I think I may have already said this but I’m a bit of an audiobook junkie. The habit started back in the days when I used to travel hither and yon, to work with kaiako (teachers) and tumuaki (principals) all over the Northern region from Kaitaia to Papakura. Sometimes I had hours on the road and I always found that to be a bit of a waste. While I definitely relished the alone time it always felt like I should be doing something useful… as if staying alive on the road is somehow not useful? All habits are created to meet some kind of need.

“All habits are created to meet some kind of need. ”

My habit started with CD sets of personal development material. The first one I bought was Infinite Possibilities: The Art of Living Your Dreams by Mike Dooley, who one of the contributors to Rhonda Byrne’s 2006 best seller, The Secret. Back then I was searching for a way out of my depression of some years and I was determined to do so without medication. That was the real need I was trying to meet, not just filling in time on the road. There’s a whole other story behind that but I’ll save that for a later post.

Anyway, that was the start of my audio obsession. Today, as well as a pile of actual paper books, ebooks, pdfs, blog and online course subscriptions, I have a growing library of audiobooks. Did you know you can buy audiobooks about almost anything from iTunes or Audible? In fact most books these days come in paper, electronic and audio format. You can learn pretty much anything if you really want to.

My need was information - I wanted to understand what my depression was, where it came from and how I could rectify whatever it had been that sent me down that dark path. I wanted to understand how my brain and mind worked… and didn’t work. I believed then, and to this day, that I’m an intelligent person, that I could figure it out and do something about it. What began as a stumbling pilgrimage out of darkness has become an empowering habit of learning.

So I’m sharing this with you to give a little bit of insight to my epic quest from a very dark and deep depression to my current state of growth and action. My journey has been a more liberating and empowering process than I could have predicted and it has given me a blossoming sense of purpose. The whole process, which is obviously ongoing, has been centred on my determination to gather up information, knowledge and skills and to use what I’ve learned to create something that serves to uplift others. I’m not 100% certain exactly what that will look like but that’s not the important part of the process. What’s important is that I’m doing, I’m growing, I’m learning and I’m trying whatever I can to fulfil my purpose. I trust the Universe to bring the rest of it together.

I’m also writing this in the hope that it may give a touch of inspiration to someone else who is feeling, for whatever reason, at a bit of a loss as to what to do next in their life odyssey. Maybe that someone is you or someone you know.

What I found was a whole world of information out there, and a ton of it is free stuff, that you can access to learn whatever it is you need to learn in order to get your wheels back on the track of your life. Learning is one of the most empowering things you can do for yourself and these days it’s easier than ever to access what you need. It could be to do with your health, your career, relationships, spiritual or mental state. Whatever it is, get into it.

Make a start. Be like me and make a hundred starts if you must, but start!

Feeding my mind