“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.”
He looked around again for the source of the answer but there was no one there. Was he talking to himself? Was he losing his mind?
And yet, the feeling which accompanied the voice was so peaceful, so alive and full of energy that he felt complete fulfilment. The moment was indescribably beautiful. A sweet smell of roses filled his nostrils and a feeling of unconditional love flowed through him. His heart beat effortlessly with the rhyme of the flow. He felt so alive, so alert.
The voice came again, but this time as a feeling, an inner calling that whispered in his heart: “Get up and walk to the sea.”
“I can’t be walking around the town at this hour in the morning,” Ethan replied. “What will Natalie think? What will her parents think? If I get up, I’ll probably wake the kids.”
But the feeling, to go to the sea, was so strong it was as if a large powerful arm had caught hold of him, and was pulling him out of bed!
“What the hell is going on here?” he wondered. But the voice, the force was irresistibly pulling him towards the sea. He got out of bed, dressed and then furtively crept through the house. He gently opened and closed the front door and slipped out into the early morning. He felt like an adventurer, ready to explore a land he’d never seen before.
He walked
