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    Open Doors: The Truth About Happiness & Success
    Open Doors: The Truth About Happiness & Success
    Open Doors: The Truth About Happiness & Success
    Ebook129 pages1 hour

    Open Doors: The Truth About Happiness & Success

    By Stephen Griffiths

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    About this ebook

    In 2006, the author experienced an event that would change his life for ever and resulted is his tireless pursuit to understand the true meaning of happiness. Never one to accept things at face value, his approach was to understand the logic and science behind the practices and tools that are the key components in all self-help or self-discovery techniques. Instead of ‘smoke and mirrors’, he presents the simple mechanics behind a sometimes complex and crazy world.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherBookBaby
    Release dateSep 22, 2014
    ISBN9781483538730
    Open Doors: The Truth About Happiness & Success

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      Book preview

      Open Doors - Stephen Griffiths

      Door

      Introduction

      ‘One door closes and another one opens.’

      I was thirty-one years old when one of the most memorable doors in my life closed and though unaware at the time, a new door opened that would ultimately change my life forever.

      It was a very average Tuesday and I had spent the day meeting a client and friend in the hope of convincing him to invest in my latest business venture, the one that I hoped would result in me finally achieving the wealth I so badly wanted and had been chasing for years.

      Over those years I had worked in a variety of businesses and I can honestly say that I never really succeeded in any. It had nothing to do with laziness or a lack of motivation; I was never out of work because the one thing I possessed was drive and ambition. However, despite hard work, I could never seem to rise to the top, to be the best!

      I have always been very entrepreneurial but my latest business venture was already suffering from serious cash flow problems and the more traditional routes for finding finance were closed to me due to the failure of an earlier business venture. Let’s just say that my credit rating was far from healthy, it was life on support!

      If I am really honest my credit rating was the least of my problems. The reality was that I owed a lot of money to a lot of people, from a variety of financial institutions, to my family and friends. The bank was knocking on my door, trying to repossess my home and ‘family time’ at the weekend usually consisted of trying to figure out how we would survive the week ahead and still put food on the table.

      It was as if someone or something had let the hand break off on my life and it was rolling down hill out of control and constantly gathering speed. The faster it went the less options became available to bring it back under control.

      I needed help and I needed it fast. I new in all honesty that I was willing to offer him anything for the minimal investment that I needed but the more I listed the up sides, the benefits, the ‘win-win’ scenarios that I had planned out in my head and which I was certain would convince anybody to part with the cash I so badly needed, he seemed to become less and less interested.

      My need wasn’t solely focused on needing the cash for my latest business venture. By default, this new business venture was hopefully a way to pay my mortgage and put food on the table in addition to the long list of other needs that any young family has.

      My oldest son had just been born a couple of months previously and in retrospect this should have been a time to limit any risk taking in my life and instead focus on my new growing family. I should have been enjoying this time and all the new experiences that your first child brings. Instead here I was, rolling the dice one more time. I was driven by my hunger to get ahead and to get ahead in my world I needed money and I needed lots of it!

      I was convinced that this latest venture would deliver everything I wanted and more importantly, it could deliver it quickly.

      As far back as I can remember I was driven by a need to succeed, the need to have it all. If someone had of asked me back then exactly what success looked like, I honestly do not think I could have given them an answer. There wasn’t one particular thing that represented success to me; I simply wanted the whole package that we all associate with success; wealth, power, the ability to live a life less ordinary.

      The reality was that I had never really given any thought to what it was that I was truly passionate about. I never stopped to consider whether there was one thing that I was driven by or if there was something that I was trying to achieve. That just wasn’t me!

      What I did know about myself was that I possessed the ability to never quite, to never give up. No matter what, I knew that if failure came my way I would brush myself off, get up and keep going!

      When the gentleman that I was sitting opposite, my financial saviour and whom I so desperately hoped was going to say ‘yes’ to making the investment I urgently needed, informed me of his decision to pass, I was devastated. I walked out of the meeting like a zombie! He was my last port of call, the last hope to secure the investment I so desperately needed.

      I remember sitting in my car outside of his office staring out at the rain and racking my brain for my plan B or more specifically a plan X or Z...I had lost track of how many doors I had knocked on to that point. I could feel the sensation of panic slowly creeping up within me but as I had done many times before, I recognised its pending encroachment and using a trait I have always possessed, I banished it to the furthest recesses of my mind.

      I buried it, or so I thought.

      Similar to the weather outside, I was feeling less than sunny. To make matters worse, I felt like I was starting to come down with a cold. By the time I got home, I was starting to feel like I had been run over by a cement truck. My wife took one look at me and suggested a bath, so off I trudged up the stairs feeling extremely sorry for myself.

      After a long hot bath and feeling slightly better I decided it was time to get out. I had just managed to dry myself when I started to feel really dizzy. Thankfully I had the foresight to put some underwear on and made it to our bedroom. I say thankfully because what followed saw any dignity I had left fly out the window.

      I began to sweat uncontrollably and started to find it hard to breathe. I started to lose the feeling in my limbs and as I lay on our bed a sensation of numbness that had started in my fingertips and toes was gradually moving up my limbs towards the centre of my torso. Worse still, every joint in my body started to lock and curl in on its self.

      I was in excruciating pain.

      So there I was, naked except for some underwear, drenched in sweat with all my joints twisted and locked. All I could keep thinking was once the numbness that was spreading up my body reaches my chest, and then it was lights out!

      I was convinced I was having a heart attack!

      I will always remember my wife standing at the bottom of the bed with absolute fear and panic in her eyes while our son cried in her arms. She had called an ambulance and as we waited for them to arrive, I knew I had messed up big time! I knew I had made a mess of my life and in that process I was messing up theirs.

      I would be gone and she would be left to pick up the pieces!

      The medics arrived to find a grown man, wet through with sweat and lying on the bed in a twisted ball in his underpants! A grown man who it turned out was not having a heart attack but instead a very severe panic attack.

      I couldn’t believe it!

      They told me it was a panic attack most likely brought on by stress. My own body had decided to mutiny! To add insult to injury, in order to break me out of the symptoms that I thought had taken over my body and had me in their death grip, they simply made me focus on a point on our bedroom wall and slow my breathing. Within minutes everything was normal again.

      I felt like such a fool.

      I had always understood ‘panic attacks’ to be a direct reaction to a particular event, such as someone who has a fear of enclosed spaces getting trapped in a crowded lift or train! I never believed it was something that could happen to you when you were not directly in such a high stress situation. After all, I had run the bath in order to relax and unwind and as far as I was concerned I put those earlier feelings of dread regarding my current financial situation out of my mind.

      Once the effects had subsided, they still insisted that they take me to the hospital just as a precautionary

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