Archives: positivity

For the last two years on January 1st I’ve sworn to myself I’m going to revitalise this blog and do things differently. I haven’t. I’ve spent the last two Januarys and Februarys slowly failing to keep up with a constant schedule, largely because I can never work out what this blog is supposed to be.

So from tomorrow I’m going back to my roots and this will be about one thing and one thing only: that little thing that makes me smile every day, whatever it may be.

Way back in the beginning, that’s all this blog was supposed to be. Some of it was going to be able daily battles (and that’s what ended up in the book), but it was also here to remind me to keep smiling, no matter what.

Whatever happens over the coming months and years, wherever my health takes me and whatever else life throws at me, this blog will be here not only to document the process, but also to remind me when the going gets to its very toughest, that the world is really a very funny place and you have to keep on smiling, because the other options are too dark to think of.

That’s what I’ll be doing from now on. And don’t worry, you’re excused if you no longer want to listen.

Keep smiling!

I don’t normally do review posts like this, but today I somehow feel it’s necessary.

I’m tempted to say ‘good riddance’ to 2014; the last 12 months (plus a few days at the back end of 2013) have possible been the worst of my life, filled with such depths of sadness as they were, not to mention other rocky patches I stumbled through during their course.

But that’s not the nature of this blog and it’s not my nature either. I may be wallowing in sadness a little longer than I usually might, but I’m not one to rail against the world. I don’t believe in a world with no redeeming features and I’ve continued to try to find life’s little silver linings, to smile through it all.

In that spirit:

This year I lost 4 friends:

Kerry was a friend I first filmed in 2012 who told her story so eloquently and beautifully it even made me tear up, which is tough for someone who has seen and lived through so many stories of life with CF.

Anders was a distant but no less sturdy rock for me when I needed support. Twice, when I was having a rough patch and knowing that I had zero music knowledge, Anders made me a mix tape (on CD) and sent it down for me to stick on to keep me tuned into the world around me.

Emily was the friend who was always one step ahead of me.

And Eugenie was someone who seemed never to ask anything of anyone in life, to offer nothing but her heartfelt support, love and affection to everyone she came into contact with, and to find out today that she’s no longer with us is almost too much for me to bear.

This year I saw my niece turn 1:

Isla is everything I could have dreamt of in a new niece, the perfect addition to the growing cadre of nieces and nephews that light up our life. And she’s the niece I never thought I’d see and, without the kindness of one person and their family, I never would have.

This year I lost my way:

Halfway through the year, after losing three friends in 4 months (Gareth, Kerry and Anders), I didn’t know what to do with myself and everything seemed a bit pointless. But having my wife at my side to guide and support me, not to mention my wonderful colleagues at World Vision, I got through the tough times and found my way again. Unfortunately for my colleagues (or fortunately, depending on your point of view…), it would be elsewhere.

This year I found a new home:

When I saw a job description looking for a master storyteller to join the charity whose work over the last 50 years is largely responsible for me being here today, it felt utterly perfect. How could I not put my name forward for it? Again, thanks to encouragement and support from my wonderful wife, I applied, was interviewed and was given the job. What a way to give back to the people who’ve helped me be here and what a way to help pave the way to a brighter future for all those going through what I went through.

This year I learned how to make mistakes (and recover from them):

K and I upped sticks to move to St Albans to be closer to the CF Trust office in Bromley and make the commute a little easier. We found a lovely little flat at the top of the high street and roped in a cohort of friends and family members to help us shift all our stuff from our 4-bed house to our 2-bed flat.

And then we realised how big a mistake we had made. We were miserable, and making each other miserable. So we reversed our decision. Quickly and quietly we gathered our things and five weeks after we’d moved out, we took ourselves back to our lovely Wellingborough dwelling and I discovered that a longer commute is worth the time if you come back to a place that feels like home.

This year I learned that grief is all-consuming, but that it will pass:

From moment to moment I’m am still struck by enormous pangs of pain in missing Gareth, who was such a big part of our lives and whom we loved so much. And as each death this year has started to mount up it’s become harder and harder to take.

But as I sit here and hope upon hope that 2015 will be kinder to us and to our friends and to our family than 2013 and 2014 have been, I recognise that all these things are fleeting. More importantly, all these things, these experiences, are what make us who we are, are what make me who I am and are what make each and every moment we share with the people we love most the most important moments of our lives.

Hug your loved ones close in 2015, and give thanks for the time we have with them. And if they are no longer here to hug, raise a glass and a smile for the light they brought, not for the shadow that remains in their wake.

I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but there has been a major glut in ‘Why New Year’s Resolutions Suck’ posts since the turn of the year.

The strange thing is that even thought people spend a lot of time griping about how awful they are, they still seem to make them. And the biggest issue with any kind of resolution is the kick in the teeth you get when you fail.

This isn’t one of those posts, I promise.

But I did set myself some monthly goals to achieve this year, starting with January’s 3: eating right, daily exercise and daily writing. And success for these is largely subjective: whatever I deem good enough is good enough.

This week, though, I had my attempts to follow-through on my resolutions kicked squarely up the butt by a friend – and completely inadvertently on his part, too.

A bad start

Daily exercise is something I’ve always struggled with. As I’ve written about before, I throw myself into things that are beyond my capability and end up injured, demoralised or ill. Or all three. Which sucks.

The idea of my daily exercise goal wasn’t to hop on a get-fit-quick bandwagon and end up in my usual situation of running for two days then realising I can’t run then abandoning all hope of ever being able to run and then wallowing in a pit of junk-food-laden self-pity on the couch. It was designed to follow the little-and-often maxim and, hopefully, to develop positive habits for the rest of the year.

But I didn’t.

Getting in from work in the evening I’d be tired, it would be cold outside, I’d not really want to go anywhere other than the sofa and my bed.

And I wasn’t sleeping well, despite being tired.

Then, on Monday night, I read an update on Facebook that said:

I have exercised every day since New Year. Today I have clocked up 90 mins of brisk walking. Not much to some but for me that’s impressive seeing as this time last year I could barely stand up without excruciating pain. #grateful

Gratitude

That one word hashtag at the end (let’s leave aside how irritating and pointless hashtags on Facebook are for a moment, because I like this dude and, well, it seemed to work!) made all the difference to me.

I know GB (the dude in question) had a rough ride over the last few years, to which he alludes in the post. And I realised that my lack of inspiration and motivation to get out there and do anything at all to try to develop positive habits and achieve my goals wasn’t just lazy; it was ungrateful.

All of a sudden, from apparently nowhere, I was hit by a stark realisation: of all the things I’ve used to try to drive me, of all the motivational videos I’ve YouTube’d, all the incentives I’ve tried to give myself, none will ever be as strong as the feeling that I’m not being grateful enough for my life.

My donor has afforded me opportunities I genuinely never thought I’d have and although I say I’m grateful and thankful every day, my actions seem to belie those words.

It’s time for me to live what I believe, to match my deeds to my thoughts, to accept the hard things and to remember there’s always someone worse off than more. It’s time to smile through it…

Find your own gratitude

The point is we all have our own spur. We all have something that will connect with us, drive us, keep us going when it gets really tough.

It’s not always apparent what this is and, while we may think we’ve nailed it, a large part of the reason we fail at things like New Year’s resolutions is that we haven’t truly found our motivational force.

For me, it took the example and evidence of gratitude – and my own fears and desires not to be seen as ungrateful – to find the thing that gets me off the sofa and out into the cold, dark evening to walk the village as I have done since Monday.

For you, it may be the motivation of a big challenge, to raise money for charity or dedication to supporting someone else. Whatever it may be, don’t try to find it in anyone else: it will be yours and yours alone.

Have you found yours yet? Let us know what it is in the comments below or on Twitter.

I’m astonished logging in to the blog today to discover it’s been a month since I last wrote here. Why so? And why write now, at midnight on a Friday?

Because I’ve just read this and because I’ve had one of the most wonderful weeks of my life where I finally found peace with who I am, what I want to achieve and the knowledge and faith that if I want to, I will.

I wrote to my mailing list a couple of weeks ago about how disappointed I’ve been in myself recently. I’ve tried new things and failed. I’ve retried old things and failed again. I should have been celebrating the release of my first book and instead I was focusing on the negative things in my life and how ‘hard’ things were.

And yes, you’re right to scoff; how hard can life really be when I’ve just published a book that describes my journey that culminated in my being about as close to death as it’s possible to be while still breathing and moving around.

The truth is, I’d lost my way.

I’d lost the focus on the things in life that make me smile.

I’d lost my belief in myself and my dreams, that I can make things happen if only I put my mind to them.

I’d lost my understanding of the world around me and my place in it.

I was fearful; scared of a future I couldn’t predict, never realising that no one can.

I felt insignificant, I felt lost, I felt directionless and unable to see through the fog.

And then this week I spent a day with a group of people I greatly admire, hugely respect and feel an enormous amount of love for. And sharing the day with them, opening ourselves up to the world around us and to the spiritual world we wanted to share helped not only connect with my beliefs, but also with the inner sense of self I’d lost.

I’ve been crying out for an answer to my questions, all the while ignoring the signs for what I know to be true.

So far from being a downbeat and reflective post bemoaning the downfall and deletion of this blog – after all, what did I have to say the world any more – it’s an opportunity for me to wish you all an amazing end to 2012 (now the world hasn’t ended).

I hope you have a wonderful Christmas, that you celebrate the festivities in whatever way befits your beliefs (even if that’s not at all), and I hope you welcome 2013 with open arms and fresh excitement for what the world has to offer each and every one of us.

I don’t expect next year to be all green grass and rose-tinted, but I do hope that it delivers on the promise of the end of 2012.

The blog will be back in the new year; changed, perhaps, but still the same me, with the same beliefs and the same will to show you all that it doesn’t matter where you come from or where you’re going, only what you choose to do with where you are right now.

I almost didn’t post today – I wasn’t sure I had anything to say and wasn’t feeling especially inspired – but when I relaunched the blog a while back I made a commitment to posting every Wednesday and Friday without exception, so I now feel obliged to you, my dear reader, and to myself to keep it up.

Actually, as I sat down to write, I realised just what I should be writing about. You see, life isn’t always plain sailing and sometimes things are just downright shitty1. But there’s always a flip side, you just have to find it.
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1. if you’ll excuse the language [↩]

Over the life of this blog, I’ve written quite a lot about CF, it’s affects and my life as well as the lives of others with the incurable condition.

I’m one of the lucky few to have survived and thrived after a double-lung transplant that saved and transformed my life four-and-a-half years ago, but this week is CF Week in the UK and I wanted to see if I could tell a different story.

On Sunday night, a wonderful adopted-Aunty of mine posted a heart-felt, inspiring and moving message to her Facebook friends about her daughter, who has CF. I immediately asked her if I could re-print it on the blog to share with everyone who’s not connected with her.

Happily, she agreed. This post is her words, in full, which are far more eloquent, emotive and impactful than I think I could have managed and, as you’ll see at the end, they sum up everything that SmileThroughIt represents.

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