- Everyone has a purpose.
There's something you are meant to do.
By the way, what you're meant to do lies directly behind
and is connected to what you love to do.
You know, when I was at school,
I wanted to be an artist,
but my parents didn't like that for me.
And I decided I'd be a teacher
and I was very excited about that, but it wasn't for me.
And then I decided I'd be a child psychologist
and that also wasn't for me, because it was just too hard.
When you're a therapist working with children,
you tend to have three patients, mother, father, child.
Often divorced, on a different page
and it's interesting working with one,
working with three was hard.
And then, when I became a therapist,
I saw time and time again
people who would be depressed,
and interesting one of the major factors of depression
which is not, by the way,
a chemical imbalance in your brain.
That's not even a real thing at all.
One of the major cause of depression
is failing to follow your heart's desire.
And I've seen people who say,
"No, all my life, I wanted to be a doctor
or a teacher or a lawyer
or a golf instructor
I wanted to be in the theater, but you know,
my parents kind of steered me into this is a good job for you.
And now I'm depressed because my life is passing me by
and I haven't followed my heart's desire."
I've seen many people who are depressed
because they have a good job.
"I'm a lawyer, it's a good job, but I don't like it,
I'm not fulfilled."
I work with many, many police officers,
great people who say, "I went into the police
to make a difference
and for all kinds of reasons, it's nobody's fault,
I lock up drunks,
I lock up people who are mentally ill.
It's not what I wanted."
And it's very easy to get stuck in a career
that isn't what you wanted because often, when you're 18
and you start careers advice or 16,
you don't know what you want.
"I want to do that, that's great for me, my family did it."
And then you get into the career and you suddenly get stuck.
You feel lost.
You feel unfulfilled.
You feel unsure about your future.
The unfulfilled is a big thing
because everyone has a purpose.
There's something you are meant to do.
By the way, what you're meant to do lies directly behind
and is connected to what you love to do.
But humans have a fear of change.
You know, we're wired to resist change.
Anyone with a small child, whenever they get to two,
they go, "I don't like that, it's got lumps in it."
"I don't like that yogurt, it's not pink."
And nature is very clever,
it's wired us to be scared of change,
the same old, same old me is safe.
We used to only live until we're about 50
and it was all about being safe.
Just getting through the day.
But now we live until we're 102
and we suddenly realize, well
what's the point?
It's like that great song.
I used to love, get up, go to work,
get a job, pay the bills.
Bittersweet Symphony by The Verve, that's the one.
And I was just talking about this.
Futileness, of what is life about?
If I get up, go to work, come home, pay the bills.
And you may know
that many people have more heart attacks
on a Monday than any other day of the week.
Many people say, "I'm really depressed on a Sunday night
because I'm going to a job that doesn't make my heart sing."
So what do you do if you feel depressed
and your job doesn't make your heart sing?
Well, you got to find something that you love.
And I, you know, started off thinking
I'm going to be an artist.
I'm going to be a teacher, be a child psychologist.
And I almost fell into being an RTT® therapist.
And I love this job.
And you know why I love it?
It ticks all the boxes.
It makes my heart sing.
I do what I love.
I love what I do.
I would do this job for nothing.
And I often do because I love it so much.
Every day, I get a massive sense of purpose.
You see, humans have these needs, going to tell you
what they are, we need significance.
We need connection, need diversity.
We also need certainty
and we need to feel we're making a difference.
The number one reason people stay
in a job is because they say, "I feel like I'm contributing.
I think I'm making a difference to society."
There are very few jobs that tick all those boxes.
And I worked with many people who were absolutely stuck.
One of my favorite stories is that,
this girl wrote to me and said, you know, “I’ve been a
cleaner, I was this mom with kids
and I couldn't find any job that allowed me to take my kids
to school, pick them up from school.
I couldn't earn enough money.
I didn't want to work in an office or a factory
or a call center.
So I became a cleaner.
It didn't make my heart sing.
Then I found your course
and I took it, and I began to be a therapist.
And I never knew that I could do that.
And yet I did do it."
And she wrote to me and told me, you know, "It's amazing.
My first ever client gave me a free all-expenses trip
to Florida.
And my first client was someone whose house I was cleaning.
She told me all the troubles
but hairdressers say that too.
My clients tell me all their woes.
And I was telling this story at the RTT® convention
we have a convention every year, people would come
from all
over the world to learn skills, to meet each other.
I said this story.
And she said, "And it's me.
I'm here in the room."
And she came up on stage and shared the story.
And then we have another lovely girl called Sally
in Australia who told me the same story.
She turned up at my class
and she didn't tell me at the time, probably just as well
that she put the whole thing on her credit card.
Brought her children to London, trained with me
went back to Australia and her life has just taken off.
She's blissfully happy
but we also have a lovely doctor called Morata who
came to do my live training and said, "You know, as a doctor
I want to make a difference.
I want to help people.
And it's no one's fault that I have five minutes
with people, and I prescribed medication
and that's not what I signed up for."
And she amazingly left our course,
went back to Scotland,
shut down her entire practice,
reopened as a sole RTT® therapist.
She loves it.
So we have a lot of people who have come to me
and said, you know, "I really want to do something different
but I'm scared of change.”
Very normal to be scared of change.
“I’m scared of the cost.”
“I’m scared of failing.”
“I don't like the job I'm in, but I got kind of certainty."
There's that need again.
Certainty.
"What about if I leave
and I don't like my next job, and I lose that
but I can't succeed at that job."
So we have a fear of change.
We have a fear of something different.
We have a fear of the investment.
We're going to make, the time it's going take to
train.
And that's very, very normal.
When you can see the ending of something
you can deal with it.
When something really hurts you,
it's got to be permanent and personal or pervasive
meaning it goes on all the time.
So, you know, I have a nephew at the moment who
doesn't really like his college course at all
but he knows it's ending in July,
in July, it's ending. You go back home, and you can cope
with something
when the ending is in sight, you can't cope with something when
you don't know when it ends,
and that's quite interesting.
Prisoners on remand do worse
than those with a sentence -
because they can't see the ending.
Think about how your life is going to be
in a few short months, rather
than how it is now.
And if you can see where you're going, not where you are.
You'll be amazing.
If you'd have told me 30 years ago what my life
would've looked like, I wouldn't have believed that
I would've had a home in LA, a home in Notting Hill,
an amazing life with a beautiful relationship.
A daughter, I was told I could never have children
but I didn't know.
I had no idea that my life would be the life I have now.
I still wake up and pinch myself.
I wake up every day and I say the same thing.
I love my life, and I love my life.
I'll never do anything else.
I'm going to be doing this when I'm 95.
I will never retire, but I love it.
And you can love it too.
And it will love you right back.