The Scotsman? None. Zilch. Null points.

So I took charge and sent him my half of this manuscript and he emailed back with a one-liner: ’Copey, is this your best work?’

And I’m like, cheeky sod. But, wanting to keep a feeling of entente cordiale I pinged a one-liner back: ’No Gav, on reflection, I can probably do better.’

Cue two more feverish weeks of me being hunched over a keyboard. I click ’send’ again.

This time there’s a lot of waiting. Two weeks of it in fact. I damned this creative collaboration, and then one day I logged on and there’s an email from Gav. ’I ask you again Copey, is this really the best you can do?’

Crikey! I’m getting a bit sweaty. Gav’s standards are ridiculous. Is it really the best I can do? Jeez, which bit doesn’t he like? On reflection, there are a couple of bits I can tweak so I email Gav with ’No boss, I can improve a bit more.’

Six days later a new, improved document zings its way from Derby to Edinburgh. This time I’ve attached it with a short message. ’Gav, this is awesome. It’s the very best I’m capable of.’

I wait, eyes fixed on the screen and PING, Gav replies in less than 10 seconds: ’In that case Copey, this time I shall read it.’

Ladies and gentlemen, it’s been a pleasure to have been 50% of your writing team, but it’s time for me to step aside. Our epic finale is crammed with Gavisms. Brace yourself for full-octane, high-energy, self-help comedy that just happens to be deadly serious.

Sit back and relax while the flying Scotsman reaches full steam …

My father’s last words …

I got the phone call at 6am. It was my mum and it was grave. ’You need to come now.’ I had known for some time this call was coming and yet I still wasn’t prepared. Are we ever really prepared for that call?

The doctor wasn’t expecting my dad to last much longer, so I needed to get to the hospital. And fast. I was due to be giving a speech that morning at a school in the Scottish Borders. I had to phone a colleague and tell him what was happening; he told me to get off the phone and go, he’d take care of things at work. I hung up the phone and as I turned around my wife Ali handed me a bag with a few items of clothing and some toiletries. ’Just go.’ I hugged her and ran out the door.

My dad had been rushed to a hospital two hours from where I live. My biggest fear was that I wouldn’t make it in time to say goodbye. A few speed limits broken, I made it to the hospital, parked up and ran past the phalanx of pyjama-clad smokers, some with drips attached to their arms. I continued to sprint along hospital corridors, following the blue line, up three flights of stairs towards Ward 8. Double doors ahead, I stopped and sucked in a few lungfuls of air. I knew that on the other side of those doors was my absolute hero, my best friend, my dad. And I was about to see him for the last time.

My brother had got there before me. He and my mum sat in silence. They left the room and gave me time to sit and speak with the old man. Pumped full of morphine and with very shallow breathing, he was completely unresponsive. I didn’t care. I said all the things I wanted to say and kissed him on the forehead.

Hours passed. Dad remained unconscious.

Several hours later, having been sat around him sharing memories and telling stories from years gone past, my dad’s eyes shot open. He lifted his head off the pillow, looked at mum, looked at my brother, turned to me and said …

’What the fuck’s going on?’

He closed his eyes and slipped away.

They were his very last words. ’What the fuck’s going on?’

He was the coolest dad in the world, right to the very end. I don’t want to overanalyse his immortal last sentence, but could it be that my old man, who I assumed knew everything about everything, knew nothing about anything?

It’s generally accepted that life is not a rehearsal. This may explain why a lot of people seem to be making a total hash of it. They’re just making it up as they go along. What if we’re all just bumbling along in the dark, like Theseus, but without any string to follow?

So what the fuck is going on? We think the short answer to that is nobody actually knows.

Go back to the year 1244 and you could predict, with some certainty, what the world would be like in, say, 1280. Anyone who makes that sort of prediction nowadays is off their rocker.

In a world of uncertainty, just one thing is certain. Super-wellness, or shining, is never going to go out of fashion. Whatever the future holds, being the very best version of yourself is the key. It always has been and it always will be. It’s the key to staying sane. It’s the key to enjoying the hurly burly of life. And it’s the key to unlocking the shine in others.

Get gritty

We’ve all got that friend. You know, the one who’s a legend. They’re crazy but they’re awesome. Let me tell you about my best friend. We’ll call him Jonny, because that’s his name.

‘I try to be available for life to happen to me.’

Bill Murray

It was my first year at university and I hadn’t even known Jonny six weeks. We were in a particularly boring early-morning lecture and the lights went off as the lecturer hit the play button on a short video for us all to watch.

Jonny was sat to my right. ’I’m going to take off all my clothes,’ he said.

I laughed at the ridiculousness of this statement. Crazy, right?

Two minutes later I turned to my right and there’s Jonny with zero clothes on. Sitting stark bollock naked in a lecture theatre surrounded by 200 other students.

About four minutes later the video ended and the lights came back on. Jonny, fully clothed once again, turned, gave me a nudge and simply said, ’See, told you I was going to take off all my clothes’.

Why did Jonny do this? It’s crazy, right? Crazy, or genius?

The craziest part for me was actually that I didn’t see, hear or feel him taking his clothes off! It was like they just fell off and then somehow fell back on again.

How boring would life be if we didn’t have that outrageous experience or bold companion or ridiculous story?

As Laura Argintar writes, ’Crazy friends make the best friends. They’re the ones who stand out, whose shared memories are always two parts fun and one part completely horrifying.’

I could fill an entire book with ’Jonny escapades’, though most I wouldn’t be allowed to tell you. But, strangely enough, this chapter’s not about persuading you to get your kit off during your next cinema trip or convincing you to be two parts fun and one part horrifying, it’s about David Bowie. The actual, real David Bowie …

Before we get to Bowie, a teacher of mine once posed the following question: if there are ten birds sitting on a washing line and five decide to fly away, how many are left?

The whole class screamed, ’Five! Durr!’

Sir smiled and gave us the answer. ’Ten,’ he purred. ’They’re all still on the washing line.’

We all looked at each other with a puzzled expression.

He continued, ’They only decided to fly away, they didn’t actually fly.’

The lesson here, of course, was lost on most of us eight-year-olds at the time but later on in life it was very clear. How many times in life do we decide we’re going to do something and then we don’t. We put it off, we find an excuse not to do it.

Learn a musical instrument, change job, stop smoking, lose weight, get fit, ask that person out, get divorced, get hitched, get more sleep, go on that holiday, start your own biz, write a book, the list goes on.

But you don’t do it. Why? Because you’ll get round to it later? Or because you can’t? Fear of failure perhaps? Or what others will say? They might even laugh. It’s too much like hard work. Things will work out the way they are. You’re scared. It’s another list that tends to go on a bit.

If you take a closer look, you’ll find it’s nothing more than a list of excuses. Excuses are what stop you in your tracks. SHINE has been about changing your mindset away from, ’What’s the worst that could happen?’ to ’What’s the best?’

There are two types of people though. Those who then act upon it and those who don’t, they just sit around hoping one day it will happen all by itself. In a previous book, Andy described life as a massive DIY project. Just as your IKEA Billy bookcase won’t assemble itself and your spare room won’t give itself a lick of paint, your life won’t move forward without some effort. But the birds on a wire conundrum hints that ’deciding’ and ’doing’ are not the same thing.

We love Angela Duckworth’s grit formula, in which effort counts twice.

First up, talent × effort = skill.

When you consider individuals in identical circumstances, what each achieves depends on just two things: talent and effort. Talent relates to how fast we can improve in skill. Applying it to a subject, say maths, a little bit of talent is useful, but talent without effort means you’ll never get skilful.

But also, skill × effort = achievement.

Once you’ve got skilful, it’s effort that makes the breakthrough to achievement.

Oscar-nominated actor Will Smith articulates it well by admitting that he never really considered himself as talented: ’Where I excel is ridiculous, sickening work ethic.’ He goes on, ’I will not be outworked. You might have more talent than me, be smarter than me, you might be sexier than me. You might be all of those things. You got me in nine categories. But if we get on the treadmill together, there’s two things. You’re getting off first, or I’m gonna die. It’s really that simple.’

Deciding to do something is common. Indeed, enthusiasm is common. Endurance is rare, because it takes effort to keep going.

It’s a whole lot easier to stop. And that’s the problem.

Rebel rebel

We’ve been thinking about the birds on a wire conundrum. We think Sir might have been wrong. If there are 10 birds sitting on a washing line and five decide to fly away, how many are left?

What if the answer is nine? There are nine birds left sitting on the washing line.

Why nine?

Because there’s always one. Jonny is one. Mary Poppins is one. David Bowie was one. Not only is there always one but there has to be one. Or else who do we follow? Who lights the way?

We all need a David Bowie. Think about it, someone actually decided to be David Bowie. The guy who decided to be David Bowie was David Robert Jones. He didn’t put it off, or panic about what his mates might say, he just became the actual David Bowie.

Caitlin Moran describes it thus: ’In 1968, Bowie was a gay, ginger, bonk-eyed, snaggle-toothed freak walking around South London in a dress, being shouted at by thugs. Four years later, he was still exactly that – but everyone else wanted to be like him, too.’

If David Bowie can make being David Bowie cool, we’re sure you can make you cool.

Plus, unlike David Bowie, you get to listen to David Bowie for inspiration.

So you’re one up on him, really.

Yes, you’re already ahead of David Bowie.

‘We don’t want to ruin the ending for you but everything is going to be magic.’

Gav

And so to our Epic ending. And it really is Epic, with a capital ’E’.

The previous 46 700 words have been about rescuing you from a suffocating state of the mundane. We’ve done what authors do and used the subtleties of language to challenge your thinking. Are you experiencing happy days or muddling through in a happy daze? Are you befuddled by a career in which you feel you’re embroiled in busy-ness instead of business? You could be in the right state or a right state, the difference is palpable. And there’s much less nuance between being well off and experiencing wellbeing.

Just so there’s no confusion, to truly SHINE we’re nudging you towards happy days, business, the right state and wellbeing.

‘The pen is mightier than the sword and considerably easier to write with.’

Marty Feldman

But with 300 words left, let’s stop the clever words and fancy author trickery. Let’s do some hit-you-between-the-eyes stuff. We started this chapter with death, so let’s finish it that way, but, as has been our way since Chapter 1, with some quirkiness.

Congratulations. You’re going to die.

You’re so lucky to get to die. Because that means you’ve had the chance to live. Most people are never going to die because they are never going to be born. The potential number of people who could have been here in my place is so huge you’d have to count to infinity, twice! And yet here we are, seven billion of us, jostling for position. I don’t know about you but I don’t feel like some sort of person to be marked out as deserving of life. I have a palpable sense of ordinariness, yet I’m part of the privileged few who’ve won the lottery of birth against all the odds.

You’re the chosen one. You’re here. Now. Alive! Don’t you owe it to all the ones who would have loved to have been born, but never made it, to at least sing and dance a little? And maybe at least try and make a bit of a dent in the universe. Putting effort into living life to the fullest, rather than just getting by, means you will shift to what Andy calls ’healthy functioning’ – and it’s contagious. It attracts and engages others. Some people are naturals in their positive outlook, others might require a bit of extra help, but we’re all capable of it.

‘It’s everybody’s duty to give the world a reason to dance!’

Kid President

Our final truth is that everyone has the ability to shine, yet not everyone does. Using the analogy from a few paragraphs ago, there are a lot of birds, sitting on a lot of wires. Waiting!

And waiting …

And, you know … waiting.

Your job is simple. It’s not to decide, it’s to do. Quit waiting. This is your time. Take the weight off your shoulders. Your job is not to inspire anyone else, it’s simply to be inspired.

SHINING is your purpose!

Think about it. There were passengers on the Titanic who turned down the opportunity of the sweet trolley. The best way of preparing for death is to have a cracking life, so let’s finish with an interesting question: where were you before you were born?

Because after your energy runs out, there’s a fair-to-middling chance that you’re going to go back there. It’s not a bad place, or a good place, just your energy shape-shifting.

Gav’s dad doesn’t know what the fuck’s going on. Neither do we.

But while you’ve got some time and energy, it seems sensible to shine.

Full. Fucking. Beam.