Читать книгу The Oscar for Life - Declan MiscellaneousLabor Loy - Страница 4

Natalie lay beside him. Glancing over at her, Ethan hoped his restlessness wasn’t disturbing her, but she was fast asleep. The clock on the bedside table showed it was 2.30am, exactly two minutes since he’d last checked.

This three-week break was the family’s first visit to their new holiday home and they’d travelled over from Ireland with their three children and Natalie’s parents.

A holiday in the sun! How many rainy days in Ireland had he consoled himself with the thought that, one day, he’d own a place in Spain where it hardly ever rained?

And he’d done it. He’d worked so hard in the previous twelve months to achieve this goal of owning a villa in Spain. He should have felt ecstatic, but he wasn’t anywhere close to it. He felt down and empty. What was wrong with him? Why wasn’t he happy? It didn’t make sense.

A year earlier, he’d gone into goal-setting overdrive. He set goals to achieve all kinds of things: buying a property investment portfolio; owning a beautiful 5,000 square foot home on an acre of land in the Irish countryside; making €250,000 in income; owning a new Porsche; achieving €100 million in sales; opening a chain of retail shops in Ireland; becoming a millionaire; having an outstanding relationship with Natalie and their three children; reaching twelve and a half stone in weight, and taking a three-week vacation with the family. And he’d done it all, hit every target he’d set himself.

So what was wrong? Why was he lying awake the first night in the dream holiday house, unable to sleep?

Ethan rolled from side to side, tossing and turning and wondering why he couldn’t sleep. It wasn’t a normal feeling of restlessness: it was a feeling of non-fulfilment coming from deep within the centre of his soul. He’d thought that, when he’d reached his goals, he would feel happier than ever before, but he didn’t. Yes, he had been happy for a while, but it had been surface-level happiness.

He was surrounded by beautiful material things and knew he could buy anything he wanted, go anywhere he wanted and do anything he wanted. Yet he felt unfulfilled.

Tears welled up in his eyes as he stared at the ceiling above him.

“What is happening to me? Why am I crying?” he wondered. He had everything he wanted in life but, above all, he had three beautiful children and a wonderful wife.

The connection between Ethan and Natalie had always been so close they could almost read each other’s thoughts. At times, Ethan might be thousands of miles from home, but Natalie could pick up on what he was feeling and thinking and would later tell him on the phone what had been on his mind. The relationship they had was not man-made – it was a pure, unconditional love.

Thoughts and images raced through Ethan’s mind… goals, achievements, money, houses, cars, travel, things to do, places to go, deals to be done, a better life to achieve, helicopters, business ideas to create… On and on his thoughts raced until finally, he could take no more.

“STOP!” he urged himself. “Just stop. For pity’s sake, give me a rest!”

Mercifully, the torture ceased, but Ethan was no closer to understanding why he felt so low. He’d achieved what he’d set out to achieve. What more was there to do?

Maybe it was all too easy. Perhaps the challenge wasn’t there anymore. Maybe he was finding getting what he wanted, achieving his goals, too easy. He had the ability to set his mind on any goal and, like magic, he would achieve it. It had been a long, hard slog to get here. He’d spent his earlier business career working 14-hour days. Back then, he believed the secret to successful living was to work hard and, if that didn’t produce exceptional results, then he figured he had to work even harder and longer.

His attitude hadn’t gone unnoticed by family and friends, and it wasn’t always welcomed. On his wedding day, Ethan’s father, who Ethan didn’t get on with, warned Natalie: “Watch that guy, he wants everything now.”

It was an insightful comment from a man with whom Ethan had no real relationship. His father had described exactly the type of person Ethan was: he wanted everything immediately. He wanted the great things in life: to be wealthy and successful – whatever successful meant.

He knew there was another way to live. He’d often heard people talking about the power of the human mind with their mantra that, “whatever you believe, you can achieve”. But he dismissed their beliefs out of hand, describing them as ‘mind games’ and ‘mumbo jumbo’. He preferred to concentrate on sheer hard work to get ahead and believed the secret of success was to work on one thing while thinking of the next five things you were going to do.

“Move fast, work hard and just get on with it,” was his maxim. “Drive things,” Ethan told everyone he met and, in the beginning at least, that approach seemed to work.

But when Natalie became pregnant and gave birth to their first daughter, Angelina, things changed. It became harder for Ethan to justify working long days when he knew that Natalie needed his help with Angelina at home.

Then came a life-saving revelation.

One summer’s evening at his home in Drogheda, Ethan was caught up working on a multi-million pound contract which was throwing up all sorts of unexpected problems and challenges. As he sat there in the kitchen grappling with the contract, he gradually became aware of the presence of Natalie’s mother, Kristina, who was cuddling and comforting a crying Angelina. As he caught sight of his crying daughter and the doting grandmother, he felt an overwhelming sadness. Suddenly, he caught a glimpse of a future – his future – in which he spent his time working, working, working, and not being there for his family. He pictured a life in which he wasn’t able to show his children how much he loved them, in which they would grow up without knowing him. Like a hammer blow, he realised they would grow up exactly as he had – without knowing their father.

He didn’t do anything then to change, but he was becoming aware!

The next day he woke at 5.30am. It was a bright, sunny morning and, through the partly open window, he could feel the heat in the air, and hear the first verses of the dawn chorus. The beautiful Boyne Valley stretched away into the distance and Ethan knew that, somewhere down near the river’s edge, early morning anglers would be preparing for a morning of quiet fishing. He breakfasted and set off for his Dublin office shortly after 6am, anxious to miss the usual rush-hour traffic. By 7am he was sitting at his trendy Danish desk in the office, looking down on the cars in Walkinstown Avenue, which were at a standstill.

Later that morning, his colleague, Paul, walked into his office and sat down.

“Well, Ethan, how’re things?”

Ethan winced at the question as though somebody had struck him on the side of the head with a piece of timber. Images from the previous night flooded back into his mind. He thought of Kristina cuddling her crying granddaughter – his daughter. He realised he hadn’t been there for his child when she needed him. Suddenly, he was overwhelmed by emotion and started to cry. He saw his life flash before him: a life of struggle, pressure, work, stress, pain, of not being there for his family, and of pushing his family away.

“That’s it,” he thought. “There has to be an easier way than this, an easier way to get the most out of life. I want it all – business success, financial success, health success – but I also want to be there for the most important people in my life.”

The memory of his crying daughter had been just a moment in time. But, somehow it had triggered within him a question, which demanded an answer – what kind of life did he want to live? How could he become all he was capable of becoming without the stress, pressure and fear destroying the most truly important parts of his life?

Though he didn’t yet know it back then, that question would set him on a journey of learning about the mind, human performance, strategy, business, psychology and achievement. In the two years since that moment, the first part of his journey had been immense. He had become a millionaire businessman who seemingly managed the impossible – achieving all of his personal and financial goals while managing to build a wonderful relationship with his wife and children.

It had all been achieved by learning about the ‘mumbo jumbo’ he’d so readily dismissed in his earlier life. Since jettisoning that antipathy to ‘mind games’, he’d learned about the power of the human mind and, in doing so, had achieved so much more than he ever thought possible.

But lying there that night in Spain, he realised something was missing. His heart felt empty and his mind was racing uncontrollably. Ethan had always believed questions control the direction of one’s life. Two questions had dominated his life: the first was, “Is there an easier way to achieve and have everything you want in life, than by hard work?” The second thing he asked himself was: “Is there more to life than just achieving?”

He repeated the two questions in his mind without any expectation of an answer.

But, to his surprise, that’s exactly what he got – an answer. He heard a voice speaking to him but when he looked around the room for the person who was talking there was no one there, save his sleeping wife. He shook himself to make sure he wasn’t dreaming, but he was awake.

Fear gripped his mind.

“I’m going crazy, talking to myself, and hearing voices,” he said. Yet, at the same time, he felt a rush of energy flow through every cell of his body. He felt so alive, and it was as if he became the whole room, and the room became him.

Then the voice said: “If you want to know the answer, get up and walk to the sea, and I will show and tell you the answer.”