the uk.

They came over, it was like the 1970s.

And they'd been invited over 'cause to see whether it would be a good

place to have a, a monastery.

And they had a trip.

And at the end of the trip, Ajun Char who was there with two of the

monks who, who uh, sort of, uh, were traveling with him, studying with him.

And, um, Ajun Char turned to one of them and said, okay, yeah.

I think this would be a good place to South Monastery.

Uh, I'd like you to stay here now to, to set it up.

And um, so good luck, keep in touch.

And so, and so the point around this is just that these kind of

values essentially, you know, it is personal, trust yourself.

You know what to do here, Right, You know what to do.

Total personal responsibility, but community awareness.

And these values kind of, and I offered this to the guy who was the

climate activist who'd been sort of struggling but had also brought

this work, put this group together.

And I was saying, you know, maybe actually it's in the shift to these

values that kind of open up something.

Like actually, if we all really understood what personal responsibility

and community awareness meant, and we did the work day by day by day of really

understanding what that means, 'cause obviously the abbot of that network now

has 50 years of practice of doing this every day, so way beyond what we would

ever kind of imagine or hope to get to.

But it's like the power of an underlying story, the power of underlying

values, which do kind of open up, can have super transformative effect.

Yeah.

I mean, I, I totally resonate with everything you've just

said about, about the magic.

You know, stage magicians, they, they're great, but it's illusionary

because it's all slight of hand, and they use techniques and tricks to

fool you into thinking it's magic.

But this is a kind of magic that's real magic, that isn't

explainable by sleight of hand.

Like when you start, I found, uh, so I'll talk about myself.

The more I I got into my journey, the more I started to live my values out in

every little decision in every moment.

So I have a value of love and kindness.

So the more kind I was, the more generous I was in my time.

Then when I needed something and I couldn't figure out how to get the thing I

needed, someone would just appear, someone would turn up, someone would literally,

it was like, it was like always inside.

I can give you loads of examples where this happened.

And I thought, wow, this system of living one's values from the inside and

radiating it out, the inside out way, this magnetizes the universe to pull things

into reality that you need instantly.

I mean, instant, it's instant.

Um, and, and I like, and I'll give you an example.

You know, like I remember after a couple of years of traveling, thinking I'd been

to an elephant sanctuary in Thailand and I'd been to an orphanage in Nepal.

And I remember thinking and feeling, God, I'd really like to help those things

because they're, they're doing great things for their local communities.

They're poor, they've got no money.

They're doing just some great stuff.

What could I do to help?

What could I do help?

And I just remember thinking as I ate every meal and I was at every

social gathering and trekking in the mountains, and it was always

in my thinking, what could I do?

What could I do?

And I sort just remember thinking, God, university, you know, just, just show

me a way forward with this, will you?

I wanna do something, I'm not quite sure what.

And then shortly after that, I met a guy traveling and he was

a six times marathon runner.

He was 10 years younger than me.

I was 48 when I met him.

And, um, I said, what'd you do for leisure?

Then?

He said, oh, I run, I like running marathons.

I said, oh, tell me about that.

And as he spoke about him running marathons, I could feel my body tingling.

I didn't understand it, but God, I just went, oh my God, my body

is really liking hearing this.

I said, I'm getting a weird reaction to you saying all this.

I said, do you think I could run a marathon?

And he looked at me and he said, have you ever run before?

I said, no, not even a hundred meters.

He said, well, you look quite fit.

I mean, he said, I'll tell you what I mean.

If you decide to stay here where I live for six months, I'll

train you how to run a marathon.

I said, really?

He said, yeah.

He said, that's, you know, I'll get you ready for a marathon.

I'll show you what everything you need to do.

I'll train with you, blah, blah.

I said, I said, I shook his as a right.

It's a deal.

And I did that and I ran the New York Marathon on the first

November, 2009 And when he asked me, which marathon do you wanna run?

I said, well, I'd love to run the New York Marathon.

It's the biggest in the world.

I've been in New York two years before to watch the end when Paula Radcliffe won it.

And I remember turning my friend Angie, in saying.

She said, are you ever gonna run a marathon?

I said, nah, nah.

And I said, but if I did, it would be this one.

I wouldn't run run any other one.

It'd have to be this one.

That was two years before.

So when Matt said what run marathon do you wanna run?

I said, I wanna run the New York Marathon, but I'd never get a place in that.

There's so many people.

He said, why don't you go in the ballot?

I went in the ballot and I got a place.

First time.

First time.

I mean, it was just, I knew this was a confirmation signal that I was living in

alignment with everything in my values.

He showed up.

I got a place easily.

I put the call out to friends for money to raise, and I got $15,000 in donations.

You know, and, and, and all of this was just me.

I wasn't, didn't have a team or a company or anything.

It was just me.

So I knew I was living in alignment and everything was confirming it all the

time, all the time it was happening.

Beautiful.

I think, you know, the invitation with all of this is don't believe Ray,

experiment with yourself, isn't it?

It's like, okay, what actually is important to me?

What are my values?

What other things around which I want to base my decisions?

And if I consciously, deliberately, intentionally practice living from that

place, see how it works out for you.

And I did put my, I, I came up with my own six rules for happiness in my journey.

The, the six rules I lived by that worked for me, I've shared those in the book,

you know, so the six rules I'm talking about are explained and they're in there.

Not to say, I actually put them in to say, I dunno what your rules are, here's mine.

Uh, use some of these if you want, but I think you're gonna come up

with your own rules, but here's mine.

So you've gotta start at least.

And so where, if people want to, uh, learn about those, those six

rules, where would they find the book and more information about you?

there's a website called lifewithoutatie.com.

People can buy the book directly.

If they want a signed copy, they have to order it there because I will personally

sign it and post it from my home.

Um, the book's on Amazon, you know, that's where most people buy the book.

Um, it's on Amazon, paperback and Kindle.

Well, thank you very much, Ray.

I've really enjoyed talking to you.

Yeah.

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