Lose Yourself - Eminem

If you had one shot or one opportunity to seize everything you’ve ever wanted in a moment, would you capture it or just let it slip?

If you are risk adverse, don’t like taking chances and would never gamble – you probably would let it slip. Living without ever leaping through sliding doors, following one’s instinct or plainly grabbing the moment can leads to a very ordinary existence. And if ordinary suits you then that’s great…

 

However, for some folk, every day is a gamble. A permanent game of chance where living life on the edge is normality and where adrenalin is the driver in the need for succeed.

 

It goes without saying that it’s always best to have a balanced approach to living but what happens if you are someone that knowingly needs to change but finds change impossible. I’m often asked, ‘how do you it?’ or rather ‘how did you do it?’ as it was such a long time ago when I ‘changed’- and if I’m being honest, there was no magic trick – I just knew things had to be different and that there was a better life out there for me.

 

The concept took time to build and about eighteen months to come to the moment when I simply flicked a switch in my brain and said to myself that I’d throw away some of my behavioural processes. Sounds easy, eh? I can tell you it’s not. With a mere 5% success rate, going ‘Cold Turkey’ is a gamble that even the biggest sucker wouldn’t take. It’s a good job I didn’t know at the time as it’s an easy out when things get tough but it’s one where the folk I work with gamble and win time and time again.

 

You see there’s definitely something about ‘projected success’ if there is such a thing and being accountable to someone else that’s been there, got the T-shirt and has succeeded. Okay it’s hard excluding something that, we love, desire or depend on in some cases and it takes time to escape our demons. A time where we can feel loss, loneliness and a lack of direction. I found replacing addiction with a low level of daily exercise (when I started) really helped and as I reduced my element of daily risk of relapse. I felt calmer and in a far more stable state of control.

 

Twenty-seven years on and I’m still living life this way, using my own philosophy to get through the ups and downs of daily life. When I started out on this journey, folk thought I’d lost my marbles – in reality, I made a life-changing decision that would become life-changing for many other people too.

 

Coming out of lockdown, it’s worth taking a few moments to consider and recalibrate your thoughts and actions as we head towards the Autumn of 2021 and think about the future. I’m someone with first-hand knowledge of ‘Your Health is your Wealth’ both in a self-inflicted way and by cruel chance. My advice it to lower the odds of losing out on the greatest gift you’ll ever have and look after yourself. 

 

It’ll give you the brightest future you could ever imagine.

 

And as Marshall Bruce Mathers III put so well - ‘This opportunity comes once in a lifetime’ to which I must add, ‘so don’t f@ck it up’…

 

Amen

 

1,103 Marathons - 257 Ultras - 9 Guinness World Records - 15 Marathon des Sables

Big Time - Sir Peter of Gabriel

‘Not me, I'm smarter than that, I worked it out’ - Gabriel

How do you measure success? By how much you earn? By where you live? By how little you have to work? Or by the size and make of your car?

 

Why are we programmed to see objects as a sign of success? And hey, before you say it, I’m just as ‘signs of success programmed’ as the next person. 

 

I mean, the car thing has always got me. And It’s possibly a young man’s game and like most, I was suckered in during my sales career where a ‘Ford Mondeo Ghia X’ was perceived as the pinnacle of car hierarchy. And on finally getting my career-eager hands on the keys I found it cornered like a shopping trolley and was really an old man’s car! 

 

For the record, at only three days old it was stolen off my drive for parts and all that was left was a bodyshell in a remote field gateway that was taken away to an early company car scrapyard grave. And being success-status-driven I went to the next level reaching BMW status where you find that everyone else on the road, even though they don’t know you, instantly hates you.

 

It’s kinda sad that we mark success by the outward signs of wealth rather than by what we’ve achieved or by what we’ve done with other people.

 

You see it’s the things you can’t see that really matter. It’s not where you’ve been, it’s how you’ve done it counts. It’s experience that makes you smart and being smart leads to success. Success that you simply can’t buy and that you earn, over time.

 

If like me you are enjoying the Olympics, see what winning the Gold, Silver or Bronze, means to the competitors. For some, only Gold will do, for others a Bronze will be their life’s defining moment. Success means different things to different people.

 

Now, we are not all world beating athletes, but we can outplay our own dreams and succeed in areas we once thought were unachievable. I know – been there and got the T-Shirt…many times.

 

I found that success comes from hours and hours of training, focus and determination and if you feel you have yet to succeed in life, make a plan and start to make it happen. You probably won’t get anything tangible to show for your efforts but inwardly you’ll know what true success feels like and how it’s measured when you look back on your life in the future.

 

Amen.

 

1,102 Marathons, 257 Ultras, 9 Guinness World Records & 15 Marathon des Sables