Your Extraordinary Life

Simple Steps To A Life Of Freedom And Fulfilment

This is my block buster 103,000 word step by step guide for creating a life of freedom, fun and fulfilment. This book is now in it’s second edition and is sold in the USA, Europe and the United Kingdom.

The only place you can buy this rare first edition is from this web site!

Ford Motor Company’s MD said of this book “ A well worn copy of Your Extraordinary Life lies next to my bedside table. If ever there was a user-manual for creating a great life, this is it”.

Scroll down to view Front Cover, Back Cover, Table of Contents and the Preface…

Front Cover …

Back Cover …

Table of Contents ...

Preface ...

"Life is a daring adventure or nothing. To keep our faces toward change and
behave like free spirits in the presence of fate is strength undefeatable."
Helen Keller

Welcome to the world of the Extra-Ordinary
This is a world where you go that only 1 in a 1,000 humans will ever venture. It’s a place that will test you and expand the very limits of your potential. It’s where you get to meet your nemesis and to beat him or her at their own game. And frankly it’s mostly a very uncomfortable place.

The reason that this book has the potential to produce discomfort in your life is that it’s about choosing to create an Extra-Ordinary Life. And that in turn requires time spent out of your Comfort Zone. There is no growth without effort.

Unfortunately though the opiate of the masses these days isn’t religion, it’s pleasure. As the ‘standard of living’ increases billions of bored and stifled souls have chosen to swap their freedom for certainty and have consequently cocooned themselves in a collective huddle within the safety of a stupefying Comfort Zone.

Developed countries have the highest standards of living across more socio-economic levels than at any other time in history. Many of the routine, time-sucking and energy-sapping tasks have been automated or outsourced and what we are left with is more choice and supposedly, more freedom.

And yet ironically, at the same time that we bear witness to this plethora of pleasure and this cornucopia of choice, the world is also experiencing a vacuum of happiness, a dearth of fulfilment and a massive increase in the swallowing of antidepressants.

So what’s gone wrong? Surely more money, more toys, more choices must mean more happiness, more freedom and more fulfilment. Apparently not.

The problem is that our ability to manufacture and deliver pleasure and comfort to the market place has outpaced our ability to alter the intrinsic human needs of growth, challenge and fulfilment.

Creating, distributing and branding larger and more pleasurable Comfort Zones may be all well and good when it comes to building fat corporate profits but it does nothing for the human spirit which needs to grow and experience life outside of the Comfort Zone in order to feel fulfilment.

In a world obsessed with making life easier and more pleasure-filled I am advocating a different approach. My observation is that most people are primarily motivated by securing certainty around their cocoon of comfort. I propose that we each replace that primary driving force for the Goal of being Extra-Ordinary.

My observation is that the very act of proactively choosing to create ‘Your Extra-Ordinary Life’ leads one to all manner of obstacles and challenges that, when overcome, produces character growth and a sense of fulfilment besides which the value of pleasure pales by comparison.

There is no growth and no fulfilment within a Comfort Zone. Without challenges and obstacles and effort and achievement, there is no fulfilment and no lasting happiness.

‘It takes courage to push yourself to places that you have never been before … to test your limits … to break through barriers. And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom’.
Anais Nin

When my grandson learnt to swim we gave him some ‘water wings’. That gave him more confidence. One day he’ll take them off and then he’ll be able to swim faster and have even more fun.

Today it’s like the populace have forgotten to take off their water wings. They are metaphorically travelling through life being propped up with the twin water wings of pleasure and comfort.

Not that there is anything wrong with a piece of pleasure or a slice of comfort. When my father was born in the depression years of the 1920’s there was very little choice and even less comfort. Hard work, if you could get it, was your only hope of eking out a little pleasure. But in our haste to put some distance between ourselves and those decades of deprivation, we have swung the pendulum of pleasure far too far the other way.

We have sold our souls for the price of a trinket of technology and a few shiny things with fancy brand names. We can however buy our lives back by taking a leap of faith outside our Comfort Zone, by collecting our courage and reinvigorating our spirits with the challenges and experiences that are all a part of consciously creating ‘Your Extra-Ordinary Life’.

This is a book for people who refuse to settle down and be ordinary. God forbid that anyone should come to my funeral and say that I lived a sensible and normal life. I’d throw up in the casket. And then I’d haunt them until they recanted. As Peter Garret of Midnight Oil so succinctly sung, ‘It’s better to die on your feet than live on your knees’. I’m hopeful that when my body dies they’ll then have to beat my passion to death so my soul will finally let go. Until then, it’s ‘game on’.

Every day you have a choice. Live or exist. Give up or step up.

My wish for you is that you may live every day for the rest of your life. This book shows you both why you need to do this and how to do it.

I hope you’ll find some stirring in your spirit and join in the greatest adventure of all: to live ‘Your Extra-Ordinary Life’.

‘It was not for small things but for great that God created men, who, knowing the great, are not satisfied with small things. Indeed, it was for the limitless alone that He created men, who are the only beings on earth to have rediscovered their infinite nature and who are not fully satisfied by anything limited, however great that thing may be’.
Marcilio Ficino