The first thing I had to do after watching ‘The Secret’ was to work out which areas of my life I was unhappy with, or just wanted to change, and then to decide what I wanted to change in those areas.
I have long felt that life should not be filled with work and time spent around people you don’t necessarily care about, but rather, life should be filled with fun and laughter. I have always believed that everyone can have a job which they enjoy, and are motivated and fullfilled by every day.
My first decision was to look at changing my life to spend most of my time with my family; we’re planning to home school our two children, and I wanted to be as involved with their schooling as my wife will be.
To provide the additional time needed for this my wife and I discussed both of us working part time. For us to be able to work part time, we needed to find a way to be more flexible about work and working hours.
We’ve often talked about taking the money we’ve made through the increasing market value of our house, and using it to move away from the South East of England, not just because the price of living and owning a house means most family’s have to work as many hours as possible to pay their bills, but also because we aspired to something more with regards to personal fullfilment. For me this meant the satisfaction of my soul’s desire to provide for myself, and to be creative every day of my life - I’ve often used the line ‘every day should be different’ meaning that there should be an element of each day which you don’t plan for, you just arrive at that point each day and make up what you are about to do.
After watching ‘The Secret’, I asked myself the question ‘Should I stay at work building my career, near my friends and family etc. Or should I make time with my family my priority and work towards that goal?’ - what ‘The Secret’ had shown me was to listen to my true feelings on this issue, truly listen….. I knew the right answer for me straight away, and made up my mind to take the plunge; sell the house, quit my job, move to an area where we could buy a house outright - without a mortgage - and start working part time.
We made that decision in January 2007. We decorated over the next few months, sold the house in May 2007 and have now just moved to our new house in Derbyshire.
I quit my job as New Media Manager for a business to business publishing company covering the uk food and drink industry in July, and received my first taste of part time work after working out my notice period, when helping out at the same company while they recruited for my replacement.
Since then, I’ve been singing the praises for part time work - if you can see a way to trying it, do it!! It’s a truly liberating experience. You spend more time doing the things you like when you like (because you have more free time) and you have a new enthusiasm for work because you’re relaxed and happy.
I love spending more time with my wife and children, I knew I would, I just wasn’t listening to my soul (my feelings), which were screaming out for me to take the fun option.
One of the first things I say to anyone when I tell them about creating your own reality is:
- Ask yourself a question and listen to how the different answers you put forward make you feel - the answer which makes you feel good/right/happy is your true path
- When asking yourself this question, don’t listen to the thoughts which occur straight after each different answer…these always tend to be ‘yeah, but…’ thoughts. There is always a ‘Yeah, but…’ thought about everything, but there’s only one true feeling, one true path which will lead you to joy and happiness.
I always find when I go through this process, that I know the answer to the question already, that is, that one of the answers doesn’t just feel right, I know it’s the right option for me to follow.
create your own reality