To be honest I had no idea what I wanted to achieve in my life – kinda glad in a way

Slowly I’m making progress on organising the paperwork to contribute to the rewrite of my memoir.

I’m still quietly chuckling to myself that after a life as a bit of a perfectionist, achieving 10 ‘O’ levels and 3 ‘A’ levels and then a degree and then travelling round the world during a gap year and then starting an 18 year career in an audit office, qualifying as an accountant and auditing the Department of Health and associated bodies both financially and on performance and then training others within the audit office and then internationally and then a secondment to the Victorian Auditor-General’s Office, a return to UK and then the decision three years later to emigrate permanently to Australia after completing a training project with the Accounts Chamber of the Russian Federation and then working in various roles in the Victorian public sector until 2011 when I experienced, due to intense work stress, my first psychotic episode at the age of 43 which lasted some six months followed by a diagnosis of bipolar.

Since 2011, could life get more interesting?

To experience what I’ve experienced in the context of what I’ve shared above, I just find fascinating.

And I’ve learned even more about myself than I was aware of before I emigrated in 2008 at the age of 40.

I feel a new path emerging, one I never knew I had within me, one I never knew I wanted or needed.

And for me that is the truth and the essence of bipolar and maybe more broadly any diagnosis of mental illness – to wake us up to the reality that what we are doing is not our path, nor our life.

This pandemic has accelerated my progress and opened my eyes more widely both to myself and my inner operating manual – moreover the operating manual of humanity.

We are where we are.

But where do we want to be?

And how are we going to get there?

To explore the world of personal development and the science underpinning both neuro-linguistic programming or NLP and subsequently mBIT and mBraining has deepened my understanding of myself and deepened my capacity and capability to effect a sense of healing and recovery I had not previously felt accessible to myself.

I’ve read so much on personal development and on living the dream but I did not know what my dreams where. No idea about a dream life, dream house, dream anything. My parents never talked about their dreams and I guess neither did their parents or their parent’s parents.

That the gift of experiencing a major mental illness.

I was living the wrong life.

I was living by the wrong set of values.

I had been conditioned to be someone I was not born to be.

Now my parents were complex and only trying to do their best.

Unyet the unintended consequences are immeasurable in respect of our health and wellbeing and ultimately our quality of life.

I have learned so much and continue to learn and be fascinated by life.

This journey has just begun.