Welcome to Centred!

I feel as though, in my youth, I had a good deal of potential. I was an academic sort and did quite well at school (not as well as I felt I could have done, I often thought); I developed some good social skills despite early shyness; I had a little sporting success; I could pick up a language fairly quickly. One thing I did not do very well was work hard. Things were abandoned half-done, I left everything to the last minute: I was probably quite lazy – always looking for the easiest path. Sadly, this habit followed me into adulthood and I’ve always had a nagging thought that I never quite lived up to that early potential. There were things I celebrated – I was well-regarded by many places I’d worked at; I had 2 wonderful children (still have!); I had lived my life as a relatively good person. But there was this nagging doubt. In 2017, I quit my school-teaching career of 15+ years to become a private maths tutor. I was only working in the afternoons and evenings, and my children and then-wife were at school all day, so I had around 6 hours to myself every day. I joined a couple of groups at my library (reading, philosophy) and was volunteering at my local community radio station (Penistone FM) so had a few things to keep me busy. I took on a good amount of the housework but I still had plenty of time available to me. I had decided that I wanted to be a writer: at least write one novel. I had an idea and I had the time. Did I manage to put virtual pen to paper? No. Instead, I lay on the sofa all day watching game show repeats. Looking back, I’m embarrassed about this period in my life. For 3 years, pretty much all I did was watch this TV. It wasn’t even good quality TV; it was trash. I don’t regret much in my life but that 3 year period is definitely something I wish I could re-live and change. I subsequently went back into schools (as a teaching assistant, to begin with) and lost the spare time I once had. I’m pleased I got back into the formal education world, but I wish I’d spent more time on developing my opportunity when I had that once-in-a-lifetime chance.

Fast forward a few years and I had split up with my wife and was living in the North-East again, near my parents and siblings. I was supply teaching and quite enjoying it. I had started seeing someone new and this was going well. Things felt a little more in balance. In the summer of 2023, I opened a coffee shop with my new partner and we worked there together. I didn’t really notice at the time but things were going downhill for me in many areas. I wasn’t looking after myself (washing, taking my medication, eating well, exercising); I had begun to take my relationships for granted a little; my finances were severely depleted; I wasn’t really spending time on the things which were enjoyable to me; I had little in the way of intellectual stimulation in my life; I was stressed, angry even, with relatively minor things in my life. That September, after I had signed up to do some supply work again for a couple of days a week in order to supplement any earnings from the coffee shop, I found myself at a low. In the early hours of one morning, late in the month, I found myself awake, having had 3 or 4 cups of coffee overnight, along with a large takeaway meal which I didn’t want or need. I realised that I wouldn’t be fit for work in the morning and that if the agency rang with a job, I wouldn’t be able to take it. I took stock of my life and realised there was a lot to work on. Where to go from here?

Over the years, I had tried self-development programs. One in particular was 30 Days To Live A Better Life by Celestine Chua. The idea here was to break down self-improvement into 30 steps, addressing them one day at a time. There were some steps I found a little too “woo” for my liking but on the whole I had enjoyed it. Some of the tasks in particular I had found useful and even after I had stopped using the program, I carried versions of them over to my personal attempts to improve. I had made it through the program once, about a year and a half before the September in question and although I had made progress immediately, things slipped as time passed. I didn’t feel that this was what I wanted to do again. Instead, I decided to take matters into my own hands. 

My MO was as follows: I would write down all the things I could imagine I might want to achieve over the next 25 years in the areas of career, finances, environment, transport, health, grooming, relationships, recreation, intellectual, productivity, spirituality and contribution. All of the things I wrote down would be assigned an item (e.g. teaching, poetry, crosswords, playing guitar or volunteering) and these grouped into like categories, such as reading, writing, music, home or day-to-day finances. Once organised like this, I could keep a closer track of what I was hoping to achieve and how I was doing in each area / category / item.

Next up: where did I want my life to be in 25 years. I spent time writing my long-term goals for every item I had come up with. For a few things, I was quite close already. For most, I was a long way off. For several, I hadn’t even begun. I was aspirational for everything. Why not be? If I’d set my sights low and achieved everything, would I not be left with a feeling that I hadn’t truly fulfilled my life goals? So I reached for the stars in every case. Now that I had my goals, I could score my life against my end-points in each area. I used a scale from 0 to 100, going up in increments of 5. There were a lot of 0s. To give myself some credit, there were a few high scores too but mostly everything fell a long way short of where I wanted to be. This was to be expected, I suppose, but I hadn’t expected it to be as bad as it was. I took an average score: 11.70. I gave this as my percentage score for my life at that moment. Barely even a 1/10. Poor. Very poor. It brought into sharp focus that if I wanted to be living a more impressive life, I needed to get going. This may well have been the lowest point I’d ever been.

I was to address one category (consisting of several items) per month. Or rather, add a new category each month. So, for the first month, I only had one thing to think about. The next, two, then three and so on. I could set an end of year goal for each category as it came about and set my goals for each month against this. Spending a month on developing good habits was long enough for things to stick, I thought, so that they would be almost second nature by the time I came to the next month. I could do a little towards other items but wouldn’t give myself a hard time if I didn’t do much in the way of progressing these. One more thing to do: pick a category to address in the first month (October 2023) and write the initial goals for myself. By the end of the month, I had done this and was ready to start my new journey the following day. I wished myself luck and stepped into it, hopes high.

I am currently in my third year of Centred, and I have progressed by a good amount (although there is still a lot of work to do). For example, whilst I am in an excellent relationship now, I’m back in education, have a grooming routine almost completely under control, my social life is good, and I have a much more positive mindset… I’m still not great at getting up in the morning, the little exercise I was doing has dried up, and I haven’t done any writing of note for a long while. All of these things have been focus areas. But, of course, it’s all aspirational. There’s no rule-book which says my life has to be lived a certain way. Everything I’ve decided for myself is exactly that – decided for myself; I can change it any time I choose.

That said, as I enter month 27, I am filled with a passion to do better. For myself, for my partner, for my children, for the wider world. That’s where this blog comes in. It is intended to be an outlet for my interests, roles and hobbies, and a place to hold myself to account for my self-development. This being the first post, it holds little other than exposition, and I hope you can forgive me that. In the coming weeks and months, I hope to add reviews (books, films, albums), recipes, tasting notes, a writing diary, education musings, my training regime, puzzles, the list goes on. There is no real tying theme to what may be included, other than these are the things which interest me. By committing to posting about them, I am far more likely to engage with them in my own life, and therefore build the life I desire.

That brings us full circle, back to Centred as a self-development program. My motto is “Be Impressive!”. By filling my life with the things which are important to me, and which are good for me, I hope to achieve that – for myself, first and foremost, but also for the people who have supported me throughout the difficulties of the last few years.

Send me a message: encouragement, ideas, comments on your own journey – it’s all welcome.