#530 What if your career is just a role? Insights on living authentically from a 14-year sabbatical, with Ray Martin.

What if the life you're living isn't truly yours, but just a role you've been cast to play?

Many of us follow a script handed to us by society. Career success, family, stability - only to one day feel a deep emptiness inside. This episode explores how to recognise when you're stuck in a life that doesn't align with your true self and how to break free from the roles you've been conditioned to play.

• Discover the surprising moment that shattered Ray Martin’s CEO identity and launched him into 14 years of soul-searching and backpacking.
• Learn the transformative power of becoming your own observer, and how this shift can reduce suffering and elevate self-awareness.
• Understand how "confirmation signals" can guide major life decisions and help you trust your intuition during uncertain transitions.

Tap play to uncover the insights that can help you turn personal crisis into a path of purpose, peace, and profound authenticity.

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KEY POINTS AND TIMESTAMPS:

02:13 - Ray Martin's Background and Pre-Sabbatical Life

05:54 - Personal Crisis and Life Transformation

07:34 - Unexpected Acting Experience and Identity Revelation

09:12 - Decision to Take a Sabbatical

13:09 - Exploring Asia and Self-Discovery

17:36 - Navigating Life's Transition and Neutral Zone

19:17 - Vipassana Meditation and Inner Transformation

23:28 - Confirmation Signals and Intuitive Decision-Making

30:27 - Becoming Your Own Observer

38:08 - Finding Authenticity and Life's True Path

42:30 - Closing Insights and Advice to Younger Self

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MEMORABLE QUOTE:

"Trust that the universe has your back—just go where your energy takes you, and don’t worry, it will all be all right in the end."

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VALUABLE RESOURCES:

Ray's book: https://lifewithoutatie.com/

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To explore coaching with Agi: https://personaldevelopmentmasterypodcast.com/mentor

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🎙️ Want to be a guest?

Message Agi on PodMatch: https://www.podmatch.com/member/personaldevelopmentmastery

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Personal development interviews exploring key principles of personal development, self improvement, self mastery, personal growth, self-discipline, and personal improvement — all supporting a life of purpose and fulfilment.

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Transcript

Agi Keramidas: 0:00

What if your career is just a role insights on living authentically from a 14 year sabbatical? Welcome to Personal Development mastery, the podcast that helps intelligent, busy professionals develop self mastery and gain clarity so you can thrive in a fulfilling, purposeful life. Join us every Monday for an insightful conversation with a guest, and it's Thursday for a shorter episode where I reflect and share with you. I'm your host, Agi Keramidas, and this is episode 530 Agi 30 if you are looking to live more authentically and break free from societal expectations, this conversation with my guest, Ray Martin explores how stepping out of your scripted identity can lead to true inner peace and purpose. By listening today, you are going to learn the transformative power of becoming your own observer, and how this can reduce suffering and elevate self awareness. You will also understand how confirmation signals can guide major life decisions and help you trust your intuition during uncertainty. If you are feeling stuck in a life that no longer fits or questioning the role you have been playing, then this episode is for you before we dive in, if you are in a life or career transition and resonate with the topics we discuss here, I offer one to one coaching and mentoring to help you find clarity and move forward with purpose curious To explore what that could look like for you visit personal development mastery podcast.com/mentor, or just tap the link in the show notes. Now, let's get started. Today, it is my real pleasure to speak with Ray Martin, also known as the daily explorer. Ray, ray, you are an entrepreneur, a business leader, speaker, a mindfulness teacher and author of life without a tie. After a series of life altering events, you left behind your role as a successful CEO and set off on what was meant to be a six month sabbatical, that journey turned into 14 years of global exploration and inner transformation. You're passionate about guiding leaders to break free from societal expectations so that they can live with authenticity, inner peace and purpose they I am delighted to speak with you today. Welcome.

Ray Martin: 3:05

Thank you very much. What a lovely, lovely introduction. Thank you. Well,

Agi Keramidas: 3:09

what a what an intriguing story. This is. I'm sure you hear that a lot that it is not something very common, and I'm looking forward to discussing some of the wisdom that you have collected on this adventure, I will call it that for sure. The thing I would like to start with, Ray tell us about the before. I mean, when you decided to take that sabbatical, what was going on and what made you, you know, take that decision?

Ray Martin: 3:47

Yeah, that's a great question. I'd ever since I grew up, grew up at school, you know, I'd always been told by parents and people that I knew as adults back then, in the 60s, you know, the way to be happy was to just get a really good job, get married, have a family, get a house, etc, etc. So I was following that, what I call the mainstream life. But actually, recently, someone referred to that as an off the shelf life story, which I think is much better phrase than mine. But I was following that, you know, dutifully. And so I reached the age of about 42 and I was the CEO of a company I founded, five or six years earlier, a consulting business doing leadership development and coaching and training. And I founded the company with my girlfriend, who is now my wife, and so we were husband and wife, management team and business partners in this venture, and it was really successful. I'd become Daily Telegraph Business Leader of the Year in 2000 to my work as a CEO. And on the surface, Ray's life looked brilliant. But deep inside myself, I have to say, I wasn't really ever fully happy in that life, because I. To put it into one sentence, I felt like I was living someone else's life. And this was talked about in Bronnie Ware's book, you know, the Top Five Regrets of the Dying when she said, when she asked dying people what they most regret about their life, they all say the same five things. And the top thing was, I wished I'd live my life true to myself and not the life that others expected of me, and I used to sort of wonder it in my most private moments, you know, what was I doing that was causing me to feel like that could never really answer. I never really traced the source of it. And then one day, my wife came back from a meeting and said, I'm leaving you and I'm leaving the company. It was really sudden. It was incredibly shocking and impactful, and I could see that it was going to change everything. And whilst that was going on, my father got very ill, and he died shortly afterwards. And so within about three or four months, Agi, I was out of my home. I was out my marriage, my dad had gone. I was leaving the company I founded. It was a desperately happy time for me. It was broken. And someone that said to me, about a year into my paralysis of being completely, you know, just down with it all, of not seeing any future, someone made a suggestion to me. They said, You know, one of the ways you can get yourself out of a funk like this sometimes is forget about yourself for a while and just go and help someone else, 100% go into service there. So that's what I decided to do. I went to Australia, where a friend of mine had breast cancer. Her name's Elizabeth, and I wrote about her in the book. And I said, can I just come and look after you for a month while you have your chemotherapy and stuff like that? Because her husband was working full time, she had a young son, she said, that'd be great. So I did that. But no, nothing changed inside me, except in the last week of my stay in Australia, I went up to see some friends in Cairns, and they said, We're going to the theatre tonight. You want a ticket? Do you want to come? I said, Okay, so I went to the theatre, and during the interval of the play, we're watching, I'm looking at the programme, and I see my attention keeps drawing to the corner of the page. It says, We're auditioning for the next play. It's a British play called out of order. It's about a Member of Parliament. And I said to my friends, for a joke, I should be in that play. I've got the perfect English accent, but I wasn't an actor, or I was only kidding, but they seriously turned around to me and said, Well, we know the director of the play, why don't you go to the audition? Think you'd be good. And I said, that's crazy. Come on, I'm going back to England in three days. They're never going to pick me my limiting beliefs were just spouting forward. I'm not an actor. I've got no training, and anyway, I can't afford to do it. I need to pay all the bills at home and pay my mortgage. In episode, they said, Well, why don't you just go for fun? You'll be here. You know, forget about trying to get in the play. So I did, and I went to this play, and to cut a very long story short, the director asked me if I would take the lead role in the play, which was like, well, biggest 400 lines in the script. Central character, comedic, Bethune. So lots of difficult challenges as an actor, a crazy voice I'd have to do to be George pickden. And my sister in law's an actress, so I called her, and she said, could I do this? She said, Yeah, I was already back in London after the audition when I got this call. And so I went back and did the play two, two days after these conversations, and it and it really completely changed my thinking, because as I was flying back to London after three months of doing the play, I realised that I was feeling a lot of dread as Ray the businessman resuming that old life. And I thought, what's that about? And I went, oh my god, Ray the businessman is a character that I play. It's not me. And I never, ever, ever, until that experience, thought of myself as a character I was playing. I just thought me, the businessman was me and and then that, that realisation had me go right. As Anthony Robbins says in his book, you are not just the actor in your story. You're the director and the script writer too. So you can move between those positions. And I thought, does Ray, the characters character need to be changed, or does he need a different situation? Or should we just kill the series completely and say it's over? And I decided to kill the series completely and say it's over. I don't want to be businessman any longer, at least not for a while. And and that led me to follow the advice. My friend in Australia went to see the play with it said, why don't you take a six months sabbatical and really work out a new path for yourself? And I laughed at first when she said, I said, That's ridiculous. I'm not wasting my time doing the six months of Article backpacking. What's the point of that? You know that. Now, in light of the play and the inside hat, it just seemed like a really good idea, so that's what got me to start sabbatical is a very long answer. I hope that's okay. It

Agi Keramidas: 10:08

was fascinating. And I will make a stop at the one of the last, the final things that you said, because I think it is very insightful, and transformation a transformational once someone begins to realise it. And that is what you said about that you were playing the role of Ray, the businessman, yeah, and that role, or that identity that many of us, you know, assume, let's say, professionally, for this context, there are others, but it is. It is a role. We step into it. At some point we will step out of it. And it is a choice, and is a very big realisation. Thank you for

Ray Martin: 10:52

Yeah, it was quite astonishing, because to become George pickden, the character in the play, I had to ask the director of the play, you know, what clothes does he wear? What's his voice? How does he walk? How does he sit? What does he think? Where did he go to school? You know, all of these things I had to learn and actually pretend to be. And I didn't realise that over the years and years I'd been in business, I learned to become Ray the businessman, because it happened so gradually and so unconsciously, without me even thinking about it, I just made assumptions every day, that that was me, you know, and that's what I needed to do. And so me and my character become wedded, like, a bit like, I don't know, David Schwimmer, who used to play Ross in friends, you know, he didn't want to be Ross for the rest of his acting life, you know, I think he struggled to find a new role, but I didn't want to be Ross for the rest of my life. You know, yeah,

Agi Keramidas: 11:50

you talked about stepping into a new character, and what comes to for me to ask is from someone who listening now that has identified with the characters for a long time, of their role, as we were saying, the role that they have been playing, and they have been, you know, feeling the the desire, or the nods, if you want, There is something else or another role. Now that we the word role sounds in both ways. What would you say to that person to perhaps, facilitate, you know, going towards the direction of what's authentic to themselves? That's how I see it,

Ray Martin: 12:40

yeah, I mean, basically, essentially, you need new data from life. Basically, you know, I lived off all the data that I'd ever taken on board to become the person I was. And I I couldn't shift my thinking, really, without new data. So I decided to go to a part of the world where I thought I might get some new understanding, new insight. And I went to Asia because in Asia there's a lot of Buddhism, mysticism, you know, Eastern philosophy, that kind of thing. And I was really curious, because I'd sort of had, you know, some connection with that through my development and spiritual journey, but really at a distance, not not really in my face. And I was really curious to find out more about how do you get to know yourself? How do you develop self awareness? How do you really discover who you are? And I thought, I'm never going to find that out. Amongst my friends in London, they just think the same as me. They've got the same mindset as me. They're not going to challenge me to do that. So I wanted to go somewhere completely unfamiliar in every way possible. Now, you don't have to go abroad to do this. There's loads of places you can do it, even in the UK or wherever you are. But for me, because I didn't have children, when I got divorced, and I was, you know, financially, able to support myself for a while, I decided that I want to be a backpacker and just live modestly and frugally. And, you know, find out more about life. Just take on board a whole load of new data and and just like opening a big box of Lego on the floor and just see all the pieces fall out and go, Okay, what can I What can I build with this? That was essentially my, my quest. But the question I was trying to answer was the Brony ware question, what does living life true to myself actually look like, feel like and sound like for me? Because I had no idea. It certainly wasn't being a CEO, but I didn't know what that would be replaced with.

Agi Keramidas: 14:45

And I think no one does, unless they start taking some steps towards that direction. Yeah, it's really from my knowledge comes as a, you know, an insight, like an epiphany, that now I know everything you. Exactly You said. And I want to discuss this with you, because I find it fascinating. They use the word quest earlier. I said adventure. I think it is very both are very appropriate words, so during your quest, but also a physical adventure, backpacking, going places. I can only imagine that you had to be very, let's say flexible, and probably the word that really, and I don't want to beat around the bush, I will say the word that I want to use, and it's the word surrendering to what happens correct, and perhaps going towards one direction which doesn't necessarily is the direction that your mind or your fears would take you to. But yes, doing it anyway. So I wanted to hear your, you know, insights from this particular element, because I'm sure you've had many,

Ray Martin: 16:02

yeah, yeah,

Agi Keramidas: 16:04

times like this,

Ray Martin: 16:05

yeah, yeah. There's a couple of things to say here. I've got to be honest and say I found the transition of leaving London as an affluent businessman to being a very modest, budget driven anonymous backpacker. I found that transition really difficult. You know, in the first couple of months when I was in Thailand, you know, I get very irritated if my my meal wasn't brought to me in the restaurant, you know, within a certain time that I was used to. Or, you know, in Asia, nothing works like it does in England. And so you can often get your dessert coming before your main course, and two people dying together don't get their food at the same time. And that's normal there. But I was sort of enraged by some of this stuff, going, don't you know who I am? You know, Don't you realise I was somebody important? Once I could see my my ego and mind, you know, really agitated most of the time. And I was also carrying a lot of fear and anxiety about having been a failure as a husband, you know, having had to face the shame of being left by my partner, and having to admit and acknowledge that I wasn't perfect by a long shot, even though I sort of had a persona of success as a business leader and had these awards to prove it, etc, but behind the scenes, it was chaos, and so I had a lot of guilt and shame about that, and a lot of fear about how I was going to reshape my life, or if I ever could, because I thought I would never be happy again. I was in so much pain from the losses, so I had all that going on, and I couldn't get calm. I couldn't make sense of it. I was in a transition, as William Bridges calls it. And in his book on transitions, which one of the best books on the subject that I've ever come across, he says, you have an ending and then later a new beginning. And there's this period in the middle, which hardly anyone acknowledges, which is different. It's got different rules to the ending and the beginning, and it could last a week, a month, a year, but in that he calls it the neutral zone. You're in the neutral zone, different rules apply. Don't take action for actions sake. Only make temporary structures look after yourself in little ways that you don't normally, because everything's going to be different. Nothing's going to make sense in the neutral zone because the same rules don't apply. So I recognised I was in this place. I'd left my old life, but I didn't know what my new life would be, and so I was in this weird transition. So I was doing everything I could to help myself be calm. And in the end, I sat down and I you probably see that I think you've got a copy of the book I wrote these 10 guiding principles for myself because I thought I need, I need some psychological guard rails to protect my mind from the agony it's in while I'm in this transition, if I don't, if I'm not careful, I'll go crazy, I'll flip out. You know, I need to stay sane, and I need to keep open and keep my quest alive, and have the faculty to search and then process information and not be disturbed all the time. And so I wrote these 10 guiding principles to help myself, purely for myself, just to help myself have an easier time. And as that's why I included them in the book, because they were like my guardian angels. Those 10 Principles, they kept me safe until someone said to me, have you ever thought about doing a Vipassana meditation retreat? And I said, I didn't even know what that was, Agi Vipassana. What's that? I said, Well, you go into a Buddhist monastery for 10 days, you sit in silence for 10 days, you don't speak to anybody at all, and you just meditate with the monks, and you follow the programme that they run. And you get an opportunity to observe your own mind and start getting deep self awareness, you know, and understanding how these the cycle of craving works, and things like this. And I thought, Oh, my God, I've never been quiet for more than 10 minutes. How can. I can't imagine 10 days, but I did that. I went into the monastery after six months, and when I came out, I was like a different man. It's like someone if had a, if I had a volume knob on the side of my head when I went in, and it was up 10 out of 10 noise in my head when I left, it was like turned down to one hour 10. I hadn't gone completely, but it was, it was hardly there. I was so quiet and so calm and so grounded and so kind of serene on the inside, I realised that, you know, I was causing a lot of my own anxiety through through the way I was thinking, which I'd never occurred to me before.

Agi Keramidas: 20:38

I've also done it in Dave persona meditation. So I Yeah, you know, I know, yes, it was in in store market, in Suffolk, so it was, I know what you say, but before the the noise or the loudness goes down for me, it went up much more than it was. Yeah, I'll come back okay, to something you said about the transition. You said about the neutral zone. And thank you. That is, I think, very useful to think of it as such. I suppose one of the things that are scary about being in that neutral zone is that you don't know exactly when it's going to end. It might be you said, it might be a week. It might be much, much longer. So during that time, when you are in that neutral zone, and it's still not 100% clear of how your next life or your next role, as was saying, is going to be, what are you talk about, confirmation signals? And I would like to ask, what is the role of the what Sudan will be looking for when they are in that neutral zone, you know, to gain strength from and for social trust that I'm going through this, there is an end

Ray Martin: 22:02

to that. Yeah, yeah. That's a great, great thing to talk about, how it occurs to me. Well, first of all, the idea of confirmation signals. I learned that originally as a pilot when I was flying aeroplanes, because when you're when I learned how to fly, which was in the 90s, they didn't have GPS in the cockpits, you had to fly using a map and a ground recognition and used radio instruments. So if you, for example, if you're in London, you wanted to fly to Brighton. There's an inch there's a beacon on the ground in Brighton called a vor and it emits a radio frequency. It's got a certain number, it's in a book. So you tune the instrument in your cockpit to the Brighton frequency, and it's got a couple of decimal places, digits after the dot, and you think, right up the needle in your cockpit starts to point to that beacon, and so you fly in the direction of the needle. It's perfect system. However, if you don't confirm that you've chosen the right beacon from the book, you are flying down the needle to the wrong place, so you need to get a secondary confirmation. And the way it works in the aeroplane is you press a button on your control column, and you get an audio signal in your ear. It's Morse code, and it kind of goes and the signal is, it is unique to that beacon. So if you don't hear the unique signal of that beacon. You know you've chosen the wrong one. If you hear the signal, it's confirmed that you are going in the right direction. And so I was looking I thought that's a really good metaphor for me. For me every time I had to make a decision, I thought, I'll get a confirmation signal if I can. So for example, I'll give you some concrete examples. When I came back from Australia, after looking after my friend, I was offered the part in the play. It was a massive decision, because I was already back in London. I had bills to pay. I was on my own now, my wife had left, and I had three or four clients that I'd lined up while I was away who wanted me to do work. And they said, Can you help us? I said, Well, I only want to get back. If you can wait till I get back, I can do it. And so I obligated myself and made commitments that I'll definitely do this when I come back. And as soon as I arrived, I got the offer to do the play, and it was like really disturbed me, because on one hand, I really wanted to keep my word and promise to these people, and I needed the money. And on the other hand, there was something compelling about going to do the play as like, as if God wanted me to do it. It was it. Was it. I couldn't make sense of it rationally, but there was my inner wisdom was telling me, you must go and do that play. So I was in a dilemma. I didn't want to let anyone down. I didn't want to take a risk, but I didn't want to miss the opportunity. I thought, What do I do? What's my confirmation signal? So I would I? What I decided was I would get the blessing of each person who I duplicated myself to. So I called each one and I told them exactly what had happened. I didn't make up a story or lie. I said, this is what happened. I went to Australia, I did this audition. I unexpectedly been offered the lead part, and I feel like my. Soul wants to do it, but I don't want to let you down, so I'm going to go and do it. I'll only do it if you say you go with my blessing, and you can help me when you come back, if you tell me you give me your blessing, that I'll go and do it. If you say, No, I want you here, I will definitely 100% stay here. And all four of them said, go with my blessing. If I was you, I would go. And that gave me a confirmation signal that I was doing the right

Agi Keramidas: 25:22

thing. Four of them, four signals, yeah,

Ray Martin: 25:26

four signals. But you know, I needed, I needed. It was like an all or nothing. If even one had said, Stay, I would have stayed. I would have stayed. It's a

Agi Keramidas: 25:33

very bold and courageous way to make that

Ray Martin: 25:38

decision, yeah, but I knew, then I knew it was right. Yeah,

Agi Keramidas: 25:42

definitely. And you don't have any possibility of regret because you went with a blessing. That's amazing.

Ray Martin: 25:48

Yeah, I've got, I've got more examples, but we'll come back to them if you want to. But

Agi Keramidas: 25:54

definitely, I mean, give us one more example, because it is, yeah.

Ray Martin: 26:00

So I've been travelling about four or five years in you know, by the time I left in 2005 I was around about 2010 in that period, I'd had loads of conversations with fellow travellers over coffees, over supper in the hostels I was staying in, and things like that. And it all asked me, How did I start travelling and why? And I told them these stories, and they just listen and listen. And at the end of those evenings, some people said to me, can I give you my email address? Ray? I say, why? They say, well, because we love what you taught. And if you ever write a book with some of these stories in it, we definitely like to read it. And I laughed. I said, God, I don't know what you think. You know, I'm not doing any of this to write a book. I'm doing this because I'm I was a broken person. I'm trying to heal myself and find out an answer to my quest. This is for me. I'm not doing this to be an author. I've never written anything except a blog I was writing, and by the time I got to 2010 I I'd had about 100 email addresses on this list. And I thought suddenly dawned on me, oh, my god, the universe wants me to write a book. I keep getting one or two people every month give me their addresses. How could I not see this? How did I miss this message that I've been called to write a book about this? So I thought, I don't know how to write I don't know how to write a book. I don't know what's in a book. I better learn. So then, as I was thinking this, I'm not kidding, literally, within a couple of days on Facebook, which is still quite new, in 2010 on Facebook, someone had advertised that they were coming from New York to Chiang, Mai, where I was staying, to run a five day writers course. And it was help anyone who was interested in writing a book, learn all the basics and be begin the journey, and they'd know everything they needed to. And this, she was a published author and a literary agent, Big Shot, and she wanted$1,200 for her course, which is way beyond what I could afford. And it looked like it was for people who'd already written. So I wrote to her, and I said, I'm looking for something to get myself going. I said, I'm not sure if this is the right thing for me for two reasons. One is it looks like it's for people with a track record. And two is it's $1,200 I said, I've never written a thing in my life. Would I be in the way if I joined the course, or would I be a nuisance? Can I do it as a beginner. And the second thing is, I can't afford $1,200 but I could pay $500 if you'd let me do the course. And she wrote back and said yes and yes, and I knew that was a confirmation signal, right course,

Agi Keramidas: 28:36

and a very good discount Yes,

Ray Martin: 28:38

because I just knew once I got confirmation on those two things, and it was, that's what I meant to be doing,

Agi Keramidas: 28:44

absolutely, you know, you you the word synchronicities came to my mind when I heard these things that you said. And it is, how wonderful confirmation that there is more there. Yeah, on the path. Ray, well, I know there are about 150 other topics that I could go with you today. However, there is certainly one more thing I wanted to at least briefly touch upon and I will switch gears. Yes. Now so you have in your book, which, by the way, you were mentioning your book, I will show it here, which is a the word massive. Well, it's huge. It's over 400 pages, which is a

Ray Martin: 29:37

long period to write about.

Agi Keramidas: 29:41

Definitely in there you have, like towards the end, you talk about the six rules for happiness. Yeah, there is one in particular that I would like to hear you know your thoughts about i. Sure love to hear your thoughts about all of them. Okay, however, for you know the practicalities of the time we have together, the one that I'm very much interested in to hear how you interpret it and how you advise someone you know to apply this rule is the one that says, become your own observer. Yeah,

Ray Martin: 30:27

yeah. Well, I learned this when I was in the monastery. That's where my first insight into this came, because I sat for 10 days and watched myself sitting with all my thoughts passing through my mind, and I realised, gosh, at a certain point, it became clear to me that I wasn't my thoughts. And that sounds like a very cliche thing to say, but if you can observe yourself having a thought going like right now, I go, Oh, I notice I'm enjoying my conversation with Agi. So I'm noticing that I'm thinking that I'm enjoying this that's different to me just being consumed in the thought. I'm just enjoying it. And so that ability to put ourselves in the third person role and observe ourselves having thoughts means we're not the thoughts themselves. We're the awareness or the consciousness that is aware that we are having that thought. So what I am is the awareness, not the thought. Now, I never had this separation in my thinking before, and I realised that was a very powerful way of looking at life, because it meant that I didn't need to be necessarily agitated or annoyed or angry or upset certain events because I wasn't the person that was upset, I was just the person noticing I felt like that. And it sounds like a really subtle thing, but it's a massive shift in awareness, and it's saved me an awful lot of suffering over the years to have that awareness. And what it does is it enables you to sit quite high up on the ladder of accountability for your life. You know, because if you don't have that awareness, it's very easy to blame circumstances or another person for an event that doesn't go according to plan. So for example, it's very common in social conversations, oh, I'm sorry, I'm late. The train was late. Now that sounds fairly innocent, fair enough. But the real truth is, I'm sorry I'm late. I chose to get on a train that there was a didn't leave early enough that if there was any event where it would be delayed, I would be late, and I didn't. I chose to not think about those particular contingencies and consequences, because it wasn't that important to me, and had I felt it was so important, there's no way I was going to be like I would have got a train an hour earlier. So, you know, we're just not we're just used to in our social dialogues to skip those things, but most of us live at quite a low level of accountability, really honestly, on those sorts of things, if we really think about it. So having this ability to be an observer really makes you fully accountable for owning everything that you do, think and say, and all the events that happen around you, because you're co authoring those events, whether you know it or not or like it. This is how I see it. That's a good answer.

Agi Keramidas: 33:22

And accountability will also add, not only to others, self accountability, also for, you know, taking responsibility for everything, of course, because I will have to say that on the because it is challenge for many as you, I'm sure know being a mindfulness teacher that becoming your own observer is not necessarily something that is easy or natural, or it can happen once in a while, And then you get carried away with the thought many, many times, and then you realise, oh yes, the observer had gone. So what's your advice to someone who, yes, knows what you mean about becoming your own observer, but they're not in a, let's say level. If I can use that word to become that often, or at least as often as it would really create that effect that you were saying earlier.

Ray Martin: 34:34

Well, everyone's got to find their own way to this kind of understanding. It's not one way that works for everybody. But I would encourage anyone listening to to really reflect deeply on what they what they say and do, because your action, your behaviour, let's say, is mostly driven by how you feel when you're in the moment with whoever you're with, the feeling that you're having. And the feeling is driven mostly by your thinking. So we live in a sort of, think, feel, behave, universe. That's how that's how it occurs to me, and your thinking is determined by something even deeper, which is like, what are my preconceptions and expectations of life? Because often people sort of say, oh, that really upset me, but they don't realise. They're not consciously aware of the fact they're holding a belief or expectation of how that should be in life and how that event should be and how it actually are. Is is a different now you if you the different the suffering is the gap between how it should be and how it actually is. This gap causes a feeling of suffering. If you didn't have the expectation at all, and you were just observing as if you're from another planet, and you remove the expectation and just you're left with how it how it is, then there's no suffering, because it's just how it is. You just accept it is the way it is, and there is no gap, because the expectation has been removed. But you cannot remove the expectation to your conscious that you're holding it.

Agi Keramidas: 36:10

Thank you. You reminded me I was having a conversation recently, and my guest was saying, let's change the expectation. Yeah, with the word preference, yeah? Because it really takes away all the pressure that, yeah, it's so much mild,

Ray Martin: 36:26

yeah, yeah. And we all have these, even, you know, I have them, you know, I expect people to be on time if they've agreed to meet me. That's things like this. We all have them, and we've also got mild levels of irritation sometimes, if these things don't work out, but it's whether or not we can see those as just being part of our computer software, and they're really meaningless in some ways, and whether we can let go and surrender to what, what's, what's actually happening, and just accept reality, because most of us are Fighting with our realities a lot of

Agi Keramidas: 37:02

the time. And you know, when you think about the expectation, many of them are just some programmes that are running. They're not even really our expectations, but we still, you know, allow them to, yeah,

Ray Martin: 37:17

I have my dad in my mind, who passed away years ago, sort of saying, you know, always be on time, right?

Agi Keramidas: 37:24

I remember also a phrase I have learned from Tony Robbins, and it is to be early is to be on time. Yes. You know, it's great for me to live by that standard, yes, but I can't expect everyone to be I would love to, yeah, I prefer to now. Rather than experience, I use the word prefer.

Ray Martin: 37:44

And that means, you know, it's a challenge to our belief system, because if someone's a minute late, it means they don't care. They don't care. They don't care about this. Of course, it's not true. It's absolutely not true our own rule, yeah,

Agi Keramidas: 37:58

yeah. We attach this inference to this event. Ray, what a fascinating conversation. As I'm going to start wrapping things up, what I would like to ask you to tell us next is direct the listener where you want them to go and carry the journey with you. I'm sure they have been intrigued by you and fascinated with this brief conversation.

Ray Martin: 38:28

Yeah, I mean, I in my in my belief system of life, I believe that we're all trying to find our way home, as I call it. You know, that to that place of peace and contentment and where we feel like we're living our fully authentic self. Finding your own true path is the way I say it. And so, you know, I just want to be encouraging to anyone who feels like they're quite slightly off their centre line or looking for that just to keep exploring, to keep going, keep investing in that journey. It's what it's really worth it in my experience, and just wanted to be a torch bearer for that kind of awareness around it. Essentially, of course, I work with people. I am a coach myself, so I do actually work with people to help support them on that journey. But I would encourage anyone to do it in their own way. You know what? Get find what support and resources they need, because it's definitely worth it. And when you're in that place, a couple of things happen which are really unexpected gifts. One is I found through doing it myself, during the life without a time journey, I can not only do you get confirmation signals right, we talked about the things happen with with so much ease that they feel effortless, literally effortless, like there's no trying. You just have your intention set it out really clearly and within minutes or hours sometimes, but certainly within days, something's coming towards you that exactly is what you need. And so there's an effortlessness to live in when you're in alignment. With who you truly are, and you're on your right path, it becomes effortless. And that's why I think it's worth the struggle. Because there's a you get in the slipstream of life and you get pulled and it's lovely. So I definitely think that's that's a good reason to do it.

Agi Keramidas: 40:17

I wrote that down because it was spoke to me as well as I'm sure it has spoken to many. Ray I have two questions that I always ask my guests at the end, and the first one is, what does personal development mean to you?

Ray Martin: 40:38

Personal Development? Wow, my answer to that would probably be a sort of relentless pursuit of Wisdom and Knowledge and Being curious. I think for me, that's a big part of it. You know, when we get to the point where we think we know it all, we don't, there's nothing more, we're in big trouble. I mean, I just had to record an intro video. I'm doing some coaching on a workshop in a couple weeks. We were asked to do a one minute intro video to people, and the question we were asked to answer was, what's most commonly misunderstood about you? And I said, Okay, well, I'm a 64 I'm an accomplished CEO and a coach, and I've had loads of life experience. So what people commonly misunderstand is that they think I know everything they think of success comes really easy to me, and I'm confident, and I I've got strong opinions about everything in business and leadership and that, you know, I'm infallible. Well, you couldn't be further from the truth. You know, every single day, I look at other people who do what I do, and I think, God, they're going to find out I'm not very good at this. I don't really know what I'm doing. Gosh, they only knew how much I struggle with some of these things myself. You know, imposter syndrome is some something I've lived with my whole life. It's never going away. It's never ever gonna stop. It's always there. It's like a it's like an unwanted companion who won't go away. And through becoming my own observer, I've just been able to hear and see that voice and just say, Hello, you're back. Hi. Just stay over there. Keep well away from me. You know, don't need you. Thanks.

Agi Keramidas: 42:16

A quick hypothetical question, also, if you could go back in time and meet your 18 year old self. What's one piece for one piece of advice you would give him?

Ray Martin: 42:30

Well, this on a practical level, I would have, I would have said, you know, to make much better use of the financial resources I had when I was 18, which I didn't have any sense around at all. I just blew everything I created when I was younger, and I can see, looking back at the end of my life, how useful that would have been to create the foundation of stability and security in my life. But I'd also say that there are no mistakes, you know, just trust that the universe has got your back all of the time, because that's something that's really been obvious to me as I get into my retirement years. It's obvious that the universe has my back. I've never really seen it any other way. So so I'd have to say, That's what I'd say to my Agi myself. You you just go and take go where your energy takes you. Don't worry, it'll all be all right in the end, as they say, I love that Ray.

Agi Keramidas: 43:27

I want to thank you so much for this wonderful conversation I had with you today. I believe it's been just inspiring, but also useful, and our listeners have found some insightful elements or something that triggered them enough to take some action towards that. I want to wish you all the very best with your plans and your everything from now on, thank you. I will leave it to you for your parting words.

Ray Martin: 44:06

Well, I love meeting people and talking about these things, and I'm going to be appearing at several book fairs around the UK between now and Christmas, Birmingham and market harbour and Litchfield Coventry and places like this. So if anyone wants to meet me in person at any of these book fairs, if you live near to these places, I welcome you to come and you know, have a chat that would be that would be great.

Agi Keramidas: 44:34

Thank you for listening to this conversation with Ray Martin. I hope it has given you a fresh perspective on identity, personal transformation and the power of self awareness. If this conversation inspired or helped you, if it gave you something meaningful, consider supporting the show. Just visit personal development mastery podcast. Do. COMM, slash support or tap the link in the episode description. Thank you for being part of the journey until next time. Stand Out. Don't fit in.