I started writing in early 2020 in simple lined notebooks as a way of straightening out my thinking. By June of that year I had started my fifth book.

There was a lot coming out. I was 48 years old. Life was a struggle. I couldn’t seem to make anything stick.

I had been working on my own small business for about 4 years. It was making money and a small team was supporting me but there was little satisfaction coming from the work I was putting in.

The writing stopped me in my tracks.

From my writing, I could see that things had to change. I could map out ideas for the future, make sense of the lack of fun, the lack of progress, and the breakdown in my self-belief.

It did a couple of important things that I needed at the time – it put it all there in front of me, and it set me on a new path.

One of the by-products of continually writing these notes has been the ability to revisit them. The progress I’ve made since those dark days is clear.

I took time to listen to what was going on inside myself, and being real about my attitude to life. I hadn’t done this before, and I’m glad I began to. It’s unlocked much more than I thought it would.

The words I wrote are hard to look back on but they needed to be said. I had to have this kind of talk to myself, being honest about where my life was at.

It all came out on the page once I committed to the process, the practice, of writing things out.

When I think back on how powerful a tool it has been (and still is), it’s up there with the best things that I’ve ever done for myself.