The Fearless Life Manifesto

“I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: ‘If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?’ And whenever the answer has been ‘No’ for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something.” Steve Jobs

How would you answer the question Steve Jobs put to himself every morning? How many days in a row would the answer be the same?

I love this quote for many reasons.

Firstly, it’s a great question to ask yourself but beyond that, it sums up very succinctly what Fearless Life Design is all about. Intention.

Jobs asked himself this question every morning because he lived with intention. He wanted every day of his time here on this planet to count and wasn’t afraid to change when the answer wasn’t a positive one; he had got past that fear.

We can all see where that intention led him. If you don’t own an Apple product yourself, I’m sure you know someone who does.

Does that mean we should all be like Steve, starting multinational companies and being visionaries and trendsetters? Of course not. That is unless that is what you see for yourself. If so, you should do that. What we can all do though, is live with intent and live the life that lies beyond our fears.

Let me state right away that I’m not talking just about ‘work’ here. An essential element of a Fearless Life is to spend your time doing what you want, where you want, when you want but a Fearless Life by Design goes way beyond that.

It’s not just about doing something you love that brings you money; it’s about having it all. It’s about taking all the areas of your life to the level you want them to be. Your relationships, your health, your feeling of connection, your feeling of peace and happiness, your impact on the lives of others.

There is no reason why your dream ideal of how all these areas of your life should be, can’t be your reality.

Like anything in life it won’t happen all by itself. You need to set the intention and create a plan. That is what this manifesto is about.

Not only must we have a plan for our life but it should be one of our choosing and not one we have settled into from the limited choices that we believe are available to us.

Have you ever found yourself go after a goal, perhaps a new job, relationship or material object only to reach it and at some point soon after found yourself with the same feelings of emptiness, boredom or frustration that you had before? The very feelings that prompted you into action in the first place. I know I have many times.

It’s so easy to get caught up in day to day matters, to drift and end up in a place that you’re not even sure how you arrived at or how to get back on track.

If you step back, it’s easy to see how this happens.

Here’s the crazy thing. If you decided three months from now, you were going to take you and your family (or friends) for a two-week vacation to Disneyland Florida you would do an enormous amount of preparation.

You certainly wouldn’t wait to arrive at the date in your calendar marked for departure and start to think about it then! No, you would go online, do some research and look for the best deals.

You’d find the best flight price and then you would check out hotels. You would need to arrange transport to your departure and arrival airports, car hire or taxis.

You would need to arrange your park tickets, and you would think about planning what days you would do what and way more besides.

That list is just scratching the surface of the time, effort, planning and money that would go into making that two-week vacation a success and how you would you like it to be.

That’s just for two weeks. How much of a plan do we make for our lives? How excited are we about our day to day existence compared to our next vacation?

Shouldn’t the same level of planning, dreams, hopes, commitment and dedication go into our lives, what we become and the difference we make?

Shouldn’t we be living a life of purpose?

Now you may find yourself screaming right now, “of course, it should, but that’s just not reality.”

I hear you…but I promise you it can be. You just need to ‘be like Steve’, ask yourself a few questions in the mirror, have the intent to change the things you don’t like and have a system in place to make it happen. That’s what this manifesto and Fearless Life Design are all about - a system for making your life remarkable.

Why listen to me, though?

Time for me to share the story of how I ended up writing the words you are reading now.

That story really started when I found myself standing at the end of a hospital bed, facing death for the first time.

My father was admitted into hospital just around the time myself, my wife and her youngest daughter decided to move country. We’d been living in Spain for many years but had just spent a year in the UK before deciding to return.

The move was all set so they went ahead while I stayed behind living in a hotel out of a suitcase.

Every day I went into the hospital and every day I saw him get worse, literally wasting away before my eyes.

I’d never been confronted with this situation before. Sure, I’d been to funerals, known people who had passed away but the majority of those were when I was young. I’d never actually faced death in this way.

I didn’t know what to do, what I was supposed to do or how to help. Part of me wanted to run away. I felt scared and useless. I’d never had to adopt the role of a carer before, to be so selfless, to devote myself totally to another’s needs at this level.

Running away wasn’t an option so I got on with it and day by day I became a little less useless and slightly less scared.

I stayed positive but he declined further and now was just skin and bone, hardly able to communicate and there I stood at the end of the bed with the real fact of life right in front of me.

This is what awaits us all. This is where it all leads. It was a sobering thought.

Things my dad wanted to do, places he wanted to see, people he wanted to speak to, situations he wanted to resolve. They weren’t going to happen now. Ever.

I’m sorry if this talk of death is depressing, that’s not my intention. My hope is that this resonates on some level with you and serves as a call to action.

We all believe that we have another day to do the things we should be doing right now.

We all think we can get around to it tomorrow but for each and every one of us, one day that tomorrow won’t come.

We all know we are going to die, but we push it to the back of our minds thinking we have all the time in the world. The truth is our time is short, and we have no idea of how long we have.

The “tomorrow” of December 24th never arrived for my father. He passed away the day before.

I’ll let Steve Jobs end this section with some words of his from the same speech I referenced earlier:

“Remembering that I’ll be dead soon is the most important tool I’ve ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life.

Because almost everything—all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure—these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important.

Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.”

The Journey Begins

The nature of our mortality had hit me like a brick. I knew I had to take action, that I had to take a grip of myself and my life. I’d always wanted to coach and help others but, well, that could wait until ‘tomorrow’ was always my mantra. I’d received the message loud and clear that there wasn’t a moment to lose.

So I started what became a journey of discovery…

I knew the answer must be out there. So I decided to dedicate myself to answering the questions of what does it take to be happy, why do we continually self-sabotage ourselves and how can you have balance in all areas of your life?

I’d always been into self-development, but I decided it was time to “Turn Pro” as Steven Pressfield titled his book.

Turning Pro entailed investing over $50,000 of my hard-earned cash and two years of my life getting on planes to meet various mentors, coaches and trainers who appeared to have answers to these questions.

I wanted to look in all areas; nothing was off the table from the most spiritual and new age teachings to the latest high-performance studies and neuropsychology. Somewhere between spirit and science the answer undoubtedly lay. What I was looking for was the balance point.

We seem to live in a world that likes to restrict our choices to an either or situation. You’re either this or you are that.

This would appear to be especially true in this area. You're either a spiritual person or a material one. Just to be clear here, when I use the word spiritual I’m not referring to religion but what is related to or affects the human spirit as opposed to material or physical things.

But is that really the case?

Personally, I don’t want to pick one over the other. I don’t want to be without worldly possessions and sit on a mountain mediating all day and at the same time, I don’t want to be working 20 hours a day to acquire as many material possessions and as much power as I possibly can.

I want balance. A bit of both. I want to feel a sense of connection and peace but I also like nice things.

It seemed to me that being at an extreme end of the scale, whichever side you chose, made little sense.

To be at the extreme spiritual end would mean missing out on the full human experience (having stuff) and to be at the extreme material end would also mean missing out on the whole human experience (having peace and meaning).

The balance point is what I was looking for, the full human experience.

So as I said, nothing was off the table in my investigation and quest to find the answers

In this time I trained and became certified as one of only 300 people in the world as a High-Performance Coach by Brendon Burchard, one of the world’s highest paid coaches.

I also gained qualifications in a range of other skills and methodologies such as hypnotherapy, NLP, life coaching and many more.

Along with my travels and hiring mentors, I studied courses online and read on average a book a week on the topics of psychology, achievement and happiness. One month I read one book every day for 30 days. That month had a profound effect on me; I highly recommend you try it one day.

All this time and investment paid off.

My mentors showed my the way forward. From some I learnt the true nature of ourselves and thought. From others, I discovered tools, techniques and methodologies to plan, design and create the wealth to achieve the life I wanted. I learnt how to find purpose and how to take that into the world to help others.

I applied what I had been taught in my life. I was, and still am, a case study and testing ground for all ideas.

All areas of my life improved. My relationships, my energy, my balance, my feeling of connection and my sense of purpose.

I took what the best ideas and concepts from all the different practices I had learnt and moulded them in a mixture that worked and produced fast results.

I started my coaching practice and helped others arrive at the same understanding; I taught them how to apply the same lessons and methods to their lives, and I saw them transform too.

Now it’s your turn.

If I can do it and they can do it, so can you…

Now you may not believe that the life you only dare to dream of can be yours.

You will have many stories to back this up, but they are just that, stories. They are not based on reality but fears. These are fears you can overcome once you understand the nature of these stories and the reality of how your thoughts work.

We all tell stories, to ourselves and others. Stories of what could have been and what could be if only the circumstances were otherwise.

These are not the stories I want for you…

My goal is that the stories you tell yourself and others are not ones made up of limiting beliefs and doubt but ones of certainty and hope.

My goal is that the stories you tell are not about why you can’t achieve your true desires but what you have already achieved and the plans you have for the future.

My goal is that the stories you tell are not about the traits you don’t have, the faults you feel you possess and the excuses we all live by but about your creativity and innate wisdom that you use to design the life of your dreams.

My goal is that the stories you tell be about your life of intention, how you are the masters of your fate and the captain of your soul.

My goal is that the stories you tell be about conquering your fears, living with purpose and making a difference in the world. My goal is that the stories you tell be about how every area of your life, your work, your money, your relationships, your body, your mind, your feeling of connection with the world is the best it could be and exactly how you wanted it.

Imagine walking in the morning, eager to meet the day, to do work that enlivens you, brings passion to your life and makes a real difference in the world.

Imagine your relationships with your loved ones and friends, deeper and closer than they have ever been, no longer fuelled by petty squabbles and frustrations but only powered by mutual love, understanding and compassion.

Imagine a mind free of negative self-chatter, a mind that supports you that allows you to fulfil your potential and purpose. A mind a that is quiet and peaceful.

Imagine a body that provides you with the vitality that gives you the energy to accomplish more than you have thought possible.

Imagine a world of abundance, a world that you have all that you need financially to achieve the life dreams you decide, the life you deserve.

Imagine having the abundance to help others, to make a difference, to leave a legacy that will remain on this planet long after you have left.

Imagine the change in the world a life lived from this place would provide.

If you can imagine it, you can make it happen.

It is there right in front if you because the future is not somewhere you arrive, it is somewhere you decide to be.

So how do we decide what this future will be?

Firstly we need to get clarity. We need to ask the question “what is it I really want?” and dedicate some time to answering it. It’s time to get specific.What is it you want?

Where do you want to live? Do you want to travel? If you don’t currently have a partner would you like one? What will they be like? How much money do you need to earn a year to afford your dream lifestyle? How will you create that? What do you like doing with your time?

These questions are just scratching the surface; you can come up with many more for all the areas of our life. Like I said… it’s time to get specific.

You are designing your ideal life here; you need specifics. We need to know what it is that we want. The more detail, the better.

Once you have this level of clarity on what you really want you can form a plan, one that takes into account all the areas of our life.

This plan will be the solid foundation on which to create your dream life because without it, whatever you build will eventually crumble.

To create this strong foundation, you will need to gain an understanding of yourself and the reality of the processes that create your reality and outcomes.

We are all governed by our thoughts. The thoughts we have (up to 70,000 a day!) create how we feel. How we feel dictates our actions, and these actions dictate our outcomes. The results we get. To create the outcomes we want we need to understand this process and harness it to work for us rather than against this. Am I talking about positive thinking and affirmations? No, though thinking positively and saying nice things about surely yourself can’t do any harm!

The only problem with it is that positive thinking is hard to maintain because to do so you would need to be constantly thinking about it. That’s not the way our brains work. We have little control over the constant thoughts that pop into our heads second by second. The key is to be able to drown all that noise in our heads out so we can be guided by our instinct and intuition.

Once you have this foundation in place, you can build upon it and step by step, brick by brick, so that the life of your dreams becomes a reality.

Too many times when trying to achieve something we take massive action only to burn out. Crash dieting would be a good example. A few weeks of misery to lose a few pounds only to put the weight back on again once it’s over.

Had we just adjusted our eating habits a little and made that a daily practice we would arrive at our desired result in a manner that was pleasant to us and most importantly we would maintain it.

It will make you doubt yourself, that you are capable of creating everything you have decided you want, it will tell you to give up, take the easy road and go and watch another series on Netflix instead.

You can’t let it. You must fight that internal chatter. It doesn’t mean to harm you, in fact, it is trying to protect you for what it sees as danger. The unknown. This is your fear talking and there is just one way to shut it up. Take action and keep moving forward. Remember what is is you really want, regain clarity and keep going!

If your doubts and internal chatter weren’t bad enough, we have a whole media machine in our society that appears to be intent on keeping you in fear. It keeps you distracted; it sucks your motivation to take action, to dream big and to make your life what you want it to be.

You can take the control back; you can live the life you choose.

Doing this alone is never easy. We get off track, lost and confused. We can easily buy our excuses and stories as to why we should not take action.

That is is why I have coaches and mentors. They support me in achieving my goals. They guide me when I get lost, they help me get clarity when I get confused, and they make me accountable to myself.

This is why I love coaching and mentoring others because I get to offer that same support to others.

Details of how we can support you in creating a Fearless Life can be found on our website.

Decide today to create the life you want to live.

Do it now because sometimes later becomes never…

www.TheFearlessLifeProject.com