How I Changed My Life for the Better
How I Changed my Life from nothing to where I am today
Have you ever woken up and wondered how you ended up with this life of yours? Do you feel stuck in the rut of the same routine day after day, week after week, year in, year out? Maybe you feel trapped by obligations, by debt, by other people’s expectations.
If you want to get off the tread-mill, you can! I know, because I’ve done it.
I get hundreds of letters, emails and messages every single month telling me how lucky I am to to have such a good life here in Spain, living a life without worries and how grateful I should be and can you send me some ‘Lottery Numbers’ because I need a win urgently to pay off their debts, etc.
I’ve already written many articles about ‘Luck’. How it’s not something that just appears overnight, you have to put some effort in to attract it and be worthy of it too.
Let me start by telling a something about myself, then perhaps what I have to say later regarding the above will make a little sense as to how I became to be where I am today.
As most of you know, I was born into a Gypsy family, travelling for the first 6 years of my life in a horse-drawn Vardo (caravan) before upgrading to motor transport. It was a very hard life for our parents, looking back for us kids too, but a the time we knew nothing else.
Being travellers with no fixed abode as it was termed back then we weren’t expected to have ambitions about the future,the only thing that mattered was earning what we could during the summer months on the fairs to last the winter.
70 years later I now realise how I manged to turn my life from nowhere, to where I am today and I will show you how you can do the same. Not only will I show you what to do, but I`ll also show you what’s holding you back.
Reclaiming your Personal Freedom Today
You may not realise it, but when it comes to living your best life and meeting your potential, you could be your own worst enemy. Limiting beliefs, all that negative self-talk, are the single biggest thing holding you back.
Limiting beliefs are the negative messages about your ability or your characteristics often imprinted from your childhood. In my case it was the fact I never went to school, so always though the non-gypsy kids were better than me. We were always called names like: Gipo’s, Piky’s, Hedge-hoppers, so it seemed like everyone had a down on me.
Think of all the messages you might have received about being bad or lazy or selfish, even slow or ‘just not that smart.’ These messages go deep into your subconscious and help to create the adult self-talk that makes you feel bad – an Inner Critic who chips in to say you’re not that great. This continuous loop of ‘no you can’t’ becomes a pattern of self-sabotage that blocks you from achieving your dreams. To start with, you can begin to rescript that negative self-talk by turning it around and embedding positive beliefs, just like I did.
Stop comparing your life with others
It used to be called keeping up with the Jones’s. Now it’s looking at other people’s seemingly perfect lives on social media. Everyone shows the best possible version of themselves to the world. No one takes selfies of their failures, their bad hair days, their overdrawn bank account do they?
That was my first mistake, trying to be like the ‘House-dwellers’ because I thought they were better than me.
I mentioned before about my interests/hobbies, well the first thing I was fascinated with was ‘Bakery Shops’, because we cooked everything and I mean everything on an open fire outside either in an iron stew-pot or on a flat griddle plate I couldn’t for the life of me think how they managed to make bread and cakes I saw in the shop windows. Because of this, I eventually went to catering college and took a three and a half years bakery course and went on to own two bakeries in Leeds, West Yorkshire and then later on one in Spain and I’m still here after 12 years of retirement
Later in life at the age of 28 I met my dear wife Pamela, she was not from a travelling family, but a nurse, midwife with three diplomas in tropical diseases and had travelled to many countries plying her trade. By sheer coincidence, we both had a great interest in the Circus. With me it was because working on the fairgrounds we almost always had a small circus travelling with us. With Pamela, it was just an interest from childhood that had developed into a sort of hobby, visiting the Circus. Because of this, the bakeries in the UK were sold and we ran away with a circus as they say!
We put together two circus acts, one clowning with a Comedy Car routine and the other a Red Indian Knife throwing & stock whip act. With these two acts we travelled the world as Circus artistes with some of the most famous shows for 17 years.
Unfortunately,with all the tumbling and clowning around Arthritis set in and consequently I had to give it all up so we returned to Leeds and opened another bakery. The rest is history as they say. Now retired and living in Granada, Spain amongst the Spanish Gitano (Gypsies) where I feel I have gone full circle and come back to my roots.
Think YOU CAN and you WILL, — Think YOU CAN’T and you WON’T
So you see it can be done with a little effort on your part, over the coming weeks I will be posting some more detailed hints and tips to help YOU get the life you want. If you have any comments leave them below or on my contact page HERE
Until next time …….
Category: Articles
Hi Carole,
Thank you, have a good Christmas and stay safe.
It was an interesting read.
This is very heart touching and Inspirational.