To Be Inspired

I have been reflecting this week on one year in my job and lots to do with life in general and not to burden you with goo and gushy writing I just wanted to try and understand myself how I got here.

Reading and writing has helped me massively, and I never thought it would because it was always something I was told that I was no good at, I remember so well when the teacher in my middle school (Ashmead) told me how my writing looked like a spider has jumped in an inkwell and ran across the page “I don’t know why you bother doing my homework at all!”.

I think a light switched on for me when I was about 43 years old. I started to read which was a catalyst for me to write. I was reading about people like Dr Wayne Dyer, Inky Johnson and more recently Wim Hof and of course as you all know by now, I’ve been listening to Bob Marley all my life, so with all of that and TED talks too, I feel that my eyes and ears have been opened a lot.

It was Inky Johnson that said, “why not me?”, these three simple words helped me so much, to use your loss or disability to help others rather than say “Why me?”.

When you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change. Albert Einstein once observed that the most fundamental and major decision that you have to make in your life is this… “Do I live in a friendly or a hostile universe?” which is it? Is it a universe that is filled with hostility and anger and people wanting to hate each other, people wanting to kill each other, is that what you see because when you see the world that way that’s exactly what you will create for yourself in your life, this is from great scientific minds and the interesting thing is that this is not just a clever play on words that when you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change. Imagine the following scene… You’re in your house, you have your car keys in your hand, the lights go out, power failure. You can’t see a thing; you stumble around in your living room, and you drop your keys and you look around for a moment and you realise that you’re never going to find them in the dark but you look outside and you notice that the street lights are on. So, in your mind a light bulb goes off “I’m not going to sit around here in the dark and grope around looking for my keys when there’s a light on outside, I’m going to go out here under the streetlight and I’m going to look for my keys”. You may be laughing, this makes a lot of sense, so you’re out here groping around and you’re looking for your keys and you’re looking and looking and your neighbour comes along and says “What happened” and you say “well I dropped my keys” and the neighbour says “well I’ll help you look for them” so now there’s two of you on the ground looking for the keys and finally he says: “excuse me but where did you drop your keys?” well um… I dropped them in the house. He said, “you mean to tell me that you dropped your keys in the house and you’re looking for them out here in the streetlight, it doesn’t make sense” and you said well, it doesn’t make any sense to grope around in the dark when there’s light out here. So many laugh and think how silly that is but it is exactly what we do, when we have a problem, a difficulty, a struggle that is located INSIDE and we’re looking for the solution OUTSIDE. Some place outside of ourselves. It would be like going to the Doctor and telling him all of your symptoms and the doctor says: Oh boy, you’ve got a lot of symptoms and he starts writing our prescriptions. You need a prescription for this symptom, you need a prescription for that symptom and finally he gets 4 or 5 prescriptions, and you go to walk out and say well I’d like my prescriptions and he says “No, no, no, I’ll give this one to your mother-in-law, I’ll give this one to your neighbour, I’ll give this one to your boss…” and so on and so on. You’re the one with the struggles and with the difficulties expecting somebody else to change or something outside of you to get better in order for you to make your life work is something you really have to take a hard look at, it's inside of you.

It's not always been this way, I’ve not always been the inspirational one to look up to, far from it. I remember before Michelle came along and before I decided to go from negative to positive, I had nothing at all. I lived in arrears in a council house that I wasn’t worthy of and eventually, justifiably, got evicted from and had to live in a bedsit by myself with other people who I didn’t even know, and I felt the lowest of the low and everyone thought I was happy-go-lucky Martin, the life and soul. I had made massive mistakes and it wasn’t until I put it all on myself that I would be able to get back up again. It’s similar to trying to encourage an addict to give something up when they’re not in a place to do so, and then there was a light switch moment and I knew the only person that could help me, was me.

I heard this a while ago and it resonated with me so much that it still has some of my headspace today, I heard a story from Wayne Dyer who was visiting an addiction centre and the sign on the wall said “There are no justified resentments in this group” and what he said to the group that night was no matter what anybody says to you here, no matter what kind of anger comes directed towards you, no matter how much hate you may encounter showing up in your life, there are no justified resentments. Meaning, that if you carry around resentment inside of you, about anything or about anyone and I’m talking about the person that you lent money and hasn’t paid you back, I’m talking about the person in your life that you feel was abusive in your life, I’m talking about the person who walked out on you and left you for someone else, I’m talking about ALL of the things that you have justified in your heart and in your life that you have that right to be resentful about and I am suggesting to you that those resentments will always end up harming you and creating in you a sense of despair. No one ever dies from a snake bite. The snake bite will never kill you. You can not be un-bitten. Once you’re bitten, you’re bitten. But it’s the venom that continues to poor through your system AFTER the bite that will end up destroying you.

Occasionally all of us deserve a top up on good things, it is recommended in the third sector that we watch, read and listen for inspirational stories and inspirational people to keep the fire lit. I feel everyone in life should look out for positives and try to better ourselves as people, as I already said, it’s all on us and if we better ourselves from the learnings of other then so be it.

Lastly, gratitude is everything to me. I used to wish for so much and felt hard done by but now I have huge focus on what I have and not on what I do not have, I feel extremely lucky.

 

Be good, be nice and look out for others and not for others faults.  x

#MusclesMatter

One Year at MD UK - A very lucky and grateful man