My Reason Why.

Well, here we go, my first blog post.

I have contemplated writing a blog for a long time but always put off publicly sharing anything I had written, read, thought, or experienced. So to those who are here reading my first blog post, I sincerely thank you. Before I begin I must point out that this may be one of the longest posts I write. The first half explains how I got my passion for self-development, and what I hope my blog will do for others, and in the second half I begin to open up about my past, the details of which may shock you. If you read the whole post I hope you find some entertainment and value in what I have written. If you find at the end you have any questions, thoughts, or feedback (good or bad) I would love to hear from you, so please do get in touch.

So what led me to start now?

Like most of us in lockdown, I had nothing to do, and I have always found that to be extremely difficult. Whenever I do nothing, I always hear a small internal voice saying that I am wasting my time because I am doing nothing to get me from where I am, to where I want to be. So, to begin this year, and lockdown, I wrote myself several big goals for each important aspect of my life. I then broke these down into the smallest possible steps that I could take daily. Building a website and starting this blog are just some of those small steps on a journey towards achieving my bigger goals.

Where did a desire to start a blog come from?

For the past few years, I have developed a huge passion for reading, learning, and personal development. Most people see this passion as a bit obsessive, I am often called a nerd at work, and an egghead by friends. However, I cannot give as much credit to anything else in the past few years that has helped me to get to where I am today as I can to the countless books I have read, and all the hours I have put into educating myself.

Surprisingly to most, when I was younger and right up until the summer I finished University, I hated reading. However, I could never have predicted just how much that would change during an unexpected invite and trip to Paris.

A few months after finishing University I received a call from an unknown number. The person who called me was a friend of mine. We had only had limited interaction off the University basketball courts before this call. He called to invite me to Paris because he was looking for one more person to join, and a mutual friend of ours had suggested that the three of us would get on very well if we all went together. I was completely blown away by all this, and I am still so grateful to them both for how much that trip changed my life.

Following the call, just a few weeks later, we were on an overnight coach trip from London to Paris. My friend (that invited me) and I were having a deep heart to heart about the past few years at University, playing and pursuing professional basketball, friendships, relationships, break-ups, what we planned to do next, and what we most wanted to do in life. It was during the conversation on one of the previous topics, when he said that I must read the first page of a book he had recently finished. I told him I wasn't interested in looking at it because I never really enjoyed reading, and I didn’t see the value in it.

Fortunately, he was very persistent saying that with how much I love psychology, and with the topic we were discussing, I must read this page. I decided to relent knowing there must be some truth to what he is saying if he believed it so strongly. I unlocked my phone, searched for the pdf, and read the first page as he instructed. In minutes 1 page turned into 30 and nothing was the same again. Never before had I read something that was so shockingly true that it blew a hole into my previously held ideals and beliefs. Each page I read was like a clear puzzle piece giving me words to better understand and explain those topics of which I had previously only had a blurred/incomplete picture of previously.

In those 30 pages, I was starting to see how reading helps you to better understand your life and how to live it. Every page I read provided more knowledge that helped me to think, analyse and formulate my thoughts to better explain and discuss the questions I had about both my past and present life. The greater value I saw in this information was how it provides the essence, knowledge, and principles to help create a different/better future. I began to realise I didn’t know anything, and the possibilities of what I could discover/learn was so exciting.

It was in that excitement, whilst travelling to Paris in the middle of the night, that I ordered my first sip of knowledge from what is an ocean of unknown depth and potential. I sat there in pure joy knowing that not only was I hours away from arriving in Paris, but upon my return I would be greeted by the book that had just opened my eyes to an entirely new world. Even then I still had no idea just how much my life would change with each book I read. It is only now, whilst writing these lines, that I see just how ironic the first line of that book was… “Why do my eyes hurt?" because, “You’ve never used them before”.

This excitement of my eyes being opened to the possibilities of what exists outside of what we know, is what I want to provide others with through my blog. I feel the majority of people today just assume they know everything (like I once did), and then only feed on the information that supports their current views (confirmation bias). We also get caught up conforming to what others, society, and culture say about how we should live, act and be. This is especially true now in the age of social media and digital marketing with how it conditions us to be completely obsessed with comparing our lives and our levels of perceived success to others. This leads us to primarily think about how we “should” act to feel “accepted” and “comfortable”, instead of just living a life that is true to us.

A big problem with following the crowd is that, through the years, we increasingly neglect our true selves and dismiss any new/better information and experiences that could drastically change and improve our lives. We forget that we are not supposed to be squares with the exact same thoughts, opinions, ideas, with the single purpose of just fitting another square-shaped hole. We are all individuals who are supposed to discover our own unique views on life and how we should live them. This is why I want to write about those books, topics, and ideas that can help open our minds and ultimately improve the quality of our lives. I want this blog to rock the boat of what is considered correct, standard, and common thought followed dogmatically by the masses.

I don’t believe in just reading more “self-help fluff.” I strongly believe we should engage in those topics, areas, and ideas that allow us to better understand ourselves so we can later better understand the world. I want this blog to provide an entry into these areas and I hope that by writing, formulating, and sharing my thoughts it might spark a passion in others, providing the same excitement and drive to learn more like I had when I read my first book on that coach to Paris.

I am very aware that lots of people believe, like I once did, reading isn’t for them. To that statement I always reply the same way, “It just means you haven’t found the right book, and read it at the right time”, because when you do, your eyes will open, and you will no doubt change.

I assume you may be asking, “Mike, what is this book that opened your eyes?!”, I am afraid I will have to disappoint you. I truly believe that this book deserves a post all to itself, and to briefly talk about it here wouldn’t do it enough justice. Additionally, the primary reason for this particular blog post is to provide an understanding of why I started this blog, and secondly to give a small taste of what is to come later. If you have made it this far, I sincerely thank you, and I am sure that what is written next will not disappoint, you may even find it quite shocking.

Okay, you read books, but what will make your blogs any different from others?

Not many people know that between the ages of 16-18 I had a very different experience growing up than most. The summer I finished my GCSE exams, my younger brother and I were invited into our parent's room one morning after I asked why they weren’t at work that day. Nothing would have prepared us for the answer that followed. That was the day we were told that our Dad had been diagnosed with Motor Neurones Disease (MND is the same disease that Stephen Hawkins had which affects only 2 in every 100,000 people) and given a life expectancy of 2-5 years.

We had known previously that Dad couldn’t lift his left arm above shoulder level. We both thought it was odd but had no idea it would/could be anything more serious. Our Mum and Dad had delayed telling us about the diagnosis because they didn’t want to affect my performance in my GCSE exams. In the weeks before finding out, only our Mum, Dad, and a Doctor in Oxford knew about Dad being diagnosed with a terminal illness that would slowly reduce all his motor functions as the neurones in his brain controlling them, all slowly turned off and died.

Dad only lived for one year following his diagnosis, passing away in the summer of 2013. Amazingly, he continued to teach as the Head of Social Sciences at a comprehensive school as he rapidly deteriorated, eventually only having the motor function of slightly moving his left index finger and his speech. At this point, he was supported 24/7 by a breathing machine and a motorised wheelchair. Surprisingly, despite this, we all have many positive stories about things that happened in that year even as Dads physical functions decreased.

One of my favourite stories was how my Dad acted during a fire alarm that went off in the school he taught at. At the time of the alarm he hadn’t started using his motorised wheelchair, as he could still walk short distances, so no one knew that this chair existed nor that it was waiting for him as the literal “skeleton in his classroom cupboard”. His pride wouldn’t allow him to use it until it was absolutely necessary. This was especially because, to everyone in the school he was known as “Stevo” the cool, good-looking, funny teacher who rode a fast black motorbike, and he didn’t want this perception by others to change. However, he knew that he could no longer walk to where the whole school had to gather during the alarm, so he decided that he would seize this moment and show the entire school the motorised wheelchair in his way, and in his style.

So once everyone was gathered outside the school, he got in the chair, drove out the classroom, went around the entire outside of the school, down the road that led to the school (the chair was unrestricted at Dads’ request and could go up to 8mph), stopped next to my mum (who also worked at the school), smirked at her, did a wheel spin in front of everyone and raced off back to his classroom, around a corner and nearly knocked over an assistant head on his return to the classroom. When the kids returned, he let them have fun in the chair and he even personally burned rings into the classroom's floor from doing so many doughnuts. This gives you a small glimpse of my Dad’s incredible personality and how his pride, strength, past motorbiking days, humour, and selective idiocy never left him.

As you can imagine even among the good times there were also plenty of bad ones, and as a result, in that year, I grew up very quickly. It is the key reason I say I am called an “old soul” and an “over thinker” by others. What also changed massively during this year was the outlook my family and I had/have on life and the meaning of it, as we all came to realise who, and what, actually matters in our lives. During this time I discovered that there are a few moments in our lives when the bubble of what we think matters completely bursts. When this happens, you become completely aware of the hilarity of how you were previously running around living your life and what you held as being most important in it.

This is not a “woe-is-me story” as that is not the point of these blogs. I honestly really dislike pity and the “I’m so sorry(s)” when people find out my Dad died when I was 17. Because of this I never before felt the need to inform people of my past, especially because it often just leads people to feel awkward and unsure of what to say or how to act. Also, I didn’t want this pity to impact how grateful I am for how the experience taught me that everyone has their own story, and every single person around you either has, does, or will go through some very deep sh*t. This is a fact of life, and to help others deal with this is one of the main reasons that I decided to begin writing this blog and sharing my past.

I strongly believe that the dark/bad times in our lives can help us build the strongest foundations of who we are, and who we could later become. It is the darkest times that give us the purest call to bear the responsibility of building our strength, identity, humour, passion, and purpose so that we can overcome the adversity we face. Through bearing this load and overcoming adversity, we learn to see the good that existed inside of the bad, such as what we learnt, who we became, and if any good memories or moments did exist. The awareness of these helps us to more accurately appreciate the bad times we overcame and the good times we later experience.

Carl Jung once said “No tree can grow to heaven unless its roots reach down to hell”. This perfectly represents my belief and that in order to obtain ideals such as happiness, love, and success we must also experience the reverse, such as sadness, loss, and failure. Through overcoming these obstacles we deepen our roots and become more stable/capable of growing and standing taller in the light. Without strengthening our roots we are easily blown over by the softest winds of adversity. Therefore both the good and bad times are necessary for us to become the best version of ourselves and to fully experience/appreciate what life has to offer.

I don’t want those who read this blog post to think that every post is going to be a deep analysis and continual discussion of my past and how tough things can be because that is not close to what I intend to do here. I will be using this platform to discuss a range of books, articles, cultures, topics, ideas, and principles that can be used to help give us all (myself included) answers to some of the questions we all have, or will later ask ourselves. There is so much I want to write about that I truly believe can help others in any area and discipline of life. I won’t just pigeonhole myself into only talking about dramatic situations and the resilience they require because there is still so much more that interests me and that I have to offer.

Now with still being someone who has experienced a few darker shades of life, it is reasonable to assume that I will still draw from this source of experience when and if it holds any relevance to a certain area/topic I find myself discussing. Primarily this is because I do still want to share some of the ways I was able to get through difficult times, both past and present, to allow others to use this information as motivation, inspiration, or even guidance for their personal circumstances. I will also add that it is from my past experiences and both my parent’s strength, resilience, and humour that made me proud of who I am, why I live my life the way I do, and also why I have my “intense” sense of humour (I will apologise now for when you are later offended by a joke I say).

I don’t believe I have all the answers, or perhaps any correct ones. But as the years have passed and my knowledge and experience have grown, I believe it has given me something of value to say and share. Writing these blogs through the lens of my life experience and the books I have read will help me to formulate and track my thoughts, ideas and opinions and how they further develop and evolve over time. This will allow me to always know who I was and what I thought at any point in my life and also how or why those ever change. I am excited that sharing this will allow me to gradually create a platform that I hope provides both value and support to others, wherever they currently find themselves in life, good or bad.

To conclude…

I hope, for whatever reason you come to read my blog posts, you find something of value, or perhaps even just a momentary distraction if that's what's needed. I hope for others that my words engage your thoughts into a deeper internal discussion on new ideas that provide a slightly alternative perspective on how to see yourself and the world around us. My final desire for this blog follows my belief that sometimes we all need that one person, one sentence, one moment that can cause a single "powering thought" that propels our next step towards the light and out of the dark tunnel we all sometimes find ourselves trapped in. If I can achieve any of these desires for just a few people then that is what will truly make this blog a success to me.

To finish, I must say that I don’t entirely know where this blog is going to go, nor do I know as much as others about the areas in which I plan to write. I do know that my life has given me something to say/share and not doing so would be a lie. I know that sharing my truth with the world in hopes of helping others is going to be a very exciting journey.

I have so many ideas for this site, and I am so excited about starting this journey to make these become a reality. I know that in doing so I will make a lot of mistakes, and I am going to be wrong more times than I am right. However, I am not afraid to fail or to be laughed at, as this will only make the blog more worthwhile. Failure to me is just a necessary part of the path to finding truth and success. So for this reason I hope I fail fast and often, so that I may later succeed in having the biggest positive impact I can on others.

Writing for these reasons is what I believe will help me to keep taking those small steps towards those big goals I have set myself, and what is most true to me and what I dream to do. I am so excited if you are here to join me on this journey to shake the boat of what is expected of us. I hope in doing so you come to find a grain of sand that you can add to your own beach to identify your own meaning/purpose.

If you made it this far, thank you so much for reading my first blog. I hope that you found some entertainment in it and that it may also be the first of many that you come to read. If you have any questions, thoughts, or feedback I would love to hear from you, so please do get in touch.

Welcome to Powering Thoughts.

Written for you,

By

Mike Stevenson