Gifts in Pain

TL – Ray Martin

[00:00:00] Paula: Welcome to “TesseLeads” with your host Tesse Akpeki, and co-host me Paula Okonneh. “TesseLeads” is a safe, sensitive, and supportive place and space to share, hear, and tell your stories and experiences. You’ll hear how our guests are creating opportunities navigating diverse challenges, confronting their dilemmas, and shaping their future. We have a fantastic guest today, his name is Ray Martin, and I’ll tell you something about Ray. Ray Martin is also known as the Daily Explorer. He’s an interpreter and an award-winning business leader. He’s also a coach, a mentor, a facilitator, a speaker. He’s a writer and a mindfulness teacher. He’s also considered to be a torch bearer for greater human consciousness. He’s created the calling “All Angels Foundation” and runs marathon to raise money for causes he believes in, which have included an orphanage in Nepal and an elephant sanctuary in Thailand. Whatever he does he says his mission is to bring more joy and happiness into the world. So today’s theme is “Life Without a Tie, Finding Your Path”. And we will be exploring how to do this amidst the noise, the chaos, and pressure to conform that we find ourselves in, in this busy world today. Welcome Ray to “TesseLeads”

[00:01:52] Ray: Thank you. What a lovely introduction. Beautiful

[00:01:56] Tesse: Ray, we are so delighted to have you on this show. I loved reading your book,” Life Without a Tie”, and what struck me was your life-changing relationships, how you’d shared the stories about that and the friendships you made all over the world. I loved your insights, your wisdom, the unpredictable and random events that took place through 28 countries. That struck me. And you know, I’m curious, as I think about what I was reading, what came to my mind was how you can guide people to live bravely, to make bold decisions, and how those things can be able to bring deep joy and happiness in people. I.E, what Jewels, can you share with us about how this works for others and where it’s coming from, from yourself?

[00:02:55] Ray: Yeah. Yeah. Wow. That’s so much to say about that. That’s why it took a book to even put it down on paper. Let me see if I can pick out some things from what I’ve learned myself, which is, first of all, I think curiosity in any context is hugely underrated by most people. Most people just truck along with their life as it is, without being curious about what else is possible. Just even in their own thinking, let alone whether or not it can actually bring it about or make it happen. You know, what am I settling for? What else could I do? You know, what’s the gift I’m holding back here? Things like this, you know. Like I’ve always been curious and reflective on what I’ve done, and I would think nothing at all about coming to one of you if I worked with you and saying, do you know what? I’m really interested, is there anything you could see in me that I could improve? Or how am I showing up for you? Can I do anything better? Because I’m curious to know from any place I can get information, how can I be me better? I don’t see that in a lot of people. So I think, you know, for a start, just being curious about oneself, about the world, about others, and how many conversations do we have in our social lives or in our work lives where we’re just waiting for the other person to stop talking so we can say something about ourselves, you know? And so they might say, “oh, I had a really rough weekend”. And rather than say, “oh, really? What happened”? Most people might say, yeah, me too, I had a really rough weekend. But then it’s a competition who had the worst weekend, you know? And it’s like there’s no real learning. And that’s why I think curiosity is something I advocate for whenever I can. It’s a massively underrated tool. And there’s a guy called Jim Dethmer, an author, he wrote a book called “The 15 Commitments of Conscious Leaders”. I don’t know if you’ve come across it, it’s a beautiful book. And he’s got a really simple model when he runs a workshop with executives. He draws a horizontal line on a piece of flip chart paper and he says, do you live above the line or below the line? Of course, everyone says, I don’t know, what’s the line? You know. They say, well, when you’re living below the line, you are committed to being closed, defensive, and being right. And when you’re living above the line, you’re committed to be an open, curious, and wanting to learn. Where do you spend most of your time? So most people say, oh God, about 80% below the line, I’m afraid, or maybe even more. And so that’s a great start point, and I think that’s a really, that’s something to think about. I mean, it’s just the first thing. And then once you become curious, how do you articulate what your needs are and where you’re trying to get to, and who do you have around you to support you to do that better? Have you got someone? Could you find someone? Is there someone you know, even a friend who could help you do that better? And of course, what are the steps you take? And I talked about having supportive relationships in my book as one of the rules for happiness, build empowering, supportive, and sustainable relationships. That’s a condition for happiness. Because I think our friends should be people that say, Tesse, come on you’re not living your purpose here. This is not in alignment with who you really are. I think it’s more is possible from you. It’s something I think as a true friend would say to you. But in our friendships, we tend to collude to keep each other the same, and we certainly do that at work as well, I’ve seen that a lot. But I only remember through my career, I just remember the people that pushed me really hard in a good way and said, you are capable of so much more than you are doing at the moment. I can see it in you. You are way more capable than you think, you are underselling yourself. You know I think we want friends in our lives to give us that kind of radical support and radical challenge sometimes. Carry on. I mean, how hard, how much you want me to say about this.

[00:06:58] Tesse: Paula, I, you know, I look into Paula’s eyes and I see her curious, and you said invite curiosity. So Paula invite your curiosity about what Ray shared so far.

[00:07:12] Paula: I’m curious as to how many people are actually brave enough to be vulnerable. I think vulnerability has become a word that we’ve heard more often now because, I like to give kudos to the millennials. The millennials have made things a lot more acceptable. I talked more about mental health and wellness. We didn’t, and we were like, get over it. And so you know it when you talked about, you know, curiosity and having friends that push you and encourage you. I love that. But I was just really curious about how many people are open and vulnerable to say yes, I actually do live below the line. Cause people like to build themselves up, you know?

[00:07:55] Ray: I think that’s what leadership is. You see, I think a lot of people think being a leader is a position or a role in a job. But to me, being a leader is a state of mind. In other words, I’ve seen people in a non-business situation, like at an airport when there’s a flight canceled and there’s a hundred people milling around the desk or wanting something to happen. Well, eventually one person steps forward and starts being the spokesperson for that group and demanding something change, you know, from their company. And they assume a leadership role in that moment. They’re just being a leader. They’re going first, they’re not waiting for someone else. And to me, that’s what being a leader is. You start doing it yourself. You have to go first. So if you start in your own friendships, being radically supportive and radically challenging your friends, you’ll eventually get people doing that for you. But you don’t wait for someone to do it, you choose it as a way of showing up. You know, this is for me what being a leader is, it’s about going first. I think that’s always how I’ve thought of it. And I had that role when I became a CEO of my own business. I’d never been a CEO before. I’d never owned a business before or run a company. Never started one. So I had to learn really fast, you know. I thought, God, I can’t wait to be taught this by somebody. I’m just going to have to do what I think’s right, and go first and do it this way. And I remember people ask me, when would you know how you know the company’s a success? I’ll say, well, because I’ll be proud of it, and people will speak about it in those terms. Yeah, it’ll be financially viable, but it’ll be a feeling that I’m really proud of how the people here come to work. And that’s really what, where my target was. So as I think these things are important, I don’t know if I answered the question, let me just check that I have.

[00:09:40] Paula: You did. Because I’m curious as to, you know, as you said, you were the CEO of your own company, you had no rules to go by. So how did you go about like writing those rules, encouraging. We talked earlier on for those who have listened to other podcasts, we talked about empowering our employees, whoever works with us, you know. So how did you go about writing those rules? Rules of encouragement for work.

[00:10:06] Ray: Yeah, it’s good. I mean mine’s a mashup of everything I’ve ever learned, you know. Because you know there’s only a certain amount of wisdom in the world and everyone can speak about it in different terms, but we all essentially come back to the same place always. The fundamentals are pretty clear. Now when I watch people who have been really successful in business or in any walk of life as an athlete or anything, they model a certain kind of behavior and belief system, and I’ll run through it. Having core strength was the first one. Taking full ownership for everything that happens. They never ever let blaming someone else or conditions or circumstances stop them. If those things aren’t working how they want them to, they find a way around it. They just don’t waste any time on blaming someone else. The third one I would say, is having what I call a conscious mind. Because if you’re not aware that you think thoughts and you can step back and see yourself thinking those thoughts, if there’s no separation, then you are fully enmeshed in what you’re thinking, you become the thought. So if you are angry, you become fully angry. If you are sad, you become fully sad. But anyone who’s got any success in life is able to step back from that and go, I notice at this moment I am having feelings of sadness. How do I want to deal with that? They are separate to the thought in the way they speak about it to themselves, in the way they act themselves. And they might even say, I notice I’m thinking thoughts of revenge and getting my own back with this person, and I’m aware that that isn’t probably the best way to go. What else could I do here? Whereas someone has just got the desire for revenge and they’re fully identified with that, it’s just going to be lashing out and kicking out of that person. There’s no space, they’re reacting. They’re basically an automatic pilot and we are not always aware when we are on auto  pilot. So we’ve got to build that muscle of, I call it being the observer, conscious mind being the observer. And then the next thing that all successful people have, is they have habits and routines that they repeatedly do. So let me give you a couple of examples. You know, one would be what’s your relationship with failure? I encourage anyone I coach to fail forward and fail fast. Fail as many times as you can because you’ll learn more. Don’t be embarrassed about it or have any shame about it. Treat failure and success as the same. They’re just learning. They’re just like data gathering. You get some data from succeeding, you get some data from failing, all of it makes you a better person. So that’s one habit. Another habit would be look at the raw facts, how often do I just do that? Or do I get caught up in the drama of the event? Another one might be, hold your opinions lightly. How many business meetings have you been in when you just see people are not willing to let go of the opinion they’re holding? They’ll die for that opinion. They’ll literally walk out the organization rather than just change their thinking or let it go, or just be a bit less attached to it. Be curious, they’re not curious, they’re dogmatically attached and there’s others. So there’s having a good set of habits. Building intentional relationships is another habit I encourage. In my book, I call it building powerful, sustainable, supportive relationships. But you’ve got to build your relationships for the long term. I can give you really good example of that. When I was running first place as a CEO. I had one person, a young person in their twenties on my team, was brilliant, really genius person, but young and not much experience. But she was gaining experience working at first place for five or six years, the amazing contributor. And when I saw that the company was going to come to an end because of the events that happened, I discreetly went to a rival company and said, I’ve got this fantastic person on my team. No one publicly knows this yet, she does, but our company’s got to cease functioning at a certain point because of a certain personal events that happened. I’d really like to find her a great company, she can continue her path. And I had no reason for doing that because I wasn’t getting any financial reward and didn’t ask. What was driving was a sense of, I just wanted to do the right thing for her and have her be safe. Because that was living my value of integrity and honoring that value in myself and my value of love and integrity, and that was my motivation. So she eventually got a job offer from that company and she went to join them, and they loved her. She loved it being there. It worked brilliantly, really worked out brilliantly. What about four years after that and I’d gone off to Asia now, I was like four or five years into my 14 year journey. I was off in Asia, lost contact with her. But eventually I met a woman in Poland who I fell in love with and I moved to Poland and I was much closer to London. So I reached out to this woman and just called her socially and said, how are you doing? You know, this is about 15 years after all this had happened. She had two kids, got married. She was in her forties now, much older, wiser person. A different version of herself, yeah, but brilliant still. She said, oh yeah, that was great. I had some brilliant years at that company I took the job in. But it got sold by a much bigger company, and now me and the founder we’re going to launch a new business and it’s called, she told me the name of it and she said, we’re going to be teaching emerging leaders about leadership principles and we’re going to build a team of coaches. And I said, you know what? I said, that would be my dream work based on the journey I’ve been on, there’s nothing more I’d like to do than to coach those people. Can I be on the team? She said, yep, you’ve got a place just like that. And that was 13 years later. Just magic. I mean literally, I came back to Europe and I thought, where am I going to find a team to work with? Where’s my tribe? And one call to her and I was in the tribe. And that’s because I have that relationship and I’ve got other examples I could throw in here, similar. I’ve never struggled to find people to help.

[00:15:58] Tesse: So powerful reciprocity. Yeah, kind of.

[00:16:01] Ray: And that’s Patrick Lens. Who’s the reciprocity principles from, is it Daniel de Martini? I can’t remember if John Martini.

[00:16:09] Tesse: I know that it’s highlighted very strongly by appreciative inquiry.

[00:16:13] Ray: Yeah. Right. Yeah.

[00:16:14] Tesse: And reciprocity and mutuality. But I’m sure it comes across in different kinds of ways. As you say that, Ray, I remember my late brother, Tony. He was one of my guides and he was one of my teachers, and he used to say, “to build the bridge that you don’t know whether you’re going to cross, you just build it”.

[00:16:35] Ray: Yeah. I believe if you are just being helpful, kind and generous to whoever you can do that with, as long as you genuinely mean it, rather than you’re pretending to do it as a technique. If you’re genuinely like that, you’re always going to be okay. Even if it doesn’t come back from the same person, it’s coming some other way. You’re always going to be okay, because you’re putting that energy out into the world and it’s going to vibrate with people on that frequency. And people on that frequency will find you and know that you are a person they want to help.

[00:17:06] Tesse: Absolutely. And it mirrors back to you, your heart, your heart to do that, like your heart, to make sure that woman was safe. And little did you know that that bridge was something else. And the values piece that you’ve been talking to Paula and I about, it comes alive in the integrity, the selflessness by making sure somebody else is okay.

[00:17:30] Ray: I think so. And I just want to qualify, I’m not saying this from a sort of textbook or a theoretical perspective. I’m saying this because I’m 62 and I’ve put this into practice for now. I went to work at 16 so I’ve got 45 years of practicing this. And I know directly from my own experience this is working, and I can give you a thousand examples. Like even when I wrote the book, I thought I want 15 or 16 people to review this book early before it goes into the world and tell me honestly, radically honestly what needs to be changed. And you know, I had a queue of people wanting to help me with that. I had to narrow it down to 15. I had loads of people who wanted to do that for me.

[00:18:14] Tesse: A queue people, is that not a demonstration of how people see you. I mean, when I read your book, one of the things I was very intrigued about were your relationship the romantic relationships that failed. And I thought, I’m going to ask Ray about one or two in particular that you know I could feel the pain coming out. You know, like, woo, you know, and the question I have here is really about when relationships, particularly the romantic ones, don’t work. When there is a breakdown of those and there’s an exit and whoever does it exiting, but that’s what things crumble and the pain is there. Sharing your learning when you talk about life without a tie in those situations, what would you say?

[00:19:03] Ray: Well, there’s a couple of things I wrote in the book that are worth, I think flagging. One is we meet people throughout life, we never know exactly why we’ve met them until much later usually. But I would say you could put every person into one of three camps, which is you meet people for a reason, a season, or a lifetime. But it’s not important to know at the moment you need them, which it is because it’ll all be revealed later. So for example, I had a really difficult and challenging short relationship with a woman I met in Shanghai called Dancy in the book. And you’ll remember her because she was the first person I’d ever encountered in my life who had a narcissistic personality, and it was incredibly distressing for me. I was in tears every day. I didn’t understand what was going on with her and why she was treating me in a certain way. It all made sense much later when I read about narcissism and that kind of thing. It all fell into place, but at the time it was very distressing. Yet at the same time, she was the person that showed me how to structure all the chapters for my book, and it was through a half a day working session with her. It was the first time I ever saw what my book was going to look like as a structure. I couldn’t write anything before I met her because I had all the thoughts jumbled up in my head, but I couldn’t organize them in my own head. What she did, she showed me how to organize it on paper and into different chapters through facilitating me, and I ended up with a blueprint, literally like an architect’s blueprint for the book. So there was a reason that I met her

[00:20:55] Ray: But there was one reason I met her and it was to get that, because after I left that encounter, I was able to make a really good start on the book and start writing. And I knew how to write and what to write. I knew how to set it out. So that’s an example. Now a season, reason season, lifetime, a season would be someone like Annie. I met Annie in London just before I went on the journey, and she invited me to join her and travel to Thailand, and I thought, fantastic, why not? And I didn’t know whether Annie and I would be together for life or a week or anything. But turned out we were together for a year and a half when we left, and then came back together again for another year. And so that was a relationship with my life for a season, because it was through that encounter with her that I started to see the parts in me that were needing attention, patterns of behavior that were destructive. She really helped me see what I could do to improve my life as a man in the world. But I didn’t make the changes speedily enough to save that relationship with her. So she showed me what I needed to do through the relationship itself. Then I invested time and energy to make those changes. But by then it was too late for her, she had to go. So that was a season, that relationship was for a season like two years, two intense and lovely years. I’m a much better version of me because I had that time with her than I would’ve been, I think. And a lifetime relationship is my relationship with Charlotte, because we’re not married. We’re not husband and wife, but we’ll be friends forever. You know, we’ve just got a very deep and very powerful connection in our lives. So similar values, similar ways of looking at things. You asked me about relationships, so that’s one perspective I hold for all relationships. So if it’s not working out how I think it should, I’m not too bothered. That’s one thing. And then a second for romantic relationships, I think I love this metaphor. You’ve got one sheet of A4 paper and another sheet of A4 paper, and you put glue on the fronts of both. And when you start a relationship, it’s like you put these two sheets of paper stuck together like this, and then if you want to separate, they never come apart exactly how they were before they were glued together. There’s always tearing and you know, it’s just the way it is. That’s just how life is. But I believe there’s some value in that pain because for both people, usually it highlights, it shows us where we are not on our path, or we’re not living our values, or we’re out of alignment. And it shows us where we can see ways we can make changes to our own belief system that’s going to help us in the next version make it work better.

[00:23:44] Ray: Wow.

[00:23:45] Ray: You know, there’s always gifts in the pain always. Perhaps some people will argue sometimes those most painful encounters are the ones with the most learning, and there’s some truth in that. I think it certainly is for me, and I’ve highlighted in each of the encounters I had in the journey that I was in, I’ve highlighted what I learned. You know, there was one relationship with a woman called Sylvia, where I forgot about my guiding principles. I felt I was wronged by her, and I made at the time an unconscious choice. I made a choice to get some revenge and get my own back on her, and it didn’t work for me very well. And then afterwards I realized I lost my guiding principle connection and I’d acted out of a kind of small part of myself and seen the consequences of that. But that helped me sort of commit again to being the best, most principled version of myself that I could be. Because I saw the damage I’d caused by not being that version.

[00:24:43] Tesse: Paula what are your reflections? Because I’m saying I wish I’d read Ray’s book before it was written. But what are your thoughts?

[00:24:53] Paula: I love those categories. I love people coming to your life for a reason. I love it. The reason, the season, the lifetime, and then that analogy with the romantic category, two A4 papers stuck together, once you pull them apart, you have parts of the other person in you that infects you positively and negatively, and the other person, again, has the same. I love all of that. I mean, it was so vivid in my mind. And of course, this being the podcast in which we focus on the personal side of our guests, I’m curious as to what are your hopes and your dreams for your future?

[00:25:37] Ray: Yeah, well, of course there’s several strands to the answers to that question. I wrote this chapter in the book. I did a program called The Hoffman Process, and we had to literally articulate our vision for ourselves in four areas. Home ,work, how I show up as a man in the world and relationships. So I’ve got a picture of like, what do I want my home to be? And I actually, it’s really weird because even though I did that process, what was it, 13 years ago, this week I just committed to buying a home in the UK. So in the weekend I found a house and I’m going to start building my own home. For the first time in 20 years, I’m going to have a tie of a home and I’m really thrilled about that. So I’ve gone from life without a tie with any ties to now going to have a tie again, and I’m very, very happy to be building a home. So that part was missing for me. In the area of work, I’ve made a decision, which is I’m not going to interfere with that. In other words, not going to use my rational mind to determine where I think it should go. I’m going to just observe and listen and feel the universe and based on what people will come to me and ask me for, I will serve them in the way they wish to be served. You know, so that could go any direction as long as it’s meeting the needs that people have of me, and I’m serving them in the way they wish to be served. It could be workshops, it could be seminars, it could be talks, it could be another book. But I’m going to be guided so that I am in service to what’s needed, rather than me determining what I want to do and then pushing it out like that way. I used to do that, and I don’t want to live that way anymore. So that’s an area of relationship. I’m obviously dreaming of meeting a partner, a love partner who I could see out my life with. That would be my ideal scenario. I’m not in that situation. Available.

[00:27:30] Paula: That ties in with one other category, area of a man.

[00:27:37] Ray: Then there’s a man in the world. You know, I realized that I’ve spoken to a lot of men since I wrote this book who’ve sort of confided in the similar thoughts to the ones I had, and certainly their marriages are not ideal and things like this. So maybe I’ve got some role that I can play for men, fellow men, to help be in service to them and especially the men that go through these transitions that we go through when people divorce and their family life changes and the impact that has on everything. Cause I’ve lived through that now, so I kind of feel like I’ve got something useful to bring to that. And I don’t know, I’m still exploring it, because early days the book’s only just come out and I’ve had chats with three or four men like that and I’m just working out what they need. It’s a bit uncertainty even for me, but one of the things that’s different for me in this era is that I am so okay with the uncertainty and not knowing. Whereas as a businessman in London years ago, I had to be certain about everything. I had to control reality by being certain, and I don’t have that need anymore. So I don’t mind not knowing as much.

[00:28:41] Paula: That’s absolutely brilliant. It also means looking at you, there’s going to be another book to follow this one.

[00:28:48] Ray: I’ve got an idea in my mind, a clear idea for a second book that I want to write. Yeah. But it’s honestly, it’s such a big effort writing a book. It’s a nightmare on one level. It’s like it takes every night and every weekend. It’s such a big job. It took me six years to write this book. Oh, I’m not sure I’m ready for another commitment like that. But the second book is a bit, going to be quite a bit shorter than this one.

[00:29:15] Paula: That’s amazing. I mean, you know, I say you’ve achieved what you need to achieve for now.

[00:29:20] Ray: Yeah, for now.

[00:29:21] Paula: And as we read your book, we would know and that would encourage you to know what the next steps are. I mean, just listening to you break this down, homework relationships and, you know, showing up in the world as a man, I can see four books coming out of this.

[00:29:37] Tesse: I can see the same. I mean, for me, when I read the book, to be quite honest I thought you know, I would have liked to read more about your experience and your journey coming back to the UK and you met the pandemic, Covid.

[00:29:51] Ray: Yeah. Oh my God. That was horrendous.

[00:29:52] Tesse: Yeah. And that’s a piece I thought, oh, the book has come yet to that you know, it just a thought. The Post pandemic.

[00:29:59] Ray: That was the last page of the book, wasn’t it?

[00:30:01] Tesse: That was the last picture of the book. And I’m saying another chapter would’ve, you know, but, you know, I’m going to hand over it to Paula because, you know, you can see I’m intrigued everything you’ve said resonates with me. And that last bit that you said about emergence and being in that emergence with divergence, for me that’s a really rich journey and it takes a lot of trust.

[00:30:25] Ray: Can you imagine what it would be like if our political leaders were like that? I’m here to serve you the community, you tell us what you need and we’ll do that for you.

[00:30:34] Paula: That’s called Utopia.

[00:30:35] Ray: I mean, that would, wouldn’t that be an amazing world to be living in if political leaders were truly in service to the community that has elected them?

[00:30:44] Tesse: Amen. I hope this is,

[00:30:45] Ray: I mean we’re just so, we’re just such a million miles away from that. I don’t see that ever changing, by the way, cause.

[00:30:51] Paula: I know.

[00:30:51] Tesse: I hope it does. I hope it does. I mean, I think that Jacinda Erden and you know, and other, they showed the possibility of what that humble kind of leadership in service of others, empathetic leadership and compassionate accountability can look like. And so I’m kind of hopeful.

[00:31:09] Ray: Yeah, I mean, it’s one of the reasons I do what I do in the leadership space, because I think the only way I could be valuable as part of the wave of change would just be to help individuals learn the skills of principled leadership. And hopefully they’ll be a next generation of leaders that won’t be corrupted by the usual crap that these leaders sort of get sucked into. But I don’t know, I’ve got to do something with my life that’s valuable. So that’s what I’ve chosen, so that’s the best thing I can think of.

[00:31:38] Tesse: Keep doing what you’re doing, Ray. It’s great, it’s great. Paula, you know.

[00:31:44] Paula: This has been incredibly enlightening. Thank you so much Ray, for being a guest on “TesseLeads”. And then to our precious, precious listeners, we thank you for listening in. We want you to know that your stories, just like Rays and your life matters to us, so we encourage you to share them with us. We also encourage you to head over to “Apple Podcast”, “Google Podcast”, “Spotify” or anywhere else you listen to podcasts and please click subscribe. And if you find that “TesseLeads” has been helpful, we’d love you to write us a review or send us a note. And of course, if you’d like to be a guest on our show, please head over to our new website, “TesseLeads” and apply. Thank you so much again.

[00:32:32] Ray: My pleasure.

[00:32:33] Tesse: Ray, you brought a “Ray” of Sunshine into the studio, so thanks for being on our show.

[00:32:38] Ray: Fabulous.

[00:32:39] Paula: This has been fabulous.