10 Things That “Happened” to Me…
After being invited to write a post about 10 things that happened to me by Joanne at "I’m Happy Fish" I wasn’t sure if I could remember 10 things that had happened to me that would actually be interesting to read. Still, after Joanne kindly tagged me I started to write without having a list planned first. It took a while, but here it is. It’s been quite a journey of self discovery!.
As I write I have just had an idea. Seeing as I am enthusiastically in the process of discovering what habits and patterns I perpetuate that create the results I currently have in my life and having the intention of changing them, so they create the results I want rather than the ones I just get given to me I thought it appropriate to make a statement.
I acknowledge and I take responsibility for the fact that what happens to me does not simply happen to me, but in fact came from within me. Not intentionally or consciously, but nonetheless came into my reality through certain thinking and or behavioral patterns… somehow.
Now I have made that clear, here are 10 things that, at the time I perceived as happening to me. They are in no particular order:
The Asian Tsunami. On December 26th 2004 I went scuba diving in the Andaman Sea, Thailand in open water, but close to a beautiful, large rock that towered out of the water. It was the first time I had ever been in the sea with diving gear. It was day 2 of my PADI diving course and I was a little nervous because to be honest I don’t really feel that comfortable under the water. I descended with a friend and the instructor to the sea bed, which was 5 metres down and headed to an anchored rope on the bottom and were instructed to wait there and check we were all OK. Holding onto the rope, we noticed the sand starting to kick up off the bottom and the water became very cloudy, quite quickly. I didn’t realize it at the time but there was a strong current of some kind and my mask filled with water, so I let go of the rope to empty my mask. I then started drifting away from the others, who were still holding the rope. I thought nothing of it. I decided to remain calm as I had read in my course book and then through the murky water I noticed the look on my instructors face. Something was not right. The instructor and my friend both stretched out to grab me and managed to grip me literally by the fingers to pull me back to the rope. All this happened in a few seconds, but of course the experience that followed went on for some time after. What we had experienced was the tsunami. I try not to analyze it too much these days, but when I think about it I am reminded of how lucky I am to be alive today to which I am truly grateful. It also was the cause of me knowing a wonderful woman today. - A car accident. This I have written about already at Leave The Office, so I won’t go into details again, just link to the full story here… and here. To describe the thing itself however, I simply had a very large truck drive into the back of my car whilst I was stationary, causing me some serious discomfort in the form of whiplash, a second awakening to life and how precious it is and also left me with the feeling of being a cat, seeing as I seem to have several lives on this evidence. Funny that, seeing as I was born in the year of the Dog! Again I am grateful for being able to tell this story today.
- Creating a vision of the woman of my dreams. I’m really exposing some personal information here, but seeing as this post in in the category "Law of Attraction" I attracted my girlfriend, who I just know is my life partner. This really does prove to me how we create our reality and our results. I attended a Tom Monte program in April 2003 in a beautiful location in Wales, UK. During this program we were all asked to divide into pairs and describe to each other our perfect soul mate or life partner. At that time I had been single for nearly 5 years and I had resigned myself to the fact that I was never going to find anyone to share my life with, so I had no recurring thoughts about the kind of woman I wanted to be with. However from somewhere inside of me I described this woman in every detail. What she looked like, the colour of her hair, her eyes, the fact that she was from an exotic country, she was beautiful and I described the way we were in each other’s company. How much we were always laughing and joking, even when there was nothing to say everything felt easy and natural. All of these details came out of me as if someone else was giving me the information and as I got to the part about how we laughed together I broke down in tears. I obviously uncovered something! Anyway after that day I forgot all about it. So what happened to me that day was the realization that I was somehow not letting anybody into my life…. but there’s more…. later
- Another attraction, this time an ideal job. As I returned from Thailand in October 2006 I felt pretty low. I had no money left after my trip. I missed my girlfriend and I needed to get a job. All I wanted to do was go back to Thailand, but I knew that would not be possible without some money saved. I started job hunting for a telecom job, seeing as that is what I have done so many times before and after a week or so as I was out for a walk I said to myself. "I need to spend some time here saving my money, so that one day I can relocate to Thailand, but I also need to be able to visit my girlfriend too, so I want a job that pays me full time money and also allows me the kind of time off where I can visit Thailand for a month at a time, preferably more than once a year". Now you may think I am flowering this story up a bit, but I really am not. A week later I applied online for a shift engineer job and followed up the email application with a telephone call. It was perfect timing. I was lined up with an interview a few days later and the guy who interviewed was an old colleague from a previous job who I got on with very well and who knew my abilities and trusted me. Needless to say I got the job. Now I work long nightshifts, but I get a lot of time off and this September I am going to Thailand for 5 weeks for the second time this year, paid vacation from work.
- The day I decided that I wasn’t handsome! When I was about 9 years old I went on holiday to the Spanish island of Ibiza with my family. We were enjoying ourselves by the pool and I remember asking my Dad, for some reason if would grow up to be tall. At about the same time there was a man with his young son walking by and my Dad said. I think you will be of a similar size to that man. I wanted to be tall and this guy was tall enough for me to think "Great I’m pleased with that" then my Das innocently followed that with "Of course, you won’t be as handsome as him" I think he was alluding to the fact that he didn’t consider himself handsome, but I remember feeling rather deflated at that and subconsciously I think I made a decision that day that I was not handsome. Ironically about 12 years later, when I was playing in a band, my Dad came to see me play and the girlfriend of one of my band mates told me that she thought my Dad was really good looking! I think that actually helped me dispel part of the illusion I held about my own looks that night, even though I didn’t know it at the time.
- The night I wet the bed!Here is a perfect example of something that felt like it happened to me, but was actually something I did! When I was 10 years old I went on a one-week school trip to The Isle of Wight in the UK. We all stayed in this old fashioned hotel and as far as I recall it was the first time I had been away from home. I must have been nervous or homesick or something, but whatever the reason I wet the bed! It seems pretty insignificant now and I’m not even embarrassed about it, but at the time it was a nightmare that I wanted to forget. The thing that stuck in my mind however was not the fact that I had wet the bed, but the fact that my best friend found it hilariously funny and just couldn’t wait to tell all the other kids. It may not bother me these days, but I’m sure it contributed to some deeply held beliefs about myself and possibly about friends in general. Anyway I am a fully functional human being and I don’t think I have suffered greatly from that.
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The day I suddenly started to write music. I had been playing the guitar for nearly 10 years. In fact that was 10 years ago. Wow it doesn’t seem that long! I was always good at coming up with lead guitar parts in a band situation, but was never able to write songs for some reason. One day when I was playing the guitar at home I came out with a song. Just like that. It took as long to write as it took to play, literally. I then found in the days that followed many songs flowing out of me. However apart from the first song there were no lyrics, just music, but in the 10 years that followed I have written so many songs and pieces of music and it’s still coming. Interestingly quite recently I made an affirmation about being able to write truly great and inspiring lyrics because I still had trouble writing words to music. It seems now that the words are starting to come naturally too. My dream now is to release my own solo album and I don’t care whether it sells a lot of copies or not! - The story of when I gave up smoking. I started smoking quite late really. I was about 20 or 21 when I took it up. Very silly really because I had got through the toughest period of peer pressure, but I suppose at 21 when we all think we know everything I was still just as impressionable and naive. I remember at the age of about 24 or 25 saying on a few occasions "I’ll give up by the time I’m 30". Well little did I know it then, but I had made a clear affirmation to the Universe and whilst I may have forgotten about my statement the Universe had not because 4 days before my 30th birthday I woke up with excruciating chest pains. I bravely soldiered on into work, but could take it no more mid-morning and left work to see a doctor. The pain was so bad I couldn’t smoke a cigarette. The doctor diagnosed me with Pleuracy (an infection of the pleural fluid on the outside of the lung) and warned me not to smoke 2 weeks. I was given 2 weeks off work and went to my parent’s house to recover, enjoying a quiet birthday 30th celebration there. After 2 weeks of antibiotics and rest I realized that I hadn’t missed smoking one bit, so I decided not to resume smoking at all. Also as a bonus, to help stop any possible temptation to go back I stopped going out drinking as much after work with colleagues and I lost a load of weight too due to a drop in my consumption of beer. Plus the money I saved as a result felt like I had doubled my salary! So I did give up smoking by the time I was 30!
- The day I nearly hanged myself! I hadn’t thought about this for many many years, but it just popped into my head. When I was in primary school in a gym lesson I was swinging around on the rings. I think I was about 8 years old. I don’t know what possessed me to do it. I must have been taken over by some crazy-thinking being or something because I decided to put my head through the ring and unsurprisingly it wouldn’t come out again. There I was struggling to get my head out of this ring and all the time, fighting with my arms to stop my neck taking all the weight off my body. I was quite simply hanging myself! My teacher noticed and went white as a sheet when she saw me. She rushed over and held me up, helping me to ease my head back through the ring. I can’t really remember much after that apart from a huge bookcase falling away from the wall and landing so close to my foot, just to scrape the skin off my heel. I was inches away from being crushed. All this in the same lesson. Somebody was looking down on me that day!
- The woman of my dreams becoming a reality. This is my favorite one and the one that ties up many of the
preceding chapters of my life. When I went to Thailand in 2004, which you can read all about in my travelogue, I met a beautiful Thai girl, who, if it wasn’t for the tsunami I may never have seen again. We kept in touch a little after I returned home, but not for long and we lost touch for nearly a year. One day she called me and we started regularly chatting on MSN messenger and on the telephone. After some time I felt that there was possibly something special going on here, so I decided to go to see her in Thailand again to make sure if there really was something real between us or if it was just a passing thing. It felt real to me, so I wanted to make sure that this was my chance to find my true love or close the chapter and get on with my life. About a week before I was due to fly to Thailand I had an awakening. I woke up early and sat bolt upright in astonishment. The girl I had described in item 3 was this girl. Not just like her or some of the details the same. No. THE WOMAN that I described. There was absolutely no difference between what I had envisioned in my mind, described in words and the actual woman that I was actually falling in love with and about to be reunited with. I just knew before I arrived that the only chapter I would be closing was the one about me being single and lonely! The moment I walked out of the terminal at Phuket airport and saw her waiting with her friends I knew I was "home". It felt so natural and easy. We walked on the beach as the sun set and we didn’t really need to say much. I just knew. The time we then spent together was exactly how I had described our relationship 3 and a half years before. 1 and a half years before I had even met her. We still spend a lot of time laughing and joking together and I know that she is THE ONE.
I hope you enjoyed reading the 10 things that "happened" to me. This was hard work. I had trouble going through my memory banks to find these facts. It has been quite a journey and, in many ways quite a cleansing experience for me. It’s great when a blog post has this affect on me because I feel that there is more chance it will provide some value to those who read it. I feel I have exposed my self quite a bit in this post, which proved to me that I have grown since I started this blog. I am more open to sharing these days. Thank you so much Joanne for tagging me to do this post.
Comments
Comment from Rob
Time: September 1, 2007, 7:40 pm
Wow thanks you Joanne! That’s the nicest comment I’ve had so far at Leave The Office!
Thank you.
Rob
Comment from Erin
Time: September 6, 2007, 1:28 am
After Priscilla Palmer’s self development list my friend Jenny and I have decided to try to help build the self development community as well with a little contest. I would like to invite you to find out more details at Win a $25 Gift Certificate.
Comment from Rob
Time: September 6, 2007, 7:41 am
Sounds good Erin, especially the subject matter of your contest. I’ll enjoy writing a post/article about the power of habits.
Thanks for stopping by.
Comment from Erin
Time: September 6, 2007, 12:17 pm
Rob,
Great, I look forward to your response!
Comment from Joanne
Time: September 1, 2007, 9:00 am
Hi Rob,
I really enjoy reading your 10 things. I think someone was, and is still looking and taking care of you. And hey, even though we haven’t meet in person, but from the pics on your blog, I can tell you are really, a handsome one, inside and outside
Joanne