Follow your path

If I'd had the necessary conviction and self-belief when I was a teenager, I'd have become an author fifty years ago.

Follow your path

Had a great afternoon yesterday working on my new book. It’s for older children and parents who want to read to younger children without dying of boredom, and it’s the follow-up to the book I wrote during lockdown about Big Ben.

Ever since I was a teenager I have been searching for my path in life. If only I’d had the necessary self-belief and conviction in those days to listen to the promptings of my heart, I would have become an author fifty years ago instead of wasting much of my life trying to follow futile career paths that I believed I was expected to pursue.

I’ve always wanted to be a writer and for many years dabbled in it until some fifteen years ago I published my first book, The Five Pillars of Happiness, a weighty non-fiction tome designed to help people follow their hearts to build a life they wanted, to experience fulfilment, meaning and purpose, the primary ingredients of happiness, on a daily basis.

That’s why my primary obsession has always been: Follow your heart and find your true path. Don’t try to sound or look or be like anyone else. Your heart always knows what’s right for you ad when you experience conflict, love is always the answer.

This takes courage, you may need support, and perhaps a strategic or tactical approach is necessary. It may be easier said than done, but it’s certainly worth venturing out of your comfort zone and it certainly is doable. And it’s almost certainly worth the effort.

Now I’m on my forth book I realise the path of writer and author is for me. After all, it’s the only thing I’m really good at. True, I’m a pretty good sailor and an accomplished carpenter, and I’m certainly getting to grips with learning the piano, but in my heart of hearts I honestly believe the writing is the only thing I can excel at. And excelling at something feels utterly joyful.

In case you are interested, Big Ben is a very large, mischievous shire horse with an insatiable appetite for adventure. His last escapade was getting married, no mean feat for any kind of horse.

In this follow-up story, Ben embarks on his next impossible, hairbrained adventure, a journey festooned with challenges, accompanied by all his animal friends large and small and a handful of humans, to a very special destination.

Will they make it? And what will they do when they get there? And why?

Watch this space over the next months to learn of my progress with this project, which is an adventure and journey for me too along the path I have chosen.

Meanwhile, if you are not happy with the way your life is, listen to your heart, which always knows what’s best for you, and follow it’s guidance without hesitation.