Richard Flook 

I wanted less stress and more happiness

 - here’s my story

In 1992 I was living in an fantastic two bedroom apartment that I owned outright, working in the family wine trade, which for many people would have been their dream job, I had a beautiful girlfriend, a lovely car, I travelled the world buying wine, my life on the outside seemed fantastic to everybody looking in, but on the inside I was desperately unhappy, I loathed many parts of my job and I was secretly depressed.

My mother had died from breast cancer many years earlier when I was 12, my father had divorced twice, and at this time was into his second long term girlfriend. My two brothers hated me and so did my father’s newest partner, most of my friends were superficial; my girlfriend just liked me for my money. I was desperate to please my father as well and I did everything to show him I was worthy of his love but I hated the job he gave me, I felt like a legal drug pusher, most people I knew, seemed to drink for relief, just to blot out their boring lives, so inside I was deeply unhappy.

It got worse, out of the blue my father sacked me, in the blink of an eye, I had no income, I had no job, I had to sell my apartment and my car, to pay off my debts. What was worse was I lost my self respect and my friends, colleagues and work mates shunned me. My beautiful girlfriend at the time gave up on me and found another man. I was in a mess financially, socially, spiritually and mentally.

I knew I was in the wrong career – but I did not know why

I did my best to get another good job but I kept getting nowhere; I knew I had been in the wrong career the day I started working in the family business, but I did not know why. I ended up working in a petrol station as an assistant being paid the minimum wage. I went from drinking champagne with celebrity wine makers in foreign countries to pumping gas in a run down garage, in a bad part of town. I blamed everyone else for my misfortune; mostly I blamed my father. Now my outer world was as horrible as my inner world.

A friend then introduced me to how I could change all of this. I dismissed what he was offering me several times. Out of frustration he rudely had to remind me of the truth of my situation; where I was and where I had been in my life. He said to me ‘What did I have to loose?’ on reflection, absolutely nothing, but it took me weeks to realise this.

I was very sceptical with the techniques that he showed me; I hate being told what to do, I had always disliked this type of motivational mind work but I found many things I applied made perfect sense and they worked immediately, and from that day I have never looked back. My life changed dramatically, as quickly as I lost everything, I got it back, only this time it was different because I had what I wanted, and more of it.