Alive and Kicking - Simple Minds 1985

Here is Chapter 16 of my next book 'Reborn to Run' in its second edit. I'd be interested in knowing what you think. So here goes...

‘Once upon a Time’ was one of my go-to albums back in 1985. It was Simple Minds seventh studio offering and by then the band had hit supergroup status not only in the UK but also in America playing at the American Live-Aid performance in Philadelphia on 13 July 1985. They were a kind of Scottish U2 as I remember. The Alive and Kicking lyrics were almost written for me and my clients. Who is gonna come and turn the tide? What's it gonna take to make a dream survive? The song is pure as any mid-eighties anthem could be and the heavy snare and piano combined with Charlie Burchill’s clever guitar hook and the la-la-la sing along chorus with vocalist Jim Kerr still makes me feel alive and kicking today and ready to take on any day.

Most folk say they want to make the change but what holds them back is the fear of shame. However, everything we do is confidential, and that first step doesn’t have to be that frightening. It feels like jumping into the abyss and it’s no wonder people get scared. It can be very, very frightening to say the least. And if you are about to unlock Pandora's box then it's very easy to say to yourself, ‘Hmm, maybe I’ll do it tomorrow’.

 

If you're going to change your lifestyle, eject some friendships, take a different career path or choose a different relationship, it's like setting off a nuclear bomb, inside your head as are literally vaporising your existence and whatever you are known for, you might not be anymore.

 

Even if you're not happy with who you are, it requires a leap of faith to change it as you are going to change your identity and probably ditch the people you’ve surrounded yourself with, as they have the similar poor character traits to the ones you are trying to exclude.

 

It’s going to unsettle a lot of people because you are not going to be the same person that you were before. You're not going to be the drinker, the smoker, the hell-raiser as that identity is going to disappear.

 

Friends will try to entice you back into your old ways saying, ‘You’re no fun anymore or come on, one drink won’t hurt’. You're no longer their partner in crime. The friendship which was cemented by alcohol won’t exist any longer and the common ground you once shared will disappear as will the friendship.

 

I can remember the day I became a non-drinker so vividly.

 

Back then I would go to the pub every night after work. We were in the printing game at the time, and five o'clock had become the five o'clock club. I’d would walk in cigarette in hand and knock down the first of many pints of lager.

 

I’d stay for about two-and-a-half hours and then leave slightly the worse for wear. That was how it was for me back then and, of course that is how it still is for many people. But what happens is you start getting home later and later and then not going home to save the inevitable arguments.

 

The giant leap for ‘Rorykind’ step didn't happen overnight and without any planning. I didn't just decide on the 5th of January 1994, to start my new life, that process had actually taken about eighteen months. 

 

It had taken eighteen months because I had to get my own act together before I could then come out and tell the world. I’d previously reached out to the Samaritans, which was the first step. I just phoned them in the middle of a Metallica set during the Freddie Mercury tribute concert on April 20th, 1992.

 

Watching the show, I felt out of control. I just thought, I've got to do something.' 

 

That was the first step, my 'point zero' where things from then on could only get better.

 

By October '93, I was starting to ‘circle the drain’ again and by Christmas I knew that if I didn't do anything, I would soon reach the point of no return. Every day I was unhappy. Every day was an embarrassment. Every day I felt a bigger failure than the day before.

 

I entered a melancholic state of thought, 'Is this it, is this what life has in store? I was 31. I was unhappily married. I had three kids at that stage, I smoked too much and every day I woke up with a headache. It was like, 'What am I doing here?'

 

Every day you drink more to get to the same state of calm and happiness. For me that was as much as maybe 5-10 pints in a day. It was a lot of lager. 

 

Thirty years ago, the world was a very different place. We didn't have people or places to reach out to for help. We didn't have social media to find others who'd survived the same predicament. We didn't have the celebrity endorsement of sobriety.

 

What we did have was a big bottle of man-up pills. All you needed to do was take a few and line up the next pint. And when you’ve had one pint, you may as well have another, and another, and another. Getting off that treadmill proved virtually impossible. I can identify with people who are in that situation and if they've reached out to me, they've already left the diving board and that’s the first step of their recovery.

 

They're free falling into a new phase of their life. A new life they’ll need to experience to see if it’s for them as sometimes people lose their identity as they simply don’t recognise the new person, they see now see in the mirror.

 

Let's say, for example, the person is no longer grossly overweight. They're no longer the gargantuan person with this larger-than-life personality that everybody liked. Suddenly, they feel part of their charisma has gone. Part of their personal 'Wow factor’ has disappeared and they are now blending in with everyone else.

 

There are plenty of comedians and singers who’ve done exactly that. They’ve dined out on careers of being a larger-than-life character and after losing their excess weight lose their routine and revert to type.

 

That's the thing, when you commit to change with me it is a rebirth, a complete rebirth. And it’s amazingly quick. It’s a case of your personality trying to keep up with your shrinking body. I endeavour to bring things into three-month cycle where in just 90 days we can bring about the most significant amount of change.

 

Remember the six weeks of the summer holidays we had back at school? It's a bit like that. Six weeks when you were a child seemed like an eternity, but for an adult it’s a month and a half – double it and there’s enough time to move a mountain.

 

Stick at it and before you know it, tweleve weeks has become six months. You can lose six stones in six months. As a percentage of your life, it’s nothing, a time where breakthroughs are a daily occurrence. Getting the boulder to move is the key and before you know it, it's rolling down the hill faster than Indiana Jones can escape.

 

I have taken people from twenty-three stones to thirteen stones and then to run the Marathon Des Sables in just 209 days. Taking someone grossly overweight to be fit enough to survive the world toughest foot race speaks volumes for getting into the right mindset. 

 

My client was easy to re-program, as he wholeheartedly wanted to make the change. He was 100 per cent willing starting with a meagre 15,000 daily steps, building quickly to 25,000 and beyond.

 

If somebody is doing that, you know they mean business. He really wanted that change. He'd met a person I’d previously transformed and had thought 'Well, if you can do it with them, you can do it with me.' 

 

Before working with me he'd become disenchanted with how he was spending his life, what he was doing to relax, what he was doing for entertainment and adventure. He went from a very sedentary life and decided that there was a world of fitness out there and that he wanted to be part of. A new tribe, which sounds a bit culty, but what I’ve created is a safe environment in which to change. It's very caring place and one in which to live the dream that I’m still living myself.

 

And the dream, of course, is to live a long, happy fruitful life. And for me, it's about achievement within that life. I wanted and still want to achieve. I wanted to make my mark on the world, a footprint on humanity.

 

If it's your own Wikipedia page that floats your boat, well that's fine. If you discover a cure for leprosy or even produce time travel, then that's also fine. 

 

‘Endeavour to be remembered for something’, is what I say. In a lifetime, we waste time, and the fact is, I don't want to waste a moment. 

 

People, me included, have wasted a lot of life. We do it through a combination of poor choices, bad luck and surrounding ourselves with the wrong people. One day you wake up in a bad dream and think, 'Hold on a minute, what’s going on and why am I doing what I’m doing?’

 

I've witnessed it with clients. I've stood people on the scales and have said, 'Congratulations, you're 25 stones.' And they go, 'Oh, I thought it was about 20 – but 25? Really?' People just don't realise their predicament. They say, ‘I knew it would be bad, but not that bad’.

 

Waking up in the cold light of day makes for a real moment of realisation and a great opportunity to reach out for help.

 

What makes me different from other people offering help and advice out there is the method and the promise. I try and treat the whole mind and body. It's a universal approach to health and fitness. 

 

We try to look at every aspect of life to get them all in balance, so that the thing that you’re keen on pursuing and pushing towards has a firm foundation. We endeavour to fix home, work, relationships, children, money, debt: the list is endless. Knowing those details gives me an idea about what's going on. From there we make a fully tailored programme. We're talking about life here. We're talking about the future. We're talking about the big picture.

 

If we're going to fix that, we’ll need to fix everything.

 

When I work with a client, I’ll make a lot of suggestions. A lot of what I do is opening people's minds up to possibilities of things they’d never previously considered. I'm not some kind of drill sergeant. I'm not ‘The Terminator’. I can't force change or make you go to the gym. Even if you do 90 per cent of what we plan, you'll still succeed. I like to be seen to be supportive but fair.

 

But that doesn't mean I’m weak, and I don't suffer fools gladly. I am critical but being critical doesn't have to be a negative thing either. This is about being honest.

 

I'm not a big 'Well done!' person because if you are 130 kilos and you've lost 50 kilos, do you need me to say, 'Well done?' It's obvious that you've moved a mountain. I've entered your world. We've got rid of the fat but hopefully and more importantly we've identified why you gained the weight in the first place.

 

We've stopped the behavioural trait that’s overshadowed so much of the past and now we can build a brighter future. And when the process eventually comes to an end and it’s time to fly, I’ll be there cheering you on. 

 

But first, there's a weaning off period where we’re no longer holding hands. When I’ve worked with people throughout out their journey, hopefully we’ve discovered the answer to future happiness. It’s the right solution. Onwards, it feels like their making their own plans. And if they pursue it, in the belief of its of their own doing, they're more likely to follow it. 

 

When you jump into this new world, you’ll need some idea of where you're going. There’s a vision of where this journey will take you but actually where you’ll end up is often completely different. The route takes lots of twists and turns and lots of detours but that's part of the fun.

 

It happens every time. I can't think of anybody that has just said, 'I'm here now, I want to be there tomorrow,' and everything then followed the script. People develop, the process develops.

 

I said to someone the other day that they would make a great teacher. Kids would love them. And they replied, 'Well, yeah, I do like kids.' I said I thought they they'd be just perfect for teaching – why not go and investigate it? 

 

I believe it’s their vocation in life and could be the adventure that they've been looking for in life. People never think they're extraordinary. They never think that they can become an extraordinary person. 

It's all about taking that first step.

1,164 Marathons - 273 Ultras - 16 MDS - 1 Life

Get the Message - Electronic 1991

Flying the Flag at MDS 2017

Here is Chapter 12 of my next book 'Reborn to Run' in its second edit. I'd be interested in knowing what you think. So here goes...

This song is by the English band Electronic formed by Bernard Sumner, vocalist of New Order and Johnny Marr guitarist of the Smiths. Being released at the very time when I was at my lowest point made it a kind of 'Realisation Anthem'. The lyrics spoke to me about 'Living and Dying' and the truth of the matter was that the message simply wasn't getting through and registering in my clouded alcohol and nicotine infected necrotic world. As for not knowing where to begin, well that line still rings in my ears some thirty years on. Today, the balance of Sumner's lyrics and Marr's music makes for perfect listening for a time long ago but not forgotten.

It's a shame it took me so long to get the message. I wasn’t always like I am now. In fact, when I look back at why and how my life has changed, I realise that at one point in my life, like many of my clients, I was in living in a massive, out-of-control nosedive. Where luckily before I hit rock bottom, I managed to pull out of crashing into oblivion, in the nick of time.

 

I didn’t rise and soar majestically like an eagle - I just about managed to save myself and level out. It’s a feeling we all experienced during the COVID-19 epidemic. Our very existence was challenged, people’s livelihoods were wiped out in a moment and as a nation we were stripped back to the basics.

 

The basics being to stay indoors. Not to mix with other people and work from home whilst the Government’s boffins endeavoured to find a vaccine and the National Health Service found a way to cope. We were all challenged and put into level flight. People’s lives were put on hold in a hope that a more ‘normal service’ would be resumed as soon as possible.

 

Similarly, during my own nosedive, all those years ago, I realised that I couldn't fix things in a moment I had to find an antidote to my situation. The problem had become too overwhelming as there was too much that I didn’t like about myself. However, I felt if I stopped the drinking, the smoking and went on a diet, I might be able to assess my other short comings. I would put myself into a period of suspended animation where I could put things right and then discover what and where I was going for the rest of my life. 

 

It echoed my starting point. My ‘Point Zero’. The point where things couldn’t possibly get any worse. An embarrassing ‘Personal Rock Bottom’ where the only way I felt was up.

 

My predicament wasn’t a quick fix. All I could do at first was to imagine a brighter future. It became the most important part of the fresh mindset that I needed to adopt and understand.

 

Certainly, with my own alcohol addiction in the 90’s - and then again when I had Guillain-Barré Syndrome in 2016, I used the same mindset to stop myself from crashing. It didn’t immediately fix either situation but instead parked the problems whilst I searched for an escape strategy. A stabilisation period that would provide the perfect opportunity for personal reflection and personal honesty.

 

So much of our time is spent inventing excuses when things go wrong, when there’s only ever one person to blame - yourself. You’re a victim of your own choices and whatever predicament you find yourself in, is of your own doing in one way or another. It sounds harsh, but it’s true.

 

It’s actually a combination of poor timing, poor choices, and coincidences. However, in life the planets hardly ever line up. We are all aware when they do and we’ve all been in situations where everything’s looking rosy, where business or relationships are firing on all cylinders, only to find out that it goes on to fail for one or all of the above reasons.

 

In our daily lives we tend to only plan for success - we never plan for failure. As a nation we are happy to insure over 30 million cars in the UK every year yet only 11% of people have private health insurance. My belief is that your health is your wealth and without your health, you have nothing. Paying to jump the queue is a no-brainer, yet most people won’t do it. Possibly because they can’t afford it and they don’t see the value in it, or they think it’s unfair to queue-jump others. However, when the chips are down, we’ll all wish we’d invested as it can be too late to give the problem to an already overloaded NHS and wait in line to be fixed before it’s too late. 

 

‘If only’ is a hard life-lesson indeed.

 

But that’s what happened during COVID? We found the nation couldn’t cope, because 50,000+ people a day were becoming ill and as a result, other people with serious illnesses didn’t get seen. 

 

What I propose instead is to manage your own destiny. I believe we tend to spend too much time thinking about what’s missing and what’s going wrong rather than thinking about what you want to happen. 

 

Question yourself. What are you doing? Where are you going? What’s holding you back and stopping you from getting the foundations in place. That’s the hardest part to get right. It's about getting everything in its right place. But where do you start? It’s easy if all the building blocks are laid out with an easy-to-follow set of instructions but ‘Life’ is a different kind of DIY project.

 

Imagine a huge set of dominoes lined up ready to be toppled. There are thousands upon thousands laid out and all you need to do to complete a very satisfying toppling is to set the first domino in motion.

 

Unfortunately, there’s never enough time to get all of one’s dominoes lined up as there are always distractions. Therefore, the problems never get resolved. However, if we break it down into two or three dominoes at a time problem and knock those over, we can start making progress and stop the delaying procrastination. Eventually this way, all the dominoes could be toppled.

 

It doesn’t matter if the direction you take isn’t quite right or things aren’t happening at the right speed, at least you’ve started. There’s nothing worse than 'I’ll do it later’ or ‘I’ll start tomorrow’ or even worse ‘I can’t be bothered'. For heaven’s sake, my message is ‘JUST GET STARTED!’

 

You don’t need flashy trainers to go for a run and you don’t need to join a gym. You can start running from your front door. I know that, because that’s what I did - I knew there was something missing, a void in my life where I needed to run to find out what the ‘missing’ was. 

 

I felt my ‘missing’ was ‘achievement’ and that became the focal part of my mindset. I wanted to achieve the self-satisfaction that accompanies achievement. And part of that achieving was doing things to the best of my ability.

 

When I went for that first run, I didn’t set out to run more than 1,000 marathons or set multiple Guinness World Records or run across deserts or even write books. I was looking for structure. An 'exoskeleton', if you like, to hang the rest of my life on. A structure in my shaky, chaotic world.

 

It’s about being driven and finding out what drives you on. That’s down to two different personality traits perhaps and whether you are ‘reward’, or ‘experience’ driven.

 

Let me explain the difference. I’ve run all those marathons and have an enormous number of medals from doing them, yet they’re tucked away in a shopping bag in the loft. They’re not on show as I’m not reward driven, I’m experience driven. So, if I didn’t pick up a medal at the end of a race, it wouldn’t matter, what does matter is that I’ve got the memories of an achievement that will live with me forever.

 

These achievements are etched into my DNA.

 

I’m very much experience driven - whereas other’s love a medal or a trophy where it’s not the taking part but only the winning that counts. However, I found having an ‘Experience Goal’ really helped me survive.

 

Finding myself with Guillain-Barré Syndrome (GBS) and thinking, 'I’ve just run the Marathon des Sables and there’s another one in twelve months’ time - can I get fit in time to do it?' That became the driver - a proper ‘Experience Goal’. It became a major part of my recovery method especially as I thought I’d never see the Sahara Desert ever again. Emotionally I was all in.

 

For me, it's all about the memories, and even the best photo provides just a snapshot of a moment - I have this amazing photo of me running down a sand dune a year on from GBS carrying the Welsh Flag full of life. Yet prior to seeing the photographer I’d felt exhausted and out for the count. When I look at the photo, my sense of pride shines out, yet I can assure you only a few metres prior to the snap, I was struggling to make a slow walk and felt totally broken.

 

I’d decided to go back to the Marathon des Sables, in 2017, as a kind of experiment just to see if I could do it. An experiment without instructions or any previous experience as a reference of how to complete ‘The World’s Toughest Footrace’ whilst recovering from an obscure neurological syndrome. The only guide I had was ‘Coleman Gut-Instinct’.  

 

My thought process went along the lines that life doesn’t come with a handbook and the best judge of any predicament is yourself. I mean, no one tells you when you’re born just how easy or hard life is going to be; we just find out along the way.

 

My initial recovery thoughts were a case of, 'Wow I’ve been in shit a few times, but not as never as bad as this before’ and when you’re lying there paralysed in a hospital bed literally in your own body fluids, I felt I needed to gather my thoughts and emotions to try and discover a solution.

 

Never in my mind did I think, ‘Why me,' and I always envisaged that things would return to normal.' At the time anyone looking in might have thought, 'Hmm, I’m not so sure.' But then I didn’t have any negative thoughts about my recovery outcome when I was ill - the only thing I was mad about was being stuck on 976 marathons for over five months.

 

I recently saw a photograph on social media of someone wearing their 2016 Robin Hood Marathon medal. I just thought, 'Ah that’s the one that got away.' My thousandth - the ‘marathon that never happened’. It illustrated to me that life's not this fantastic easy ride. Life bites back. Things happen. People happen. Illness happens. Shit happens. You’re simply in the wrong place at the wrong time and when it does go wrong, what are you going to do about it? 

 

Become a victim? Listen to the Energy Vampires? Become Super-Negative?

 

You know, a few people thought I faked my illness saying 'There’s nothing wrong with you. You are just doing it for self-promotion purposes.' Can you believe that? The negative attitude towards me was interesting and only fuelled my attitude of recovery. I just dismissed the blast of Kryptonite and started thinking, 'How on Earth am I going to get better?’ And if I’m wanting to be seen as this amazing ‘Lifestyle Coach’ and can’t fix myself, then I’m in the wrong game.'

 

My thoughts were ‘Onwards. The only way to look is ahead.' And maybe this was of my own doing. Maybe my condition was a result of running all those marathons – I mean, my immune system must have been shot. Who knows? But then, so what, it was done, and I couldn’t change it however much I might have wished. 

 

What I could do, was to start shaping the future and begin breaking down the ‘Everest’ of getting better that lay ahead. We often regard problems as mountains and although everyone’s Everest might be of a different height, mountains are there to be conquered.

 

If your ‘Everest’ is alcohol addiction, well it’s a tricky climb as there’s only a 1 in 4 chance of a ‘Cold Turkey’ sobriety success. However, when people work with me the 25% becomes more of 90% success, as it’s the mindset and accountability that I project that helps provide a vision for people to see where sobriety can take them. 

 

With my own addiction, I never thought about stopping drinking being a lifelong adventure. I just thought about it being a bit of a one-day at a time kinda effort. 

 

And that's my mindset in general, live the day. Break it down into, what are you doing today? What are you doing in the next hour? What are you doing in the next ten minutes? One step at a time. 

 

If you break it down, you’ll survive. 

 

When you can and can do it consistently, you’ll find the pain and the negative thoughts diminish. The addiction goes and the grief will go with it. There’s suddenly light at the end of the tunnel and the world starts to become a brighter place. And when good things start to happen or someone pays you a compliment, that’s an even bigger reason to try even harder.

1,163 Marathons - 273 Ultras - 16 MDS - 9 GWR - 1 Life