Todd: 0:00

This is the Cluttered Path, a compass for midlife. You can achieve everything society tells you to want Success, money, admiration but you can still feel completely empty inside. Here's what most success stories don't tell you. Sometimes, the only way to find happiness is to rid yourself of the outward trappings of success. Because the man we'll meet today he won it all, but he discovered his greatest achievement was really just learning to live with nothing but what he carried in a backpack, while finding more joy than he ever expected. His name is Ray Martin, also known as the Daily Explorer. He's an entrepreneur, an award-winning business leader, coach, mentor, speaker, among many other things, and his mission in life is to really empower people to live authentically and bring more joy and happiness to the world. Ray, welcome to the show.

Ray: 0:56

Oh, what a lovely introduction. Thank you so much, todd, that's brilliant.

Todd: 1:00

Oh, no worries. So Ray's in the UK and I just wanted to tell you, ray, I visited Uxbridge, outside of London, for about 10 days, yeah, okay, and I had a really good time. It was the company I worked for. We had something going on in the area, so I was there for 10 days. Yeah. And really just enjoyed interacting with the British people.

Ray: 1:20

I'm glad to hear it people.

Todd: 1:22

It was nice. Just a couple of things. One what I really liked about this group is every day they all brought their lunches and they all ate lunch in the common area.

Ray: 1:33

Okay yeah, that's quite a popular thing in British companies.

Todd: 1:37

I like that. For me it was like, okay, this is cool. And then there was a lady there who she said, todd, I'm going to make you a proper cup of British tea. And I said, ok, cool. So, yeah, very pleasant people. But yeah, I really enjoyed my trip there. Yeah, super OK. Well, let's get started. So can you tell us where you were born and about your childhood?

Ray: 1:59

Yeah, I was born in a tiny, tiny little town on the outskirts of London called Wellingarden City and it was a typical little suburb that sprung up in the 60s to meet the sort of housing crisis in central London which had been bombed during the war and stuff like that. And my parents were from the bombed part of London and so they wanted to move out and create a bright new future for their family that had just started. I've got an older brother. He was one year old. They moved out to welling garden city and I was born in welling garden city just about a year after they arrived.

Ray: 2:35

I went to school there and it's a. It's the kind of place that I would think there's many places in america like it. You kind of small town. You grow up there, meet your partner, life probably when you're there and have your children there and never leave. That's one life story off the shelf. Or you finish your schooling and then you just leave and you never come back. It's probably one or the other of those, maybe some shades, but mostly I'd say it was that, and for me it was the second one, because I really was excited about the idea of moving to London and getting involved in commerce and the whole razzmatazz of that kind of busy world, and I really was excited about that. So I had to leave Welling Garden City, which I did when I was about 17.

Todd: 3:18

Yeah, I did the same. It was a small town in Georgia here in the States and it was like I just ended up leaving, never went back. Yeah, Interesting, but uh. So what activities did you enjoy as a teen?

Ray: 3:32

Oh yeah, definitely sports. I, I love. I love playing football, um, uh, any kind of sports, actually, you know the preferred one. And watching and playing, loved movies, uh, loved reading. I love making models and kits, which I used to do, and my brother and I, um, were very avid, I'm sorry, very nerdy, but we were really enjoying called aircraft spotting in in america, in england, I don't know what they call it america you're basically fascinated by airplanes and you go to airfields to see the airplanes and you make a note of their registration numbers, because there were books that contain all the registrations and you can collect the registration numbers until you've seen, got them all, you know and wow. So we would sit at heathrow during our school holidays for the whole day with our binoculars watching, watching airplanes land and take off. We loved it. My brother actually, incidentally, became an airline pilot. That's what he did for his work, his career, so he was really loving that. So that's some of the things.

Todd: 4:36

Yeah, when I was a kid, in sixth grade, we took a field trip to an Air Force base in the area and we saw these F-15s and all this stuff. So that was I wanted to be a pilot. That was my plan at 18 years old. I'm going to go to the military, I'm going to do this, I don't know be a pilot. Once I got in the military and I saw how much the pilots had to work, I was like no thanks.

Ray: 5:00

Yeah, I mean I don't know if you know the place, but when a davis montham at tucson in arizona okay, the airplane boneyard or graveyard, I think they call it I know and I really wanted to go there and you can go there and go on a tour, and which I did and it was amazing because there's about two and a half thousand or three thousand aircraft parked and all boarded up in the desert there so they don't rust or deteriorate, but wow, what an amazing, incredible. It was like something out of a steven spielberg movie. It was really extraordinary. Yeah, that's real weird.

Todd: 5:30

Yeah, that is cool. That's interesting, man. Something just popped into my head when I was in england, in uxbridge. There we were out at dinner one night and um talking to one of the british colleagues and he told he was talking about his house and he's like somehow it came up that it was built in the year 1099. And I'm like your house is older than my country.

Ray: 5:50

Yeah right, 1099, that's nearly a thousand several hundred years old.

Todd: 5:59

It was surreal. That was very interesting. Okay, so what did you pursue after secondary school and for Americans, that's high school?

Ray: 6:07

Yeah, we had the option of going to do two more years of study at school they call that A-levels in England and then if you did that, you had the option to then go on to university, which is, I'd say, the most people did that. But you know, I had a vision when I was a child Like when I was 10 or 11, something didn't make sense to me about law, and I was growing up in the 60s, so the thinking has changed massively since then. So this doesn't really apply now. But when I was in the 60s, what I saw were adults who worked mostly in one company their whole life and they worked really long hours and really hard in order to retire and get their pension so they could start really living the life they wanted. But most of them died within two, three, four years of retiring and it just never made sense to me as a child that that would be your life, and I used to say sometimes to one or two teachers and certainly to my classmates that doesn't make any sense to me.

Ray: 7:04

Why do people do that? What is that what we're supposed to do? And they said, well, what's, what's the alternative? And I was only 10 or 11 I'd say well, you know what I'm gonna do as a young kid. I'm gonna just get a job where I can earn twice as much money in the first half and then have the second half of my life saved from 40 onwards, to go and travel and play. And that's what I'm going to do. And they say, oh, how are you going to do that? I said I don't know. I'm only 10, I have no idea what I was talking about, but I had this thinking as a kid and then I totally forgot about it. But it came back to me when I you know, later on in my life, when I got divorced and my dad died and that led to me taking the journey that I've written about in my book. That then became. I went oh my goodness, I forgot what I'd said. It was as if it silently shaped my life journey in the background, without even consciously realizing it.

Todd: 7:59

Excellent, yeah, and it's not an unrealistic goal work and save money and build up so you can retire early.

Ray: 8:07

But that's an adult's logic and that is rational and that's great. But I wasn't an adult and I wasn't rational. I was just saying it because it didn't make any sense to just spend your whole life doing one thing and then die.

Todd: 8:21

Right, and I think most people feel that way and then die Right and we, I think most people feel that way. But, and strangely, now and now and today, you can get let go from a company, especially here in the States and everywhere. You know, yeah, you just you think you're going to work someplace. You have it, you know, I'm going to, I'm going to be here until I retire.

Ray: 8:36

No, Then they let you go and it's yeah, it's yeah. That psychological contract has been ripped up for at least a decade now.

Todd: 8:49

It has. And then when I was in my mid-30s I've been in the tech industry for my whole career and just in my mid-30s I started seeing my colleagues. They would hit their 50s Right and they would get laid off. And it was to me that was like, I'm not going to.

Ray: 9:22

And here's the devastating tragic thing is a lot of them just didn't have any money, so they would end up losing everything and then they can't find another job because of their age. And it was yeah. So I saw that and it was like I don't want that for myself, so it's time to save money. But yeah, so when did you become an entrepreneur? Yeah, I did.

Ray: 9:29

I actually because of that thinking as a child, you know, when I was 16 and my education come to an end, I didn't want to continue with further education. I wanted to get into the world of creation and work and business and start learning straight away about business, and so I took a job at 16. I worked for one of the big banks in England Excellent, to start learning, and that's what I did. I worked for one of the big banks in England to start learning, and that's what I did, and I worked for a year there. Then I joined a kind of really interesting organization in sales for a couple of years, learned about sales and building customer relationships, and that really excited me because it appealed to my values of being independent, being free, being able to create money through my skill at that work without a limit, and that really did appeal to me. I did that for a couple of years and then I joined an organization which was extremely forward-thinking and progressive.

Ray: 10:19

I don't know how lucky I was to find it, but the owner of that company used to say to a lot of the young ones I was in my 20s you're never going to become truly wealthy on a salary. You can only build wealth if you're prepared to step out and create an organization and take that risk and grow it and build it. You can be well off and comfortable on a salary, but you'll never be truly wealthy. And I saw the wisdom in that somehow, and it really challenged my thinking. But I saw it and I thought, yeah. So about eight or nine years later, I was in my early 30s, I quit that job and I said to myself and to my employer this is the last paid job I'm ever going to have. I promised myself I am only going to create my own money from this day forward. And 30 years later, todd, I am still in that place and I've never let myself down on that promise. Excellent. So that's when it started.

Todd: 11:18

What a great story. That is cool. Yeah, so the company you founded did really well.

Ray: 11:34

Can you talk about those successes and compare and contrast that to what was going on in your heart and mind at that time? That so, of course, whenever you've got something the market really is demanding and you've got a good solution to that that's affordable and worth it, you know that's that's always going to be reasonably successful. As long as you're professional and courteous and all the service that comes with it is okay, it should should work. Because we'd work me and my business partner we'd work for about 10 years in a in years in a company that offered similar services. We could see all the flaws and shortcomings of how we delivered it in that old organization as employees, so we knew exactly what to do to improve it and innovate and make it more attractive to clients.

Ray: 12:16

It was really clear and easy to see and so I didn't have any doubt. But when I sat down with my business partner, we wrote the plan for that business we wanted to launch. She said you know what would be really the measure of the success of this for you? And she thought I was going to say x million pounds or this much profit or something. I said well, I could sit down one day and say I am truly proud of this business and it reflects everything I believe in, and that's what I said.

Todd: 12:43

That's a great call.

Ray: 12:45

Yeah, and so for me, creating a company was about creating an environment to invite people into to work in which they lovingly and kindly got the kind of inputs and support to grow and develop personally, whilst delivering a high service to clients, of course, and to make money for the company, but the primary goal was as a greenhouse for growing people.

Todd: 13:11

What that's great, and so that was always my goal.

Ray: 13:16

So that's why I work as a leadership coach and that's why I was always fascinated with what makes humans grow. Yes, for myself and for others. And've still. I'm still fascinated with that and I right, I'm learning all the time, of course, even though when, when you're in your 60s, you know a lot, you never know it all right, it's always in retrospect.

Todd: 13:35

I look back and I'm like man.

Ray: 13:36

I wish I'd known then what I know now yeah, exactly, and so I had this vision to be a place where people would be proud to work. Because when I think about the companies I deal with myself right now, today, and the poor service I receive from virtually all of them, when I talk to the people that work in those organizations, I don't feel any sense from those people that they're proud of their jobs or they're proud of where they work. I think they really just sort of tough it out and tolerate the job for the salary, and that's just not how it should be, in my view.

Todd: 14:09

I agree. Yeah, I mean, there's so many lessons there. First off, you had a mentor, someone that took time to say look, if this is what you want, I recommend this. That was great. And then it's like you learned along the way what what good looked like, what, what it didn't look like yes and then, when you started your company, it was all about the people.

Ray: 14:31

So, yeah, yeah yeah, exactly yeah, that was a recipe for a successful business.

Ray: 14:36

And in about five or six years into the life of the company, I was picked out by the daily telegraph, which is a board sheet like the new york times in england, and, uh, I received the business leader of the year award for 2002 because of the work I'd done right wow, I sort of was, you know, very happy, of course, but it gave me a confirmation signal that I had achieved what I'd set out to do Nice, that's what that did, and so it was a weird thing, because that was really the beginning of the end of that phase of my life. Right, I didn't see it coming. I didn't see it when that happened.

Todd: 15:16

Right, and so that was the mountaintop, the pinnacle, that's right, the mountaintop.

Ray: 15:21

I was 42 years old.

Todd: 15:23

Wow. And then now, what was going on in your heart and mind at the time?

Ray: 15:27

What was going on in my heart and mind was you know, being a CEO isn't all it's cracked up to be. There's a lot of parts to this life and this role that I don't enjoy at all. There are some bits I like. I like the bits working with clients and the front edge of it, but a lot of the finance, legal selling and all of those things. I could do them, I was competent to do them, I had to do them because I was responsible for the salaries of all the company. So it was okay.

Ray: 16:02

But I thought you know what this isn't, feeling like. I'm really born to do this and I never could know what. What am I meant to be doing with my life? You know, I just carried on doing this because my business partner was the woman I was married to. She was responsible for all the project delivery in the company and she was my wife. So I loved her and wanted to support her and keep the thing going.

Ray: 16:25

But there was a sort of nagging feeling of I'm not on my center line. I feel like I'm living someone else's life. That was the feeling, and I'm not sure what my life would be if I was true and it all came to a head one day when, about eight or nine years into the company's life, my wife came back from a business meeting and suddenly announced I'm leaving you and I'm leaving the company. Oh no, and it was really sudden, it was really shocking. But looking back now, all these years later, it was the best thing that could have happened for me.

Ray: 16:57

Okay, because it forced me to take ownership for that inner world and go. I'm going to lose all this now. It's all going to go and I now have to determine what my path is. And um, so circumstances sort of forced my hand a bit. But also, my father got very ill at the same time as this was going on, as if that wasn't enough, and he he died shortly after that. Oh no, so within three or four months my dad had passed away, my marriage was ending, I was out of my home and the company was going to be changed irrevocably and it was colossally difficult to contain it and I I kind of spiraled down into a bit of a depression for a year, to be honest I understand that.

Ray: 17:39

Yeah, I imagine it affected your health too yeah, I just was unmotivated, couldn't go out, didn't want to see anyone, felt uncreative, all the, all the things I had been before had just gone out the window and, uh, and my best friend sort of rallied around and one of them said you know, why don't you go on a six-month sabbatical? Why don't you try and make sense of this, reflect on it, maybe get some new wisdom and insight from life somewhere else, not in london, but somewhere else? And uh, you know, see what, see what that brings and see how that helps you set a new path from here. Yeah, I thought that's quite a good idea. There's nothing to be lost from that, yeah. So I set my life up to do that and uh, as you know, and quite a lot of people know, the-month sabbatical did not go according to the plan I had in my mind when I left. Some weird things happened and I ended up living out of my backpack for 14 years.

Todd: 18:35

Oh, my word 14 years.

Ray: 18:38

Yeah, totally unexpectedly and surprisingly, I never returned to the old life that I had until 2019.

Todd: 18:46

Oh my word. So you decided on a six-month sabbatical. I did yeah. Were you planning to go backpacking for six months? Yeah.

Ray: 18:53

I was yeah.

Todd: 18:55

Okay, and was it living in hostels and stuff like?

Ray: 18:58

that, yeah, yeah, but I was going to Asia, to Thailand and Cambodia and Laos and places in Asia, and I thought I'm gonna, you know, possibly get a view of life that's different in the eastern parts of the world than I would in the west, because people think differently, got different outlooks, they've got different cultures, different ideas about what's most important in life. Okay, and I wanted to tap into a lot of that because I'd spoken to one or two friends who traveled that part of the world and they told me how rejuvenating it had been, how much it affected their thinking, and I was really kind of inspired by that.

Ray: 19:33

So, oh, that's good and then I met someone in london, okay, a woman who I liked, who was also going to go traveling around thailand and asia and go to australia after a year, and so I said and we, we cooked up a plan to go together, basically nice.

Todd: 19:49

So at like midway point of the six months, you were like I think I'm gonna extend this, or how did that? How did it happen?

Ray: 19:55

it just played out, or yeah, mostly I was noticing, even though I was in a beautiful part of the world aesthetically and I was in thailand, it all looked lovely on the surface, I was wearing my shorts and t-shirt and sandals, and on the beach and stuff inside, I was really agitated, feeling a lot of guilt and shame about being a terrible husband who failed at his marriage, um, scared about the future, anxious about what was coming next and all of those things. Anxious about what was coming next and all of those things. And I authored a set of 10 guiding principles after about three or four months to help me have a kind of safety rail to lean on. Okay, and I I made sort of 10 kind of principles that I would follow in order to be psychologically safer. Okay, and I know, and these are all in the book that I wrote years later, but they were things like self-acceptance, non-attachment, making a contribution wherever I was, modesty and frugality, things like this, things that would help me stay mentally safe whilst I was in a massive transition.

Ray: 21:01

So I was going from being a very recognized and what's the word with um status driven ceo to being completely anonymous, with no status, just a poor backpacker. You know so, right, um, you know. So I was in a huge transition and and then I met a traveler after five months, could see me in this agitated state and he said um, you know one thing I think you could do ray would really help you. We go into do a vipassana retreat. And I said what is a vipassana retreat? I never heard of it.

Todd: 21:32

I didn't even know what that was. How do you? What is that? What type of retreat?

Ray: 21:35

there's a buddhist word, vipassana. Okay, got it. And and and it means vipassana means mindfulness. You know it's got it, it's got that connotation and and he said you go into a monastery with monks for 10 days and you stay there and they give you a recommendation and you just meditate in silence every day with the monks and once a day they kind of do a buddhist teaching for you to help you understand how your own mind is working and how it causes suffering and how your thinking drives a lot of how it causes suffering and how your thinking drives a lot of your decisions. But it's not really that reliable and you know it's a chance to observe and learn about your own mind.

Ray: 22:13

I thought, I thought, gosh, I really, really, really want to understand that. So I went to do that retreat it was month five or month six. I did that and when I came through those 10 days which I never thought I'd make, because I've never been silent for more than 10 minutes um, I I was just absolutely gobsmacked at how my mindset changed. I I felt like you know, when you shake a snow globe of a souvenir you've been to on a holiday, and you shake the globe and all this stuff's flying around inside. When you put it down after three or four minutes, everything settles to the bottom and you shake the globe and all this stuff's flying around inside. When you put it down after three or four minutes, everything settles to the bottom and you can clearly see the thing in the dome.

Ray: 22:51

I felt like that in my own mind and and if I had a sound level, the noise in my head before I went into the monastery was like 10 out of 10. If I had a big knob on the side made you could twist, and it was if someone had turned it down to a. It never goes away because your mind is constantly commenting on and narrating your life. It can't be stopped. It's going to speak to you always. You cannot stop your own mind talking. People say what do you mean talking? And when they hear that, what do you mean talking? That's their mind asking that question. That's it. So it can't be switched off. But I learned how to see that and separate myself from the noise of it that it makes and you're the observer of that noise rather than being caught up in the noise.

Ray: 23:43

Yes, it's a huge distinction yes and that's one of the everything, wow.

Todd: 23:48

One of the biggest realizations I came to not I didn't come up with it myself was just learning that you are not your thoughts.

Ray: 23:55

Yeah, but to actually go through the physical steps to get that, so it kind of you really know it here, not up in your mind, not as an intellectual concept, but right as a knowing, because you've felt it and experienced it, yeah, this is a big difference.

Todd: 24:11

So in modern society. We're so, there's so much going on and we're just so stirred up it's difficult to just sit and be alone in silence. Yeah, yeah, because we're. We live tortured existences, to be honest. Yeah, we do.

Ray: 24:25

It's wow 10 days yeah, we do, and that was a game changer for me. It was a massive game changer, so much so that I thought you know what I'm meant to be going back now to England. But you know, this is just opened up something and I don't. I'm not ready to go back yet. And, by the way, just for the listeners, I didn't have any children when I was married and I got rid of a lot, pretty much all of the stuff that I owned before I left, pretty much all of the stuff that I owned before I left. So I didn't really have.

Ray: 24:55

And I sold my house in london because I put the money into the bank, thinking that in six months I'd come back and buy a smaller place to live in. Um, but I, so that was all on hold, you know. So so I had actually no stuff to look after and no kids, you know, no one waiting for me to come back, no job, obviously. No job because I was self-employed, so I didn't really have any need to return really, and so that made it easy to say I'm going to just keep on with this journey for a bit longer. I wasn't sure how much, but I thought I want to find a community that I can join, where I can meditate every week and sort of really strengthen and deepen my mindfulness practice, because I could see how much it had affected me. Okay.

Todd: 25:36

And now, did you have contact with people back in London or in the UK?

Ray: 25:40

Yes, Not much, not much. But what I did was to keep everyone up to date with my own life. I started writing a blog called the daily explorer.

Ray: 25:48

Okay, and I was and I was writing that regularly to share stories about what was happening, what I was learning, what I was learning from the journey. And people loved what I wrote and I wasn't a writer or anything like that but it started to help me hone and develop my ability as a writer. So I think that was one of the reasons why much later on in the journey, I was called to write the book, because I'd started to learn about writing. That's amazing.

Todd: 26:18

Now you called yourself. You said this. You said I was probably one of the oldest backpackers in Asia.

Ray: 26:24

I think so 45 when I left.

Todd: 26:27

Can you share any funny experiences you enjoyed during the journey? Funny.

Ray: 26:31

Gosh any uh funny experiences you enjoyed during the journey? Uh funny, gosh, uh funny. You know, obviously in hostels there's a lot of young travelers in their 19s 20s and you know, when we got cooked meals or had talks over dinner, we we had a laugh. You know, bantering around the conversations that we were having. So nothing particularly stands out as a funny story okay but did they accept you?

Todd: 26:53

I mean, where is the younger?

Ray: 26:54

yeah, a lot of people were.

Ray: 26:56

A lot of people were listening quite intently yeah to the story because they knew that's the journey they were about to embark on in their lives. And here was a guy in his 40s who said you know, make sure you choose wisely your path, because you could end up like me, you could end up just getting a what I call an off the shelf life story. If you don't take ownership for your own unique vision of life, you could end up with an off the shelf life story that everyone tells you. That's because, when I was growing up, people said, ray, if you want to be happy as an adult, this is what you must do you must get married, have kids, get a job, get a house, get a mortgage and then you'll be happy. And so that was the instructions I got and I found out, having executed that plan, that wasn't true for me. It's true for some people, it wasn't true for me. So I used to say to people I met who were in their 19s and 20s, in their gap year just be really careful, think about it. And I told them my story and a lot of them would say do you know what? I'm fascinated by what you're saying and can I give you my email address? And I'd say, yeah, but why they say well, at some point in the future, you write a book about this journey. I'd really like to read it.

Ray: 28:07

And I thought, I laughed. I said I'm not, I'm just doing this to heal myself, I'm not doing it because I want to be an author. I said, but I'll take your email address. But yeah, I said I'm very unlikely to write a book. But after five, after five years of being on the road, I had about I had about a hundred email addresses that I'd collected. Wow, and I, and as the next person came, I thought do you know what? It's just dawned on me. Why didn't I see this before? I'm being called by the universe or whatever it is. I'm being called to write a book about this journey. I better learn. I better learn how to write a book. And I went on a course. Yeah, that's how it came about. So it's because people kept asking me. It wasn't because I had left with that intention, but I was asked so many times and you?

Todd: 28:51

you say you call that a confirmation signal. So the people around confirmation signal. Yeah, yeah, that's right yeah, that's cool man, that's fascinating yeah that is so cool so I thought, oh my god, I've learned how to be a backpacker and a traveler.

Ray: 29:05

By the way, in that five years I became a fundraiser because I went to an elephant sanctuary in thailand, I did a picnic for some orphan kids in nepal after I trekked around the himalayas, and those two things alone they kind of brought me to tears of joy because I saw how much a little love and kindness and a little bit of money really helped those things. I thought I thought I want to do more of this. I'm here, I've got time. I could really help. What could I do? As I was r really help. What could I do?

Ray: 29:33

As I was ruminating on what could I do, I just randomly I just happened to meet a guy who'd run six marathons. He was 10 years younger than me, wow. And I said tell me about running marathons. And as he described his experience, I could feel my skin tingling and I could feel my excitement in my body listening and I knew there was something what he was saying. I said to him matt, his name was matt campbell. Yeah, I said, matt, do you, do you think I could run a marathon? I was 48. And he looked at me physically. He said well, you kind of look sort of fit. Have you ever run before? I said no. He said I'll tell you what. Let's go for a run tomorrow and you can wear my monitor and stuff and and if I think everything's okay, I'll offer to train you to run your first marathon. If you stay here in Chiang Mai for six months, I'll train you and get you on the start line of a marathon so that you could do a fundraiser around it for these things. And I agreed to do it and six months later more or less, I ran the New York marathon.

Ray: 30:30

It was November 2009. That had been the marathon I'd always dreamed I'd want to run. If I did one. And I managed to raise $15,000 through my business network and other connections. And I finished the marathon, went back to Asia after it and I took that money and deployed it to the elephant nature park five thousand dollars. And I took five thousand dollars to this orphanage in nepal and had a new roof built on a school, bought some computers, bought stuff they needed and just really spent a year just getting all these things done to help these causes. So that was what was filling the time. I wasn't any longer a tourist, I wasn't just traveling I. I was actually doing meaningful work, just totally voluntarily. I wasn't receiving any money at all, I just wanted to do it to help them.

Todd: 31:21

Wow, that is amazing. So you were doing all of this to give back, so it's like there's a lot of things going on there.

Ray: 31:34

So you're excited about the marathon, but then you're thinking how can I use this to help the people that I've met? I only did the marathon to raise money. That was what was behind it. I mean, that was the reason I did four more, by the way, I did five. In total, I managed to raise about $50,000.

Todd: 31:44

Wow, I mean I can look back on my own life and I can see inflection points like that where I just encounter chance encounters with strangers yeah that really just you know, nothing major happened coming out of those meetings, but it was like I can see those as inflection points yeah, that's a good one, that's exactly so it's uh yeah, that's amazing. So you what? What places that first six months? Where were you? When I was training no, no, I'm sorry, the first six months I was.

Todd: 32:12

I was mostly majority of that time traveling around thailand okay did a little bit of traveling in the neighboring countries, but mostly in thailand okay, excellent, and you spent your time in that area for the whole 14 years, or?

Ray: 32:27

no, no, uh, I liked. I liked the city of Chiang Mai, particularly liked it there. It was just a lovely vibe and really a very inexpensive place to live and the quality of life's good for the cost you know. So I really liked it. And there are some wonderful travelers there, some really open-hearted, kind foreigners living there. So it was a place where you could, you know, keep on your personal growth path and get support for that. And I found a Thai family who had a couple of guest rooms at their house and I was able to take a room with them and they befriended me and I just felt really at home there. Even though I wasn't at home, I felt really at home there. So any time I left, I left some of my stuff at their house so I could come back to the room I was in. So it became a sort of base in asia for me and I in in that 14 years, I'd say I probably spent about four or five years in thailand. Okay, in thailand, yeah that's, that's amazing.

Todd: 33:24

I mean the thought of just taking in someone and you know, yeah, yeah, that was, that's human connection.

Ray: 33:31

It was. It was very, very. I was very fortunate. I felt a lot of the time I felt guided. But then I say to people I coach that guidance arrives the more you start living life according to your values, vision and what's really true for you. And the more you start admitting what's true for you and actually choosing according to that, the more the universe kind of aligns to give you what you need. When you're not living true to those things. Life's an effort and it's really hard to make one step forward because you're sort of pushing against what you think you want, because your thinking's out of alignment.

Todd: 34:08

Yeah, well, let's dig into those things. So you found this new mission in life? Yeah, it sort of emerged for you and you used that phrase.

Ray: 34:17

Confirmation signals as a navigation tool yeah that's where I learned it as an air, as an aircraft pilot.

Todd: 34:25

That's where it actually came okay, yeah, I'm sorry, you were a pilot as well, or you learned it from a pilot.

Ray: 34:30

I was a pilot, yeah that's cool.

Todd: 34:32

So confirmation signals.

Ray: 34:34

So explain those so when you, when you're in the cockpit of an aircraft or at least when I trained, I didn't have gps, it was quite a long time ago. So you were, you were navigating using charts in your lap and looking up for things on the ground, etc. So the only aids that were available were things called vor's, uh beacons on the ground which emitted a radio frequency and um. So if you were flying from, say, london to birmingham, birmingham airport has a vor at the airport which emits a specific frequency. It's in the book, you know, it's got digits and you tune your instrument to the Birmingham VOR and the needle in your cockpit starts pointing towards it, because you tuned it.

Todd: 35:18

That is fascinating.

Ray: 35:19

And you just well, then you fly in the direction of the needle because it's pointing to that beacon. So everything's fine, as long as you have selected the beacon you actually want. Because if you select by just mistake, birmingham's let's say, birmingham is 124.8, but you select 124.7, thinking that's that one, but that's actually in the opposite direction, it's somewhere else. You're then flying the needle to a place you don't want to go. So to avoid that scenario, there's a Morse code signal in your ear. When you press the button, you get an audio confirmation, a morse code signal in your ear. When you press the button, you get a, an audio confirmation in morse code that you have the birmingham beacon. It's unique, yeah, it's at. If it's not the unique signal that that beacon has, you know you've chosen the wrong one. So that signal confirms your selection confirmation and tells you you're headed in the right direction.

Todd: 36:13

Yeah, so I thought what a perfect metaphor for life yes, because then, james and I, as we came up with the name of our podcast, and if you look at our artwork and stuff, it's uh, it's a map and a compass and so I was infantry in the marines so we did land navigation with a compass and a map.

Ray: 36:33

So it makes sense to you, then yeah.

Todd: 36:35

So what you're saying, I'm like, okay, that's how pilots did that, that's cool, yeah, yeah. So you know it's talking about the cluttered path, though. I mean, it's like you do map out your way, but then along the way it doesn't look like the map. No, it never does. Yeah, no, it never does, yeah. And you're encountering all these obstacles along the way and then the mission becomes how do I navigate this path that I'm on? Yeah, and how do I get around the obstacles? And taking offsets and things like that. But, wow, that is fascinating man. Confirmation signals.

Ray: 37:07

And so that enabled me to say, okay, I'm facing this decision on this uncharted journey. I've been invited to do this or I'm getting called to write a book. How do I know that's the right decision for me? Okay, well, here's a literary author who's advertising a five-day writing course in Chiang Mai. Let me test this out to see if it's right. I will contact her and I'll ask her two questions and, depending on the answer, it will confirm it's wrong or it's right. I will contact her and I'll ask her two questions and, depending on the answer, it will confirm it's wrong or it's right. So I contacted her and said I see that you're doing a five-day course. It looks like it's for already established authors.

Ray: 37:43

I'm a complete beginner. Would I be suitable as a participant or would I just be in the way? Because if I'd be suitable, along with these other authors, I need that confirmed. Second, is you're asking people to pay 1200? I'm a backpacker fundraiser. I don't have any income because I really didn't. Can I do the course for 500? Now, if I got yeses to both of those, I'd say that's going to be my confirmation signal. That's the the right choice. If I don't, I'll find another way. She came back and said yes and yes. That confirmed it.

Todd: 38:19

Nice. So my interpretation looking at that, I can see that in my own life when I was 18, I mapped out my entire life and I thought, okay, I'm going to do this, I'm going to do this, I'm joining the military, I'm going to go to college. Then I'm going to do this. I'm joining the military, I'm going to go to college, then I'm going to go back into the military. I'm going to be a pilot.

Todd: 38:35

This is what I'm going to do, but then along the way, I diverted from that path and I left the military. Yeah, what I took away from that is you have to take action. Yeah, observe what's happening and then make, make a decision and act, and then things change and be unattached to the action you've taken.

Ray: 38:53

Yes, more like I. I sort of think of it being more like a person conducting an experiment rather than a person who's got to achieve an outcome whatever happens. Yes. That puts you in a sort of state of anxiety. I think it's not helpful.

Todd: 39:08

Yeah, detach yourself from the outcome.

Ray: 39:11

Yeah.

Todd: 39:12

And uh yeah. So there's a book I read called uh, inner excellence yeah and he talks about that. You can't focus on the outcome, you have to just think about the process.

Ray: 39:21

Yeah, I think what am I going to learn from this?

Ray: 39:23

whether it works out, whether it doesn't work out, excellent, I'm going to learn something yeah and also I like the concept that lots of writers have now taken on board from the three principles work. Michael Neal is perhaps best known because he wrote a book called the Inside Out Revolution and he's regarded as one of the world's top coaches around this. He says you have to shift your orientation in life from an outside-in way of looking at life to an inside-out way of navigating. This is his way of describing it. So an outside in person goes I'm unhappy. I'm unhappy because out there I don't have the right job or I don't have enough money or my partner's not the best part I could have. I'm going to go out, find a new partner and then I'll be happy in.

Ray: 40:08

Yeah, this never works this never works this is the orientation we're given as children when we're growing up. But the real truth is I'm happy how I am. I accept and love myself. I'm gonna just put that happiness out into the world and guess what lovely people are attracted to coming to me. Yes, and I'm happy about that. Yeah, I'm happy anyway, right. Yeah, it's an inside out. Your happiness is inside first right, and it shines outward and that shining outward brings to you what you need and you've got to trust life is going to deliver you. Just you've got to trust that at some point.

Todd: 40:46

You just got to let go and trust it's coming, it's coming right all I've got to do is show up happy and we think that it's the outside things, the, and the grass is greener on the other side of the fence and then, you, you get to the other side of the fence and you kill the grass, so yeah, correct.

Ray: 41:01

Correct. You know this is big and that's one of the major shifts in orientation that I had from being a ceo. I was very target driven and outcome driven for the business of, of course, yes, and I would say. People say the phrase is I'll be happy when dot, dot, dot, you can fill in your. I'll be happy when we hit this year's revenue target. I'll be happy when we hit next year's revenue target. The happiness that came was for five minutes. Then I'll be now. I'm not happy again until we get next year. I'll be happy when I get a bigger house. I'm not happy again until we get next year. I'll be happy when I get a bigger house, I'll be happy when blah, blah, blah, you know, you never, you never have enough.

Ray: 41:35

It's always. It's always just like the donkey with the carrot it's always just.

Todd: 41:41

And you never. You achieve that and then you're still not happy and it's never enough.

Ray: 41:45

But yeah, we are enough already. That's the thing we don't really get taught that right.

Todd: 41:50

And so that leads to the next question that so you recommend people commit to a path that is true. You say true and authentic. What do you mean by that?

Ray: 41:58

yeah, I just mean that you first you start, you say irrespective of what I do, what action I do or what work I do or any of those things as a human being, what's really important to me? What in my daily life, what is most important that I experience? And so people might say things like, for example well, I want to experience being part of a team. I don't, you know, it could be in any job, but I like being part of a team or community. I like being in a team. So that's.

Todd: 42:26

I write that down.

Ray: 42:26

I want to be in a great team, a team that lifts me, a team that encourages me to grow. In a great team, a team that lifts me, a team that encourages me to grow, a team that supports my growth that would be an experience I definitely would want, no matter what the job was. And then you say I want to be, I like learning new things. I get really excited learning anything new, so I want to be in a team, I want to be learning. Uh, you might say I like doing things that no one's done before, so I like to pioneer new things.

Ray: 42:52

So now you got I want a life in which I'm in a team, I'm learning new things and I'm getting a chance to pioneer some new things that no one's ever done before. So now you're kind of getting a feel of what you're looking for in terms of the experience. So then when a job comes up, you can look at that job and what's advertised and say to what extent will I meet these three needs that I have? How? What's the match there? And so if it matches a hundred percent, that's a really good choice, yeah for you. But if it doesn't match at all like if it's data analytics and you're sitting on your own with the spreadsheet at home and you're not in your team and you're not learning because you've got to do that for the next five years and you know, and it's and it's been, it's just routine maintenance and there's nothing to be innovated. You're going to be really unhappy.

Todd: 43:38

Oh, yeah, yeah. What I'm taking away here is well. One thing I'm noticing is that you're writing things down.

Ray: 43:46

I'm making a note of these things because you've got to know what your values are. You have to know them and be really clear with your own mind what they are, because I think we've got like this internal dashboard that keeps us on the true path. One is values, one is vision. You know, what is the vision of the life that I'm trying to author? What? Does that look?

Ray: 44:08

like, not just my work, but my work, family, family, children, you know, contribution to society. It's all in that vision. What does that vision look like, and am I constantly moving towards it, or am I moving away from it? So, values and vision, purpose, you know why do I wake up in the morning? What am I here? What's my presence on earth meant to be? For you know what's it, what's the reason I'm, I'm here in this incarnation, you know that's fun.

Ray: 44:36

Um, one is beliefs. What are the beliefs I hold that really empower me, like, for example, I believe it's really good to be generous. That's a very empowering belief and it always adds when you act out of it. But I believe there's just not. I don't have enough money to even give anything. That's a limiting belief, that's going to restrict your thinking. And then the last one is what are the forces that drive me that I'm not really consciously aware of? And those ones are the same for all of us, for you, me and everyone. Ones are the same for all of us, for you, me and everyone.

Ray: 45:12

There are things like the need for belonging, security, the need for recognition, the need for you know, variety, things like that, right. So those, those are the five things on the dashboard. Now. That means that once a week, or more often, you're going to sit and make time to reflect on yourself. Let me score myself on those. Where am I? You know how? To what extent am I? Am I meeting all of those five things on the dashboard and where do I need to make changes? Where do I need to pay a bit more attention? Where do I need to improve? What do I need to shift here?

Todd: 45:43

Yeah, most of us have a check engine light on our dashboard and we ignore it.

Ray: 45:48

Yeah, right, so that's the. That's like a personal check-inin and I'd recommend at least 20, 30 minutes of reflection time a week for someone who's busy. Yeah so good.

Todd: 45:57

Yeah, most of us are just reactionary. Life is happening and we're just being carried along by whatever is in the river bumping into us.

Ray: 46:06

Yeah, exactly, and what I've just described to you there is like I've got these.

Ray: 46:11

My editors, when I wrote the book, asked me to write what would be my six rules for a happy life. So I wrote those in the book, and the first two were develop a strong core of self-awareness so that's creating the dashboard. And the second rule was take full ownership for everything that happens, because, even though you've got an understanding of your values and you've got a vision, other people will take actions that you don't like or are not in your plan, get made redundant or this or that will happen. Yeah, you cannot let those things stop you from moving towards your vision. You've got to find ways of overcoming that, and so the third rule, which is becoming your own observer, is really really vital, which is, you know, pay attention to what your thinking is and, if it's limiting what your choices are, maybe shift the thinking and change your thinking a bit to unlimit yourself. You know, yeah, and so that I've explained that in a much more depth than I can do in this conversation, probably right yeah.

Todd: 47:12

So now you're teaching others what you've learned. You've written the book. Now how did it come about that you decided to become a coach?

Ray: 47:20

well, when I was a ceo and I won this award, it was highly publicized in the papers, and so I started receiving telephone calls asking from other ceos and other leaders saying, whatever it is you're doing with your company, with your people, could you share with me what you do and tell me what I should do? I wasn't a coach normally then, but I said, yeah, I can make some time to sit and take you through some of that if you want. And so I, and with my management team in my company, I have a very collaborative style and I'm very coaching in my style. So I would even with my managers in the company. I would say where are you trying to get to? What's most important for you in terms of your growth this year? What would be a milestone you'd like to achieve for yourself? And they'd say that.

Ray: 48:07

And so I'd then be saying every month how are you getting on with that? Are you making the progress you want? What's getting in the way for you? How could you overcome that? You know what would help you. So I had a very coaching based approach anyway as a leader, yeah. And so I just thought you know what I just really want to do. Focus on this. I don't want to own and operate a business. I don't want the responsibility of having to pay salaries every month and run the company and own it. I can do that, but it's not me in my element, it's not me at my absolute best. I just want to focus on the parts that really light me up and discard the rest.

Todd: 48:44

Excellent One thing that strikes me here the coaching emerged for you because people started asking rather than you. Honestly, a lot of people have appointed themselves life coaches.

Ray: 48:57

Yeah, well, you know, if you're out of work and you need money, you do what you need to do, don't you?

Todd: 49:01

Yeah, so it's interesting that a lot of stuff on LinkedIn out there were.

Ray: 49:06

Yeah, out there were. Yeah, yeah. Well, now these days I mean because that psychological contract of a job for life is gone we are seeing huge, huge numbers of people now are self-employed and trying to make that work.

Todd: 49:18

I got kids and families to look after and it makes sense they have to find a way yeah, so I'll leave that one alone, but I'll just say this there's a lot of people that they're they're working their day jobs and they have a dream of becoming a life coach, but they haven't done that step of taking observing themselves.

Ray: 49:39

Yeah, yeah, that's the most valuable part, yeah.

Todd: 49:41

Do I have this skill and are there people around me that are confirming this and saying, yeah, you should do this. We started the podcast. This was after years of people saying, hey, you should do this. We started the podcast. This was after years of people saying, hey, you should. You know, blah, blah, blah, and I got those confirmation signals along the way. Now, who knows, we may never, nothing may ever come of it other than I'm really enjoying these conversations. Who knows?

Todd: 50:04

But, there's value in that alone, and I'm not. You know, I'm not thinking about the outcome here, although I do. You know, sometimes I do think I would like for this to be the only thing I do in life, but I'm not attached to that. So, yeah, man, this is fascinating, but for me, though, as a nine-to-five employee, my perception is that most of these C-suite execs, they're really just hiding behind a facade and they're just trapped in other people's expectations. So you came from that space. Is that your perspective as well?

Ray: 50:35

Yeah, yeah, a lot of it is. You know, you just got this drive. I have to. I have to prove to my parents I'm good enough to be doing this or something. You know I'm not sure it's different beliefs for everyone, but that's why I think digging in to ask oneself what are my beliefs and which ones limit me and which ones really actually serve me and help me grow. Because if you're dry, being driven by some of these beliefs, they're just just going to hinder your progress and development. And I kind of like it saying you're climbing a ladder but your ladder is resting against the wrong wall.

Ray: 51:12

You know so you just want to make sure your ladder's against the wall that's yours, the one that you're actually trying to climb.

Todd: 51:18

You may need to get off that ladder.

Ray: 51:21

Or move it to a different wall at least and put the effort in, because you've always got to put the effort in, but make sure you pick the wall you really want to climb.

Todd: 51:29

Right, and is the effort you're putting in aligned with where you're trying to go?

Ray: 51:34

yeah, and you know with who you are yeah, absolutely, and you know, I I think I've been very fortunate. I want to be kind, you know, to the listeners. I don't want to say and everyone's trying their absolute best and working with the limited awareness that they have, so no one's's doing anything wrong. It's just that when you get new data, even if it's about what goes on in your own head, when you get new data to look at, it can change your perspective and can change your orientation. But you've got to be willing to go and digging for the new data inside your own thinking, right? No one's coming to do it for you?

Todd: 52:09

Yeah, just opening up a little bit about myself here. I've spent a lot of my life bitter and resentful about circumstances, right, and things not working out the way I want them to. Yeah.

Todd: 52:21

But what was missing was that, the self-awareness, just sitting down and settling my mind and thinking where do I want to be, what do I believe, what are my values, and so conversations like this with you, ray, have been so helpful for me. So, thank you, you're welcome, thank you, it's good, and I'm just thinking of people in my life that are just faced with this right now.

Todd: 52:47

Just sitting back and life has just happened to them and they're feeling trapped and they're feeling isolated and they're feeling like it's just not worth it. I mean, that's why the suicide rate is just epidemic proportions, especially among men.

Ray: 53:03

Yeah, well, it's completely valid to feel that way. And if I meet someone who feels like that, I ask them what is the thinking they're having? That's that's driving those feelings, that, because it's a think, feel, behave world we live in, you know, our behavior is driven by how we feel, and how we feel is driven by what we think it is that order.

Ray: 53:25

yes, so if someone's feeling bad, it means their thinking needs to be examined. They have to be willing to look at their thinking. There is no other way of shifting that feeling to a more positive, more encouraging, more empowering feeling. There is no way of doing that if you're not examining your thinking and being willing to let go and change your thinking. People say, well, you can't just change your thinking. You can, you can actually do it. Yes, you can't just change your thinking. You can. You can actually do it. Yes, you can. There are ways of doing that.

Todd: 53:54

Yes, I literally just had a conversation with a psychotherapist and he said it's independent of age as well. It is so the old dog, new tricks thing is not true.

Ray: 54:04

Exactly. We choose our thoughts just like we choose something off the menu in a restaurant. We choose our thoughts just like we choose something off the menu in a restaurant. Yes, we choose the thoughts that kind of we're most comfortable or habitually used to choosing, not the rest of the options that are available.

Todd: 54:19

And we don't challenge the thoughts, the negative thoughts that come up and this is me, so I'm not Right. This is how I've operated for much of my adult life is the thoughts emerge, I don't challenge them, I accept them and then I go along with them and then my feelings emerge, negative feelings, and that drives behavior.

Ray: 54:37

Yeah, exactly.

Todd: 54:38

And so you end up leaving a job a good job because you just had negative feeling. This is me. I'm not pointing the finger, I'm, you know, unsettled, negative thoughts. I changed jobs, yeah, and that's not a good thing. I've gotten better about that. In, in, in recent years.

Ray: 54:54

But, uh, I get you, I get you, you really do. Yeah. One conversation can completely transform your experience of life. Right and that decent conversation can shift everything.

Todd: 55:06

Yes, and that is how I arrived at this point where it's having these conversations. I love this, so, wow, this has been edifying. Ray, I really thank you for your time.

Ray: 55:19

Yeah, my pleasure.

Todd: 55:20

Yeah, so how can people contact you Ray?

Ray: 55:23

Well, a couple of ways I've got. The book I wrote is called Life Without a Tie. So there's a website called lifewithoutatiecom that has a bio of me and some bit about the journey, lots of photographs from the 14 years of journey that I was in, because a lot of readers who read the book said can we see pictures? So we put loads of pictures up on the website for readers. And I'm also on LinkedIn. It's where I mostly communicate with people in the business world. It's on LinkedIn and people will find me on LinkedIn. Those are the two best places. If anyone wants to get the book, it's on Amazon.

Todd: 56:01

Yeah, and I'll put an affiliate link in the episode description here and we'll also put links for lifewithoutatiecom and also LinkedIn bio for Ray. So, this is good man, so we'll do that, but any takeaways you'd like to leave with the audience.

Ray: 56:17

Oh gosh, I think we've covered a lot of ground here. We've hit a lot, yeah, but if I had to come back to one single point, it would always be. You know, put your ladder up against the right wall, and that means really give some thought to what is my true path and how do I find and get a confirmation signal?

Todd: 56:35

I wrote that down. You said choose wisely your path, the confirmation signals looking for. And I'm telling you, so often we don't seek out the confirmation. No we just barrel forward with I want to do this. Yeah, I don't even have the skills to do that. What am I doing't even have the skills to do that. What am I doing here? Yeah, yeah, exactly, and that just leads to a lot of dissatisfaction. But can do.

Ray: 57:00

And sometimes and sometimes accidentally at least a lot of joy. You know it's hard to say be definitive, but you know I can only share the experience I've had. But yeah, I mean, it's different for everyone experience I've had.

Todd: 57:12

But yeah, I mean it's different for everyone my one statement here that I'm taking away at this point and I want to leave is choose wisely your path. Yeah, and that choosing there's a lot wrapped into that choosing because you, you need to sit down and think, write things down and that choice becomes an informed choice that aligns with who you are and where you want to be. So choose wisely your path. So, thanks so much for listening and if you enjoyed this episode, please consider leaving a review and share it with your friends. And until next time, see you on the path.

Ray: 57:46

This is the cluttered house. Stories about life. This could be for tonight.