Here’s a thought experiment that will make 2024 the year you would love it to be…

Become the Alchemist of you own memories.

It’s really simple (even if it sounds like it’s not), and doing it will allow those memories to become the very things you need to make 2024 the year you would love it to be.

So here’s the thought experiment.

As you reflect on 2023, remember this…

In the moment of recall a memory is no longer something from the past, it is a present moment thought.

It is alive… it is a living thing!

You can leave it as it is, or you can choose to use that memory for how you need it now.

Because in the moment recall you are in the live reliving of that moment and can reshape its narrative intent.

You can alter and shift what you make that memory mean in ways that serve you now.

Why?

Because in the moment of recall you are looking at the memory from a different place, with a different perspective, and as the you now, that is different to the you back then. So the ‘memory-thought’ too, is different.

Explore this live remembering as a ‘present-moment’ happening and discover within it golden nuggets that could never have been seen back then. But they can be known right now.

They are abundantly there in all your memories just waiting for you to have the courage and curiosity to find them, so that they can serve you now.

Reflect on that and it will have a profound impact on the stories you tell yourselves about WHO you are, WHAT you’ve done and what you’re CAPABLE of achieving.

So, become the Alchemist of you own memories and allow them to be what they already are… the very things you need to make the year ahead the year you would love it to be.

A lot is often said about the power of now, and the importance of living in the moment.

But what is this moment, what is now, and how do we access it?

Like so many others, I have spent many hours in search of this ephemeral instant, until I realised, that there is no now.

In realising that, I opened myself up to an experience of life and living in which I touched eternity… and I fell in love.

I share this piece as an invitation for you to join me here.

Let me share how I found my way.

Whenever we go in search of something, by definition, it is conceived of as being somewhere other than where we are and what is here.

Even saying as Ram Dass famously did, “Be here now”, carries with it the subtly inference that we are not ‘here now’.

In actuality of course we can be nowhere else. Even in our most distracted and unconscious moments we are here now.

Perhaps “Here now, be.” opens the door a little wider, though not of course as eloquently.

It was as I began to contemplate the words of Ram Dass, not as one sentence but as three sentences, that the insight came.

Be. Here. Now.

And as the sediment settled on this contemplation, these separate sentences became separate paragraphs, separate books and even separate teachings. And then I saw, through the now clear waters, what these words are pointing out.

There is no now.

There is only the ephemeral act of awareness. The dissociated witness, present as the context of experience, not lost in its content.

Consciousness being aware of itself. Like infant in awe of the never before, discovering itself in a mirror.

There is no moment in time, no beginning and no end. No noticing when now begins, or when it’s no longer here.

The ‘now’ we seek is not the ticking of a clock, nor the grain of sand’s drop in an hourglass.

It is the eternal and infinite witnessing of what is… and being in THAT ‘now’… is being in ‘Love’.

And if ‘now’ is Love, which of course it is, then Shakespeare once again captures its beautiful, immutable magnificence:

Love is not love

Which alters when it alteration finds,

Or bends with the remover to remove:

O no! it is an ever-fixed mark

That looks on tempests and is never shaken.

The ‘ever-fixed mark’ of Now is not its contents. It is not the rose, nor it’s scent, which ‘by any other name smells as sweet’! It is the context.

It is an unblinking lens shining life into living, and in its brilliance we see, what it is to be.

It is love… and in THAT now, we are always in love.

The more you help others, you the more you help yourself.

That was single greatest insight that shone like a beacon light in my recovery from addiction and suicidal ideation.

It saved my life.

Sharing with others what I was learning on my own stumbling path, and seeing how it was helping them, gave me glimpses through to a life that was worth the living.

Over time those glimpses became a way of seeing myself with eyes that were able to love what they saw.

And the more I helped others the more my life became this life I love to live today.

Part of this unfolding story included a very dear young friend, and an extraordinarily talented musician, Tim Block.

Let me tell you that story.

The plot line pivots a few years back, when I had the honour of helping Tim as his life turned inward on itself and threatened to implode.

And the story’s denouement happened just a few days ago, when I had the even greater honour of being on the receiving end of Tim’s helping hand reaching back to me.

It was the reciprocal act of kindness that had it genesis many years ago.

In 2015 I was in the early stages of my recovery, and the impulse to share what I was discovering beyond the borders of my work as a speaker, coach and mentor, was already beginning rise. I wanted to find a way of helping anyone with whom my work might resonate.

After much angst and soul searching, I decided I had to leave my business, leave the UK, and move to the safe and isolated haven of my home in Portugal. There I would begin a self-imposed retreat that I knew would last a good few years.

The intention was to give myself time to contemplate, write and create whatever wanted to express itself through me. My hermitage would allow that flow absolute freedom from the implied constraints of external obligations.

Authenticity, openness and the benefit of others were the only imperatives.

It didn’t take long before my explorations led me to write and create short form videos that I called “Thought Experiments for a life well lived.” They blended modern empirical science with ancient intuitive wisdom in ways that encourage others to experiment with the ideas in the ‘laboratory’ of their own life.

As I was beginning to explore this format Tim, as he would from time to time, dropped into this creative space.

He would be writing and producing music, I would be writing and making my videos, and we would share the work as it flowed.

I clearly remember showing him my first Thought Experiment video, ‘Help Others Get It’, curious about how it would resonate with a younger generation.

This was that video:

He loved it, and immediately felt that I had found the perfect way to reach an audience that so desperately need to hear what was being shared… his peers.

“So many people I know need this stuff. They need what you’re sharing. It’ll help them so much. You absolutely have to share these videos on Instagram and social media”

In gratitude I nodded and felt some precious kindling had been lit.

But as I was digital immigrant of the first order, I think we both knew that doing so was beyond the bleeding edge of my abilities at the time. Simply writing, editing and producing the pieces was already a full time job!

Time past. I kept creating. So did Tim.

But soon Tim began his own dark journey through deeply challenging times. Increasingly he leaned into the help and guidance I was able to share.

His own Phoenix was struggling to take flight and he feared the flames might consume him utterly. I was so grateful to be able to help.

Meanwhile, my foray into social media did begin but stayed in the more familiar territory of Linked In. But I never ventured into what I saw as the unknown and mysterious lands of Instagram, Twitter or TikTok.

And so with Tim now standing back in the light, and my creative expressions becoming increasingly ripe, the story returns to the weekend that’s just past, when Tim came over to visit with some friends.

He had told me that a few weeks back he’d started making a gift for me and was here to give it to me in person. I was intrigued.

“The gift”, he said preparing to give it to me, “was inspired by that very first video you showed me all those years ago.”

He reminded me of how much he thought I should share these videos on social media so that a younger generation, could find them and be inspired by them.

He went on to say that they had so inspired him, and that I had so helped him in his own recovery, he wanted to do something for me that was the living embodiment of that first video about helping others.

“So,” he said, “I did this for you.”

He handed me his mobile phone. On its screen was a TikTok account full of my videos… but I didn’t have a TikTok account!

“You do now.” Tim said with a beaming smile spreading across his face, “Check out the video in top right. How many views has it had?”

“1.2 million!” I replied in utter astonishment.

The account, which Tim has set up just a few weeks before, also had over 50,000 likes and 8,600 followers.

“You helped me so much Tom when I really needed it. I wanted to help you. And I wanted to Pay it Forward, by helping millions of others find what you have to share.”

What a truly magical manifestation of this profoundly impactful insight.

What Tim didn’t know was that his gift reached back even beyond my move to Portugal, to when I was struggling with the direction in which to take my life in those early months of recovery.

Because as I deeply contemplated my highest possible purpose, one phrase written on my white board played like a mantra in my head:

“I want to help millions of people enjoy a life well lived.”

It was the tipping point that gave me the courage and inspiration to move to Portugal and enter the vast terrain of ‘I don’t know’ in search of a path that would lead me at least some of the way, toward that highest purpose.

Never would I have believed that 8 years on it would have risen into reality.

I am reminded of the immortal line that ends the 1940’s film ‘Now Voyager’:

“Why wish for the moon when we have the stars.”

Well, this moon shot of Tim’s, made that wildest of dreams come true.

Now let’s head for the stars!

COULD YOU HELP?

I am so grateful to those I have told this story to over the last few days and who are now helping me help others by following the TikTok account.

Here’s a couple of ways you can help too:

1. Follow the journey by following the account. Here’s the link
2. Share this story with others.

Finally I want to thank you so much for taking the time to read this story all the way through, I am exceedingly grateful.

In loving kindness,

Tom

Too often we are way too hard on ourselves.

And in my experience the ones most practiced at this, are those extraordinary people who achieve truly extraordinary things.

It’s as if this self-flagellation is an essential motivating ingredient stoking the flames of their already prodigious talent into an inferno of stella achievements.

But then, at the attainment of their longed-for goals, the longed-for sense of worth and value is nowhere to be found.

Instead, and despite all the hard work and sacrifices made, they feel empty, lost and unfulfilled.

As the embers of their last achievement dim, its fading light seems to be yet more proof that they themselves are somehow deeply ‘wrong’.

And so like Icarus they fall.

It is a vertiginous ‘flight path’ I have flown myself many times, until I learnt how not to.

You see there is a story we tell ourselves about who we are and what we’re worth. And in many cases, including my own it is not a very kind story.

It is the tale inadequacy, of failure, of being less that everyone thinks you are, and a fear that one day they will discover the truth!

And so you run. Harder, faster, higher.

But because the story is inside you there is nowhere it will not be when you arrive. Even at the summit of the most extraordinary achievements.

But still you carry on.

Through tenacious effort you try to control what others think of you. You try to squeeze a high opinion out of them, by squeezing ever more achievement out of yourselves.

Until dry and parched, there is nothing left inside… except the story.

And at last, you pay attention to its tale.

In your need to collect the kind thoughts of others, you left no room for kindness to yourself!

So here’s a thought experiment for you to play around with and the more imagination you apply to it the more fun you will have.

Do three unapologetic acts of kindness for yourself today… and tomorrow and the next day… and FOR THE REST OF YOU LIFE!

Be the grateful and deserving recipient of these mini moments of joy unconditionally shared. And notice what it feels like.

Notice how that voice in you head softens its tone, and how the fist in you belly loosens its grip, beginning to let slip, the untrue story you’ve held for far too long.

Of all the prodigious achievements out there is the world of want, there are none so mighty as a single act of loving kindness to yourself.

It is the genesis of all there is, and those who kindle its embers into life, create flames that warm the hearts of others right around the world…

… as I hope these words are warming yours right now.

Have you heard the expression ‘being lonely in a crowd’?

It describes how being surrounded by people can actually amplify the sense of loneliness and isolation we feel.

Though it initially seems counter intuitive, a little thought allows us to see clearly why this is can be the case. Especially if we’ve had the experience.

The same irony can be equally true for high achievers who, despite having the incredible job, the respect of their peers and all the trappings of great success, feel deeply unfulfilled.

Despite all of those seemingly affirming and empowering things they feel empty and alone in a life that’s lost its sense of meaning and purpose.

To those on the outside, who perhaps themselves aspire to grand goals, it’s difficult to understand. So today my post is as much aimed at those as it is at the disillusioned high achievers I directly help in my work as a coach.

You too will feel from time to time the disconnect between external achievements and internal rewards, but you will put it down to not having achieved the summit of your aspirations yet.

And so the solution is to double down on your ambitions and strive higher, faster, harder, and for longer and longer hours.

My own experiences of success, as an actor and an opera singer, and then as an entrepreneur selling my business for a lot of money, taught me this extremely hard eared lessons:

No sense of meaning and fulfilment that uses the rocket fuel of external affirmation, lasts.

More likely that rocket fuel explodes.

In my case it very nearly had me take my own life. Not because of what the achievements were, but because of what they weren’t!

They weren’t what I really wanted; they were what I thought would fill a deep hole in my own self-worth.

That kind of motivation is very effective at driving us onto success, but the feeling of fulfilment is always short lived.

So whether you have achieved your external goals or are driving toward them now, the insight is to get really clear about your ‘why’.

What is your real purpose, the one that’s deep inside?

Let that be your guiding light and let all the material manifestations of success be the magnificent comets tail following that shooting star.

Instead of running from those feelings of dissatisfaction, disappointed, frustration and emptiness, use them. Let them be the warning lights on the dashboard of your true purpose.

Pay attention to them, investigate them, and find out what it is they are trying to tell you. Never run from them no matter how uncomfortable they feel.

Their intention is your congruence. They are letting you know that you’re drifting of course.

With this authenticity of ambition, the arrival at your summit will be so much more than the achievement of mere ambition. It will be a coming home to your true self.

In the meantime, look out for those shooting stars.

Here’s a question….

How often do you ask for help?

Isn’t it funny how a simple request for help can sometimes feel so impossibly difficult to utter?

We feel we should be able to manage on our own, and that asking for help somehow says something negative about us. So, we carry on help-less.

Here’s another question.

How does it feel when you help others?

If feels good doesn’t it, which is just as nature intended.

When we perform this evolutionarily advantageous behaviour, we receive the gift of a delicious neurochemical cocktail of oxytocin, serotonin and dopamine to encourage us to do it more and increase the strength of those vital social bonds.

But in our independent, self-reliant ‘don’t show weakness world’, we’d rather dance with danger than ask for help. And in adherence to the same self-sufficient code, if not directly asked for help, we shy away from offering it for fear offending others.

In doing this we disinherit ourselves from the better part of our true nature, the shared experience of life and living. Worse, we walk toward the lonely demise of our extinction of our species.

So here’s a thought experiment that will help you, as much as it will help others.

Call to mind the most openly helpful person you know, and in particular some of the acts of kindness they’ve done for others.

[PAUSE FOR A MOMENT TO ENJOY THE FOND RECALL…]

Notice how you feel as you bring these memories to life.

I bet you’re smiling :-)

And as you allow that smile to broaden across your face, ask yourself what it would be like to have people smile that way about you?

What would it be like to be thought of by others as a role model for the giving and receiving of help?

It would be wonderful wouldn’t it? Well… becoming one is very simple.

1. Ask someone for help.
2. Have the courage to offer help, even if not asked.
3. Repeat 1 & 2 at least twice a day!

Is that too much to ask?

And remember, the helping hand that reaches out to others, reaches back to you.

The best way to achieve the life you would love to live, is to help others achieve their own.

Imagine the kind of world we would create together if we all did that!

I don’t know.

Most of us hate saying those three words because we think to ourselves “I should know!

We think it says something negative about us to have to say (and admit), we don’t know.

But what would it be like to be excited by those words, and with childlike curiosity be in wonderment of what you are about to discover?

I work with highly successful people who’ve achieved extraordinary things in their lives, but who are now feeling stuck lost and unfulfilled. And despite all that they have in term of financial resources, status and experience, they don’t know what to do about it.

To them, having always been so driven and so instinctively able to know what needs to be done, not knowing what to do about something as important as how to find a truly rewarding and fulfilling life, is existentially challenging.

But that, I tell them, is a good thing.

When you have the courage to allow yourself to not know, then the one thing you can know is that you are in exactly the right place!

Because by definition everything we need to know but don’t yet, exists in the space of I don’t know. It is full of latent possibilities, because it is nothing but latent possibilities.

You are in what quantum physicists call the ‘super position of pure potential’, and from there anything can, and everything does happen.

Despite the incredible benefits of dwelling in the immaculate space of what Zen Buddhists call Beginner’s Mind, saying those three words “I don’t know.”, is so very difficult, especial for high achievers.

But it is the key to the boundless possibility wherein the life of deep meaning and purpose you seek, is waiting to be found.

And so I actively encourage the wonderful people I work with to go beyond the borders of their known world, as if they themselves were Columbus or Magellan.

There is so much to discover when we use the wise perspective of ‘I don’t know’ as the food that feeds our future growth?

It will create a space into which, with effortless ease, everything you need is able at last to spontaneously flow.

Let go and allow… the I don’t know.

We live our lives as a separate self, thinking it to be the unassailable truth of who we are.

But this separate self is imaginary.

It is simply a thought, and we have yet to evolved beyond thought.

That’s a very provocative statement… so let’s unpack it.

The sentient ability to think, reason and creatively conceive has set us on a path toward fully enlightened consciousness, but for all our brilliance, the climb toward our collective awakening has only just begun.

To reach that immaculate summit and touch eternity, we must have the courage to go beyond thought.

As scary and unwise as that may currently seem, those feelings of fear and doubt are the very beacon lights we need to let us know we trek the right mountain track.

But who would dare do that?

Who would dare believe that the lives we would love to live, lie beyond thought?

Surely everything we achieve, every goal we set, and ambition we reach, has been hard won with the diligent application of intellectual endeavour. And in order achieve such heady heights of human attainment, choosing to leave thought behind seems… unthinkable.

But thought is also responsible for the fictions that create the feelings of emptiness soon after a goals achievement.

It is responsible for the confused frustration of finding ourselves in a life that is so much less than all we expected it to be.

And it is responsible for the fear that has us see challenges and obstacles as barriers that bar the way, rather than opportunities that open doorways through to the kind of life we would love to be living.

For we oh so smart sentient beings, the thought of moving beyond thought is akin saying that the best way quench your thirst is to stop drinking, or that the quickest way to get where you really want to be is to leave the car at home and walk!

But I’m not saying that thinking is a bad think, it isn’t, it’s an incredible thing.

What I am saying is that it’s not the only thing, and that the silence between thoughts solves far more problems than the merry go round of the ‘monkey mind’, that has us thinking the same patterns of thought 80 to 90% of the time.

And more than that, I’m saying that when we choose not to use this most precious resource, we amplify its potent contribution when we do choose to use it.

Make you think… right!

Sadly though, beguiled by its sparkling magnificence, and enthral to its magical misdirection, thinking has become such an obsessive-compulsive addiction, that we now believe our very existence depends on its perpetual momentum.

And so, because we can, we do.

Just as every problem is a nail for the one holding the hammer, so thinking becomes the solution we use for any and every life situation.

We have thought the ‘thinker’ into existence and called it ‘me’, making of this most magnificent servant a terrible master.

But now… as highly evolved expressions of consciousness, we can choose to use this potent power as artist paints, as poets write, and as a composer makes their music,. We can choose to realise that it is in the space between what we make things mean that the deepest insight are to be found.

And in that thoughtless silence what really matters can at last be heard.

So, use thinking for how you need it now, and if not needed, rest in the bliss of pure unalloyed presence.

So what is it about tough times that make them doorways through which we can all walk, into more rewarding and fulfilling lives well and truly lived?

It seems a bit bleak for that doesn’t it?!

And why did the Buddha choose ‘suffering’ as the central insight of the teachings that earnestly flowed from his own awakening?

Well… spoiler alert… he didn’t.

He used the word Dukkha which most often, and most unsatisfactorily, gets translated as ‘suffering’.

Now this isn’t an arcane piece of interpartive nit picking, it is important. Because that blunt translation has so many of us putting bolts and bars on the very door through which the life we would love to live is reached.

However, if we can let go of those inhibiting preconceptions, and use instead the words ‘tough times’, that door swings open. And we get to see all the way through to a place from which that life we would love to live, can be experienced as the life we live today.

But when we close our eyes to the emancipating utility of tough times, the most incisive and astute insight into the true nature of our human experience, and how to transform that experience into the profound peace of a human being, being truly conscious, is lost.

And that is so sad.

Because in this turning away we disinherit ourselves from an experience of life and living, that in the glimpses I have had, is revealed to be achingly exquisite.

So let me say it load and clear, Dukkha is not suffering in the one-dimensional way we tend to make it mean, and to conceive of it thus is to take a single leaf to be the entire tree.

Dukkha is a clear and compassionate, lovingly tender insight into the ripples of those tough times that furrow the surface of what would otherwise be, the still calm lake of a fulfilling life well lived.

Some ripples and waves you could and should of course call suffering in all its pained conceptual form, others though may simply be the uneasy disquiet that whispers in the stillness of ‘time to think’.

And it is also true that some of those ripples are the lovely things in life.

The fleeting pleasures we wish would stay, the sweet taste of fruit that drifts away, and the final notes of a beautiful song that we wish would linger and never be gone.

It is in these all-encompassing everythings, that the real meaning and revelatory depth of Dukkha is revealed.

Not because these things themselves contain the poison of suffering, but because the living of life with its multi-various vicissitudes, stimulates a desire for these things to either be gone, or to linger on… and there in that craving is the cause of it all.

The rippling unreliability of wanting things to be other than they are.

So Dukkha points in antonym toward it sister Sukha, the peace and joy, happiness and love lying just beneath the unsettled surface of all our tough times.

But these are all just words, and ‘the finger pointing at the moon is not the moon’.

A single word alone lacks the nuance and subtlety required to hold this Orchid of enlightenment safe, as we ask it to prove its own beauty.

Surrender words, surrender suffering, and allow the utility of tough times to be your teacher.

Let lake waters still to glass the thin-skinned surface of this craven craving world.

And there in depth for all to see, the tough times reveal their utility.

It has always been my intention to share my work in a way that is of greatest service to others on their own journey toward an extraordinary life well and truly lived.

Directly exploring the nature of Consciousness is of course a powerful route toward that goal but doing so can often feel incongruously at odds with the full on, full up lives we live today, with all their competing needs and wants.

It’s easy to see why those two things may appear to be mutually exclusive.

But from my own lived experience, I know now they are not.

The challenges that narrated my own life’s story, and the thousands of hours of introspective reflection, research and meditation that those challenges made essential, revealed to me a golden thread.

It is the story arc that the lives of truly extraordinary people follow, as they find the courage to travel into and through even the most challenging and debilitating of times.

And it is the counter intuitive act of using the very things that seem to bar your way as food to feed your future growth, that enables these magnificent Phoenix to fly… and often to heights that inspire us all.

As the Phoenix Rising Story Arc describes, it is often at the summit of our high achievements that the challenges and traumas that fuel our first fast ascent, catch us up.

And like the bow wake of a comet then threaten to destroy everything,

But even here — and especially here — the obstacles we need to navigate, the challenges we must overcome, the opportunities we want to take, and of course old traumas that blur or blind the way, are the very things that will enable us to fly… if that is, we have courage to go back and find what it was we left behind.

My Own Story Arc

When we have the courage to use even the darkest times as points of nascent light, they become the catalyst for a potent transformation in every aspect of our lives.

It is a truly transcendent experience, but importantly, one that roots itself ever more deeply in the practical and pragmatic needs of day to day living. It deliberately and courageously uses the vicissitudes of life, and their competing imperatives, as the alchemy through which we create for ourselves and others, what the Stoics called ‘A Good Life’.

The purpose of Phoenix Rising is to be that Alchemist

From the ashes of my own nadir over a decade ago, the seeds of which were sown some forty years before, rose what has now become the organising principle of Phoenix Rising, around which my way of helping others now orbits.

It is a safe harbour into which I bring a lifetime of living an examined life.

Forged in the formative experiences of my own ‘challenging’ childhood

Shaped in the creative expression of being an actor and then an opera singer.

Intensified by 17 years of building a multi-million-pound marketing agency that left me with all the material attainments and external affirmations I could wish for, but in a life that was so empty of real meaning and purpose, that I no longer wanted to live it.

And throughout all of that, the hole deep inside me, that had driven my tenacious success, had also driven me to a drug and alcohol addiction that would take two years in prison and two trips through rehab to escape.

But finally, after a short stay in a secure metal hospital with suicidal ideations, came the painful yet beautiful recovery and 5 years of self-imposed retreat, where meditation, study and contemplation allowed me to rebuild my life on the firm foundations of truly profound insights.

And so, the genesis of Phoenix Rising has found its full expression now, and become my way of giving back to those who helped me, by helping others.

It is an understanding of how we infants of evolution can guide ourselves to the place from which we clearly see all the way through to whatever it is we want to achieve with our lives.

So, my bi-weekly publication, now called Phoenix Rising, is the first step of many I will take, using these collected insights to help those who have been through extraordinary things… achieve extraordinary things.

It is my way of humbly playing my part in the evolution of our consciousness as a species.