Luck Changes

The first week I started my new job I was invited to the office Christmas party. I had entered the company right at the point where Christmas takes over, even in this company which had a majority of non-Christian people working there. It’s a good time to start a new job I think, there’s not so much pressure because in my experience people just seem to do less work around this time and you can also get a feel for what people are like when their out of the office and partaking in merry making!

I knew my luck was changing because at that Christmas party I won a cool digital radio in the raffle. Not bad for someone who had only arrived 2 weeks earlier! It was a sign for me to just enjoy the situation I was in for however long I needed to be in it and feel certain about the fact that what I wanted to achieve was going to be achieved. I started on the night shift pattern soon after and I was working the nightshift on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day.

Shortly after new year 2007 I booked my next trip to Thailand for April. I was able to use up half my leave days for the year and combining that with my off days between shifts I had a whopping 5 and a half weeks to sample some of my future dream life. As soon as the time off was authorized I booked the flight. Needless to say I had a great time and although it was a wrench to part with my love again, it felt good too because I knew I was closer to being back there for good.

I had gotten to the point where I hated Christmas, but from 2006 that changed. I had a reason to enjoy it again – a reason that had never gone away in the first place.

It’s a great feeling when you know you are creating your successes and living them. Deliberately creating instead of being at the mercy of what "Happens to you".

Getting on Track

Arriving back in the UK at the end of October 2006, the memories of a hot UK summer fading and a trip to Thailand that totally changed the way I felt about my life dominating my thoughts I had a project: To start a new life, but first I had to get my current life on track to get me in shape to take on a new one on the other side of the world.

After having the idea to start a blog and having already obtained the domain name leavetheoffice.com (I thought it sounded cool) I got to work learning how to put a website together – it’s good to know it’s still going!

I didn’t get to it immediately. I had to find a job to pay off my debts and save money for my new life, so I got to work on that. I must mention first that early in 2007 I started to discover lots of material on the subject of how we create our own reality and that we are responsible for pretty much every coincidence and incident that we experience. I also had a little taste of this after engaging in various transformational programs between 2002 and 2004.

The reason I mention that now is because of what I later realized about the way in which I found exactly the job I needed at the time. The first week back in the UK I was pretty unhappy; longing to be somewhere else with my special lady, not knowing how it was possible and wanting it right then and there. A great recipe for self-inflicted suffering if ever there was one!

I remember going for a walk and saying to myself "I need a job that pays me full time money, but allows me the kind of time off that will enable me to visit Thailand and spend enough time to really get to know each other the best we can before I go to live there". Basically I had in mind to be able to have a couple of months in the course of a year off work. Pretty much unheard of, especially in the first year working in any job.

One week later I had a job working night shifts and the way the shifts were planned I was indeed able to take those 2 months off. I had two 5 week holidays to Thailand in 2007, both fully paid and both wonderful. What a job!

The irony was that although I was fed up working a full time job in an industry that I wanted to leave behind and finding myself having to go back to it to get where I wanted to be I found that I really enjoyed this job. I was happy there. Of course it wasn’t what I wanted, but I was in a state of enjoying my present situation. The people I worked with were nice, the work was OK and the time off I had for working on my new plans was a gift.

I believe that the reason my dream came true pretty quickly was down to my state of mind doing that job. If I had loathed it I believe it would have taken me longer or it may never have worked out at all. Who knows? It’s possible I could still be there!

It took me less than 18 months from my initial decision to paying off my debts, saving a chunk of money and stepping off the plane in Thailand to start my new life.

This brings me to a most important point:

When you really desire something, are certain why you desire it and just get on with whatever you need to do along the way… and enjoy the whole process. You WILL achieve your dream.

It’s quite something

The day you make a clear decision that will impact the way you live forever. It’s not easy to put into words, well not words that successfully translate the feeling. It’s exciting thinking of all the possibilities and scary not knowing how you will deal with whatever lies in store, but it also came with a hint of sorrow. I can only think that came from the fear that I may never succeed in achieving what it was I wanted more than anything else in the world.

This came after an incredible summer in 2006. I spent most of it doing some odd-jobs for a friend, mostly manual labour and gardening, through some of the hottest days that the UK has ever experienced. I was pretty penniless, but considering a trip to Thailand to see the lady I had kept in touch with since my trip there in 2004. I was in turmoil about whether to just go and enjoy myself or to be sensible and just get a job as soon as possible to keep myself going.

After some thought (not much as it turns out) I realized that just keeping myself going was what I had been woefully dissatisfied in doing for the past, I don’t know how many years, so I decided to listen to the part of me that was saying I needed this trip for my own survival and sanity. I decided to go and visit her to see once and for all if there was a future or if I could leave this so-called dream of Thailand as a memory and get on with my life.

There was a future and indeed it is now my present.

When I returned from my 6-week trip to Thailand I was certain of one thing. I wanted to go back and start a life with the woman I loved, but facing a big obstacle: Money. I had debts and I knew of no way I could make a living once I was in Thailand. Still I had a very strong desire to go and create my dream life, so I did what I had to do: I got a job and from then on planned my escape from The Office.

Taking Stock

Well it won’t be long before everyone is reflecting on another year gone by and thinking about how they are going to begin 2011. There will be those top ten lists of 2010, the best and worst of 2010. New Year’s resolutions and of course the preachy posts about not making New Year’s resolutions at all, but instead some "deep" insight about focusing on your whole life, not just the new year!

So I’m getting in early and getting it over with. Really as I age I am becoming less inclined to dwell on nostalgia and view every day as important as the next or last. There is just as much significance in life whether there is something sensational to report in the news or nothing at all, so I’m going to do my little bit of reflection right here, right now about how I have got this far and I’m even going to go as far as to serialize it (so I can have something to write about for a bit, even if it is about me).

OK then, on with Leave the Office – My first ever blog and after all this time, thinking of ways for Leave the Office to grow up and become an authority on something I decided to forget about all that and just write. I have other blogs and interests, which are based around my true passions in life: Writing and recording music, but this is what started me off on a new life, so it’s about the unfolding of life for me and how I stumble through it with varying degrees of success and lessons learned – if that is of any interest to you that is!

Still, after learning many lessons and meeting with new lessons every day I have come to a point where I no longer feel worried about whether I sound self obsessed writing about myself. If you’re not interested you won’t even have got this far down the page.

Leave the Office took me from a place of Longing to Living. It was gradual, but that was good because it gave me no choice but to watch what was happening in my life and come to terms with periods of time where I wasn’t enjoying myself so much. That was key for me, to actually understand the fact that it is normal to have periods in life that are less than desirable because they give rise to your creative thinking to come up with suggestions for a solution.

My suggestion was to start a new life on the other side of the world – just start again using everything I had built up to that point (as in my knowledge and experience) and try to put the best of it to good use, whilst dropping the less useful part of my nature (i.e. the stroppy, impatient, angry SOB I was susceptible to being all too often).

I pushed myself until I broke out of certain patterns and developed new ones that were less self-focused and more enjoyable and finally in 2008 I left the Office!

Just in Time for Christmas

Not that Christmas has any relevance to this at all, except for the fact that this time of year I always have mixed feelings approaching Christmas time.

I love living here in Thailand and I love being as far away from all the seasonal madness in the UK. The office Christmas parties, the office Christmas joviality, which would be nice if it was all year round, not just for 2 weeks. Ironically I also miss this to some degree, because it is fun, just less fun than I have here.

I also miss my family in the UK. It would be really nice to go there for Christmas day, but what is fun because of the time difference is that we are able to open our presents that have been sent to us from the UK, make a video of it and send it to family in the UK ready for when they start their Christmas day, which makes us feel closer together.

Anyway, what’s all this rambling about Christmas for anyway? I suppose what reminded me of it is that I will be posting a serialized version of my journey with Leave the Office, which will last up until Christmas, maybe New Year. Yes, that means this blog has finally decided it wants to be a personal journal, but I will attempt to write it in a way that is inviting and may inspire you to change your lifestyle. If you need inspiring that is.

So the series will start off with a current assessment of where I’m at now and then delve into the archives (and what’s left of my memory banks) to see if I can accurately cover the turning points, the twists and turns and the breakthroughs I had when I first decided I was going to Leave the Office!

Things like, what I did, how I felt, what I discovered and what went "wrong" along the way.

Still Going Strong

It is the fourth anniversary of the birth of Leave the Office. Although the blog did not first appear until November 2006, it was this date that I had the idea for it. I had the domain for a while, but didn’t know what to do with it. The term "Leave the Office" was something I came up with out of a desire to leave the office.

I came up with the idea of actually writing a blog about it whilst I was in Bangkok, trying to come up with ideas as to how I could make Thailand a more permanent fixture in my life. Well I have been living in Thailand for two and a half years now and I left the Office!

So this post is just a reminder that the path keeps unwinding and taking you somewhere. Forget about whether it’s where you want to be taken (or where you think you want to be taken) and instead look to see if there is something about the current stage of the journey that correlates to your desired path.

You will probably find something that does and then you can concentrate on that part, seeing as that is more likely to get you focused on what you want and more effective at making it happen. You know, it is often easy to think that we are being forced into a situation that we don’t want or that is taking us away from where we think we want to go, but the further I go, the more I see that it isn’t the case at all.

After coming up with this idea to leave the office and to write about it, the only thing I knew to make it possible and to build the foundation to make it a reality was to walk straight into a full-time job, in an office! But it proved to me that jumping into an office job was what I needed to do in order to leave it!

Food for thought.

There is a Purpose For Having a Heart’s Desire

Which is why everybody has at least one. Even if they don’t know exactly what it is right now. The capacity to have dreams and aspirations is part of a mechanism to stay challenged, in a state of growth and to expand the experience of living for everybody you come into contact with.

Looking at it like that with such high stakes you could argue that giving up your dreams and resigning to a life that you’d rather not have given the choice (a choice, which incidentally you do have) then this could be viewed as sinful. I think this is probably the true meaning of sin if you take away all religious connotations of the word.

To sin is to sell yourself short, so to speak; Not to honor your spirit, the part of you that decided to come here and have a go. Your dreams are what you are here to live by. It’s the code for your soul to adhere to and if you interrupt that, meaning allowing your ego, the part you created as the mask of your spirit since you came into this world then you are breaking that code.

Of course, this is not to make you out as the bad guy. How can it mean that? Who would knowingly destroy themselves at the the very essence of who they are? I believe nobody would, which is why it is important to have some awareness about what it is that tends to be the driver for what we do and how faithfully we follow our dreams or give them up.

That awareness will give rise to an understanding of who you are and in turn will make you more naturally inspired to create what you came here to create, no matter how small that may seem. Nothing is small in this universe, it’s all encompassing, which is why there is no limit to the number of attempts to succeed or the amount of time you think you have left.

You cannot give up on your dream. Even if you die before realizing it. It’s the dream that keeps you operating at a level that is healthy for your soul. You know, I think that the soul does not need the dream to be fulfilled, but instead requires simply the co-operation and partnership from you as a physical being to justify its existence on this earth.

Your dream is there to make a complete person out of you, whatever the outcome, so keep it strong in your heart.

How Do You Feel About Doing That?

I believe that it is essential to do what you know is really "You". I mean that if you are going to spend a large part of your life doing something, whether it’s a job, running a business or whatever it is you have chosen as your life’s work then it has to make you feel good or there is little point in doing it at all.

I believe this because of what I have learned from personal experience. For years I put up with feeling unfulfilled and constantly longed for something more. Nowadays I assess how something makes me feel and if it makes me feel in such a way that I determine is not how I want to be for the sake of my own well-being or is at the detriment of my family’s well-being then I make a quick decision to either change my approach to it or stop it.

It is sometimes a little scary because on some occasions it has meant cutting off a source of income, but no amount of income can compensate selling myself short in how I feel and it really does make a big difference how my family feels too, whether I am in good shape or not, which is paramount.

If you really take some time out in peace and quiet to ask yourself what it is that is truly "You", it’s pretty easy to know what it is, then you can take steps towards doing it. You may even find that you are already doing what is truly "You" and you just lost touch with what it is that makes it special for you.

In that case, it’s a simple reassessment of the approach you take.

Don’t Succumb to the Forces of Safety!

A little insight from recent experience. Once you make a significant change in the way you approach your life it is likely that you will face decisions along the way that will be based on going deeper into "the Rabbit Hole" or returning to something familiar and safe.

In my experience this happens with such regularity that it cannot be ignored, although it took me a few years to notice the patterns. The last big decision I made about pursuing my dream lifestyle was back in 2008 and the biggest decision before that was committing to a final 18months of work in a job that I no longer wanted to do, ever again.

Since embarking on my amazing adventure in an exotic land, which I often forget is just day to day life now, there have been days where my focus has been pulled back to what is safe and familiar, like getting a regular job to pay bills, so I will feel secure. However, jobs are not the most abundant thing where I live, due to local economics and policy. Good thing too because there has been little temptation to succumb to the dark side of the daily drudge!

Recently though, temptations (if you can call them that) did appear and hooked me in because of their surface appearance. I recently took a job doing something that I thought was a dream come true. It was in line with my passions and interests, which are music and recording and in a place that a job of that nature is almost unheard of. I was quite impressed at my manifesting abilities and saw it as a sign of great steps in the direction I want to go; namely to do what I love for a living, when I choose to do it.

However there was one catch. It turned out to not be a dream job, it took up nearly all the time I have, more hours than any job I’ve had to do back in the UK, not much money and no easy way to apply enough energy on the things I want to develop and achieve of my own. It was not long before I realized that I was walking straight back into the office. Not simply in a physical sense, but mentally. I was getting stressed, angry and found myself complaining about everything, even though I was getting my bills paid!

OK, game over. Time to nip it in the bud. If there is one great thing I learned over the last month or so, it’s that being able to pay your bills doesn’t have anything to do with being happy and I want my daughter to have happy dad and my wife to have a happy husband. It’s as simple as that, so there’s no need to over-analyze it.

I just wanted to share this because I think it carried such fundamental truth as to what is really important in life and it’s important to know what purpose you have for all the money you want in your life because it is not the money that make you happy, it’s what you do with it.

I’m back on track and more certain than ever that my destiny, financial and otherwise, is in my own hands. Not in the hands of any employer.

It is Just a Step From Where You Are

To where you want to be. This is the philosophy behind the ‘Longing to Living’ concept.

Not sure what that means? It’s quite simple. Most of us, including myself once upon a time, spend most of our lives longing for something, whether that’s a different lifestyle, less stress, our ideal partner or whatever else you may happen to long for.

It has become more acceptable to people these days, the notion of focusing more on what you want in order to bring about more of what you want. Makes sense really doesn’t it? However this is not all it seems because the state of longing for something usually means that we are indeed wanting it, but with a belief that we can’t have it. There is a huge difference between longing to live the life of your dreams and living it, but the gap between the two is actually very small, meaning that living your dream is within your grasp.

Now rather than bombard you with new age nonsense the so-called secret to achieving this is not a secret at all. What gets you living instead of longing is a decision.

I discovered that all I had to do to live my dream life and to continue building on that dream was making decisions. Sorry if that sounds obvious, but the decision to just start living my preferred lifestyle is what transformed my life.

I write several blogs, write and produce music and I write books, all of which are designed to lift your spirits and empower you to have the confidence in making the decisions that will change your life.

I recommend you read the following blogs:

• The Neural Recon Report – Developing a ‘Can Do’ Mindset
• Boy at Heart – My Musical Expression of Life.

Currently available as part of the Longing to Living Concept is my book Mind Over Matter Heart Over Mind. You can get a downloadable copy of the interactive songbook, which includes the 5 songs from ‘MOMHOM’. It explains how you can shift your way of thinking, so you can start creating the things you want in your life, just as I have done and continue to do.

You can get your downloadable Songbook even quicker if you just fill in the form at the top-right of this page and you’ll also receive the MOMHOM Free Program, which will be explained to you once you sign up for your free songbook.

It’s all good and it’s all for you!