“There are no mistakes or failures, only lessons” …and I spent a lifetime learning!
“A man’s errors are his portals of discovery”
~ James Joyce
I was brought up in a dysfunctional, cosmopolitan, upper middle class family as a highly strung dyslexic surrounded by eccentric relatives. However the result of having to cope with dyslexia and a logic disfunction had an unexpected but ultimately life-saving side-effect… as I grew older (but not at that stage wiser) I discovered I had the proverbial ‘gift of the gab’ and so naturally became a raconteur to communicate when and where logic or argument failed me!
Having been dissuaded from becoming an actor by my father, I found a métier as an international ‘front-man’ – where telling stories to sell ideas or influence clients came naturally… if some what flamboyantly… with lashings of space-invading charisma and oodles of false-Ego!
A headlong cavalcade of uber-hectic jobs, over-work, travel, spare time activities (I’ll spare you those details!) and on-the-spur-of-the-moment decisions propelled me from consumer and luxury brand advertising, hyperbolic copywriting, press & public relations, economic development to a multi-market coordinator, international art advisor, art event promoter, entrepreneur and strategic consultancy; and from thence I walked backwards into healing and personal development!
However concentration on work, play, travel, and an obsessive out-of-hours rôle as a professional ‘rake’ and non-professional actor/producer, resulted in a seriously unsustainable roller-coaster life. Not surprisingly around the mid ’80′s my business, out of-hours and personal life collided spectacularly …piling up painfully at a ‘Mid-Life Crossroads’.
My subsequent decision to radically review my attitudes and change my behaviour and past patterns has been an eventful and surprising journey. Lessons learned along the way were frequently challenging, usually discomforting, often hilarious and ultimately life-changing and fulfilling.
Following much personal journeying and soul-searching along the paths of self-enquiry, self-development and spiritual learning and soul growth, I decided this year – not before time – to finally focus on my own innate talents as well as the skills I’d acquired as a journey-man wordsmith, communicator and speaker, social host, healer-therapist, coach and mentor.
Now, in my capacity as an experienced host and professional Toastmaster/Master of Ceremonies and after-dinner speaker, I’m having fun offering an original, very personalised and elegant ‘hosting’ service to help people celebrate and enjoy the most special days, events and moments in their lives with a uniquely English ‘Touch of Elegance, my personal brand of flamboyancy, charisma and the dash of British humour that Europeans love!
To broaden my experience as a writer, speaker and storyteller I dived into deeper rivers of reference and oceans of audience via the world/wide/web! …and am currently researching and writing stories… and together with a great chum, fellow seeker and liver of life-to-the-full, projecting our vocal chords into the arena of Audio-books and YouTube with a series of ‘tall tales’ and humorous reminisces from two gloriously colourful and folly-full lifetimes of making every mistake in the book (and quite a few we made up ourselves!!).
And, if my Muse, quill, ink, Asprin and focus hold out: research and write a historical novel and film script …so nothing too ambitious then!!
Finally this year having suffered, and with the grace of the angels, recovered fully from a near-fatal heart attack, I’m more than ever aware (and grateful too) that I owe much of the little wisdoms I’ve acquired along the way to many friends, as well as strangers, in my life. Especially those who took the time (and a lot of that was needed as I was an excruciatingly slow learner!!) to help me finally learn something useful from my mistakes and Life’s unending twists, turns and somersaults! As a life coach and mentor now myself, I endeavour to help people whose paths cross mine, to find their own way to self-healing and self-worth – so they too may discover peace of mind and a fulfilling balance in their life… as I’ve been blessed in doing.
“Experience is the name everyone gives to their mistakes”
~ Oscar Wilde
OK… ’tis only I, as me… experimenting with all this wonderfully blank ‘word-space”!
) …with Kipling’s immortal poem :
“IF…..
IF you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,
Or being hated, don’t give way to hating,
And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise:
If you can dream – and not make dreams your master;
If you can think – and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build ‘em up with worn-out tools:
If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breathe a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: ‘Hold on!’
If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
‘ Or walk with Kings – nor lose the common touch,
if neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,
And – which is more – you’ll be a Man, my son!”
…and so will we all… man, boy, girl and woman!