Category: Blog

By now you might know I write in a gratitude journal everyday (I use the 5 minute journal). If you’d have told the 20 year old me that in my 40’s I’d be doing this along with meditation, I’d have known for sure you weren’t a time traveller. Choosing gratitude is part of a belief I have that we can rewire our brains and there’s plenty of scientific evidence to back this up.

For over a decade friends and coworkers had thought the self help journey I’d  chosen was all woo woo and hippie. Maybe it is? I’m cool with that as I like hippie and thanks to people like Tim Ferriss the self help movement (now more aptly coined life style design) appears to be fashionable. So it turns out the by product of my dedication to improve is I’m at the height of fashion, not something I’ve been very often..

Life style design takes huge dedication and effort. What isn’t often talked about is how dangerous the journey can be when you go it alone. 5 years ago I had first hand experience when my brain plugged in some wires to my mind that I’d unplugged as a child. The result was my life went wildly off course.

I had a difficult childhood. it wasn’t that I didn’t get the practical things in life. It was the other stuff, stuff I’ve only told a handful of people.

By the time I was 20 I was still troubled. My brother and I were forced to go it alone in the world and had found a house to share together. It felt sudden and I had a lot of anger to deal with. What I wanted more than anything was to feel free from the life I saw ahead of me. A life where I was a slave to a job during the week, drinking on a Friday / Saturday night and numbing my brain with TV in between. I wanted more, so while at college I rebelled against the status quo by joining a movement that was gaining traction.  The acid house, rave, indie music revolution. Those of you who’ve seen the movie 24 hour party people(an iconic movie) will be able to picture the culture I became a part of.  It was fantastic, though not a long term solution. Ironically what I hadn’t realised was the path I’d chosen would most likely lead me to the very life I wanted to avoid. A path of short term highs and long term lows.

A couple of years later I was spending my week evenings playing Noel Gallagher acoustic songs alone on my guitar. It felt therapeutic somehow. Singing the lyrics cemented different thinking for me and I became more creative. One day I remember singing and playing Sad Song, the lyrics kept whizzing around in my head. It was a rainy day in spring and I remember having an epiphany, over time the lyrics had rewired my thinking. I put the stash of weed I’d been smoking in the bin (I haven’t touched a drug since) and that night I wrote to my dad in Seattle. 2 months later I was in the USA and my life changed course forever.

It was another 10+ years before I became a husband and father. I want to be the best, most inspiring father I can be, so when my wife Mandie became pregnant I did what I do best, I read prolifically. Not your usual parenting books, I read about psychology and the human continuum. What I hadn’t accounted for was the power of 2 particular books. Books that almost crippled me (literally). They F*ck You Upand The Continuum Concept. Both incredible books I recommend for anyone considering parenthood, just be careful if you have unresolved issues.

The problem I now had was the trauma from the darkest depths of my mind. It kept coming and wouldn’t stop. These 2 books had surfaced stuff I had consciously and unconsciously locked away. Crying in private had become a thing and back pain had become part of my daily life. Back pain so bad that some mornings I couldn’t even ride my bike to the train station.

I was told I needed back surgery and I was considering therapy for my mental pain. WTF? I had spent years designing and making a positive life and now I’d been reduced to incoming depression and daily back pain. Where was the inspiring, engaging, active father and husband? I had hit a low right after I’d reached the happiest time of my life.

I wanted my good life back, the one where I had adventures rock climbing, hiking, canoeing, mountain biking and snow boarding. The one where I designed my days and life didn’t control me.

So I went back to what I do best again, reading prolifically. I revisited Stephen Covey, Tim Ferriss and found new inspiration from a doctor named John Sarno. His book Healing Back Pain had the keys to getting my life back. He described TMS and how our brain brings on neck and back pain to prevent focus on things such as childhood trauma. It took me 12 months of working through a new lifestyle design, one made up of the mind body experience (more woo woo). Surgeons told me I had spinal stenosis but it turns out thousands of people do who also don’t have pain, so I was going to fix myself by facing my trauma.

Long story short, it was hard. I publicly hid much of what I was going through as people have enough going on without me lowering their mood when asking me how I am. I really do thank the universe and life style design for the people I have in my life.

I made it through to the other side better than I could have hoped. The biggest thing I’d like to achieve is to make a positive dent in the universe. Life style design is helping make that a reality, I hope I’m doing it right.

So, the most pertinent lesson I’ve learned on my journey is that it’s important who you choose to spend time with. Not just in person but who you read, watch and listen to, it’s what put me where I am today, I am definitely feeling grateful.

One of the problems I had with schooling and society while I was a kid was the idea we all have to aim at having a job. My mum was the same, conditioned that a good job should be a big goal in life. I’ve always rejected that thinking, I love working, I just don’t want a job.

While in between travels I was staying at my mum’s figuring out where to go next. I needed some money to get to Glastonbury festival and buy my next plane ticket, I also didn’t want to get a job in order to do either of those things.

So I had an idea. I wrote several proposals for different publications, ranging from travel, music, computer and sci-fi. I figured I could get paid to work on writing about the things I loved in life. It wasn’t a job I had to get out of bed for, in fact I did the majority of my proposals late at night after being out with friends, flexi-working before I even knew the term existed!

I got the money I needed, I even did some work for free (Melody Maker live gig reviews). My most successful and memorable paid work was an article on how to get on the set of the X Files, published in Starburst, a popular sci-fi magazine. It was one of their most popular articles that year and I made it into a book Fan Cultures because of this (Google books have an excerpt of mine here).

While in Vancouver BC I was at a youth hostel talking enthusiastically about my love of the show (yes I was an X Files nerd). At that time Gillian Anderson was known as ‘the thinking man’s crumpet’and as a thinker I definitely related to that. I loved the show and knew it was filmed in and around Vancouver, so I took any opportunity I could to ask people about it.

I had no luck with my fellow hostel stayers, so I went on a bus tour of the city. If you’re travelling alone in any city, want to learn, make friends and have a good time, get friendly with a tour guide. I hopped on a city tour bus that morning.

I made sure to sit by the front and get chatting to the driver, a friendly guy who was also a big fan of the beats, so we had great conversation. After the tour he invited me out with his friends, they were meeting up at Grouse Mountainfor beers, awesome!

It was during those drinks I asked about filming locations for the X Files. As it happened, one of the guys had just received a note through his apartment door telling him about a street closure that week for filming of the show, that was it! I had found a location..

A few days later I had successfully talked my way onto the set. Back then my British accent still did wonders in North America, especially if I exaggerated it subtly into a Hugh Grant Four Weddings and a Funeral type British.

I worked at getting teas and coffees for people. This enabled me to spend time in conversations with Gillian Anderson among others. It was a terrific experience, my first at being surrounded with smart creative people who were making something people around the world enjoyed.

I remember Gillian’s great humour the most, I’d been wearing my favourite cagoule by pervert(an East coast brand that people on the West coast weren’t familiar with..) it had almost stopped my chances of getting on set as staff thought the word pervert on my jacket meant I was on some form of day release, ha! Gillian joked about that more than once and I was fondly known as the Purv, kinda like the Fonz though not nearly as cool.

We should all work, I’m a great believer in that. As far as we know, we only get one stab at life, so merely doing a job isn’t enough.

My work at Unity is something I enjoy. Technically it’s also a job, though to me it’s about being surrounded by people smarter than me, people I can change the world with (we’re democratising game development as part of what we do).

My time at Xbox was the same, I came away from working on Xbox products so much happier and smarter than when I joined, I also know we changed many people’s lives, I will be forever grateful.

Try and make sure you’re working and not simply in a job, life will be so much more enjoyable.

I was grateful to have been pointed to the James Dyson How I Built This podcast last week. If you haven’t heard it / aren’t familiar with the series, it’s pretty awesome. Each episode contains conversation with a person who built something amazing that changed the world in some way.

The Dyson episode was nice to listen to as I started out my engineering life on the site of what is now the UK Dyson headquarters. Also, as a young mechanical engineer Dyson’s engineering team offered me a job as part of the production design team, I was honoured (though didn’t accept).

I came from a single parent family where money was tight. At the age of 16 I had to find a paying job as staying in education wasn’t an option (my mum needed money from me as the state cut off any child benefit at age 16).

I didn’t actually want a job, I wanted more education. I dreamt of academic learning, being a student and figuring out what I wanted to do in life. Unfortunately that wasn’t what I was dealt and I needed to go out and make a living.

My mum had never planned this life for myself and my brother. Sadly, after marrying my dad, her own father all but disowned her and cut her off. When my parents split up and my dad went off to Seattle, no financial help came…my mum was on her own. Luckily for my brother and I she was strong. We had a mum that negotiated a mortgage and various loans on a benefits income, learned and did house maintenance (electrical and plumbing) and understood the importance of spending what money we did have on the best food available. All this while volunteering in the community helping the elderly and fighting deep depression.

So when it came to leaving school she helped me make the best of the situation. Knowing how I liked making things as well as learning, engineering seemed to fit and funnily enough it’s also what the school told her I should do.

She helped me find an engineering apprenticeship in the town of Malmesbury, 6 miles away. With an apprenticeship (at least at the time time) I could learn while earning decent money. I was up against others yet somehow became the top runner. They offered me a position, one where they’d pay for my education as long as I used my learning to enhance their engineering systems. I turned them down. I didn’t want to cycle 6 miles through the countryside to get there for 7:30am.

So I took a different engineering role, an automotive one with a company closer to home. It sucked, I was working with people I didn’t click with as well as having very little in common socially. I wanted to be surrounded by smart people I could learn from and this job wasn’t it.

One day I got home and my mum sat me down, telling me she’d seen I was sad, she went on to explain how she’d phoned the previous company in the hope the original role was still available. This was 3 months later, so it was a terrific surprise when she told me they hadn’t found anyone else they’d wanted to work with. I was welcome to start as soon as I could, they’d also agreed to help me get to them and college by subsidising the cost of transport, amazing!

And so began my love of applying mathematics and physics into the real world. I learned from others smarter than me, surrounded myself with like-minded people and most of all I got to make things, actual things that were useful to the world.

This taught me 3 valuable lessons in life that I’ve carried with me ever since.

1. You can make the most out of what your dealt in life. Choosing not to be a victim is important and most of all do appreciate the support of those who want to help you

2. Don’t be scared to make a big change in your life. We only get one life, don’t waste it in a job / with people you don’t want to be with (in and out of work)

3. If you don’t ask you may never know. My mum asked the original company about the engineering role on the off chance, and it worked out. I’d assumed they had given it to someone else. Find a way of asking for what you want in life, you may be surprised..

I don’t remember and act on the above 3 every day. I fail at times, after which I find myself pondering on my engineering apprenticeship. The lessons I received from that era in my life are still as important today as they were back then.

End note: One day I’ll have a shed in my garden with a lathe, welder, milling machine and all the other kit I crave in order to build and make things again, it’s going to be awesome.

A while ago I found myself on an adventure in Kuala Lumpur with no where to stay. By that time my well worn ruck sack was lighter than ever as I’d been giving away items I no longer needed. This included my sleeping bag, it had been hot that summer so I didn’t want to carry anything I wasn’t using. KL is a big city and with no more jungles or beaches I really wanted a bed.

I wandered the streets looking for a hostel that looked interesting and most of all had clean bedding I could sink into. I found a place completely covered in plants (almost), there was green foliage all the way to the roof top. At the entrance were people playing chess, reading, chatting and drinking wine straight from bottles, my kind of place.

I walked past the chess drinkathon and made my way upstairs to what I figured must be reception (a lot of people around a small lady who was shouting ‘no room, no room!’)

As I approached the group a girl turned around and smiled at me ‘no spare beds’.  She had a strange American accent, not one I’d heard before.

‘American?’ I asked.

‘Ha! Me? No I’m Swedish, I think I picked up my accent from too many Friends marathons’

It turned out she had no where to stay either. ‘Let’s go search together, they prefer couples over singles here, so you can be my boyfriend’

That was the start of what became one of my most memorable and life changing months in Asia.

Cathrine was on a break from law school, we spent time together in Kuala Lumpur and Singapore, where among other things she taught me to think more purposefully (something I hadn’t mastered at the time), as well as how to better recognise a person who wasn’t being genuine (a skill we can never stop learning). I was an engineer and was able to return the favour by teaching her how to repair anything (like the rusty bikes we’d purchased from a random street seller).

Looking back, I was still fairly immature before that time, my new travel buddy definitely had a hand in turning my child mind into an adult mind.

She introduced me to the 48 Laws of Power, an incredible book by Richard Greene. I had never seen anything like it, every page full of history and examples of how others achieved results. Mastering the 48 laws was something that became a fascination for me. Apparently after its release, it was common for law students on the west coast of America to treat it as some kind kind of bible. I didn’t want to be a lawyer but I was keen to learn from history, so it didn’t take me long to realise this book was going to help me figure out how to have a greater impact across my life.

From exposing men posing as people without homes (we caught 2 men at separate times getting into fancy sports cars a few streets away from their begging plot – there were rewards from the police at the time), riding bikes through the lush inner city parks, to helping guide new back packers to the best hostels, we had a blast. By the time we parted in Singapore, her back to San Francisco, me staying for longer to continue reading and exploring, I had been upgraded with a more open mind and a new found thirst for learning.

It was at least 5 years later and the consistent messaging from a friend at EA (who disliked the immoral aspects of the book) before I realised that with great power comes great responsibility. Some of the 48 laws are morally questionable, if not downright manipulative. This is what Cathrine had been teaching me. During our reading of the laws, Cathrine helped me understand that people I meet throughout my life will be using them for or against me, either consciously or unconsciously. Learning and being aware would help me see those trying to hurt me before they could. Seeing those trying to manipulate and take advantage of my kindness (and at times naivety) before it impacted me created huge change in my life, one that I think will last forever, helping me succeed where I’d previously failed.

I could of course use the laws for my own advantage and I did, not something I’m proud of (they work as long as you master them). I do still use my concise copy as a constant reminder, helping me judge a situation, though nowadays I’m simply my true authentic self with everyone. I’ve found it’s the most satisfying and rewarding way to live my life.

End note: A summary of the 48 laws can be found here, it’s worth a read if you’re not familiar: https://www.tke.org/files/file/The_48_Laws_of_Power.pdf

I must have left my mark on Singapore, they named a street after me!