How To Know You're Going In The Right Direction (Personal Development Wisdom Snippets) | #639

[Agi Keramidas]
Welcome to Personal Development Mastery Podcast. This is another snippet of wisdom, a moment from the podcast archive that I felt deserved to be heard again. You talk about confirmation signals and I would like to ask what is the role of the, what should I be looking for when they are in that neutral zone, you know, to gain strength from and reinforce also the trust that I'm going through this, there is an end to that.

[Ray Martin]
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 airplanes, because when you're, when I learned how to fly, which was in the nineties, 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, 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 airplane 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 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. 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? And I said, well, I only want to get back. If you can wait till I get back, I can do it.

And so I'd 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 if God wanted me to do 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 what I decided was I would get the blessing of each person who I'd obligated 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, 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 thing.

Four of them, four signals. Yeah. Four signals.

But it was like an all or nothing. If even one had said, stay, I would have stayed. I would have stayed.

[Agi Keramidas]
It's a very bold and courageous way to make that decision.

[Ray Martin]
Yeah. But then I knew. Then I knew it was right.

[Agi Keramidas]
Yeah, definitely. And you don't have any possibility of regrets because you went with her blessing. That's amazing.

[Ray Martin]
Yeah. I've got more examples, but we'll come back to them if you want to.

[Agi Keramidas]
Definitely. I mean, give us one more example because it is.

[Ray Martin]
Yeah. So I've been traveling about four or five years by the time I left in 2005. I was around about 2010.

In that period, I'd had loads of conversations with fellow travelers over coffees, over supper in the hostels I was staying in and things like that. And they'd all ask me, how did I start traveling 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 talk. And if you ever write a book with some of these stories in it, we'd definitely like to read it. And I laughed.

I said, God, I don't know what you're thinking. I'm not doing any of this to write a book. I'm doing this because 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'd never written anything except the blog I was writing. And by the time I got to 2010, I'd had about 100 email addresses on this list. And I thought, suddenly it 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 advertised that they were coming from New York to Chiang Mai, where I was staying to run a five-day writer's course. And it was help anyone who was interested in writing a book, learn all the basics and begin the journey.

And they'd know everything they needed to. And 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. It was the right course. And a very good discount.

[Agi Keramidas]
Yeah.

[Ray Martin]
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]
If you enjoyed this podcast, can you think of one person that would find it useful and share it with them? Until next time, stand out. Don't fit in.