I guess a New Year blog from someone like me is supposed to be about setting goals and suchlike, and I’ve certainly gone down that road in the past, but I want to say something else this year. Not that I’m saying goals are anything but a good thing – in moderation; you could have a goal to build a great garden and be so focused on the goal you never smell a single rose. That can’t be good. What’s in my mind this time is how what we give to the world can contribute to someone else’s goal, even if we never meet them and don’t know of the contribution we’ve made. So this isn’t about goals, it’s about me setting some hopes for you.
The background to this is me realising a goal that I’ve had in some form or another since I was a small boy. I remember in my first class when I was about five the teacher would give us a sheet of paper and scissors and the afternoon to create something. On each occasion I would cut the paper into squares, sew them together into a book and start to write and draw a story. Books were magical things in my childhood, things that took me to better places, and authors were almost mythical in the distance they seemed from ordinary humans. I wanted to be one.
I wrote stories and poetry into my early twenties, and then shut down for a good number of years, only beginning again when my life began to emerge in the form it has now.
This year I achieved my dream. I got a contract to write three books from Hodder and Stoughton – a company whose books I’d read as a child. I became an author. Now it’s weird to say that, because by then I’d already written three books, all of which have sold well within their niche, so most people would already consider me to be one, yet somehow being contracted to write, being paid for words I hadn’t written yet, felt very different. And I like the feeling. I have a membership card for the Society of Authors in my wallet that makes me ridiculously pleased when I look at it. The boy in me is having a really good time.
Now this should be a story of a goal realised through a goal setting procedure. But it wasn’t. I’d written a book about relationships about 14 years ago and had it rejected by over a dozen agents and publishers, so it was resting in a drawer and I was too busy to be pursuing a publishing deal. One of the things we were busy with was the launch of a company called Thinking Slimmer with a friend called Sandra Roycroft-Davies and her husband Chris. The plan was to make available to the public a weight-loss download of my creation that would do away with dieting and create in the listener a better relationship with food. As part of the promotional work I was interviewed by a journalist from the Evening Standard. It was supposed to be about how listening to me for ten minutes a night was a more cost effective and healthier option than a gastric bypass operation. Instead the journalist, having got wind of a conversation Sandra was having, twisted it into something else. I was used to attack an organisation I’d been proud to be a member of, the Metropolitan police. You can read about it here if you haven’t already.
Here we get to my first hope for you. This year, I hope you take action. If anything happens you don’t like, or something isn’t happening that you would like, take whatever action is available to you to change it. TO YOU. Personally, take action. Don’t leave it to someone else, sit and hope things will change or be a victim of the situation. A sense of choosing your response helps you in any situation, however small the degree of control it may actually give. As a way of life it will change your life.
My first action was to complain to the editor, which received the kind of brush off you’d expect. My second was to write a blog about it. A true case of David and Goliath: my few thousand readers against their circulation of 750,000, but it made me feel better. At least with the internet we small people have some means of having a voice. I had no plan C.
Now we come to my second hope. I hope you spread kindness whenever and wherever you can. The newspaper article had suggested I’d compared myself to Derren Brown, a complete and very annoying lie. Unbeknown to me two friends emailed him with a link to my blog and Derren did me the huge kindness of tweeting it to his 750,000 followers. All of a sudden my voice was as loud as the Evening Standard, and our site crashed within seconds from the thousands of hits. Neither my friends or Derren needed to do that, it was just kindness. And it changed my life.
Because my third hope for you is that you have a stroke of luck. One of his followers is a woman of discerning taste with an exquisite eye for literary talent. She read that blog, and some of my others, and emailed me casually asking if I’d be interested in writing books for a wider audience. Her name is Charlotte Hardman and she works as a commissioning editor for Hodder. Would I like to write for a wider audience? Let me think…
I met Charlotte and her boss Mark Booth, and we came to an agreement (obviously he shares her discernment). Three books over two years, one on… relationships(!), one on weightloss and one on…well, it’s about raising resilient children but it’s for everyone.
So my point is this. If you take action it may or may not get you what you want, but it’s better than waiting for life to throw something at you. You’ve got to be in it to win it, as they say. But that’s often not going to be enough, there’s a host of talented people who deserve the cards to fall kindly for them this year, but they won’t. Some of them are reading this. This could change; we could all be each other’s dealer. If we all resolve to become even kinder, to go out of our way a little as often as we can to do a service for someone else, if we all connect through acts of kindness, acts that don’t lead obviously back to direct reciprocation, then we’re all likely to strike lucky just that little bit more often. And in the nature of the Butterfly Effect, just a little more kindness, creating just a little more luck, could change the world massively. You could make the difference to someone’s life that transforms it, even if you never know.
So, take action, spread kindness, and harvest your luck. Happy New Year.
“Here we get to my first hope for you. This year, I hope you take action. If anything happens you don’t like, or something isn’t happening that you would like, take whatever action is available to you to change it. TO YOU. Personally, take action. Don’t leave it to someone else, sit and hope things will change or be a victim of the situation. A sense of choosing your response helps you in any situation, however small the degree of control it may actually give. As a way of life it will change your life.”
This is the hope that I believe in with a passion I just wish I could put into words what you have so eloquently when I write my blogs, I think this is one of the main lesson’s I have learnt with great effect you must have control of your own life and make the right decisions for you first, I have great joy at making decisions that before I would allow others to make or make no decision at all.
Thank you as always for a thought provoking blog.
That last sentence says it all Trevor. Thank you, as always for the nudge I needed.
Love Cx
‘Take action’ (with your voice) is something I hear in my head often and I repeat to my clients frequently (with my voice!).
This is a great blog, Trevor. Eloquently written, as always 🙂
Ive been thinking about this a lot recently and the more kindness I show, the better the ‘universe adjusts in my favour’
Thank you again for putting into words the usual linguistic tangle in my head.
It was Huxley’s quote from near the end of his life that started me thinking along these lines…
‘It is a bit embarrassing to have been concerned with the human problem all one’s life and find at the end that one has no more to offer by way of advice than ‘Try to be a little kinder.’
Nice work lovely fella, you are already one of my favourite authors, I guess I’ll have to share you with a wider audience (lucky them)
How exciting to realise a childhood dream like that. It never fails to amaze me the chain of events that can be linked to the simple flap of a metaphorical butterfly’s wings. I love your writing so am very excited about your book deal. I also love your blog posts. They make me think about things in a different, and better, way. Happy New Year and I’m sure this particular action will deliver some fab books
Happy New Year Trevor
Always good to read anything you’ve written. There’s magic in your words!
I hope people take what you’re saying to heart. There are some powerful truths in there that will make a real difference for people if they take those simple, purposeful actions as you recommend.
Keep up the great work.
Ed
Of your many many words of wisdom, for me ‘take action’ has always been the most powerful ones that have stayed with me. In fact I constantly quote “Success is not a matter of chance, it’s a matter of choice. You can wait and hope it arrives or take action and make sure it does” ….to clients, friends and anyone else who will listen (its even on the front page of my website)!
This blog was a joy to read (as always) and came as a timely reminder that I’ve been rather busy telling everyone else to ‘take action’ and have been procrastinating on a few things myself!
Duly re-inspired and off to take some action 🙂
Thank you
x
How wonderful for you Trevor – a result of all the action you have taken in your life that led you to this point.
Like Anita, I hear your voice in my head saying ‘take action’ so thank you for that message it has really helped me in moments of uncertainty and procrastination. I replay it as often as I can to make sure it is fully installed in my unconscious!
And speaking of the butterfly effect – my New Year note to self has been exactly along those lines. I recently asked myself ‘how many small changes can I incorporate into my life and what will happen further down the line if I do this or that? Instead of seeing mountains I now imagine butterflies flapping their wings!! This is a recent mental shift that I am watching with curiosity as I make a number of very small changes!
Happy New Year and congratulations on your book deal. I look forward to reading them in due course.
A beautiful, wise and inspiring note to start the new year with – thank you Trevor, as always. I remember that episode with The Standard and how upset you were, so what wonderful serendipity that it has actually led to the most amazing (and deserved) success for you. You had a positive intention and it ultimately helped create a positive result, albeit not quite in the way you were expecting, but actually much better – congratulations to you, thank you for sharing, and I’m looking forward to reading those books. With love, Jenny x x x
Synchronicity….funny i should read this now. A great blog for sure. I’m lucky enough to be acquainted with some of the friends you mention and am full of admiration for them and their actions. Its a brave thing in my book to stand up for what you believe in. I have a hope that one day i too will be able to be that brave. My hope for you and everyone else i know and love is that all your hopes and dreams come true.
That’s being in the flow, isn’t it ?
Going with what you believe is right at that moment. Ultimately this flow creates your life story even bigger and better than you could have ever imagined 🙂
Much love, Uschi xxx
I’m always reminding myself of this when things go ‘wrong’ in my life. It nearly always turns out that if that hadn’t happened something even better than I could ever have imagined wouldn’t have happened either. Does that make sense?
I’m liking the idea of Trevor with Jazz Hands. Please?
Loving this Trevor… and it made me think : Charity begins at home – maybe there is a case for us all being kinder to our Self too….certainly applies to most of my clients.
My own personal new year ( my birthday!) began on Saturday with so much generosity and kindness that I have been paying it forward all week – might even eek it out through the year! Watch this space – I am ready for take off…
Thanks as always for sharing your thoughts and your wisdom from the dizzy heights of world fame…
Gill xx