Part of The Life Change Blog Series.
I stood in the staff car park at Plymouth College and stared up to the sky. It was the end of the week and end of the day, I was late, as usual, and felt tired. I had just had an interview with a student who had failed (he had submitted an essay that clearly wasn’t his. He didn’t even know what it was about). He left the room in a barrage of abuse, kicked over a chair and swore at me, stamped out into the corridor where he continued his tirade against me, the college and “all the other useless educated wankers.”
The deep irony was that the essay was about motivational counseling psychology.
I sat for a while in the empty classroom watching the rain clouds blow in from the sea. I just had to muster the energy to drive across town in rush hour traffic, pick up my wife, then drive back in the other direction and pick up the children from school (not all of them, only our 2 little boys) and then stagger around a supermarket the size of Belgium to do the weekly shop before driving the 50 miles back home.
But all the while a little thought sat at the back of my mind. It was a warm, glowing little thought like a miniature heat lamp that they use to keep pies warm in canteens.
It was a little hot pie of a thought and kept me warm on cold days. It was a thought that I got from an advertisement poster that I used to stare at on the tube train when I lived and worked in London. It said “Swap the tube for the Tuk Tuk” and had a jolly cartoon picture of a typical South East Asian motorized tricycle with a beaming office worker in the back seat.
It didn’t matter that I always felt tired and was sworn at by spotty students who couldn’t even be bothered to write their own essays about motivational counseling psychology, because one day I would swap the tube for the Tuk Tuk. I would leave the cold and the grey and the abusive for the warm and the vibrant and the friendly and start up a small counseling retreat in SE Asia; somewhere that people could go for guaranteed sunshine and relax and sort out their problems all in one go.
But as much as this little glowing thought would keep me warm on those cold Friday afternoons, another more sinister thought loomed just behind in the dark recesses of my mind, “it was never going to happen.”
As the years rolled by and our little family grew into a bigger family it dawned on me that moving overseas with 2 little boys to a land where you have no contacts, no friends and no work was not going to be as easy as just swapping the tube for a tuk tuk. It was going to be a massive upheaval and massively complicated.
It was time to take my own medicine, listen to my own motivational counseling, take a deep breath, a leap of faith and make it happen. And so we did. It actually works.
Ten years ago we created Life Change Holidays, and opened our Counseling Retreat in Thailand, we quickly added a Life Coaching Holiday and then a Couples Therapy Retreat specifically to sort out relationship problems. We now spend our time helping people overcome problems and dilemmas and generally making little hot pies of thoughts come true.
Counseling Retreat
If you would like to change your life, get away from it all and sort out your problems in one go (and make your little hot pie of a thought come true), whether with a Counseling Retreat or Couples Therapy Retreat, and have a great holiday in the sun at the same time check out our holidays and send us an email.
Counseling Retreat find out more.
A deep breathe, a leap of faith … I know the great work Chrissy does first hand and it is so interesting to read the back stories of how you worked through the process change and created a life connected to your passion and purpose. I’ll keep reading …
I enjoy reading all your articles and remember being a student of yours at Plymouth College (many years ago!!!). I was studying my Diploma in Addictions Counselling with Broadreach House. That course has taken me further than I ever could have imagined.
I had several little Hot Pie Thoughts back then. The main one was to live and raise my children in the sunshine. Somewhere not so populated. Somewhere where my children may stand a chance of employment.
I was always referred to as a dreamer by my friends and I’m sure as hell they often sniggered at my little Hot Pie Thoughts. I also read a book called The Secret by Rhonda Byrne. This book taught me the Law of Attraction and how our thoughts can become things. Conceive, Believe, Achieve. That is my motto.
I am now living and working in Australia on a 10 acre farm as a Counsellor/Educator supporting individuals who are in recovery from substance misuse. In my sessions I will often ask clients to create a vision board. A vision board of their little Hot Pie Thoughts.
My life wouldn’t be complete without these Hot Pie Thoughts.
Thank you for your lovely articles Alex.
Hey Wendie
Great to hear from you…must be about 10 years..where does the time go. Really, really pleased for you, and so glad that things have/ are working out, its made my day. Well done for sticking to your guns (I remember talking to you about sticking to your guns…and you have!) and seeing through you hot pie thoughts. Keep going and stay in touch.
cheers for now.
Alex.