Hi there, Mark here from Go Travel Mindfully. Today is the first of a range of videos that I want to put up to give you an understanding of my life and how I’ve been able to rewrite my story from trauma to freedom.
And the reason that I want to make these videos is as a counsellor for over 20 years, a therapist, mental health social worker, and the skills and the knowledge that I’ve acquired and how supporting over 7,000 clients during that time, I’ve seen the changes that can happen when we rewrite our story.
My story began obviously when I was born and unfortunately or fortunately, as it turns out later in life, I was born into a fairly abusive family. And the result of that was very low self-esteem and a sense of low self-worth. I didn’t value myself very much. In fact, you could call my story the failure story. And I went through the first period of my life experiencing that. Things never seemed to go my way. I didn’t like who I was. I didn’t have very many friends. In fact, I don’t have very many memories at all before the age of 12 years of age.
But I don’t want to make this a tale of feeling sorry for me. It was more that as I journeyed through life, I didn’t realise at first that that was my dominant story, the failure story. It was just totally who I was. But I did discover later in life that led to me going to university and getting a degree, psychology and social work degree, where I could help and support others.
And through that learning journey myself, I came across acceptance and commitment training, as I call it, Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, ACT, where I started to understand that that dominant story that had led my life, the failure story, and had played out in so many ways throughout my life to reinforce that message, was not totally who I was, even though I had believed that that was who I was, and that was going to be my life.
But I realised it was just a story. And through the skills and the techniques and the knowledge that I have learnt over the years, I have been able to manage and tame that story such that it still plays out, as do so many foundational stories in our life from those early ages, or maybe through other forms of trauma or stress that we’ve experienced. They can shape how we view and see the world and what our beliefs are. But when I realised the failure story was just a story that I could learn to manage, it has presented for me many options in life that I want to be able to share with you, because it really is a liberating experience.
I now live in a world where my mind really is very free. I am free of the old rules that used to bind me and bind so many of us in Western society. How we should be, what we should be attaining, what success looks like. All of these rules that can keep us very limited in our view on life and what we can achieve. I’ve been able to break free of that and rewrite the story, so to speak, to one of freedom.
And that freedom for myself and my wife Julie now means living a life, a much slower life. We have freed ourselves of material possessions. We don’t own a house or very few material possessions at all. And it’s very liberating. And yet I come across so many people our age, we’re in our 60s now, that would be very fearful of living that life.
But through understanding my own failure story and learning to manage that, especially when it starts to creep up, as it will in life, because that seems to be what life is about. It’s not all joy and skittles, I guess. I don’t know whether I just invented that phrase, but there you go. It’s not always about happiness. It is about learning from the suffering that we experience in life.
And I have certainly been able to do that to a point now where Julie and I really are very liberated and free. And so I’m hoping that throughout the series of videos that I will present, if it resonates with you, you will come along for the journey as well, particularly if you too are wanting to experience a different life for yourself.
Maybe you’re feeling trapped. Maybe you’ve got to that point in life where you’re saying, surely there must be more. I think I can help you discover what that more looks like as we learn to rewrite our stories.
So if this is resonating with you today, please feel free to come along for the journey. Like and subscribe this video and I will put up regular videos to tell you of my journey and what that transformation actually looks like and how you can implement it into your life to start to achieve more of the life that you truly deserve.
So thanks for watching and I hope to see you for the next video.
Hi, Mark here from Go Travel Mindfully. Thank you so much for watching this video. I hope you found it entertaining and you got some information out of it that can help you discover and enjoy the life that you truly deserve.
While you’re here at my website, you can download your very own free 80-page copy of my ebook, Get Out of Your Head and Into Your Life. It’s full of very useful, evidence-based, proven information to help you better let go of worry, fear, anxieties that may be getting in the way of you enjoying the life that you truly deserve, including becoming a full-time traveler.
So if you would like your own copy, download it now!
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