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tried this five mins ago and it crashed so here goes again. This is the next chapt in Choose Happiness ten steps to put the magic back into your life Accept There Might Be a Higher Power Step Two I THINK I’VE BEEN LUCKY. I seem to have been born with an inherent belief that there’s more to life than we can explain in material or scientific terms. Even as a young child I could feel ‘vibes’ from other people and animals and felt an invisible connection between us all. As I grew older I learned it was sometimes better not to talk about this sort of thing too much – especially if you were male. People might think you were a bit strange. Thankfully things are changing in this aspect, which is possibly why (if you’re a man) you are reading this book. In my opinion we are all connected to each other at a spiritual level and connected to some invisible something else that’s part of the life force itself. I’m convinced of it. You don’t have to agree with me. You don’t have to accept that this strange power definitely exists. But I think you’d be wise to accept the possibility that it might because then you won’t feel so silly trying out some of the techniques we’ll be discussing later. On the other hand, if you still prefer to believe that things just happen by accident or in response to actions you’ve taken in terms of pure logic, then that’s okay too. You can still learn something from the techniques in this book. As I said right at the beginning – you behave better – you get a better result. It can be as simple as that. There might, as many people believe, be no ‘magic’ involved at all. But isn’t that a dull and slightly depressing sort of attitude to take? To think there’s no magic in life? As a tv writer I’m often irritated when tv producers say they are looking for more ‘gritty realism’ in the scripts they are offered. I suppose we all understand what they mean but why is ‘grittiness’ any more realistic than say cleanliness or light-heartedness? Is a piece of grit any more ‘real’ than a snowflake or a sunflower? Why don’t producers ever say they are looking for a bit of ‘frothy realism’? I’d be happy to oblige and I know plenty of other people who feel the same. I promise you that ‘miracles’ do sometimes happen. You may vehemently deny this at the moment but who knows? You might consider changing your opinion if you decide to read on but we’ll see. So if you’re still on board let’s move on to: Keeping an open mind I’ve already told you of the happenings surrounding my friend Bryan’s death and the effect they had on me. Now I’ll mention just two more strange experiences I had as a young man that still make me shudder when I think of them. Both happened before my friend’s death. The first when I was working for a time as what used to be called a ‘tally’ man. That is, a person (man or woman) who was part salesperson and part debt-collector. I travelled around in a little van, visiting customers on a door-to-door basis, to sell them more stuff and to collect their weekly payments for the things they’d already had. It was one of the few jobs I quite enjoyed because it was so varied and you met such interesting people. (A few who occasionally offered to settle their bills in unusual ways but that’s another story.) So here we go: The near miss I happened to be running late one particular day (nothing to do with the unusual settling of bills I hasten to add) and was sprinting in and out of houses, jumping into my van, practically doing wheelies as I made screeching three-point turns and looked for short-cuts. At one particular house near the end of a cul-de-sac I drove right into their driveway so I’d be able to reverse into the street facing back the way I’d come. The privet hedges were very short so I had an excellent view all around. This quiet little street seemed totally deserted as I came out of the house and jumped into the van. I looked over my shoulder and prepared to zoom into the street without any obstructions to worry about. But for some unaccountable reason I found my foot lifting of the accelerator and slamming down on the brakes before I’d moved at all. I slipped into neutral, checked both wing mirrors and again turned in my seat to look out of the back windows. I could see nothing behind me – the way seemed completely clear. I was wasting valuable time. But despite what I’ve said about screeching turns I’ve always been a very careful driver (especially after Bryan’s terrible accident) and had only been hurrying in conditions of perfect safety. Now I didn’t feel comfortable. I switched off the engine, got out and walked to the rear of my van. Sitting, very quietly, on the driveway, just inches from my rear bumper, was a little girl – just a toddler. She was happily playing with a toy and completely oblivious of any danger. It transpired that she had ‘escaped’ from a nearby garden and had no realisation of the dreadfully dangerous position she’d put herself in. She smiled up at me as I gently coaxed her back to her own house. Now I know what sceptics will say – that I had probably seen the child playing outside on a previous occasion and realised she might be there again that day – or that I must have caught a glimpse of her without fully realising it – or that I’d heard the toy scraping on the ground. And maybe they have a point? Maybe something like that happened. But that’s not the way I remember it. I was in an area that wasn’t all that familiar to me. To the best of my knowledge I’d never seen the child before and it would have been hard to hear anything less than a shout over the sound of my engine. As far as I’m concerned I just had a ‘feeling’ that seemed to come from nowhere. I dread to think how I could have lived with the guilt, of what might so easily have happened that day, if I hadn’t ‘listened’ to my inner signals. The second incident of a similar nature probably saved my own life and the life of a workmate. It went like this: The ‘safe’ hide-out The two of us, myself and another labourer, were working at the old Derby Power Station (in the English Midlands) and had been given a particular task to perform by lunchtime. We managed to finish early and were killing time as we waited to go for our break. We wandered into a part of the site we didn’t know very well and found a furnace door to one of the boilers wide open. The door didn’t reach down to the floor it was quite small and about three feet off the ground. It was made of thick metal but also lined with fire-proof bricks. Looking inside the boiler we could see piles of old ashes on the floor and water pipes stretching up the walls like the pipes of a huge church organ. Everything looked rusty and old. We decided it must be a disused boiler and maybe one that was due to be repaired. It looked very interesting. Incredible as it now seems, we decided to scramble inside and have a closer look. Once inside we stood amongst the cold ashes that seemed like friendly sand-dunes and looked upwards at the lights streaming through small viewing windows’ set at least one floor above. The sounds of the factory had disappeared completely. The walls were so thick that even loud noises couldn’t penetrate. It was strangely peaceful and relaxing. My workmate suggested this was the perfect place for us to ‘hide’ from our bosses for a while. Realising we might be spotted through the open furnace door we managed to pull it into an almost closed position. Then we sat on the ashes and shared a newspaper my work- mate had been carrying around in his haversack. He sorted out a little bag of sandwiches and offered me one. It was like a beach picnic but with restricted views and no swimmers. We stayed like that for about fifteen minutes before I started to feel uncomfortable. With the ‘organ’ pipes and the quietness I had initially thought it was almost like sitting in the first few pews of a church but now it seemed more like being inside a tomb. I suddenly ‘knew’ that we shouldn’t stay there a moment longer. My workmate started to argue about it – saying we only had another fifteen minutes to go and we didn’t want to be seen standing around doing nothing. He said we’d be given some meaningless task to do and expected to do more in future. I refused to listen. I was feeling really worried by then. I lay on my back, pushed the heavy door open with my feet and slid out. I urged my workmate to follow. A bit reluctantly he did. ‘You work too hard and too fast,’ he said, ‘No wonder the other blokes don’t like being paired-off with you.’ There was some truth in what he said. I was in my twenties – very fit and strong and I enjoyed a challenge. We’d filled a huge lorry with rubbish in half the time some of the older labourers would have taken and in a way it was a bit unfair that we’d be more likely to be ‘punished’ for it than congratulated. Our foreman wasn’t a bad person because he understood how hard physical work can be but there were people above him who weren’t always so considerate. Anyway we’d been out of the boiler for less than a minute – and still dusting the dry ashes from our overalls when a man in a white boiler-suit came along and closed the furnace door we’d just climbed out of. He didn’t just close it – he made sure it was firmly latched into place and then started to walk briskly away towards a staircase leading upwards. I shared a silent look with my workmate. We didn’t need to say a word. We each knew exactly what the other was thinking. Had we still been inside the boiler would we have heard anything at all before the door had been closed that final inch or so? And if not would this man have heard us shouting? It seemed unlikely. The man was very brisk and businesslike and hadn’t even noticed us standing there in the open. He’d passed us with barely a glance in our direction. It’s true we’d moved away from the furnace door but not that far away. He might have paused to wonder what we were doing there, partly smothered in ashes. I hurried after the man in the white boiler-suit and politely asked him what was going on. ‘Nothing unusual,’ he said, ‘I’m just starting- up this boiler.’ He was a nice man and very interested in his job. He didn’t ask us why we were doing nothing. He invited us to go upstairs to the control panel and watch what happened next. We peered through one of the viewing panels as he pressed a button that released a thick cloud of what looked like black smoke. He explained that it was pulverised coal. He allowed me to press another button. That released a flame and possibly some kind of volatile vapour. The fuel erupted into a huge ball of fire that rolled, red and white, like a vision of hell. It was quite a sight. I realised that from this high position and at this angle we couldn’t have seen the floor of the boiler even without the coal-dust and the flames. I politely asked the nice man why he hadn’t bothered to look inside the boiler before he’d closed the furnace door. ‘What for?’ he asked. ‘Do you look inside your central heating boiler at home before you turn it on?’ Ignoring the fact that I didn’t actually have a central heating boiler at that time (since my first wife and I lived in a tiny caravan – which I usually described as a detached residence set in rural surroundings) I told him a domestic boiler wasn’t likely to have workmen inside it. ‘Nor is this one,’ he explained, ‘Not without my knowledge and the permission of the top management and not without somebody erecting warning signs and sectioning the whole area off with reflective tape. Boilers are very dangerous things you know,’ Then he added, ‘You have to treat them with respect.’ ‘Right,’ I said, ‘So you knew there’d be nobody in there working – but supposing somebody was in there for another reason?’ ‘Such as?’ he asked. I was about to say, ‘To read a newspaper and eat their sandwiches,’ but thought I’d better not. ‘Well – just to have a closer look, out of curiosity,’ I said. He held my glance for a few seconds as if he’d realised what I was implying but then he dismissed it and smiled, ‘What kind of an idiot would do that?’ he said. My workmate and I realised that in all probability, if we’d stayed inside that death trap for just another minute or so we would both have disappeared from the face of the earth without a trace. Even our bones would have been nothing but fine ashes and nobody would have gone looking for them anyway. What reason would they have had to do that? It would have been clear that we’d clocked-in for work that morning, finished one task and then just vanished. The only thing that sometime gets a laugh when I tell people this story is the thought that my first wife, my son, and all my relations might have thought I’d run off with another man or been abducted by aliens. But joking aside – not a very happy prospect for them or the partner of my workmate – who would all have suffered for years, maybe for the rest of their lives, hoping vainly for us to get in touch. Very occasionally I’ve dreamed of what those last few moments might have been like, with that thick metal and brick door being closed completely and the cloud of choking black coal-dust swirling down on us before the explosion of heat and flame hit. If I hadn’t, once again, paid attention to my inner ‘feelings’. But was it just my imagination? I realise that every example of receiving messages I’ve given so far in this book, has involved myself as receiver of the message. And I’ve already admitted I might have been fooling myself, so maybe it’s time I included a story where someone else plays the main part. This happened much later, after I’d changed my life around. I was sitting with a group of people who were attending a writers’ event at The Hayes Conference Centre in Swanwick, near Derby. I’d gone to see a friend of mine who was there as a delegate. We met in a pub just outside the conference centre. My friend introduced me to several people and we smiled, shook hands and swapped the usual pleasantries. But one lady, Marian Hough, held on to my hand a moment longer than the others, looked steadily into my eyes and said, ‘You look very sad. Is everything alright?’ I told her in no more than a couple of sentences, that several difficult things had happened very recently, including the sudden and totally unexpected death of a close family member. She apologised for being so personal and I told her not to worry. I wasn’t upset or offended. The conversation took a more general turn and we all started talking about writing and the courses on offer at the conference. But during a lull Marion leaned closer to me and whispered, ‘Please forgive me for asking but who’s John?’ Then before I had chance to answer she added, ‘And what’s cricket got to do with anything? He’s standing just behind you and showing me a cricket bat.’ I didn’t need to turn around and look for a real live person, with a name- tag, wearing a blazer and carrying some sporting equipment. It was obvious that Marion was looking at somebody that nobody else in the room could see. And the close family member who’d died so recently was my brother John. Until John had died I’d had three brothers. The other two, like me, were mad about football. John had always been mad about cricket. We’d play for hours in the backyard with a ‘real’ cricket bat and a tennis ball. Very few people in that working-class district had even seen a real cricket bat but John had a bat of his own. None of the family could bowl him out for what seemed like ages and when anyone did he’d bowl them out within minutes. He’d had trials for Derbyshire as a youth and later followed them all over the country as a spectator. I can’t think of any symbol more appropriate, than a cricket bat, to convince me this lady knew what she was talking about. In any case she then went on to tell me a couple of things that it would have been almost impossible for her to guess at. Things about the circumstances of John’s death. She wasn’t just ‘fishing’ for details and in fact I barely said a word. She was at pains to tell me something she felt was important, though she didn’t understand why. It was important – very important. There had been some confusion surrounding John’s death and one member of our family was thinking of making a formal complaint against the hospital on the grounds of negligence. Marion seemed to have some inkling of this and said that John wanted us all to know that his death wasn’t the result of an accident. He said we should stop worrying and accept what had happened. He also said he was happy where he was. To me, this has remarkable echoes with what happened after the terrible accident involving my best friend Bryan and his family – when the bird appeared and seemed to give me a message. Except this time I couldn’t have been imagining it because someone else was telling it to me. Sceptics may claim that I’d told Marian some of these details but as I’ve already said, I’d barely spoken. She wasn’t asking me questions – she was telling me things. And I had just met her for the very first time. So maybe people will say she was reading my thoughts? But if that’s true doesn’t it tend to prove what I’ve already said about psychic connections? Which brings me to my next point: Could thoughts be ‘things’? If my thoughts were floating about in the atmosphere, for anyone to read who had the ability, isn’t it just possible that thoughts aren’t necessarily extinguished by the death of the person who ‘transmitted’ them? I don’t see why we should have any difficulty believing that it might be possible – and even perhaps normal – for us to receive invisible messages without even knowing where they come from. We turn on the television set at the touch of a button on our remote control. We don’t see or hear the beam that causes this to work and we certainly don’t see pictures floating through the air before they appear on the screen. The human brain is far more complicated than a tv set. So why should we think it only responds to things that scientists can measure and understand? Can they measure love, sadness or happiness? No. They can only observe the effects these things have on our bodies and our behaviour. Would a scientist say that love doesn’t exist because you can’t weigh it or measure it? Are we all connected by a ‘universal’ energy force? It won’t surprise you to hear that I make no claims to be either a scientist or an intellectual. So I hope you’ll bear with me if I try, in my own clumsy way to explain how I sometimes ‘see’ all humans being connected to each other. Imagine’ if you will, going down to a beach and filling a bottle with water from the sea. If you then take the bottle away from the sea is it still part of the sea or is it something else? It’s certainly lost its awesome power until it’s returned to its source. Now imagine a human being who might be nothing more than a tiny portion of energy enclosed in a body. Removed from the ‘sea’ of universal energy, perhaps he or she becomes, like the sea-water in the bottle, much less powerful – until that person’s body dies and their energy returns to the universal energy source. But there’s a difference between these two examples. A human being isn’t entirely trapped inside his or her body in the same way that water can be trapped inside a bottle. A human being has a mind that just might be able to reach out and contact other minds. Perhaps contact the source of universal energy itself. And how powerful might that be? Going with the flow To carry-on a little further using water as a metaphor, can you imagine life flowing like a river? Obviously a river flows more smoothly without dams and boulders being put in its way. Surely your life is just like that. It flows along better without having too many obstacles put in the way. And do you think you might be creating some of those obstacles for yourself? Canoeing on a river can be great fun. I tried it once in America. But it was much easier going downstream than upstream – going with the flow and not against it. It’s true that, as human beings, we sometimes feel that the flow is going in the ‘wrong’ direction and we feel morally obliged to go against it. But to fight against the current when it’s heading in the right direction, as so many people do, just doesn’t make sense to me. Or am I just fooling myself again? What about organised religion? I happen to be a practising Christian who attends church regularly but significantly the church I belong to is very open-minded and tolerant. If it wasn’t I would stop going there. We don’t deny people of other religions the right to worship in their own way and anyone is welcomed into our services – whatever their faith. During a recent radio interview I said I was thinking of writing a book called, Forget Religion And Start Believing In God. I was joking but the more I thought about it afterwards the more it seemed like a reasonable idea. There are so many things I am still doubtful about where organised religion is concerned. I don’t like the fact that many religions are so male-biased for a start, or that people of differing religions (or sometimes people of different branches of the same religion) want to kill each other. I simply don’t understand this. My own belief is that you don’t need to formally worship a God you can distinguish from other Gods and you don’t, necessarily, have to follow rigid, man-made, rules you might not agree with. But, on the other hand, my experiences suggest to me that being willing to believe there might be a superior power – a power that provides direction and order in the universe – is not only helpful but also commonsense. Can a human being really think there are no ‘natural’ rules gov- erning what happens in any way – that every happening is a random event – and there’s no sense or pattern to anything? This reminds me of a nice little story I’ve heard in more than one, slightly differing version. I’m not sure if it’s actually based on some- thing that really happened but it could be and it certainly does get the point across. The version I give here is based on something I read in an excellent magazine called, The Word For Today which is distributed by the Evangelical Christian organisation, United Christian Broadcasting. Creation or random happening? A scientist who didn’t believe in any kind of God was visiting a friend who happened to be a Christian. These two had discussed the issue of creation many times. The Christian believed that God had made the Universe and given it some kind of Divine order. The scientist thought there was no ‘intelligence’ at work here. That everything in the universe and on Earth had simply ‘happened’ at random. The scientist noticed a little model of a garage made out of Lego blocks and asked if his host’s young daughter had made it. The Christian smiled and said, ‘Nobody made it. It just ‘happened’. Can you see the irony here? Could even a model made out of plastic blocks just ‘happen?’ Could the pieces tumble out of a box and assemble themselves in perfect order? Similarly, could the pieces of something much more complicated, like a thousand piece jigsaw puzzle simply form themselves into a perfect picture without any help at all? So we think it’s perfectly sensible to say that a simple Lego model or a jigsaw puzzle has to be created by someone. But that amazingly complicated things like, plants, fishes, animals, birds, insects and human-beings can just happen by themselves. Does that really seem sensible? I began this chapter by asking if a belief in a higher power was necessary. I hope I’ve made it very clear by now that it can certainly help. But it does no harm to have a questioning attitude. That’s the way to learn things. All I’m asking you to do is accept the possibility that there might be something beyond human understanding in the universe. Some power, that can come to your aid if you’re willing to listen and give the existence of that power the benefit of the doubt. It’s true that it doesn’t always seem to work but that’s no reason to say it doesn’t exist or that it might not be working to your advantage in some way that isn’t immediately obvious. People, like doctors, teachers, and solicitors, who help us make important decisions in our lives aren’t always right but that doesn’t mean they don’t really exist! And isn’t it a bit silly to say you don’t believe in a higher power because you wish for some things that never come true? When you were a child your parents may have seemed like all-knowing, all- powerful beings but they couldn’t (and hopefully didn’t) give you everything you asked for. When they said No you didn’t stop believing in their existence. And I’m guessing it didn’t stop you asking for other things either. So if you’re not yet prepared to believe – just be willing to suspend your disbelief and never stop asking. Step Two Accept there might be a higher power Keep an open mind – you have nothing to lose and everything to gain Why does ‘reality’ always have to be ‘gritty’? Is a speck of grit any more real than a snowflake or a sunflower? Pay attention to your inner-feelings when they are urging ‘good’ actions Consider the proposition that thoughts may be ‘things’ If thoughts are things then other people may be able to receive them Consider that we all came from the same source of energy Do we always stay in contact with that universal energy force? Don’t put obstacles in your own way It’s easier to flow downstream than fight against the current It’s sensible to go with the flow when it’s heading in the ‘right’direction Worship a God – not a religion If a toy garage needs a creator could a whole universe just happen? Step Three Deciding what you want IMAGINE GOING INTO A TRAVEL AGENCY and saying you’d love to go on a trip but are not sure where you want to go, when you want to go or how much you’re willing to pay. Maybe you’d get lucky and the person talking to you would have lots of time and patience and be willing to help. But sooner or later you would have to make the deci- sions yourself. And think how much easier and quicker this procedure would be if you’d done a bit of thinking in advance. Now apply this to your life as a whole. Suppose for a moment there is a higher power? Some form of Divine intelligence, willing and able to grant some, if not all of your wishes. Would you really want to make things as difficult as possible? And even if you don’t believe doesn’t it still make sense to choose happiness rather than misery; to look forward to things that you might achieve rather than simply carry-on accepting all the things you don’t really want? More than one book on positive thinking that I read in the early days advised me to start by making a wish list of some of the things I’d love to own or some of the experiences I’d love to have. It was made clear that I wasn’t being asked to limit myself to things that were already within my grasp (if only I could be bothered to make the effort). I was to ask for anything that wasn’t totally impossible. That is, I could ask for a Rolls Royce car or my own private aeroplane but not the ability to walk on water or teach a goldfish to play a piano accordion. Anyway, I can’t even remember all the things I wrote the very first time I tried it but I certainly do remember some of the ones I chose to include in my list once I started taking it seriously. Here they are: I travel to America I re-visit Singapore I have a job I love and look forward to going to work every day I meet another wonderful woman and fall in love again We have a family together We buy a big house in a really nice area I earn £50 000/$80 000 in a single year I write my own tv series Now you may be thinking that, with the exception of the bits about having my own tv series, and earning £50 000/$80 000 in a single year, this list isn’t all that remarkable or ambitious. I suppose that would be true for many people nowadays but I made this list nearly forty years ago when things were very different. Let’s take a brief look at each one of my selections. Long-haul travel was mainly for well-off people. I came from a very working-class area of Derby, which, as you may know is in the middle of England. Many of my childhood friends hadn’t even seen the sea until they were almost grown-up. And after just losing my latest job, and having no savings at all, a holiday in Skegness, less than a hundred miles away, would have been beyond me. So the idea of travelling to America and Singapore was obviously ludicrous. As for having a job I loved – well, I’d already tried over thirty jobs and hated nearly every one. Even the ‘better’ ones I found only bearable. I had no formal qualifications at all and a very poor track record. The thought of having a job I loved seemed almost as impossible as the wishes involving walking on water and having a goldfish that could busk. Meeting another wonderful woman wasn’t impossible. Derby’s (in the UK East Midland’s) always had its fair share of those. But finding one who might want to start a family with me was a very different matter. I was (and unfortunately still am) a short, stocky and very ordinary looking man. I was unemployed (if not unemployable) penniless, jobless, lacking in ambition or qualifications and on top of all that I’d just been divorced for cruelty. Hardly a great catch. It’s hard to see how I’d ever attracted my first wife. Buying houses at all was a rarity for working-class people in those days – never mind buying a big house in a really nice area. I’d be thrown out of after my divorce was owned by the council and my first wife and I been paying rent. As for earning £50,000/$80 000 in a single year, well, up to that point in my life I had never earned more than about £1,250/$2000 in a single year. Was it likely that I’d one day earn forty times more than that? Even if you are getting a lower than average wage at this moment, multiply it by forty, and you’ll get some idea how ambitious my wish must have seemed to me when I first wrote it down. I more or less plucked that figure out of thin air and didn’t take it very seriously myself. And finally I had never written a drama script of any kind and didn’t even know what a tv script looked like. I had written perhaps half a dozen short stories and managed to sell just one of them. Could I really go from that tiny success to having my own series on national television? Looked at in this light, everything on my list would surely have seemed laughable to anyone who knew me at the time. Yet, incredibly, every one of these wishes came true. I travelled to America and to Singapore, as well as to various other countries. I became a schoolteacher and enjoyed it so much that I really did look forward to Mondays! I did meet and marry another wonderful woman and did have a family – with as many as nine children at one point – hers, ours and other people’s. (We became foster- parents.) Then we needed to buy a bigger house and when we did it turned out to be one in a very nice area. And though it was hard work having such a large family (for my second wife Pat much more than me) it was great fun and very fulfilling. It also didn’t stop me from writing a successful tv series. In fact my series just happened to be a comedy drama about the lives of a married couple who decide to become foster-parents. How this came about was really quite strange. How I became a scriptwriter I was in the office of a radio producer at the BBC and ‘pitching’ ideas to him. Naturally I’d started off with what I thought was my best idea. It was the one I’d already written as a complete script and the one that had got me inside his office in the first place but he didn’t want to pursue it any further. I moved on to what I thought was my second-best idea and he didn’t like that one at all. By the time I’d reached my sixth idea I was practically making things up on the spot and he was still shaking his head. Finally I had to admit I had nothing else to talk about. I quietly accepted that I’d probably blown my big chance. I put my script and outlines back into my shoulder bag and prepared to leave. ‘I do like your writing,’ the man said, ‘Your characters and your dialogue in particular, but none of your ideas really grab me.’ Then as I was going out of the door he said, ‘Don’t give up. I’ll be happy to look at anything else you send.’ By then I didn’t really want to talk anymore. I wanted to punch him for wasting my time and money. The fare to London had been more than I’d expected and I’d had to get-up at dawn to catch the train and I was feeling just the tiniest bit fed-up. But this was the new me – the positive thinking me. I gritted my teeth and managed to say, ‘I appreciate your encouragement but I have a full-time job as a teacher and a big family including foster-children and I need to sleep and eat occasionally and go to the toilet so...’ and then I started out of the door, feeling just a bit sorry for myself, and convinced I’d never see the inside of this building again. But the man stopped me. ‘Hang on,’ he said, ‘That sounds interesting,’ ‘Which bit?’ I asked. ‘All of it,’ he said, ‘A person who’s teaching and trying to write but still has time to become a foster-parent. That was a really brave decision. Come back and tell me all about it.’ Incredibly this chance remark that I’d made led to me writing a 30-minute comedy drama series for radio called Growing Pains. And later on I turned this same idea into a 50-minute series, with the same name, for television. As I’ve already said it was all about a couple who become foster-parents. We did twelve episodes for radio and twenty for television. So was there Karma happening here or was it just a logical cause and effect sequence? I’ll leave you to decide. Earning good money And here’s an interesting point: in the year that I wrote ten of those tv episodes I was paid almost exactly £50 000/$80 000. Which brings me back rather neatly to the subject of how your goals are worded. (And I’ll be dealing with this in more detail very shortly.) Instead of writing, ‘I earn £50 000/$80 000 in a single year’ perhaps I should have written, ‘I earn at least £50 000/$80 000 every year for the rest of my life’? I’m only joking here because I’ve never really been that interested in money and sometimes think it causes more problems than it solves. And my level of happiness hasn’t always had much to do with the amount of money I’ve had at any given time. But it is a little curious that things worked out like that. And just in case £50 000/$80 000 a year doesn’t seem impressive by the time you are reading this book I can remember thinking at the time it was much more than my hard-working father and most of his friends had managed to earn in a whole lifetime. This included people who often toiled for five or six days a week from dawn till dusk, on building-sites and down coalmines, with maybe two weeks holiday a year. I’d earned it by doing something I loved and might well have done for nothing. Ever since I started believing in the power of positive thinking I’ve had a wonderful life (And please note that I didn’t really believe in it at first – I was just prepared to give it a try.) I hope you’ll do the same and that you’ll eventually feel – about your own life – the way I now feel about mine. I really mean it. But let me make it clear once again that none of these good things happened overnight and some took several years to achieve. But, as I’ve said, eventually, every single one of them did come true. Not only that – I didn’t have to wait a single day to start reaping the benefits. The very moment I decided to start believing my dreams might come true was the moment my life changed for the better. I wasn’t just focussing on the destination I was enjoying the journey That’s possibly the greatest lesson I learned in all of this: Where do you make a start? With hindsight, I now realise, that being at rock bottom and having nothing to lose might have been an advantage to me. I had no way to go but up. This might be the case for you too. But you don’t have to do things the hard way. Wouldn’t it make more sense to start from wherever you are right now (assuming you’re not at rock bottom) and learn from my mistakes as well as your own? I promise you that following these procedures wasn’t that diffi- cult for me. I wasn’t suddenly working harder I was learning how to work smarter by focussing on things I enjoyed and moving away from things I hated. I was just making better choices. And if an idiot like me (I mean like I was) can do it – anybody can. Trust me on that. I know what I’m talking about. Would you climb inside a boiler to eat a sandwich and read a newspaper? Well there you are then. How to start your own wish-list Let’s have some fun with this. Grab a pen and something to write on and in a very short while I want you to start brainstorming (on your own) for ten minutes or so. In a short while I’m going to suggest you write down all the things, happenings and situations, you can think of that would make your life more exciting, more joyful and more fulfilling. Don’t waste time thinking about it before you start and don’t worry if the things you write seem silly or almost impossible. Enjoy the silliness of it all. Remember how you felt as a child, when you could be scoring a goal for your country in your own back yard or dancing on a cloud in your bedroom. Nobody thought you were crazy or wasting your time back then because, in a way, you were rehearsing for your life as a grown-up and sensible people realised that. Now you’ll be preparing for your new life as a more fulfilled grown-up. (And this time nobody will even know about it unless you tell them!) We’ll be looking a bit more critically at what you write very soon. But please understand I’m talking about ‘things’ you can possess or experiences you can have. I’m not talking about developing aspects of your own personality or your physical fitness – directly. These two tasks will be included in a second list I’ll talk about later. So what kind of things have you always dreamed of owning and what kind of things have you always dreamed of doing? Why not put this book aside for ten minutes or so and write down whatever comes into your head. Why not do it now? And if you tried that little task – welcome back. Let’s move on: Getting a sensible balance Before you start refining your own list you might care to have another look at my own. You’ll see that it’s varied. I didn’t simply go for a list of ‘things’ I’d like to own. And money came way down on it. I’ve always been more interested in people than things anyway and I think that shows. There’s no reason for your list to be in any way similar to mine but I think it can be useful to categorise things. That way you’re more likely to achieve a sensible balance to your ambitions. And I think it’s pretty obvious the universe loves balance. You could categorise what I’ve written something like this: Travel and adventure Career development Personal relationships Living accommodation Money Creative ambitions You might like to use this as a checklist with regard to you own wishes and you might also want to add categories of your own. Perhaps something to do with possessions: a new car, a yacht, an indoor swimming pool, your own racehorse or whatever takes your fancy. That’s all stuff we might classify as your ‘outer’ wants. In a little while we’re going to consider making that second list I mentioned a few moments ago. That list will be more about what we might call your ‘inner’ wants. (Or more truly your inner needs.) Those aspects of personality and physical fitness you might need to improve to become more the person you really want to be. Remember what’s been said about changing your attitude before changing your circumstances? And your attitude doesn’t just effect your personality – it has a great impact on your health and fitness too. The important thing for now is to concentrate on this first list and whittle your selection down to ten at the most. I’ve always preferred to have anything between six and ten items at a time. Of course you’ll be able to add, subtract or revise your list at any time. And I’d advise you to look at your list at least once a month to see if it needs revising anyway. Meanwhile – don’t wait till you have perfect understanding of this technique – just give it a try and learn by experience. If you follow the next few pieces of advice you may find you’ve eliminated a few more of your wishes. That doesn’t matter. Just go back to your brainstorming and find a few replacements. Maybe, you’re getting into the swing of it by now and will go for more ambitious goals this time? To paraphrase an old saying: ‘Reach for the stars and you might reach the moon – reach for the kerb-side/ sidewalk and you could end up in the gutter.’ Don’t limit yourself too much. Relax and have fun. But be sensible too:.. Ensure you have compatible wishes Check to see that all your wishes are compatible with each other and you haven’t made one wish that could cancel another wish out. It might not be a good idea to write, ‘I train to be a ballerina with the finest ballet company in Europe’ but also, ‘I am a world champion sumo wrestler’ or ‘I run my own sheep farm in New Zealand.’ I think you can probably see why – but I could be wrong on this. It’s a weird and wonderful world we live in and maybe somebody really has done all three of those things successfully? Maybe they created a new form of ballet for larger people and sumo wrestling takes place all over the world nowadays and they could have appointed an under- manager to run the sheep farm in New Zealand whilst they kept in touch via the internet. But maybe something a bit less daunting might be more appropriate for your very first list! As always it’s your decision! Don’t have self-defeating wishes Similarly it might prove awkward if you only think of yourself and include things that are going to affect your loved ones in ways that could make life really difficult for all concerned. If you are dying to live in an igloo in Greenland make sure your partner and children aren’t currently taking scuba-diving lessons and searching the Internet for properties in Barbados. I’m exaggerating to make a point but this is no small matter. It really is vital you get off to a good start. We are talking about your life journey here and unless you want to travel solo you need to choose a destination that other people are as excited about as you are. (Okay – nearly as excited will probably be okay. But dead-set against is a definite No-no!) Keep things positive Only include things you want. Don’t write about things you want to get rid of. So don’t put things like, ‘I hate this house and would like to move out of it.’ If you do that then your subconscious mind may dwell on the most powerful word in that sentence – which is ‘hate’. And you could very easily find yourself feeling more of that! So to keep it posi- tive you might say, ‘We live in a lovely new bungalow in a quiet area near a park,’ or whatever. Your subconscious mind seems to deal better with straightforward concepts than tricky bits of grammar so don’t write convoluted sen- tences like, ‘I’m fed-up going to the same place every year for a one week holiday on a camping site. I want to travel further and do some- thing more adventurous.’ Just write something short and to the point like, ‘I go on a round the world cruise on a luxury liner,’ or ‘I fly to Peru and climb Macchu Pichu.’ Use these ‘rules’ to apply to all your wishes. And never include wishes that call for bad things to happen to other people. This is a positive wish-list. Not an attempt at black magic. (Which I’ve found to be a very dangerous pastime to yourself as well as others. Please don’t laugh at this and dismiss me as a crank. I could give some pretty convincing examples of this but that might take another book!). Wording is important Keep your wording of things in your list brief and generally in the present tense. So don’t write, ‘I intend to visit America (or Europe) one day if I can ever afford it’ but write boldly and unequivocally, ‘I visit America.’, or ‘ I visit Europe.’ Brief or detailed (It’s your choice) Some books on positive thinking advise you to add more details to your affirmations, so instead of specifying America as a destination you might say ‘New York’, or instead of Europe you might say ‘London’ or ‘Paris’ and also give the name of a top hotel there or even a particular suite in that hotel and say what you have for breakfast each day. I have no quarrel with this. I know it works because I have friends who’ve done it that way. But this book is about how positive thinking worked for me and I’m a lazy sort of person in some ways. Also I like surprises and think by being too specific you might be limiting your chances and slowing their delivery down rather than simply making your request more clear. You’ll see, for instance, that I didn’t write of going to America on holiday. I actually wrote of visiting the country. I can’t remember doing this intentionally – it was just a happy accident because instead of paying to go on holiday I got a free return flight and was paid to work there for several weeks in a summer camp. It was in a beautiful mountain region not all that far from New York. I also hitch-hiked all over the country on my own, walking and being driven, through maybe twenty states in the process. I travelled about a thousand miles in the back of a garbage truck with the side panels open – giving a panoramic view of the countryside and travelling at about forty miles an hour. (It was a brand new truck that was being delivered I hasten to add – not one actually doing its job). I even stayed a few nights at the home of the truck-driver, in Tucson Arizona, and met his wife and children. They were incredibly kind and welcoming to me, a complete stranger. And then one night, as I moved even further west, I fell asleep on someone’s lawn. In the morning I was woken-up by a tough-looking man in a cowboy outfit (but a real one), pointing a six-gun at my chest. I had the presence of mind to say, ‘I don’t remember asking for an early call,’ and giving him what I hoped was a friendly smile. After I’d told him who I was and explained what I was doing there (trying to get to the Grand Canyon for free) he invited me inside his large house for breakfast. This was served to me by a very attractive and scantily clad young lady who seemed to have half a dozen sisters of exactly the same age and with a very similar dress sense. I realised it wasn’t an ordinary house at all but a place of business and the girls had just finished a night-shift. They fed me and gave me coffee and asked for nothing in return. I was invited to use the bathroom to freshen-up and to have a swim in the outdoor pool. Later on the tough-looking man drove me to a place on the highway where he thought I had a better chance of getting another lift. He waved as he drove off and said, ‘Have a nice day.’ It seemed incredible. It wasn’t just the nice, ordinary people who were being kind to me – even the tough-guys were joining-in. But just imagine if I’d tried to put all those kind of details into my wish-list! Okay, there’s just a chance that travelling across a country in the back of a garbage truck or falling asleep outside a certain kind of business establishment (however friendly the occupants might prove to be) isn’t the kind of experience you’ll be looking for (there’s no accounting for taste!). But I’d always dreamed of going to America and as a child I was really ‘hooked’ on western films and later ‘road’ movies. So my wish-list worked in a spectacular way for me just as it’s worked for plenty of others and that’s the important thing. Time-scale Many self-help books advise you to make your list more effective by setting yourselves various time limits. They might tell you to write separate lists for the targets you intend to achieve in say, one year, three years or ten years. I can see the sense in this and if it suits you then by all means give it a try. But I’ve never been able to do it. As I’ve already said I don’t like to have my life planned out in too much detail. But also I think I’d start worrying as a deadline got closer and I’d find myself focussing on the problems rather than the goals. It’s true that I eventually gave myself a deadline for the writing of this book and I did find that helpful. But that was different because it was mostly down to my own efforts and that’s something I could, more or less, directly control. If, on the other hand, your wishes are about being offered a particular job, or meeting someone who will prove to be enormously helpful to you then these are things you can’t directly control. I can see myself getting very frustrated indeed by trying – not only to make amazing things happen – but by trying to make them happen on time. I see no harm in giving myself a kick-up the butt when I need it, but to try and do that to people you haven’t even met, seems a bit wrong somehow. And I think it would be terrible to give-up on an ambition because it hadn’t happened on schedule. Why give yourself this extra burden? So include time limits if it suits you but otherwise learn to be more flexible and go with your instincts. And that’s it so far with regard to your wish-list involving your ‘outer wants’. And in case I’ve confused you by giving so many details about my own experiences let me give you a reminder of the main points to consider in the making of your list: 1. Don’t set your sights too low 2. Whittle items down to ten at the most 3. Keep a sensible balance between them 4. Don’t include personality traits or physical well-being (directly) on this list 5. Keep your wishes compatible with family harmony 6. Don’t have self-defeating (conflicting) wishes 7. Keep them positive 8. Remember wording is important 9. Brief or detailed (Your choice) 10.Time-scale included or not (Your choice) And that’s it for this list. In the next chapter we’ll be looking at that second list I mentioned. The one to do with your ‘inner wants’ or needs. Points to note Step Three Set your goals Decide on your destination before you start your journey But don’t just focus on your destination – enjoy the journey Go for things you really want – not for things already within your grasp Don’t work harder – work smarter Do things you enjoy – then work becomes play If you’re at rock-bottom the only way to go is up Why wait? Why not start from wherever you are right now? Make your own mistakes but learn from mine while you’re waiting If an idiot (like I was) can do it – anybody can. And that includes you. Use the check-list to finalise your goals Consider revising your list at least once a month Don’t set your sights too low Be flexible and you might end-up with something better than you asked for Remember it’s supposed to be fun! So don’t stress over it