Hi, it's Duncan here.
Thank you so much for visiting. Here is my first post on my new GoodBeing blog.
If I am honest, I have so much to talk to you about, I really don't know where to begin.
Two weeks ago I completed my latest book after more than 3 years of nonstop writing. More or less every day for 3 years I would wake at 3.34a.m., descend the stairs to my office, bleary-eyed, stiff-fingered, often cold, and start typing whatever message I had received from my dreams and cosmic connection into my keyboard. As the messages are still arriving, I am still to reset my body-clock that is for sure. But in the process of fulfilling my purpose, I believe I have got 'there' - to serve others in demystifying the meaning of life and helping them tune-in to their purpose by melting the semantic fog that locks 90% of the people I meet into the wrong job. With my purpose, helping you tune-in to your purpose. For those who know me or have read my posts elsewhere, there is nothing new to my theme apart from this recent development in achieving breakthrough in codifying exactly what purpose is and how you work-out how to discover it. You see during our Covid-induced lock-down, I believe I really did achieve a breakthrough in relation to my 25-year quest to codify occupational DNA and help people truly get to know the person staring back from the mirror. This has been my ¼-century quest because - as you will discover yours will be too - my purpose was vested in me simply by the living of my life - and noticing. Warts-and-all. Every success, failure, breakthrough and learning opportunity that my life ever encountered forged into a single, life-affirming purpose. Admittedly, I am being premature launching my book because although some trusted friends and life-companions have read the final draft and loved my messages inside - 100% of them cajoling me to just get my ideas out there and start helping people, the manuscript is not yet fully edited and polished by a publisher. Therefore, there is a health-warning: even as the recovering perfectionist I am, my manuscript is not perfect. Perhaps I take a great big risk in 'going-to-press' - albeit, virtually now - but there are earnest reasons why I just need to get the word - my words - out and I hope that, in calling for a 180° turnaround in the way the World of Work operates - my outspokenness in the book does not ruffle too many feathers. But then again, I recognise that if I am going to introduce maverick-thinking to an increasingly rigid, scared and conservative world, then I am going to have to risk being seen as agitator and activist. So, with that comes degrees of controversy. The reason I mention this perspective is that - with 25 years earning my living as redundancy counsellor, with adults, career guidance practitioner, with young people and executive coach, with C-suite executives in blue-chip organisations - I am well-versed in navigating the labour market across many industry sectors, occupations and a richly diverse clientele. And I know better than most how challenging it can be to be seen as outstanding enough to be the one offered the job and conventional enough to be seen to meet the job advert and short-listed in the first place. Add to this my own challenges in breaking-in to, navigating my way around and finally zeroing-in on my calling in life. I had to burn through an inconceivably huge number of jobs to ultimately discover the innate vocation that the living on my life coupled with my personal attributes had invested in me. Believe me, it was tough and I someone who fully empathises with anyone struggling to generate traction in their life. Across the many departments that comprise a modern-day lifetime. So, so tough. Hence, in my 230,000 word manuscript just (quietly) launched on Smashwords (https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/1470036 ), I have broken my thesis for how to distil and tune-in to your purpose as a multifaceted series of interconnected essays. Meaning, you do not have to read them all if you don't have time or the inclination to do so. But because I sincerely assure they will enlighten you, do please invest time in exploring the telling chapters:
Chapter 13: Pedantic Semantics:
Chapter 14: How to Codify Purpose:
In the coming weeks and months, I will upload updated editions, I am sure; as the cosmic radio has not stopped broadcasting it signals just yet. But the piece of information that I most want for you to obtain from this initial post here is how ambitious my vision is to change the World of Work and turn as many people as possible on to their innate vocation and sense of purpose in life. Not only that, but by buying this book, gradually, I hope to be able to launch a social enterprise called The Purpose Foundation and create the first of a national - perhaps even, international - network of giant artisan and heritage craft training estate. Aimed at helping kineasthetic learners - those whom I believe are most at risk of the impact of Artificial Intelligence on humans' ability to earn their livelihood and develop a sense of momentum in life.
To achieve all of the above and so much more than I have not mentioned here, I do need one key ingredient, your help. So, please do sign-up, spread the word and stay tuned. Download your free sample of my book on Smashwords. You can pick which file format to ally with your choice of e-reader, including Kindle.
Also, please note that, for whatever reason, everything is my own work. Even wrestling with this Wix website-builder (still work-in-progress), all images in the book, formatting, the whole nine-yards, good, back or plain awful is my handywork! So, if I am not opening up a deluge that swamps me, do feel free in supplying feedback. It is the breakfast of champions!!
To finish off this inaugural post on my new blog there is this truth - and I do not include this for your sympathy. Since facing the emotional nuclear bomb of losing our long-tried-for and long yearned for son back in November 2014, writing has been my constant-companion, escape route, resurrection and, hopefully, my soon-to-be saviour. Two years ago I launched my book, 'I'm so, so Sorry'; which chronicled my odyssey from delight-to-despair-back-to-delight-again. We often talk about physical scars and the way that accidents can maim a person. But we rarely, if ever, talk about the psychological scars and they ways such injuries can maim a mind. Yes, in publicising this stark truth I risk alienating some of my aimed-for and hoped-for audience. But those people remaining are my allies in making this world kinder, fairer, happier, more loving place.
In writing my way back from my encounter with purgatory, there have been times when I feared I was permanently broken and that the original version of Duncan would never return. In brutal honesty - because I cannot see 'The Point' unless I speak with truth and authenticity - there have been moments when I could not see a way of going on. So dismal were my prospects, my future Self seemed somehow erased. I discovered that Duncan 1.0 was gone. He died with my son, Dirk. The EMDR therapist who helped me piece Duncan 2.0 back together was candid with me when he said that what I had experienced was truly horrific in anyone's definition of the word. But I wasn't comfortable as Duncan 2.0. So here I am, striving to become Duncan 3.0. A totally revamped version. The Duncan destined to build a positive legacy to leave to my son and the world he seeks to be part of.
Because there is something else you should know. A miracle happened and, in spite of being told by doctors that me and my wife Karen would never have children, we did. I want to say here that I have learned that we literally can never give up. No matter how bleak the future might look and how painful our realities appear, there are times that sometimes we just cannot see ourselves featuring in the future, with every tick of the second-hand on life's great watch-face, we inch closer to better, lighter, happier, more purposeful times. As long as we 'keep a-had' and persevere.
So, that is what this blog is about. As with my book, this is where we get a very big, important and timely conversation going on love, life and livelihood. Because if there is one thing for sure that I have learned, it is difficult to get anywhere truly worth our while trying unless we learn to love the person we are deep-down inside.
Thank you for reading this far.
Peace & Purpose,
Duncan
☮︎📌💗
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