Studies in Resilience

The world is full of amazing and resilient people. It's worth learning from their stories.

What are the factors of resilience? Nelson Mandela, who was imprisoned for 27 years on Robben Island as a political prisoner, never gave up his belief that he would eventually succeed in his goals. This is because he had a sense of Personal Mission. Indeed, many resilient people have strong faith and a belief that everything happens for a reason.

Thanks to his resilience, Mandela was able to maintain his concentration and focus on his core objective, and at the same time manage his emotions. It must have been incredibly difficult, yet through all that time he kept his emotions from destroying him.

Remember, too, my comment that not making it all about you is central to being a better person? Mandela was part of a larger movement. He was doing good for the oppressed people of South Africa. His ordeal wasn't just about him. Mandela knew where he was heading and never stopped believing.

It's said that Thomas Edison failed 1000 times before creating the lightbulb. This is one of those convenient numbers that you often hear in the personal development world, but there's no doubt that his ‘failures’ were numerous. Some people say his attempts numbered between 1000 and 10,000 but, whatever the reality, it's agreed that Edison failed a lot of times before he successfully created a reliable, working lightbulb. His response to his repeated failures was to reframe them, famously saying: ‘I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work.’

Oprah Winfrey had a harrowing childhood, in which she was repeatedly raped by family members. She ran away from home and gave birth when she was just 14, and lost her child soon after. Her estranged father then took charge of her life, encouraging her to put her past behind her and focus on what she wanted to achieve. Oprah responded to the tough father figure, who gave her days shape and a goal to aim for. Her focus on getting what she wanted and getting away from her past led her to excel as an honours student in high school. She went on to win an oratory contest, and secured a full scholarship at university. Oprah is now a global brand admired by hundreds of millions, and worth around $3 billion.

Stephen King had his first novel rejected 30 times. If it weren't for Tabitha, King's wife, Carrie may never have been published. After so much constant rejection, King threw his manuscript in the rubbish bin. Tabitha, retrieved it and made him persevere. Stephen's books have sold over 350 million copies and have been made into countless major motion pictures.

Similarly, Agatha Christie suffered five years of continual rejection before getting her first book deal. To date, sales of her books have been in excess of $2 billion. J K Rowling, famously a single mum living in Edinburgh after a failed marriage, was rejected 12 times. When Bloomsbury agreed to go ahead, her editor told her there was no money in writing children's books. The last four novels of the Harry Potter series each consecutively became the fastest‐selling books in history, on both sides of the Atlantic, with combined sales in excess of 450 million. Jack Canfield and Mark Victor Hansen received 140 rejections before the Chicken Soup for the Soul series sold 125 million copies.

The Beatles were told that guitar groups were on the way out and they had no future in show business. Steven Spielberg was rejected by the University of Southern California before he was accepted. He then dropped out of university and went on to become one of the world's most successful movie directors.

In all these stories, focus and self belief were absolutely central, plus in Stephen King’s case, a little bit of support at the right time.

For those who think that failure is not part of the narrative for successful people, Michael Jordan has some great advice: ‘I have missed more than 9000 shots in my career. I have lost almost 300 games. On 26 occasions I have been entrusted to take the game‐winning shot, and I missed. I have failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed.’

It pays to continue on, learn from mistakes and keep pursuing your goals.

The Agricultural Revolution

Let's look at the situation in Britain before the Agricultural Revolution. In the 16th century, farming was still being done along the same feudal lines as it had been done for hundreds of years since the Normans invaded.

Society was heavily dominated by the aristocracy, with local squires and lords controlling the land. Most people lived without the basic things we take for granted in the modern age—running water, a reliable heat source, sanitation—even money. To pay their rent, many people paid in produce. When a crop failed due to a bad season or blight, people starved. Life was precarious, tough and joyless. That was the downside of the pastoral idyll.

There were problems with agriculture. Farmers owned, through marriage and inheritance, strips of land dotted around the strip farming system. Strips were separated from neighbours’ by areas of raised earth called baulks, that no‐one could plant. If the neighbour's strip was badly tended, weeds and blight spread quickly to your crop. Labour was intensive and back‐breaking from morning till night, and at harvest the Church took a tenth of your produce. Few saw any money, but traded in goods in a subsistence lifestyle.

Poverty was king, and families were at the mercy of weather and disease. Research suggests that famine was known by most generations throughout the Middle Ages in Britain, affecting lifespan, killing many young children and leading to starvation in many communities. This was your life.

The land you worked probably didn't belong to you anyway, or there was no proof of it, and you might be there by custom or with no legal proof of tenure. If you were a freeholder or a copyholder with the right documentation, you could prove your claim. If not, you lived a precarious, insecure existence.

Near your village there was the Common Land. Owned collectively by the community, it was never improved or worked effectively, and was used to graze cattle.

In this Feudal System, everything depended on the local squire being responsible and running things fairly.

This way of life was turned upside down by the Agricultural Revolution. It was not one thing, not one change, but a connected series of increasingly accelerating changes that completely reshaped society.

Changes come one by one. With no fertiliser for the fields, the soil in the old system degraded as crops grew. Improvements during the Agricultural Revolution included the four‐field crop rotation system, which meant you grew different crops in your field each year so as not to draw all the goodness from the soil. Every fourth year, you left a field to lie fallow, and hopefully recover, before resuming planting. With this system, at any one time, you were only able to produce food on three‐quarters of your land.

Farming pioneer Arthur Young wrote of his travels in France, telling how French winemakers improved soil with manure and brought the process of marling the soil to Britain. Jethro Tull invented the seed drill, which planted seeds efficiently in rows rather than scattering them so that many were lost. Numerous other innovations occurred.

These changes relied on one big change, which meant a land grab by the moneyed classes. In many parts of Britain, landowners realised that improvements in wool prices meant they would make more money with fewer people on the land and more sheep.

They swept away the feudal past and created a wealthier, more productive agricultural sector. It had a terrible downside.

The change dispossessed anyone who couldn't prove land ownership. The turmoil led to hundreds of thousands being made homeless and the creation of a massive unemployed class desperate for work.

In Scotland, the Agricultural Revolution saw firstly the Lowland Clearances, and later, the Highland Clearances. In the latter, Clan members were thrown off ancestral lands. One account from the Outer Hebrides tells how ‘the richest commoner’ in Scotland, Colonel John Gordon of Cluny, ordered the people who lived on his island of South Uist to attend a compulsory meeting. Once there, they were forced aboard waiting ships and transported to the USA and Canada against their will.

Those who ran away were hunted down with dogs. Many arrived on the shores of Nova Scotia with only the clothes they stood up in. Transplanted to a foreign land, where the winters were much crueller, many of those thousands of enforced emigrants died. This was late in the history of the British Agricultural Revolution, which started in England in the 1560s. The clearance of South Uist happened in 1851.

It is one of the most extreme stories of the abuse of power that happened during the Agricultural Revolution. But across Britain, farm labourers and former small farmers were thrown off their land. It really was a revolution. It overthrew the established order and brought massive change, suffering and even death for many in the short term. The longer effect was to make people wealthier by making food more easily available and by ending the cycle of famine in Britain.

The Industrial Revolution

The Industrial Revolution was in many ways a continuation of the Agricultural Revolution. The questing mind of inventors and reformers applied scientific thinking to old methods of production. The village blacksmith who worked iron created from small‐scale ore extraction and smelting was eventually replaced by massive industrial foundries. New methods of mechanised cloth production saw small weavers and spinners who produced hand‐made cloth in cottage industries replaced with huge mills that used mechanisation to make production more efficient.

The British Empire at first set up trading posts in India, then subjugated the subcontinent. At the time India was one of the wealthiest countries in the world. Britain stripped India of its wealth and made it dependent on British trade. Indian cotton was imported to Britain where value was added by turning it into textiles, and then exported back to India. Empire was a ruthless business. Literally.

In Britain, to support the vast leap in trade, canals were built to transport newly made goods from sites that were never previously accessible to development. Steam power changed the game again, first with Newcomen's atmospheric engine, and later with Watt's double condenser. Richard Trevithick invented an early steam locomotive and George Stephenson improved on it. The pace of change accelerated further. The great industrial mills were no longer dependent on water to transport their goods, and communication improved. The first transatlantic telegraph cable between Britain and the USA was laid in 1858. The world was opening in a way none had imagined.

The Industrial Revolution changed completely the way people lived. Not always for the better. For those swept up helplessly in its progress who hadn't been able to get ahead of the tide of history, life was terrible. Work in coal mines and cotton factories led to horrendous injuries, death and diseases. Children lost limbs in the mines, developed respiratory diseases in the cotton mills, or were killed by the mill machinery.

There were those who resisted change. Ned Ludd was an apprentice weaver working in Britain in the 18th century just as the Industrial Revolution began. He saw the new weaving machines as a threat to his livelihood and broke some of them, supposedly in a fit of rage. Later, his actions inspired a movement of machine breakers who raided factories and destroyed the new equipment in the North of England. The machine breakers became known as Luddites. Of course, the Luddites didn't win. The Industrial Revolution went on without them.

Change will happen no matter what. It is our job to adjust to what is happening and find the opportunities that will help us prosper. If you close yourself off from change, you are going to lose.

There is no doubt that, for many years, working people struggled and suffered thanks to the Industrial Revolution. There's also no doubt that the nation's lives and health improved as society began to catch up with the changes the Industrial Revolution brought. Today, our lives are a world away from the impoverished lives led before the Agricultural and Industrial Revolutions.

But that is not the end of the story. More change came and so much more is in motion now.

The Information Revolution

The clean energy that came with the mass generation of electricity and supply of gas changed people's lives for the better. Electricity became the safe, clean source of power for the modern world. The electric light, the radio, the tram, the train, electrically powered factories heralded the change to a reliance on electricity.

Then the world changed again as electricity was put to a new use.

The foundations of computing were laid down by Charles Babbage in the 19th century, in which he imagined the core elements of a programmable computer, and even included punch cards in the process. Babbage's computer was based on the physical technology of the time, not electronics, which were yet to be invented. Nevertheless, his brilliantly envisioned principles for the Analytical Engine underpinned the great inventions of the early computers.

The technology finally caught up with Babbage's vision in the 1940s in the UK, with the creation of Colossus—the first digital programmable computer—used by the British Secret Services for codebreaking. ENIAC, a faster and more flexible computer, was built by the Americans in 1946.

The Information Revolution had begun, which to this day has seen an increasing acceleration of the capabilities of computers.

From massive machines built in the 1950s and 1960s, the computer has reduced so far that you can hold huge computing power in the palm of your hand. The pace of change has been extraordinary. It is often said that the computing power in a modern smartphone far exceeds the computing power used for the Apollo moon landings.

The changes to people's lives have been equally huge, in ways that were never foreseen in the early days of computing. It is difficult to take in the impact of computing on society.

At one level, computing made many more menial roles easier and eventually unnecessary. Computers control manufacturing processes. Take, for example, car production, which is largely done by robots, with far fewer people on production lines. Car engines are controlled and optimised by computers, which also control on‐board entertainment, communication, GPS, air‐conditioning, security, emissions and lighting. Orders for cars are taken over the internet, allowing bespoke vehicle manufacture on the production line. The car company's payroll is managed by a small team on computers, where 50 years ago there would have been numerous people in the accounts department.

The insurance taken out by drivers on cars is calculated by computers, the accounts through which the insurance money is paid are computerised, the driver's licence and details are on a government database, making it possible to check for fraudulent claims automatically… and so on. In every aspect of people's lives, computers and information make people's lives easier, or—if you haven't caught up with computer technology—make you bang your head against a wall!

But the real power in the Information Revolution is not in the individual transactions computers help with, but in the data attached to them. Private companies and businesses know about your family, your friends, your secret affairs, your bank balance, your spending patterns, your mental health, your fitness, your habits, your politics, your religion. Private companies and governments probably know more about you than your family and closest friends. They listen and log your speech patterns to make your life easier.

All of these things, just as in previous revolutions, have their upsides and their downsides. There is a genuine problem with the end of net neutrality, in which higher paying customers are preferred by internet servers over those with a lower budget. Already, computers analyse which customers seeking customer support have a larger income. Those who are wealthier are routed through to a human being, while those who are not considered good customers are left to struggle with slower and more laborious automated systems. It means that the wealthy can enjoy an entirely different experience of life in society, with no idea what others are going through, separated by monetary value into those who will have a positive experience and those who will fight with poor service.

This seems to be a minor issue, but if it is replicated throughout society, then social mobility becomes more difficult and democracy suffers, as classes become entrenched by the biases inherent in computer programming. The poor are held back and the wealthy preferred. And neither realises their experience of life is not a ‘standard’ experience.

In warfare, fully autonomous military drones are a step away. How will those drones be programmed? How will they make decisions about who lives and dies? Vehicles will need to make decisions about which way to swerve in a collision that will lead to the least harm. These are genuine ethical problems, not just matters of good programming.

The problems of surveillance and what will happen with the information collected from it has yet to be addressed properly and will raise more issues in the coming years. So will the increasing levels of automation that will make ‘filler’ jobs obsolete. Human‐operated taxis and grocery delivery will disappear. Shopkeepers will be able to replace staff (indeed, they already are, with self‐checkout systems). As artificial intelligence grows, it isn't just the menial jobs that are going. As algorithms are developed to mimic the best in human judgement, white collar jobs are being lost. There will be another mass of unemployed people, just as there was with the revolutions that went before. We will all need to get ahead of the curve…

These are just some of the red flags raised by the Information Revolution. Yet, it can't be denied that data can be analysed and processed faster than was ever possible in human history. Information can be collated and used to analyse markets, build conceptual models of intricate systems. It can be used to model new inventions, design buildings. With the internet, more and more data is available, and information can be shared more easily than ever before. It means that, today, someone sitting anywhere in the world who has access to the internet is able to plug themselves into vast amounts of knowledge. No longer is learning limited to the classroom. It is now available to the whole world.

The Educational Revolution that is in motion

On the back of the Information Revolution, I believe the Educational Revolution is in motion. It has already started. And in this Revolution, opportunities will open for everyone.

Education is vital for the many problems the world faces.

The way people learn, and what they are taught in schools is very much the same as it was in the 19th century. When is the curriculum going to catch up with what really needs to be taught, such as balancing a budget, how to manage your money, how to think or be in tune with your mental health? Mindfulness, entrepreneurship, healthy eating, communication skills, the mental side of exercise and sports are all subjects that can be taught, but which are completely overlooked in the classical education system. Then there are other matters, such as respecting other people's boundaries and beliefs, awareness of diversity, relationships, friends, networking, sex, social and global issues, global warming, plastic and recycling—and so much more.

For me, this is one of the reasons my industry is so appealing. It continues to grow because more and more people are seeking to learn things that help us become the best versions of ourselves far beyond where school let us down. People are keen on learning how to find love, become more confident, increase their self‐esteem, learn yoga, mindfulness, NLP, public speaking skills, how to become happier, learn marketing, make money, build a property portfolio, and become a more complete and rounded human being.

So around the world, millions of people are attending seminars, viewing YouTube and learn something new. At the time this book is being published:

• 300 hours of video are uploaded to YouTube every minute.
• Almost 5 billion videos are watched on YouTube every single day.
• Self‐improvement represents a $10 billion per year industry in the USA alone.
• $300 MILLION is the revenue generated by the 2006 self‐help book and DVD The Secret.
• The book reached the top of the New York Times bestseller list, and remained there for 146 consecutive weeks.
• E‐Learning was valued at $165 billion in 2015. It is estimated to be $240 billion in 2023, with 5 per cent growth per annum.
• The wellness industry is worth $3 trillion
• 5 PER CENT—the average annual growth of the personal development market, which far exceeds global economic trends.
• 15 MILLION COPIES—Dale Carnegie is often said be the father of the personal development industry with his famous book How to Win Friends and Influence People. First published in 1936, it went on to sell over 15 million copies and is still a bestseller.
• 20 MILLION—the number of copies Stephen Covey's 1989 classic The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People has sold to date.
• 45,000 TITLES—the estimated number of self‐help books in print.
• Tony Robbins’ ‘I am not your Guru’ is one of the most‐watched personal development events on Netflix.

I have been to countless personal development seminars and seen the way education occurs at them. Accelerated learning and using people's emotions as well as their intellects enables people to learn more quickly, makes them motivated to learn more and curious to go further. With technology to help, we have only just started the Educational Revolution!

Our Responsibility

What can be done with education? Far more than we have done so far. I believe we all hold a responsibility to change the world. Parents, educators, inspirers, authors, thinkers hold the key to global change, and we should band together and use technology to encourage real, positive change. We can't leave it to the teachers, politicians or the governments in charge of education. We have the technology and the freedom to promote new ideas and give people more opportunities and chances than ever before.

Children in developing countries who are given access to the internet become connected to the outside world and take in new ideas. Some of those ideas are not good; some are simply advertising for large corporations, some are actively destructive.

I believe that if we care about the future of the world and believe in people developing and going further in life, then we should add our potent voices to the mix. We have to get out there and deal with the big issues affecting the world—spreading change with an undeniably positive message. That then, is a revolution in education, for the whole world!

Be honest… Are you afraid of change?

Successful people usually relish change—and when they don't relish it, they at least get what change is going to mean to them.

Some understand that change is going to be uncomfortable simply because they are going to new places. That's the nature of learning—everything we have ever done for the first time will feel different—uncomfortable—strange. After a while it becomes normal and then it becomes a habit. So if you are going to have habits, learn new things that are good for you. Have good habits.

If you are looking to grow, evolve, develop, learn, find, seek, create, optimise, enhance, inspire, help, show, boost, turbo‐charge, believe, you MUST welcome change. You must see it as a natural part of life.

The question is simple, either you want to be a part of the revolution, or you want to be left behind.

You can fear change, or you can embrace it and use it to your advantage. Becoming stuck in a single idea means you'll end up on the losing side of history. But what if you are afraid of change? Really, genuinely afraid? There are ways to deal with it.

The Questions to ask yourself:

What revolution is going to happen in your life?

What have you been holding back on?

What decisions do you need to make, now?

How great will your life be once you have come out on the other side?

Seven ways to Welcome the Necessary Revolutions in Your Life

1. Admit your fear.

   It's important that you recognise your fear for what it is. Many people deny they're afraid of something, they hide it, they lie to themselves, acknowledge what scares them. They fear the consequences of change. Sometimes you hear people say they aren't afraid, but that they hate something. But you don't hate something for its own sake. The Ancient Greeks were clear about this—hatred is born of fear. You hate it because you are afraid of what it stands for and the change it will bring to your life.

2. Understand your fear.

   It's worth asking the question of your fear—is it really true?

   Look at it more closely. Many people find that by studying something and understanding its motives or what it really means, they realise they misunderstood it. Sometimes they are lacking information or have a distorted view of what the change in their lives might mean.

   When you ask this question, seek the counter examples, the things that show you might be wrong.

   Once you've found them and understood the change from lots of different directions, then you can balance them against each other. You might realise you only had a partial understanding of what the change means, or generalised it, so you imagined that one bad aspect of the change meant all the change would be bad.

   But remember—this means being brave. You have to be absolutely honest with yourself and really engage with it.

3. Reframe.

   Look at reframing and re‐understanding the change you fear. You might well find that by looking at something in a fresh light, you see a whole new way to deal with it.

   A famous king once tried to turn the tide back by commanding it to do so. King Canute sat in his throne, so the story goes, and soon the tide overran him and he nearly drowned.

   Two completely different frames attach to this story.

   One says this was evidence of the king's arrogance in trying to command the sea.

   A reframe of the story says the king was demonstrating his humility, by proving to his subjects that even he couldn't control the tide, that it was under God's command.

   Remember—if you can't stop the tide, find a new way to understand it!

4. Look for ways to make change your friend.

   What's the best that can happen when the change you fear comes along? Is it really as bad as all that? How do you make change your friend? How do you make it useful to you? If it's inevitable, then what do you need to do to make your life the best you possibly can—and live well with change? What are the best points about change?

5. What's going on with you?

   Is your fear real, or is it that you have an emotional attachment to the way things are now that simply doesn't stack up? If you like the way things are because ‘that's how they've always been’, does that mean you're actually being lazy? Should you give yourself a kick in the pants and work out what stops you accepting the change?

6. What's the worst and what's the best that could happen?

   Planning ahead and seeing how things might work out gives you the opportunity to be prepared. You should aim for the thing that is the very best outcome—and at the same time, insulate yourself however you can from the worst things. Taking stock of what might happen and working out different scenarios is going to give you an advantage. It means you've got an answer.

7. Reinvent yourself.

   Find new ways to be that will accommodate the new story you are telling. Make yourself see your situation in a new frame and seek the opportunities. You might well find that in this reinvention, you turn out to be king! For more about reinvention, read on.

The Chameleons

David Bowie was one of those enigmatic characters with a determination to succeed. As a teenager in the 1960s, he announced that he was going to be a rock star, before he could even play an instrument. The following decade saw him experimenting with which instruments were right for him. He started off as a sax player. When he realised that singing while playing sax would be impossible, he switched to guitar. He tried numerous different approaches to songwriting, doing serious songs, ballads in different styles and even writing a comedy record, ‘The Laughing Gnome’.

It was only in 1969, with his single ‘Space Oddity’, that people began to pay attention to him. Yet he'd been around in the music business by then for years—reinventing himself continually.

Over the course of his career, he reinvented himself over and over. From Major Tom, to Ziggy Stardust, to Aladdin Sane to The Thin White Duke and beyond, David Bowie was a Chameleon who changed his colours but remained at core the same thing—a rock singer. Of course, he also acted, wrote and painted—but at his core he was one thing.

Numerous others have done the same thing. Madonna is famed for reinventing her look and her style repeatedly. Picasso started off as a precise painter of lifelike portraits, and then created his own unique style of painting that was a complete departure from where he began.

Billionaire businessman Lord Alan Sugar has done this, too. His ‘thing’ was that he always wanted to trade. He started when he was a young boy by selling tar‐soaked wood dug up from the roads in London to be used as firelighters. He got into making and selling hi‐fi systems in the 1970s, then invented his own cheap tower systems under the name of Amstrad in the 1980s.

With each change and each revolution in the marketplace, Lord Sugar adapted. When computers started to change the entire home electronics marketplace in the 1980s, he was there—designing and introducing his own brand of PC. When the hard drives he was using turned out to be faulty and the company made a loss, he had a fire sale and reinvented the business as a satellite dish manufacture—finally selling it to Sky for £125 million.

He has continued as a serial entrepreneur, because his major skill is in seeing opportunities and selling things. More recently, he has also hosted the TV show The Apprentice. Yes, he's now a TV personality, but his core skill is in sales, and that never changed, though he reinvented his interests repeatedly.

Lord Sugar is another of the great chameleons—reinventors, whose business products change but who at core remain the same.

The Transformers

Though there is sometimes overlap between the Chameleons and the Transformers, the latter group are the ones who change their lives completely, and carry on.

Harrison Ford was one such Transformer. Having worked in the Hollywood studio system in the 1960s, Ford realised his career was going nowhere. He was a slave to the system and one of the bosses at Universal simply didn't like him. Harrison had a choice—to continue doing the same thing, which included being a failed actor, or doing something completely different.

When a friend said he wanted a table built for his home, Harrison offered to make it. He had no skill in carpentry, but he decided to get books out from the library and simply follow the instructions. Within a few months, he was getting calls for jobs on a regular basis and making good money.

What difference did this complete change in career make to his life? Harrison still wanted to act, but he was now able to go to auditions with a renewed sense of confidence. He wasn't completely reliant on the outcome of the audition, and this allowed him to relax. That's when he landed a role in George Lucas's American Graffiti.

This wasn't, however, the start of his rise to mega‐stardom. Harrison was having the wild time he had always dreamed he would have as a younger man, and at one drinks party had a fight with co‐star Richard Dreyfuss, throwing him off a second floor hotel balcony into the swimming pool. At that point, George Lucas decided he would never work with him again.

That's why he wasn't called for a new role Lucas was casting. Instead, his agent got him building a door into the building that Lucas walked through every morning for the auditions. Richard Dreyfuss also came to that audition, but didn't get the role.

Lucas couldn't find the right actor. The auditions went on for weeks. Finally Lucas relented and invited Harrison to audition. That was when he landed his role as Han Solo—a role that took him to mega‐stardom.

Harrison Ford's transformation as a carpenter was short‐lived—but it was this complete change that literally opened a new door for him.

Other Transformers include J K Rowling, whose life as a teacher in Portugal fell apart after she separated from her abusive partner. She ended up writing in Edinburgh. The life of the expat she had enjoyed in sunny Portugal was exchanged for a life in cold Scotland. It was a complete revolution in her life, which saw her at her lowest ebb, a single mother living on benefits.

Yet J K Rowling took the opportunity to write the book she believed in, Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, and followed her heart, reinventing herself as a novelist. As it turned out, she became the most successful novelist of modern times.

A fascinating and deeply inspiring figure is that of Nick Vujicic. Nick was born with tetra‐amelia, meaning he has only residual limbs instead of fully formed arms and legs. He spent his early years angry at the world for his disability and contemplated committing suicide at the age of eight. One day when he was 17, his mother showed him an article about a man with a severe disability who was making the most of his life. It had a transformational effect on Nick, who decided he would stop being angry and instead be grateful for all the good things in his life. He began to give motivational talks at his local church. Soon, word spread about his inspirational attitude to life. Nick has gone on to spread his message of hope to millions through books, DVDs, TV shows and inspirational talks. He now has a wife and two kids. For him, his success comes from the heart, and is the product of a strong spiritual belief and sense of personal mission to spread good news to the world.

I'll talk more about attitude and gratitude again, later.

What Reinvention Is Not

When the word reinvention comes up, sometimes people think it means they should pluck a persona from the air that isn't true to who they are. Reinvention is not about suddenly becoming someone else—it's the opposite. It's about becoming more the person you really are, by using the opportunity of reinvention to find new sides of yourself that have long been hidden.

When you reinvent yourself, it doesn't have to be as the result of a revolution, of suddenly feeling lost or dislocated from your former life—though for some people that is what's needed to shake them from their comfortable lives into one that's more meaningful. Maybe it's just that you need to become your 2.0 version. Maybe you just want to become healthier, fitter, funnier, find love. All these things, too, are reinvention.

Change or reinvention is not necessarily a mid‐life crisis.

I am not a big fan of these words, used too often by people around you. In particular, friends and loved ones might see ‘the new’ you as a mid‐life crisis, but I recommend you live your life around your reality, not theirs. Be a bit ‘selfish’. Why not?

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Richard Bandler talks about how we have the latest phone devices, we download the latest software, or buy the latest models of computers and TVs, but we expect to improve in life without updating ourselves. If you think it's too late, think again. Many, many people have made profound changes much later in life. Here are just a few, but remember—you are surrounded by change and reinvention.

• Morgan Freeman had his first Hollywood role at 52.
• Ray Kroc used to drive around the US selling milkshake machines. When he was 52, he met Maurice and Richard McDonald, and the McDonald's franchise was born.
• Andrea Bocelli began his professional opera career at 34, after working as a lawyer.
• JRR Tolkien was a successful university professor who wrote little‐known works. The Hobbit was published when he was 43. His next fiction book, The Lord of the Rings came out when he was 62.
• Trevor Bayliss was a swimming pool salesman, swimmer and stuntman. Then, at the age of 48, he began inventing aids for the disabled. He was 55 when he filed his first patent for the clockwork radio, which sold in its millions. A successful inventor, he went on to mentor other inventors.
• Sylvester Stallone was broke and didn't become successful until 30, when he created the role for the movie Rocky.
• Jon Hamm spent years auditioning unsuccessfully and waiting tables until he landed the role of Don Draper in Mad Men at the age of 36.

Seven ways to Reinvent Yourself and Find Your Calling in Life

Though many people dream of a different future, we often spend much of our life focusing on what needs to be done closer to hand. It's part of most people's make‐up to spend their energies on what is most likely to affect them now. That's why change so often comes with unexpected upheaval. But you can make changes and go after your goal without being prompted by a disaster.

When we do go for change, we often quit before seeing our dreams through to the end—which requires understanding what we need to do and the steps along the way to reinventing ourselves, changing our expectations and attitudes as life goes by—and upgrading them!

1. Look out for the rut.

   Be aware of what you're doing every day. If you don't make at least some contribution to your long term plan once a day, then you will not find it easy to move forwards. Writers will often set themselves a minimum word count to write every day. People saving up money will make sure a certain amount is put aside every week. There has to be something beyond doing your emails and catching up on tv shows or whatever makes your particular ‘rut’. Otherwise you'll get nowhere.

2. Know what you want.

   It helps to find out what you want for your future by taking yourself there in your imagination. One exercise that helps with this is to see yourself as an older person.

   What do you want it to be like?

   What do you see around you?

   A loving family?

   A lonely room?

   Wealth and comfort?

   Do you see yourself satisfied when helping others?

   Do you feel regrets for the things you didn't do?

   That last question is a strong indicator of what you should be striving for!

   Remember, too, that seeing yourself in your ideal future is a strong psychological incentive to getting there. Visualisation of yourself enjoying your future life will help you along the way. There's a hint you might want to take on board here, which means you are more likely to succeed. If you say to yourself: ‘I'm going to be a genius concert pianist,’ that's fantastic—but it's a big chunk and a huge leap. If you tell yourself: ‘To get there, every day I'm going to practise the piano and get better’, you are focusing on the process of continual improvement. That's something that, provided you do it, you can't fail at! It's a process goal rather than an outcome goal—but one that will support you on the way to the final outcome you want.

   Check also that the outcome is what you really want and that it is achievable. Remember: ‘defying gravity’ or ‘turning back the tide’ may not be realistic outcomes!

3. Know thyself.

   It's vital to know yourself. Remember what I said about being honest? You have to be as honest as you can with yourself, all of the time.

   Take some time to think over your life. Find how your passions are ignited in the world and see how you can connect with them.

   The Questions to ask yourself:

   What are you capable of?

   Where are you strong?

   When are you super amazing?

   Where are you weak? Be honest!

   What ignites your passions?

   Ask yourself, too, are your future plans what you want, or are you being overly influenced by people who have a different agenda? Sometimes, outside pressure can make you lose sight of your own goals and values.

   Sometimes it's easy to lie to yourself because you don't have a complete picture of who you are, what your strengths are and what you are capable of. Be brutally honest, and ask trusted friends to be brutally honest, too. Discussions with trusted advisers and mentors can really help you understand who you are and what you can do. You might surprise yourself!

4. Be aware of the task in hand.

   It's all too easy to imagine it's going to be easy. People who get excited and inspired by the grand vision of what their new life will be like often overlook the complexity of each step along the way. When you know what you want to achieve, work your way backwards, working out what you want to achieve before that and before that, until you get to the place you're in now. Visualise each step along the way. This trains you to know what to expect. Anticipate difficulties so you can meet them, so you don't have to improvise all the time. Have strategies to hand to deal with obstacles along the way, but also don't over‐focus on difficulties. Keep them in proportion and be ready for them as you strive toward your goal.

   You can do that by talking with people who've already been there. It's amazing how generous many people are with their expertise. They want to see other people succeed. Ask experts. Get a mentor and get the reality beyond the dream.

5. Create new habits.

   To get where you want to go, you will need to create new habits. This can be time‐consuming and energy‐depleting at the beginning. It requires a change in mental attitude if you want to learn a new skill, get fitter through exercise or eat different foods.

   If you say to yourself, ‘I would like to travel more’, that is going to lead to inertia because there isn't a piece of activity attached to it. If you say to yourself instead, ‘I'm going to book at least one trip a month’, and you then ensure that you set aside a time to look at your options, price up travel and set time aside for the travel itself, you are much more likely to actually get out the door. Committing to leaving on a trip once a month is a much more useful aim than the vague ‘I'll travel more’.

   Of course, this requires recognising the time it will take to do—so be straight with yourself and factor in the extra time. You know it makes sense.

   I recommend you to read The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do, by Charles Duhigg.

6. Work with others.

   You don't have to work alone. By spending time in a club, group or association of like‐minded people, you are far more likely to succeed in what you want on your journey to reinvention. I have received amazing advice and inspiration from the mentoring groups I have joined in the past, made really useful connections that made a massive difference in my life—and made highly valued friends, too.

7. Measure, assess, celebrate

   Check how you are doing, where you've actually got to, against the goals you have set yourself.

   The Questions to ask yourself:

   Am I moving forward?

   Am I closer to achieving what I want to achieve thanks to my actions?

   Am I closer to leaving a legacy?

   This will help keep you motivated. Set aside time to do that.

   If your assessment says that you aren't getting there, reassess what you want to achieve and the methods you've chosen to get there. This way you get to fine‐tune repeatedly.

   This is extremely good for the soul.

   When you do see your goal closer, or your pass a marker, then celebrate.

   Recognise the moments of joy your path is bringing you and give gratitude for it. That is how to keep yourself emotionally engaged.

   Then… go on for more of the same!

   That's it.

   Now, what's stopping you?

   Nothing?

   Go for it.