ISBN: 9781483538730

Acknowledgements

It has taken seven years of research, not to mention trial and error to present a perspective and approach that will enable anyone who wishes to adopt it, a factual approach to happiness and success!

I never wanted to provide a quick fix, secret steps or any other such fantastical notion regarding a short cut for achieving either. Instead I wanted to create something tangible; a means which once explained would enable the reader to make real and lasting change to their life and most importantly, their happiness.

Throughout that journey one person has stood beside me and sometimes behind me in order to push me along and that is my beautiful and extremely understanding wife.

To her I owe everything.

Index:

Introduction

Part One: Baby Steps

Why do we not value Happiness?

What does happiness look like?

The importance of Happiness

Part Two: Our Story

Responsibility

How we perceive the World

The Wisdom of the Crowd

Part Three: Our Happiness

How to find your happiness

The Secret Sauce

What happens next?

The Key to the Door

Introduction

‘One door closes and another one opens.’

I was thirty-one years old when one of the most memorable doors in my life closed and though unaware at the time, a new door opened that would ultimately change my life forever.

It was a very average Tuesday and I had spent the day meeting a client and friend in the hope of convincing him to invest in my latest business venture, the one that I hoped would result in me finally achieving the wealth I so badly wanted and had been chasing for years.

Over those years I had worked in a variety of businesses and I can honestly say that I never really succeeded in any. It had nothing to do with laziness or a lack of motivation; I was never out of work because the one thing I possessed was drive and ambition. However, despite hard work, I could never seem to rise to the top, to be the best!

I have always been very entrepreneurial but my latest business venture was already suffering from serious cash flow problems and the more traditional routes for finding finance were closed to me due to the failure of an earlier business venture. Let’s just say that my credit rating was far from healthy, it was life on support!

If I am really honest my credit rating was the least of my problems. The reality was that I owed a lot of money to a lot of people, from a variety of financial institutions, to my family and friends. The bank was knocking on my door, trying to repossess my home and ‘family time’ at the weekend usually consisted of trying to figure out how we would survive the week ahead and still put food on the table.

It was as if someone or something had let the hand break off on my life and it was rolling down hill out of control and constantly gathering speed. The faster it went the less options became available to bring it back under control.

I needed help and I needed it fast. I new in all honesty that I was willing to offer him anything for the minimal investment that I needed but the more I listed the up sides, the benefits, the ‘win-win’ scenarios that I had planned out in my head and which I was certain would convince anybody to part with the cash I so badly needed, he seemed to become less and less interested.

My need wasn’t solely focused on needing the cash for my latest business venture. By default, this new business venture was hopefully a way to pay my mortgage and put food on the table in addition to the long list of other needs that any young family has.

My oldest son had just been born a couple of months previously and in retrospect this should have been a time to limit any risk taking in my life and instead focus on my new growing family. I should have been enjoying this time and all the new experiences that your first child brings. Instead here I was, rolling the dice one more time. I was driven by my hunger to get ahead and to get ahead in my world I needed money and I needed lots of it!

I was convinced that this latest venture would deliver everything I wanted and more importantly, it could deliver it quickly.

As far back as I can remember I was driven by a need to succeed, the need to have it all. If someone had of asked me back then exactly what success looked like, I honestly do not think I could have given them an answer. There wasn’t one particular thing that represented success to me; I simply wanted the whole package that we all associate with success; wealth, power, the ability to live a life less ordinary.

The reality was that I had never really given any thought to what it was that I was truly passionate about. I never stopped to consider whether there was one thing that I was driven by or if there was something that I was trying to achieve. That just wasn’t me!

What I did know about myself was that I possessed the ability to never quite, to never give up. No matter what, I knew that if failure came my way I would brush myself off, get up and keep going!

When the gentleman that I was sitting opposite, my financial saviour and whom I so desperately hoped was going to say ‘yes’ to making the investment I urgently needed, informed me of his decision to pass, I was devastated. I walked out of the meeting like a zombie! He was my last port of call, the last hope to secure the investment I so desperately needed.

I remember sitting in my car outside of his office staring out at the rain and racking my brain for my plan B or more specifically a plan X or Z...I had lost track of how many doors I had knocked on to that point. I could feel the sensation of panic slowly creeping up within me but as I had done many times before, I recognised its pending encroachment and using a trait I have always possessed, I banished it to the furthest recesses of my mind.

I buried it, or so I thought.

Similar to the weather outside, I was feeling less than sunny. To make matters worse, I felt like I was starting to come down with a cold. By the time I got home, I was starting to feel like I had been run over by a cement truck. My wife took one look at me and suggested a bath, so off I trudged up the stairs feeling extremely sorry for myself.

After a long hot bath and feeling slightly better I decided it was time to get out. I had just managed to dry myself when I started to feel really dizzy. Thankfully I had the foresight to put some underwear on and made it to our bedroom. I say thankfully because what followed saw any dignity I had left fly out the window.

I began to sweat uncontrollably and started to find it hard to breathe. I started to lose the feeling in my limbs and as I lay on our bed a sensation of numbness that had started in my fingertips and toes was gradually moving up my limbs towards the centre of my torso. Worse still, every joint in my body started to lock and curl in on its self.

I was in excruciating pain.

So there I was, naked except for some underwear, drenched in sweat with all my joints twisted and locked. All I could keep thinking was once the numbness that was spreading up my body reaches my chest, and then it was lights out!

I was convinced I was having a heart attack!

I will always remember my wife standing at the bottom of the bed with absolute fear and panic in her eyes while our son cried in her arms. She had called an ambulance and as we waited for them to arrive, I knew I had messed up big time! I knew I had made a mess of my life and in that process I was messing up theirs.

I would be gone and she would be left to pick up the pieces!

The medics arrived to find a grown man, wet through with sweat and lying on the bed in a twisted ball in his underpants! A grown man who it turned out was not having a heart attack but instead a very severe “panic attack”.

I couldn’t believe it!

They told me it was a panic attack most likely brought on by stress. My own body had decided to mutiny! To add insult to injury, in order to break me out of the symptoms that I thought had taken over my body and had me in their death grip, they simply made me focus on a point on our bedroom wall and slow my breathing. Within minutes everything was normal again.

I felt like such a fool.

I had always understood ‘panic attacks’ to be a direct reaction to a particular event, such as someone who has a fear of enclosed spaces getting trapped in a crowded lift or train! I never believed it was something that could happen to you when you were not directly in such a high stress situation. After all, I had run the bath in order to relax and unwind and as far as I was concerned I put those earlier feelings of dread regarding my current financial situation out of my mind.

Once the effects had subsided, they still insisted that they take me to the hospital just as a precautionary measure and it was there that a doctor explained what had happened to me. He described what I had experienced as being similar to a pressure cooker, if you keep turning up the heat and don’t allow any of that building pressure to escape then it will simply find its own way out and most likely that way out will be in the form of a big bang!

Not that it offered much comfort but he also told me that no one was capable of keeping that pressure contained for ever and that it was inevitable that at some point it would find a way to escape. What that escape looked like was different for each person.

This was my body’s way of releasing the pressure - This was my big bang!

I had to stop! The doctor’s words were ringing in my ears, “the next time that pressure release might not be a panic attack but an actual heart attack”.

That struck a chord with me. My own father had suffered from heart related illness and my own physical health wasn’t exactly super! I was overweight, my diet was dreadful and despite the odd exercise flurry, I wasn’t exactly the poster boy for healthy living.

But if I am truly honest, none of these things were reason enough for me to take action.

Many of you might be reading this and thinking just as I had up to that point that a ‘panic attack’ isn’t a major life-changing event. I mean a heart attack, cancer or the loss of a loved one, these are the things can make you sit up and take stock of your life but a panic attack?

However, the reason this event had such a significant impact on me was not the panic attack itself but the sensation of losing complete and utter control. For someone who had always been focused, always thinking and strategizing to suddenly be helpless was too much to process. It was as if someone had hit a switch and taken over my mind and body. I was conscious and present but locked away on the inside. I had lost complete control of my physical body.

I now possessed a new and less than happy insight! This could happen again; at any time and place of it’s choosing. Worse still I knew that even if I recognised it, there would be nothing I could do to prevent it.

Initially it was this fear, pure and simple, that made me sit up and take stock!

I walked out of that hospital knowing that something had to change but in all honesty, I had no clue what that change needed to look like or where I needed to start?

So many questions were running through my head; ‘how had this happened to me, I had always been in control’ and ‘ how did I not see or sense the symptoms earlier’?

The first realisation and possibly the hardest one to make was not that I needed to change my life in order to prevent something like this ever happening again or perhaps something even worse. No, for me the first step was to admit that I was miserable!

That was my first big realisation and boy did it hit me like a tonne of bricks!

It actually took my wife to sit me down and ask me one very simple question. ‘Are you happy’, a question so simple that I don’t think I had ever really given it much thought. Yet the minute I let that question into my consciousness, the answer came immediately.

I sat in our kitchen, my head in my hands with tears rolling down my face. How had I allowed things to become so bad? How had I gone so wrong? How had I created such a mess out of my life and by default my family’s life?

In all honesty, how many of us whether faced with such a scenario or not, ever really stop to ponder such a question and equally be honest with ourselves about the answer? We get so caught up in living our lives that we rarely stop to make sure our particular actions are actually making us happy. What I had done and what I believe the majority of us do, is to have happiness register somewhere in my consciousness but that somewhere was way ahead in the future!

Happiness for the majority of us is a destination.

When I achieve X, then I will be happy!

When I earn X, then I will be happy!

When I meet X, then I will be happy!

When I own X, then I will be happy!

Can you be truthful and admit that you have nothing in your life at the moment that fits into one of the above categories? If you’re not ready to tackle that question then at least ask yourself when was the last time you stopped to reflect on your life?

I know what you are probably thinking, who today actually has time to do that, right?

I cannot remember one instance up to that stage in my life where I took some time to consider whether my current job made me happy or a current relationship or even a more broader question like whether my current life and the direction it was taking me, made me happy!

I had been so caught up in the pursuit of my goal that I never stopped to ask was it making me happy. Instead I put my head down and went for it. I had travelled so far down this particular avenue that I became convinced it was too late to turn back; I had invested too much and travelled too far.

I had fought for everything up to that point and I don’t remember any accomplishment no matter how minor, not being a struggle! But hey, I knew I wouldn’t be defeated and that I wouldn’t give up, so I had just kept battling away.

In some strange and delusional way, I actually wore that ability to put my head down and to keep pushing forward like a badge of honour.

Of course I wanted to be happy, doesn’t everyone but somewhere on my journey the whole concept of happiness got relegated to the position of the end goal, something to be rewarded when I achieved whatever it was I was pursuing. Happiness as far as I was concerned was a product of me reaching my destination.

The reality was that I really didn’t understand the significance of what being happy actually meant. Even when my wife had asked me that question I remember immediately thinking that happiness was a luxury and though I knew it was important on some level, I saw no real connection between what I wanted to achieve and whether I was happy, having any real correlation.

If it had of been any other situation than the one that currently faced me, I know I would have dismissed this question as not being practical or relevant in the real world.

There was plenty of time to be happy, once I got to where I wanted to be! As far as I was concerned, happiness was associated with my final destination but it had no relevance or importance to the journey I was on in order to get to that final destination.

However, just as I had never stopped to ask myself whether I was happy or not, what I was beginning to realise and what initially struck me quite hard was the fact that I have never stopped to realise how unhappy I was.

How had I not spotted that?

I knew I hated what I saw in the mirror, I hated that I was so self-absorbed with my pursuit of wealth, I hated that I had let friendships dwindle and die and I hated that I wasn’t enjoying the one thing that really mattered to me in my life...my own family.

I didn’t like who I was!

Suddenly the old mantra that I had been telling myself for years....’once I achieved my goal, then I can fix everything’ seemed very hollow. The reality was that I was never going to reach that goal; I was never going to fix anything. Instead I was just going to keep chasing the same stupid goal and achieve the same stupid result!

I think I read somewhere that the true definition of stupidity is to do the same thing over and over and to expect a different result every time. Well it dawned on me that was what I had been doing all this time! Where I thought I had my life in order due to my endless lists and plans for achieving my success, in reality I was just making the same mistakes over and over again.