Half the way will get you nowhere.
Half an idea will bear you no results.
Half a life is a life you didn’t live….
The half is a mere moment of inability,
but you are able, for you are not half a being.
You are a whole that exists to live a life,
not half a life.
Khalil Gibran

Half measures availed us nothing. We stood at a turning point.
The Big Book of AA

A real decision is measured by the fact that you’ve taken a new action. If there’s no action, you haven’t truly decided.
Tony Robbins

How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives…… There is no shortage of good days. It is good lives that are hard to come by. A life of good days lived in the senses is not enough. The life of sensation is the life of greed; it requires more and more. The life of the spirit requires less and less; time is ample and its passage sweet.
Annie Dillard, `The Writing Life´

It is no mistake that the tagline of my coaching platform, SoberOasis, reads: `Living The Lives We Love´.

Some years ago, having been rescued from living life by a script that had been exposed as alien, I decided that my future work would consist of helping others facing similar challenges. This is the passion that drives my work today as a Transformation Coach and Mental Fitness Trainer.

How does it come to pass that we adopt a script that is not our own, and how can we rectify the situation once this has become apparent?

In 2003 my world imploded. The structures so diligently built up over the years came crashing down. By the autumn I found myself standing in the rubble of my dreams, no longer living with my wife and children, out of a job, looking at a career which had seemingly fallen over a cliff, and finally facing up to the fact that my substance addiction had become a runaway train beyond control. This was a lot of humble pie to eat at one time. My mental state could best be described as `anything but well´.

Sitting in the kitchen of a friend’s house, holding in my hands one of the few remaining prized possessions, – my hardback copy of John O Donohue’s `Anam Cara´, – I opened it at a random page to read: `Many of the things that hold us back from inhabiting our destiny are false. They are only images in our minds. They are not real barriers at all. We should never allow our fears or the expectation of others to set the frontiers of our destiny.´

This hit me like a tonne of bricks. Inhabiting my destiny? What a novel idea! But really for me? There was so much responsibility to carry, after all. Surely this fact put such an option beyond my reach. This appeared to be holding me back. John’s words broke through the otherwise impregnable defences made up of fears and internalised expectations of others, defences which had formed, brick by brick, over decades.

What had I been doing all those years? Following the guidance of my best thinking, that same thinking which eventually brought me into the rooms of AA! So how reliable was the rest of my thinking? About as reliable as any thinking which, if cut off from the input of the gut and the heart, relies fully on cognition. Lots of `musts´ and `shoulds´, justified by cold logic. When put under scrutiny, as was now the case, this thinking proved to be severely impaired, due mainly to the fact that it was driven by fear.

`Only images in the mind´, as John put it. Phantoms. Saboteurs, each with convincing lies to justify its story. The Judge says that I am not good enough, so therefore must forever strain myself in vain attempts to prove my worthiness, only to find that the goalposts keep shifting. I am simply not worth it.

The Controller keeps telling me that: `I’m either in control or out of control´. That’s too simplistic, ultimately taking me down rabbit holes where attempts are made to control the uncontrollable, such as the feelings, thinking, and the actions of others. The harder we push, the more resistance we garner, so we push even harder. Life becomes a slog, drag increases,  and things do not work out as we demand. Indignation follows. What a mess!

The Hyper-Rational says that: `Emotions (especially but not only my own) are messy and must therefore be set aside at all costs. Otherwise, they will get in the way of reaching those all-important goals which will provide me with an even fleeting sense of ease and comfort. Of course, the opposite is true. By cutting off the feelings, I cut myself off from others, from life. Alienation and deep loneliness ensue.

Then there’s the Hyper-Achiever, a good old friend of mine. As the fifth of ten children, I figured out early that accomplishments would garner me even a fraction of the yearned-for parental attention and validation which was, mathematically speaking, in short supply. This came at a price. The bar kept rising. The day after successfully hanging two baskets of washing on the line, the precocious child, Patrick, was presented with three.

Of course, there was the advantage of learning to master `operations´ at an early age, but without learning the skills of balancing my outlay and having my needs met. These kids are those who typically burn out in mid life, having given their all to their professional goals.

The Stickler is the Saboteur which undertakes to do everything perfectly in the hope of keeping safe from attack. It lie is: `As long as my performance is perfect, I will be safe´. This is a standard to which no human we can fully adhere. It also distracts us from the fact that very few activities need to be done with 100% perfection. While hoping that the pilot goes through the checklist ahead of my next flight with 100% accuracy, I recognise that `roughly right´ is good enough for most of life’s tasks. The Stickler becomes a tyrant of self and others, depriving us of restful sleep, jeopardising our relationships, and endangering our well-being.

The list could be continued to cover the Avoider, the Hyper-Vigilant, the Pleaser, the Restless, and the Victim. It is the Saboteurs, which started out as survival strategies in childhood – and indeed did a good job, only to morph into fear-driven tyrants, – that dictate a script for life made up of `shoulds´ and `woulds´, a script bereft of our passions, our deeply-held values, and our innate creativity. This is how we get off track.

How to get back on track? The transformation involves learning to identify the Saboteurs and turning down the volume of their constant chatter. The second component is developing the ability to switch from the left-brain hemisphere (where the Saboteurs reside) to the right brain (where the so-called Sage Powers are to be found). This switching is learned by constant repetition , even briefly, of physical sensation exercises, which serve as a circuit breaker of the `stinking thinking´. The more we train the `Mind Command´ muscle, the better we get at harnessing our brainpower in the service of living the truth of our Sage.

The Sage Perspective states that: There is a gift in every situation. It is sufficient to be willing to believe this. The Sage Powers: Empathise, Explore, Innovate, Navigate, and Activate are fuelled by love, not fear, and usually reap corresponding responses from life.

The training of these three muscles (Saboteur Interceptor, Mind Command, and Sage Enhancer) is facilitated by the veritable Mental Fitness Studio contained in the PQ App which can be run on any device. The App provides me with short exercises, spaced out throughout each day, and allows me to monitor my progress throughout each day, over the weeks, and months.

Early in my recovery, I was mentored by a wise man who cautioned that it was: `Important to discern between those who want to recover and those who want to want to recover´. The latter group are not yet ready for the transformation. This can be discerned without any need for judgement.

They will forever spout about the need for action but never get around to actually doing what needs to be done. They are not prepared to shoulder the temporary discomfort of learning to deal with the full spectrum of their feelings, preferring to self-medicate in self-pity, anxiety, superiority, etc. They cannot let go of their deeply ingrained defiance and the clinging to the illusion of control. A German idiom comes to mind, which translates literally as: `Wash me, but don’t get me wet´.

Any transformation process comprises 20% insights and 80% practice. There is no shortage of consultants, coaches, and trainers who offer gripping, inspirational, and interesting insights, which will temporarily fire us up, but no subsequent practice. This is why most transformation efforts fizzle out in a matter of months, if not weeks. If we don’t bring 100% to the task, in terms of action, we will not succeed.

Like the transformation of the dots and dashes from the score into the delightful sound of heavenly music, there is no substitute for regular, diligent, and devoted practice. Even when at the top of their game, the greatest of artists such as Jacqueline du Pré, Vladimir Horowitz, and Yehudi Menuhin spent hours each day honing their craft. These serve me as true role models when it comes to my own ongoing transformation, especially in those moments when my Saboteurs pat me on the back for being so diligent and whisper that it’s now time to take a little break.