2017 – A New Year and A New Direction…

Just so you know, this post will be of particular interest to people who’ve followed my whole journey and people who know about or have suffered from PTSD or Depression.

Again 2016 has been a pretty good year. Though to some it wouldn’t appear so.

I spent most of the year thinking and contemplating alternative options for which way to go next. This was all thanks to things not going exactly to plan…

One of the lines I teach is, how do you know
you’re supposed to be experiencing something… Because you are experiencing it… And this kept me focused on looking for the answer. I call my actions active procrastination, my wife says I’m just lazy.

But I look at life as primarily my work is to not set off in the wrong direction, and instead to stand still until I have the correct direction to go. One thing I teach people is, if you don’t know what to do, then do nothing and feed your mind with data.

Very recently after a significant amount of thought I found the answer I had been looking for and now once again feel inspired to act. So this email is about just that, finding out what it is we wish to do, and then doing it.

But first a little success story which came about this year. It’s still very early days… But…

In July 2015 I sent out an email regarding a career opportunity with A Bug Free Mind. At the time we were considering going into corporate training, along with other types of training, and we wanted to see what interest there was in our client and prospective client database to work with us in some way.

We received almost 350 survey form submissions and my colleague Tim diligently went through all of the enquiries.

Following on from that we decided that Corporate training would be the first route we’d go down, as we had identified a lot of people with experience in this area.

Then due to a meeting in a Swimming Pool around this time last year, another colleague of mine Pete explained to a friend of ours Jason what we wanted to do and why it would work so well.

Jason got it straight away and wanted to take a licence to build a corporate training company in North America. After a few enjoyable chats, that agreement was signed on 11th August 2016

Jason was never going to run the business, he has multiple businesses and wanted to put a team in to develop and run the business. After discussions with quite a few people who had applied to work with us, Jason took on Dr Alvin C Miles (shown on right). Who is a professor and someone who was more than qualified to take my work and turn it into a corporate training course.

Alvin begun working for Saltori North America a couple of months ago and ran me through what and how he planned to teach my work. I thought he came up with a great way to tailor the A Bug Free Mind process for companies. Just so you know he has also been a long term reader of my work too, and we first met him in March 2014 at one of our events in Las Vegas.

Well anyway, about a month ago he did a free preview session to a friendly corporate client with the main aim of presenting the course idea and gaining feedback from people who knew nothing about it previously. The two hour session was received very well, and last week he got an agreement with them in principle to become our first client.

Now this is way ahead of when sales were supposed to be starting, so this was excellent news. Then he told me about how eight of the people who had originally responded to my A Bug Free Mind reader survey were also looking to go ahead as the first facilitators of the training.

We feel together with the course and the timing that we will find 2017 to be an outstanding year, and a very significant one for this new venture. As I said, it’s early days, but from concept to investor, to client, to facilitators was about 18 months, so not a bad start 🙂

Below is a short video of Dr Alvin presenting to the group, I think you’ll agree he’s quite good at it. There’s also just one of the other testimonials from the group too.

Now the reason I told you this wasn’t to drum up interest in becoming a facilitator or anything like that.

No the reason I shared it was to demonstrate what we do and how we go about getting substantial projects off the ground.

So going back to what I’ve been working on this year, working mainly with thought and with little action that is 🙂

Back in 2011. I got my first feedback from people saying how my work had helped them free themselves of depression. And it made me feel really good.

It was also very unexpected, as I designed my work to teach people success. I wasn’t creating a program to fix depression at all.

I simply knew that a depressed person couldn’t create success whilst they suffered with depression. Both things cannot exist in a person at the creation phase of success. A successful person could become depressed, but that would be after creating their success.

I then begun receiving feed back from military veterans who’d suffered with PTSD, and one particular Vietnam Vet did me the honour of promoting my work to all the Veterans in his network stating that my work was the only thing he’d found that worked to help with PTSD.

I personally found this inspirational. Especially as it was not the intention of the work. Frankly I had no idea when I set out that I was doing this to help people like this, I was just teaching success.

Over the years many more people who’ve had a traumatic event in their life, chronically depressed people, even suicidal people who my work has helped, have told me their story, and I found that the fact my work had helped them as very emotional, and personally rewarding.

Over the last 5 years I have been asked to do more to help with PTSD and I’ve turned it down again and again as my current project was still ongoing and I didn’t want to take my eye off the ball.

Well during my great period of thought this year I arrived at the conclusion that I was ready to create a course designed specifically at helping the guys in the military.

In all the answers I’ve given people to get over horrific instances in life, I just know if I focused on it for a while I could create something that would help a lot of people.

So I’ve decided I’m going to create a course and long term support system to help people who are affected by PTSD. With the primary focus being on military veterans to begin with.

Personally I’ve finally gotten to the stage of being pi$$ed off that 22 veterans a day are committing suicide when I know I can help, and I know they (those in charge) don’t know what to do to stop it.

The statistics are frightening. According to the US government there are currently over 30% of the 9 million veterans from the Vietnam war are suffering the effects of PTSD. And around 11% of veterans from the Iraq/Afghanistan wars suffering too.

What the guys in charge don’t know is PTSD is like a a cancer and once it shows itself then grows whilst is consumes the persons life. So 11% is where it is now, and it will grow from there. Given that what they are doing to try and stop it hasn’t worked for the Vietnam Vets, means it is highly likely that over 30% will end up developing some form of PTSD.

Now I am not doing this from some lofty ideological reason, that I want to respect people for their service, or honour them in some way. It is quite simply, from what I’ve seen, and from what I’ve done, I think I can really help, I think I can create something that will make a difference, and I like doing clever stuff… Plus I also expect to be handsomely rewarded for my work.

So last week I spoke to my colleagues who’ve done so much to bring our corporate training online, and we decided the first thing to do was to ask you if you would be interested in helping in some way.

Ideally we’re looking for people with an interest in PTSD/Depression, or people who were in the military who want to help. But we’re open to anyone who thinks they can help.

If you think this may be you then I’ve put a quick survey form up for you to tell us.

Please complete this survey if you feel you could help us with our goal of helping people with depression or PTSD. We would particularly like to here from anyone who works in health care industry, social workers, councillors, psychologists and doctors etc Click here to complete this survey:

Also to anyone who has used my work to help their Depression or PTSD, if you would like to tell us how it has helped, then this would help us too – Click here to respond:

Please understand any feed back you give us will not carry your full name, just initials and your location, e.g. A.S. from United Kingdom.

I/we would appreciate any help you can offer, or feedback you can give.

Obviously it’s going to take Tim a while to go through all the feed back, so please don’t expect anything from us for a while. However, we will respond to you in time.

Right now we don’t know how long it’s going to take, and I will not be starting work on making the course until late next year, but we’re pretty sure we can make this happen with the support of the right people.

A quick’ish review of 2016… It has been pretty darn good year :-)
 


In January it begun with a Caribbean Cruise as usual.

The middle picture was a lovely restaurant in Curaçao – As for the other two pictures, they were
just wonderful evenings with friends onboard ship 

Which was immediately followed by a drive from Fort Lauderdale to San Diego over 9 days… Which was a somewhat life changing experience.

Top left – Just picked up our cars in Fort Lauderdale
Group selfie near Panama City
The most common view – following Mustangs
One of the many wonderful sights in Sedona

Then we had our Annual Las Vegas Mastermind for all the guys in our business who support our A Bug Free Mind work. Again that was fantastic. I think we had about 100 wonderful people join us this year, and we are limiting it to 120 next year. This years special guest speakers were Reverend Michael Beckwith, and Brian Tracy.

Dr Beckwith is in the picture, as am I somewhere, but Brian came on a different day. I got to have dinner with both of them separately and it was great. There are also plenty of other very well known people hidden away in that picture.

Then I had another Caribbean Cruise visiting a stack of Islands I don’t usually get to see with my family.

Top left – My family’s first trip to Miami – Loved it!
Alison & Sarah on the Shuttle Boat back in The Bahamas
Us all on a beach in Barbados
Onboard ship with St Kitts in the background

Then I participated in first researching and then campaigning for Brexit. That experience was amazing too. Plus after evaluating both sides without having a preconceived idea of which was right, it became obvious which one was, so I campaigned for the side with no chance, and amazingly we still won.

Just before we won I also had some friends come form the USA and New Zealand to help me work out one area of our business, which was both very helpful and very inspirational.

We’ve also been working on getting the new board game ready too, and are currently chatting with a company in Greece about getting the deluxe version of it made by them. More on that when we have it.

Then we had a great summer, went on a holiday to Somerset… That’s us in the cabins hot tub…

David and I liked it so much I built a roof top hot tub, that’s the view from it the other night…

We also stayed for a week at my friends luxury villa in Marbella…

I get lots of offers of places to stay and I usually say no, but he said my work had really helped him and wanted to give me it as a thank you. So I was very glad I took him up on the offer.

But as for work, this has probably been the year I’ve done the least since I was about 7 years old… I felt I needed a rest, and time to think. Along the way I was wondering if I was just being lazy, and the answer is yes I was, but I was also actively procrastinating and waiting for my mind to find the answer. So I just kept supplying data on numerous things, and eventually it did.

Next year is looking good too… I’m off to the Caribbean again in January, sailing this year from New Orleans and visiting 3 Islands.

Probably before May we’ll be launching the deluxe version of the A Bug Free Mind Game – look out for an update on that soonish if you were one of the ones who were interested in the deluxe version.

Then in May we have our 4th Annual Las Vegas Annual Mastermind, which seems to get better and better each year… This year I think we are having something very special regarding some sort of desert trip added onto all the usual festivities – but they aren’t telling me much yet. Because they don’t like me saying it too soon 🙂

Right after that I leave Las Vegas with my wife to go back to the wonderful hotel we spent our honeymoon at in St Lucia. As 2017 is our 20th Anniversary, so we’re grabbing a shortish stay there before getting back to the UK for our daughters birthday.




Then a few days later we’re off to my friends wedding in Marbella, which should be pretty darn good. Quite a few of my friends going too.

Then we’re doing a big promotion in June which is supported by all our wonderful affiliates and JV partners. This will probably be the last promotion we do because of the direction change I’ve just decided on.

Then in July I’m doing another European Tour with my son, while Britain is still in Europe we thought we’d do a major tour, and are planning on 16 countries in 11 days, and travelling on at least 6 of the world’s best ‘drivers’ roads… Should be an amazing experience for both of us 🙂

Then in August I’ve got a wonderful trip planned with my family on a Baltic cruise, I think we’re visiting 8 countries, and there are plenty of days at sea with which to do nothing 🙂
Finally to end this part of my career in September we are going to be doing one last Success Made Certain event. It’ll be held in Lake Las Vegas, but this time at the hotel, not on board the boat, and not actually in the Lake 🙂

To those who don’t know, I’ve only ever done 3 of these SMC events, and I think there’s only ever been 46 people do it… It’s basically a 5.5 day event and though I say so myself, it’s pretty special for all who’ve done it.

If it’s something you’re interested in then we should send out details on it fairly soon. But it will be limited numbers as before, because it’s a pretty intense experience. So I’ll finish off this current phase of my project there.

Then in October I have a wonderful trip planned with a business partner and his wife, to relive a Greek holiday we went on 20 years ago… Except we’ll be doing it in a bit more style this time.

Then after that I’ll start work on the and create the course to help Veterans and others mentioned above.

Where that course takes us, and where your responses to the surveys above take us… Well, we shall see… How do we know what we are doing is supposed to be happening, because we are

How do we know we’re supposed to be experiencing something… Because we are experiencing it…

I started doing these emails I think in 2012 to demonstrate that I wasn’t just saying this stuff, I wanted people to see, what I teach is how I live my life. 



The barriers to us all living the life of our dreams are located within our own minds… Free them up, and you get to live life fully on your terms.

Have a great Christmas,

Best wishes,

Andy

P.S. Those links again:

If you are someone with an interest in PTSD/Depression, or were in the military and want to help then click here to leave us your details.

If you are someone who has used my work to help their Depression or PTSD, and would like to help us by sharing your experience with it and how it’s helped you, then click here to do so.