From Burnout to Breakthrough: Ray Martin on True Success, Self-Leadership & Finding Your Path

What if the life you’ve worked so hard to build... isn’t really the life you’re meant to live?
In this deeply personal and transformative episode of Life & Leadership Connected, I sit down with Ray Martin, award-winning former CEO, mindfulness teacher, and author of "Life Without a Tie", to explore what happens when a high-performing leader walks away from the world’s definition of success to rediscover himself.
After a crisis that dismantled everything he knew, a divorce, the death of his father, and the unraveling of his career, Ray left London for what was meant to be a six-month sabbatical. It turned into a 14-year journey of inner healing, deep reflection, and radical realignment.
Whether you’re an aspiring leader, a young professional feeling the pressure to perform, or someone craving more purpose in your path, this conversation will speak directly to your journey.

In this powerful episode of Life & Leadership Connected, host David Dahlén D'Cruz speaks with Ray Martin, former UK Business Leader of the Year turned global nomad, author, and coach. After building a successful business and public image, Ray found himself emotionally empty, spiritually disconnected, and deeply unfulfilled.
A painful divorce and the death of his father led him to take a sabbatical that would last 14 years, leading him through Asia, meditation retreats, and marathon fundraising, all in pursuit of something deeper: a life aligned with purpose.
Ray shares:
- The moment his “successful” life fell apart
- Why self-awareness is the foundation of all leadership
- His 6 Rules for Deep Happiness & Inner Peace
- What most aspiring leaders get wrong about success
- How to find (and start walking) your true path, even when it feels risky

This is a must-listen for anyone questioning the life they’re building, and ready to lead with greater authenticity, purpose, and freedom.

Connect with Ray Martin: Website: lifewithoutatie.com
Book: Life Without a Tie (available on Amazon)
LinkedIn: Ray Martin on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/coachraymartin/

Don't Miss Out: Like, subscribe, and share this episode with someone who’s navigating a life or career transition. Your journey to alignment starts now.

David Dahlén D'Cruz
Life & Leadership Connected
https://lifeleadershipconnected.systeme.io/32644969

Transcript

0:05

I was an English businessman in my late 30s, early 40s. And I was living what I would now describe these days as an off-the-shelf life story. I had no particular vision that I'd had to pursue a certain line of work or something. I took the kind of societal conventional advice which is, Ray, if you want to be happy, what you've got to do is got to marry a good woman, get a good job, get a house, get a mortgage, have some kids, you know, those things equals happiness. And I never questioned that and just followed that plan. But I noticed more and more as time went on, even as CEO of the company that I co-founded with my business partner, I could do the job and I did it really competently and really well because I received an award for doing it. It really weirdly didn't feel like it was my real true life. I always felt like I was living the life that others might have expected of me but not really what I wanted to do and it just gnawed away at me. Subtly and quietly in the background just really could never make sense of it because every time I tried to, I then shut myself up because another part of my voice would go"stop complaining, you're very lucky, you've got a lovely wife, you've got money, you're okay, you've got lovely home etc, what are you complaining about." Something like this, so I could never really explore and really get to the bottom of what that was about. So within three or four months, through no choice of my own, essentially, I was out of my marriage, out of my home, my company was changing, my dad had gone. Life just didn't look or feel the same. I used to describe it, I think I described it in a book as "standing in a bomb crater", and turning 360 degrees and just seeing rubble all around me, know, like life had gone. And I was on the floor, I was desperately unhappy, I was down low. And that was the beginning because in that time a friend of mine said to me, why don't you take a sabbatical? And I laughed and said, you're kidding, I'm not wasting my life traveling around the world doing that. That's the last thing I think of doing. But then a couple of other events happened and eventually my thinking came back to that idea and I didn't take the sabbatical. Obviously as a businessman in London, I've got a very particular routine. I'm living every day. I've got targets, goals, obligations. I'm driven by the needs of the company. Very, very focused on delivering results and pushing away and aside anything else that seems not important or not relevant. Whereas when I got to Thailand, I wasn't in a suit, I wasn't wearing a shirt and tie, I didn't have any goals or targets, no routines, no obligations, nothing to take care of, just empty space and time to fill with nothing. And so this was extremely disorienting for me. And it made me feel guilty that I wasn't part of the taxpaying workforce back home because all my friends were still working hard and I felt like I'd escaped or something. And that didn't feel so good and I felt purposeless, drifting, not really sure, know, obviously scared because leaving a marriage and a known life and a work life without any knowledge of what's coming over the horizon, you know, completely unknown. So that was scary too. So I was just sitting in a lot of fear and anxiety and guilt and shame most of the time I was in Thailand. was about halfway through the book in 2019 when I returned to the UK after 14 years. I'd started writing it in 2015. So, you know, three or four years of effort, was halfway there. And I knew in my guidance from my meditation was when you get back to England Ray, your main priority is to get the book finished and get it out into the world. That sort of took over my life for about a year and a half or two years until I got to the final manuscript. And then the book got launched and I've spent a lot of time ever since then talking to people about the wisdom that's sort of chronicled in that book. I give lots of talks, I go to book fairs to meet people who've read the book, I coach people who are interested in wanting to move their lives in that way but want some help. I can't overstate it David. I mean if you're not prepared to commit to a life of greater self-awareness you have no chance of being an exceptional leader. Look, zero. It's the foundation of leadership. You've got to know how to lead your own life well first. If you cannot establish... a way of doing that, you're going to be really struggling to help others lead their lives in the way we're talking about. And so what is in that foundation? There are a few particular things. What's my purpose as an individual? What's my vision for myself? What is the picture that I want to paint of my life that I want to head towards? And to what extent am I moving in that direction? Because there's nothing worse than climbing a ladder in life to get to the top and then going, my God, I put my ladder against the wrong wall. Hello and warm welcome to the Life and Leadership Connected podcast. I am David Dahlén D'Cruz and I'm so excited you're here today. In this podcast we dive into what really matters. Finding your life's purpose. Discovering your 'why'. and learning how to connect life and leadership in a healthy and sustainable way. What fuels your energy and passion? How do we grow and stay as leaders who make a real difference? inspiration to live with greater purpose and lead with heart. Want to learn more? Visit lifeleadershipconnected.com. I'm your guide and coach, David Dahlén D'Cruz. Let's get started. Hello and welcome to a new episode of the podcast, Life and Leadership Connected Podcast. And I have a guest here whose name is Ray Martin, Ray Martin. Welcome to the podcast. Thank you David, brilliant to be here. Ray Martin is an award-winning former CEO from London, England. He's a leadership coach, mindfulness teacher and the author of the book "Life Without a Tie", which is a powerful memoir about trading external success for inner peace and alignment. What began as a six-month sabbatical for him from corporate life became a 14-year nomadic journey across Asia and the world, where Ray sought not just escape, but truth. His journey is filled with moments of crisis, reflection, deep transformation, and unexpected clarity. Today, we'll unpack the story and what it means for you, viewers and listeners, and maybe especially if you're an aspiring leader navigating pressure, expectations, and the hunger for something more. So... again, the podcast Ray. Thank you very much, I'm delighted that we're talking. So Ray, take us back the sabbatical Who were you then? And your life and leadership look like as a CEO and a business leader in the UK? Yeah, I can. I was an English businessman in my late 30s, early 40s. And I was living what I would now describe these days as an off-the-shelf life story. I had no particular vision that I'd had to pursue a certain line of work or something. I took the kind of societal conventional advice which is, Ray, if you want to be happy, what you've got to do is got to marry a good woman, get a good job, get a house, get a mortgage, have some kids, you know, those things equals happiness. And I never questioned that and just followed that plan. But I noticed more and more as time went on, even as CEO of the company that I co-founded with my business partner, I could do the job and I did it really competently and really well because I received an award for doing it. It really weirdly didn't feel like it was my real true life. I always felt like I was living the life that others might have expected of me but not really what I wanted to do and it just gnawed away at me. Subtly and quietly in the background just really could never make sense of it because every time I tried to, I then shut myself up because another part of my voice would go"stop complaining, you're very lucky, you've got a lovely wife, you've got money, you're okay, you've got lovely home etc, what are you complaining about." Something like this, so I could never really explore and really get to the bottom of what that was about. That was how it started. And then my business partner was also my wife, the woman I was married to. And I'd always sort of intentionally set out to be part of the business until a certain point where I could work out, okay, now I'm going to go and do what I really want to do. But that day never ever came because a business grows, it's like a child, it needs your constant attention, and you just go with it. And just that was how it was. But one day she came back from a meeting, this was in the year 2003, late 2003, and said quite shockingly, I'm leaving you and I'm leaving the company. And that was the moment that that life started to really unravel. It was like being torpedoed in the side of a ship. Hmm. I knew it was sinking from that second onwards. At the same time, my father got very ill and he died shortly afterwards, so that was like a second torpedo going in. And So within three or four months, through no choice of my own, essentially, I was out of my marriage, out of my home, my company was changing, my dad had gone. Life just didn't look or feel the same. I used to describe it, I think I described it in a book as "standing in a bomb crater", and turning 360 degrees and just seeing rubble all around me, know, like life had gone. And I was on the floor, I was desperately unhappy, I was down low. And that was the beginning because in that time a friend of mine said to me, why don't you take a sabbatical? And I laughed and said, you're kidding, I'm not wasting my life traveling around the world doing that. That's the last thing I think of doing. But then a couple of other events happened and eventually my thinking came back to that idea and I didn't take the sabbatical. uh You mentioned somewhere that early signs or that something wasn't quite right. Did you sense anything before? Yeah, it was an energetic sense really. In the book I called it seismic tremors. You know when seismologists, watch the movement on a graph of tremors in the earth. And usually they're very small but then occasionally there's spikes and you get these tremors. That's how I described it because I put on a lot of weight. Like I'm 65 now. But if you saw pictures of me when I was in my early 40s, you'd think I was older than I am now. I just looked so physically different. I was aging quickly. I felt heavy. I just didn't feel good being in my body. And that was a big sign. It always used to worry me. And I just couldn't see a future. I could see what I was doing in the moment I was doing it, but I just couldn't see where it was going to go. And I had this sense of being lost. And then another time I tried to start a family and that didn't work and we had a miscarriage. And there were just creeping signs coming, which I kind of pushed away and ignored, if I'm honest. You mentioned in your book that despite external success you uneasiness inside you just described a little bit but can you maybe unpack it little more that how common do you think that this is for people today? That they feel this uneasiness and they don't understand what's happening? Yeah, very common and to different degrees, but in my case, because I'd had such huge public recognition for being business leader of the year in the Daily Telegraph, which is a very well read paper in England, then to have to announce to everybody my wife's leaving me, you know, was a massive kind of incongruence. How come? You you're this amazing guy's... you've got this vision and people who work for you think you're brilliant. How come you failed at your marriage and how come things in your life are not working and your life's falling apart essentially? How can that be the case? You're a fraud. You're a charlatan. You're obviously got a public image that you've curated and cultivated, but behind that it's not really real. Now I know all of this is not actually the truth because we have a tendency as human beings some of us, you know, to be self-critical and talk to ourselves in a way where it isn't truthful but it's damaging, you know, to our psyche. And I was caught in that loop to a degree but that was really how it was in that time. I felt a lot of guilt and shame and, you know, I couldn't show my face in public. I felt... And so I thought, you know, people are going to, as soon as this comes out, people are going to find out I'm not really this guy I'm cracked up to be. And I do think a lot of us have that. People call it imposter syndrome. They call it different things. Brene Brown talks about it in her work, the vulnerability and shame that people feel trying to cover. It's a common experience, but I actually had to confront it directly when all this happened because the very first time I heard, I had to first of call a meeting for all of my staff at the company because... my ex-wife and I, ran the company together, we were the management team with a couple of other people. And I had to just say to everyone who worked in the company, you're going to probably notice this already, but you're going to find out we're separating, our marriage isn't going to sustain itself. But I'm telling you all this now because I don't want any of you to be worried there isn't going to be a business or a job. So I'm having to create that reassurance. But I thought, gosh, I really was scared that people were going to really judge me and go, you must be terrible or something. But they weren't. They didn't. They were very kind and very compassionate. But I had that fear of being seen in that way. This was 2005 the change was a divorce and you lost your father at the same time, very close to that. Yeah, it was like, know, the emotional feelings in my body were all mixed up and jumbled up and regular and constant. I cried a lot in that period and just couldn't make sense of it. You know, I got some help to try and separate out the things that were sitting behind some of that so could organise my thoughts a bit better. I noticed that when I organised my thinking and sort of attributed the thinking to the particular things it sat with, I noticed that brought some relief, some calmness, because I just felt otherwise in a ball of chaos and it made no sense. And then you walked away your life as a business. was this decision born that you like, you know, you take a step away from this, yeah, this security you kind of have, and then you left for something else. Can you lead us through that process? can, it was a very distinct event that changed the game, so I'll give you the shortest version I can. This is the story I told in the book. I knew that I was desperately low and in a really bad state mentally while this was going on. And someone said to me, the best thing you can do when you're like that is just to put your own troubles to one side and find someone who really needs help. And just go and help them 100 % go into service and sure enough if you give your full attention to someone else then something will crack, something new will come, new insight. I recommend you do that and I thought that was a good advice and it turned out that a friend of mine who now lived in Australia had breast cancer, Elizabeth. So I called out to her and said I'd like to come and look after you while you have your chemotherapy because she had a very young son and her husband worked full time. like can I come and stay with you for a month and just take care of you and your needs. She said that would be brilliant so I did and even though after that month nothing had changed for me I was still in the same funk. Another friend who lived in Australia a bit further north said come up and visit while you're over which I said great and when I got there she said me and my mum are going to the theatre and you're welcome to come with us I said okay love it and in the interval of the play I was reading the program And my attention kept drawing towards a little box on one of the pages that said, "We're auditioning for the next play at this theatre. It's called 'Out of Order', which is play about an English politician in Westminster". And I said to my friends jokingly, I could play that guy. I've got an English accent. That would be perfect. I was just joking. But they said, we know the director who's casting for that play. Why don't you go to the audition? You'll be here on Sunday. And I said, don't be ridiculous, that's crazy. I'm not an actor, I've got no skill and I've got to go back to England on Tuesday to do my job and stuff. And they said, why don't you just go for fun, you know, while you're here. Don't try and be in it. So I did and I went there. And my sister-in-law was an actress professionally and I was dating a lady called Annie who was also an actress. So I knew a bit about it. I knew I had to throw myself in 100 % and I did. Uh You know, you won't believe this, I was shocked. I got offered the lead part in the play. The central comedic character who all the story hinges around and I checked in with my sister-in-law and said, do you think I could do this if I was to accept that? She said, yeah, I think you probably could. And then I checked in with all my clients who I'd obligated myself to work with and I told them this story and I said, um I just told him as it was, I said, look, you won't believe this, I'm going to tell you the story. I've been to Australia, I've done this audition for a play and I've offered the lead role. I said, but I've also given you my word I'm going to do this work and I don't want to let you down because I've got integrity at my core. I said, so I'm only going to say yes if I go with your 100 % blessing to postpone for three months. And I had to have three or four conversations like that. Every person said to me, David, I would go if I was you. Sounds like you're meant to do this. And that gave me what I now refer to as a "confirmation signal". That it was the right decision because I needed some kind of... sign from the universe that I was making a wise decision that my soul wanted me to do but my head was arguing against for all sorts of reasons and that's a situation I know loads of people find themselves in. How do you make those decisions when your heart and your soul is pushing you into it and you know it's right, your wisdom knows it's right but your rational mind is going that's irresponsible, that's crazy, you're going to be laughed at, humiliated etc. But I decided to do it. and then I did that play and it was brilliant. It changed my mind totally because for three or four months I lived as George Pigton, the character, became the character, got his voice, his clothes, his walk. I just became him. And then as was flying back to London on the aeroplane after all of that, I felt dread in my body. I was going in my body. felt, Oh no, I've got to go back to being Ray the businessman in London and it doesn't feel so good. And then I suddenly went, this is on the airplain, I had this epiphany, I my god. The businessman is a character too. I've become that character without realizing that's not me. That's just a character I play. Until I did the play I never ever ever thought of it like that. And so that was the insight that then I went okay so that's Tony Robbins the life coach says: "You're not just the actor in your story you're the director in the script writer too and so if you don't like the way a scene's playing out you can change the script you can rewrite the character a bit or you can kill off the series completely. You don't have to have it". And so I decided to kill off the series of Ray the Businessman and just leave it. Yeah, that's how it came. And you left for what was the time period before you got offered this part? Well, I got the part in the play before I left for Asia. That's what actually pushed me over the edge in deciding that taking a sabbatical was a good idea because that three or four month uh trip had been such a life-changing experience for me. I thought if I went intentionally on a six month sabbatical, with a quest in mind and I'll tell you what that was then that's going to be life-changing and the quest that I had was derived from reading a book by a lady called Bronnie Ware I don't know you've heard of it, it's called "The Top 5 Regrets of the Dying." Because I was at a low point I was searching for anything where I could get some pain relief. She said she's a hospice nurse in Australia and she says she only talks to people in the last days of their life she says you ask them all the same question what do you most regret about your life She said they say the same five things, every single one. It doesn't matter whether they're a millionaire or a janitor, it doesn't matter. The number one regret that everyone said is, "I wished I'd lived my life true to myself and not the life that others expected of me." And I thought, wow, that's exactly what I want to find out for myself. What is that? Because the life I've been leading is what others expected me, not what's true for me. And so I want to find out. And so my quest was, I'm going to Asia to do some backpacking for six months, and I'm going to find out what is true for me. I'm going to somehow, I didn't know how, but I thought I trust the process. I'm going to do that. So that's why I left. I heard you describe in another podcast that when you came there, I mean, you came to South Asia, Thailand, you know, it's nice environment and so on and beaches and so on, but inside you was a turmoil. Can you maybe describe a bit your emotional mental state, you know, when you came there? Obviously as a businessman in London, I've got a very particular routine. I'm living every day. I've got targets, goals, obligations. I'm driven by the needs of the company. Very, very focused on delivering results and pushing away and aside anything else that seems not important or not relevant. Whereas when I got to Thailand, I wasn't in a suit, I wasn't wearing a shirt and tie, I didn't have any goals or targets, no routines, no obligations, nothing to take care of, just empty space and time to fill with nothing. And so this was extremely disorienting for me. And it made me feel guilty that I wasn't part of the taxpaying workforce back home because all my friends were still working hard and I felt like I'd escaped or something. And that didn't feel so good and I felt purposeless, drifting, not really sure, know, obviously scared because leaving a marriage and a known life and a work life without any knowledge of what's coming over the horizon, you know, completely unknown. So that was scary too. So I was just sitting in a lot of fear and anxiety and guilt and shame most of the time I was in Thailand. Yeah, that's how I felt. Yeah, and I heard you said somewhere that at some point you ask the questions, what am I born to do? you came to that question? What brought that question into your mind? It had been in my mind even since I was a young child, you know, like I used to at school ask teachers, do we have a purpose for our lives? You know, how do we know why we were born now? Why is it now? Things like this. Everyone kind of just dismissed me for those questions. They never could answer. So I'd sat with those questions for years and years. In this trip, to calm my nerves and anxiety, someone recommended I went and attended a"Vipassana retreat". It's a meditation retreat that last 10 days and you go into a Buddhist monastery and you sit in silence with the monks for 10 days and you meditate and although that seemed insanely difficult to my mind because I've never been quiet for more than 10 minutes, there was something in my, again like the play, was something in my wisdom that said Ray you've got to do that, you need to do that. And I knew it was true, I knew it was right. So I went and put myself through that 10-day experience. And when I left, I felt so calm and so grounded. And I saw how mischievous my own mind was from just sitting observing it in quietness for 10 days. And that was a game changer. Seeing that me and my thinking were two separate things and they didn't have to be the way they were. I had some agency in what I decided to pay attention to in my own thinking and I had some agency in deciding that I could drop certain thinking and create new thinking. I didn't see any of that before. And so that ten-day period in the monastery gave me a completely fresh pair of eyes to look inwards with because in my life I just looked outwards all the time. Yeah. the next danger? Where's the next target? What do I need to buy to be happy? What do I need to accumulate to be happy? It's what some writers call an "outside-in" way of generating happiness, and that never works. But I was discovering there was a way called the "inside-out" way of being happy, which is you come to stillness and peace, you realize that you're... you being alive and just having functional use of your body and being able to breathe and see is already everything you need to be 100 % happy and everything else is a luxury and when you're living in that place you're radiating happiness outwards and then things are drawn to you that you need. This change was happening to me over two or three years as I was travelling but so it might sound like it happened in one night it didn't it was a gradual process but But I was completely reorientating how I was going to navigate my life. And I didn't realize how deep and how significant that change was in the beginning. Yeah. And in this podcast, I usually ask four questions to everybody. And one of them is quite related to what we're talking about now."What gives you purpose today? What gives you purpose and meaning in life? And what is your why behind the work you do today?" Yeah, that's a really good question. I'd summarize it in one sentence which I can elaborate on, but I've always seen myself as a torch bearer for greater human consciousness. There's one thing that I've done my whole life, whether it's my family or friends or just socially, I get paid to do it in my professional work. My interest is in being sure, is helping people wake up to their full That's it. I that's how I could sum it up like that. I've been interested in that for myself, obviously, to begin with, just how I learned about it. But in the most recent years, it's been something that's of great interest to me to help emerging leaders, people coming into leadership roles, who can influence the way that society turns out. Because I think we live in a world currently which is so bereft of leaders with inspiration and integrity and honesty, accountability. We just got a load of sleazebags running our country, you know, politicians particularly. And the only way I can do something directly about that is to work with people who are going to take up leadership roles and help them evolve a set of principles they're going to lead by that really lift the boats for everybody. And that's why I put the effort in. So my purpose is to be a torchbearer for greater human consciousness and sort of spread as much joy and happiness in the process as I can. That's it. Does that make sense? Yes. You work as a coach and mentor to leaders around the world. Yeah, I do. I wonder, because I you're quite a fan self-awareness and the role that plays in effective leadership. Can you talk a little bit about that? How important is self-awareness when you want to grow as leader? I can't overstate it David. I mean if you're not prepared to commit to a life of greater self-awareness you have no chance of being an exceptional leader. Look, zero. It's the foundation of leadership. You've got to know how to lead your own life well first. If you cannot establish... a way of doing that, you're going to be really struggling to help others lead their lives in the way we're talking about. And so what is in that foundation? There are a few particular things. What's my purpose as an individual? What's my vision for myself? What is the picture that I want to paint of my life that I want to head towards? And to what extent am I moving in that direction? Because there's nothing worse than climbing a ladder in life to get to the top and then going, my God, I put my ladder against the wrong wall. This is not the wall I actually wanted to climb. That happens to a lot of men and women in the business world. So that's purpose, vision, values. What are my values? What's most important to me that I experience on a daily basis? So if you have a value around community, collaboration, teamwork, you would be really not doing yourself any favors if you took a job as a data analyst, where you're sitting in a room on your own doing loads of number crunching, because you would not be living your values on an hour by hour, day by day basis. That's something like that. Yeah. knowing what's important and making sure that where you're working and who you're working with and who you're doing stuff with is honoring those values because if those values are being violated you feel it and it really really is heavy parachute on your energy. What else is in there? What are your driving forces because all human beings have a need to meet. This is common to all of us. Belonging, recognition, uh security, variety, uh acts of service. We all have a need to do those things from time to time. How do they play into the way you make decisions about and choices about things? And then last but not least, how the late Sir Ken Robinson described it as when are you in your element? Which is you've got these things that you're naturally good at, your natural God-given talents you were born with. And then you've got these things you really care a lot about, missions and parts of society. And when these two things combine, you are in your element. Your doing... work you're really good at and you're doing it for a reason you really love, if you can work in that place, in that way, you're just going to have endless energy 24 hours a day. You're never going to get tired. And for me, when I've experienced that, and I've had the luck to experience that a few times, you don't even feel like you're working. You literally go, I can't believe I'm getting paid to do this. I love this. I do it for free. And that's what we call flow, right? Yeah, Flow, yeah, there's lots of different names for it and there's loads of books written about this. But the question I ask my clients is how can you step towards spending more time in your element? Like even it doesn't have to be massive to begin with. Like I remember working with someone who worked in a financial institution, but she loved yoga. She was really in her element when she was in yoga and teaching yoga. And so she decided to start running a weekly yoga class in one of the lunch hours for people at work. So at work she could be more in her element. And this took off and people loved it and she loved it. And it made her even more productive and more skillful at her actual job. So there's loads of examples I could give you about this. great. Thank you. We are going to take a short break here for 20-30 seconds and we'll come back very soon. Hi there, just taking a quick pause. If something in this conversation is resonating with you. Maybe you are in a season of transition, or you starting to ask deeper questions about purpose and direction. I want you to know you are not alone. If you would like to explore what coaching could look like, or just take the next step toward clarity and impact, you're warmly invited to visit lifeleadshipconnected.com. And while you're there, grab your free copy of my brand new ebook, the "Identity to Impact Start a Guide". It's full of practical reflections to help you reconnect with who you are and where you are going. of this is waiting for you at lifeleadshipconnected.com Now back to the episode. Hello and welcome back to the Life and Leadership Connected Podcast. Today have a conversation with Ray Martin. next question I want to ask you Ray, you talk about six rules for happiness I believe that was something, that came journey because you write about it in the book also. Can you maybe walk us through those and how did they emerge? Yeah, I must say, before I answer, will answer, but to say that when I was writing the story of those 14 years that I spent living out of that backpack, one of the things my editors, who were brilliant in the support they gave me, encouraged me to do was to write a chapter specifically about what was the wisdom and knowledge that I gained from those 14 years. So up until that moment I hadn't crystallized that and I hadn't really deeply reflected on that. I'd done it in bits throughout the journey. So I sat down for about a month and just sort of teased that out. But it was also bringing forward a lot of the knowledge and wisdom from my previous life too. It wasn't just from the 14 years. So it was a chance for me to really say, what is the wisdom and knowledge I've acquired through my life and how can I set that out for people in a way that's really simple to understand and in a way that they could modify it for themselves, where they could adapt it to fit their own principles. So that was the job. And so I came up with these six rules for happiness. One of them was to build, first rule, number one, build a strong foundation of self-awareness. I've answered that I think so I won't say anything more about that. The second rule was about taking full ownership for everything that happens in life because we're very disempowered individuals if we are constantly blaming or at the effect of circumstances or other people who we assign power to to determine our happiness. Yeah, I mean not everything goes according to plan. Other people do things we wish they wouldn't. People let us down. People don't do stuff they say they will. But that's not a reason to not pursue your vision or keep going. And so we have to take accountability and ownership for those things and just accept that's part of the journey. And it's down to us to own that and overcome it somehow with our own creativity and energy. And we can't blame. So that's number two. Number three is what I would call, this is one of my favorites this one, Become your own observer. And this is the superpower, I think, that most people don't really fully tap into. Because one of the things I saw in the monastery when I was doing the meditation was that my mind has thoughts passing through it. And I can stand back from a distance and notice that those thoughts are passing through. And so because I have that ability, it's called "metacognition", in technical terms, because I have that ability to observe that I'm having a thought, I cannot be the thought itself because you can't be the object subject and the object, you know, it's impossible in the physics. And so this really dawned on me, what if we could spend more time in our observer than in our thoughts? Because we then could see what we were thinking from the outside and go, is that the most useful and helpful thought for me to be having right now? Should I substitute it with something else? Do I need to react in the way that I'm about to right now, which is very unwise and angry? Or is there a wiser response that I could choose instead that would serve me better? And so becoming your own observer is a practice. It's easy to say and explain. But when you actually try and do it, you have to override all of your patterned programming that you've had since you were a very small child that happens literally automatically. You have to switch your autopilot off and that's the practice. And it's very, I can tell you from my own experience, it took me years to really learn how to do that well. It's not an instant conversion. It takes a lot of dedicated practice. And I found that having meditation daily helped me with that conversion and that practice because you have to be quite calm and still sometimes to have enough pause to do it. So that's number three. Number four was Building purposeful, powerful and sustainable relationships is the route to happiness. And I've got lots of stories about this in the book but the main one I would share is that when I went off on this journey I had no idea it was going to take this long and one of the former employees of my company I helped them find a new job when I sold the business when I left England. Because they'd been so loyal to me and they were so brilliant at what they did. They were young. I could see they had a great future. So I found a rival company and said, whispered in their ear and said, could you give this person a job? I think you won't regret it because they're going to be amazing. And that's how it turned out. So about 13, 14 years later, when I was living in Poland at the time, I called this lady and just said, how are doing? Because we were friends. And I had to talk to her for literally ages. I said, you what are you up to professionally? She said, well, I'm just about to launch a brand new company with this other lady who I worked with, where you sent me and it's worked out really well, thanks. We're going to launch our own business. I said, what's it doing? She said, we're going to be coaching leaders and stuff like that. I said, is there a room on board for one more coach like me? She said well that's interesting because you were my boss for six years and if you joined I'd be your boss, how'd you feel about that? And I said well I completely have no problem with that, I'm really happy to be 100 % in service to you, I know what your mission is, I'd like to support you, yeah I'd love to do that. So I've been working with her and that organization ever since, I'm a freelance but I still work with that organization and my life's full of instances where I've never really had to apply for a job or do anything Everything I've ever had as an opportunity has come through invitations through the relationships I've got. And that's because from the outset I've tried to intentionally build powerful and purposeful relationships. And one way of doing that, say for example, how that might sound is like, let's say you and me both join the company at the same time or we're both in the same department, we sit side by side, we're doing similar work. I could say to you, David, we're going to work together probably for the next couple of years, right? We could either just come in and do our work and go off home and hardly speak to each other unless there's a problem. Or we could say, let's have a conversation about what our dreams and visions are for our best self. And we share those with each other. And we make a pact that we're going to give each other radical support and radical challenge to be that person. And we're to give each other feedback and help each other get to that vision. Should we do that? That's an intentional relationship that you're authoring with that person's blessing, togetherness. You're doing it intentionally and I find those relationships more satisfying and more powerful. That's what I mean. Number five is about proactive well-being. And because in the modern era, you know, we really have to take ownership fully for our emotional well-being, our physical well-being, our spiritual well-being and our mental health. Because the modern world is very challenging on all those levels. And no one's going to step in and check we're doing OK, and do it for us. And so proactively taking care of well-being involves things like how do you look after your body? How do you look after your mind? What do you do to cultivate your own soul? What makes your soul sing? And do you do those things regularly? Because otherwise you're just going to kind of have a breakdown or come to a halt, get very ill and things like that. So there's a whole topic on well-being which can't really do justice here. And then the final rule, and the final rule is the most interesting one to me, rule number six, because it only works if you're doing these five first. Rule number six won't work if you're not doing those. If you are doing them all, rule number six is Find and empower other people to live that way. And that is so important as a leader because it's how you know and prove that you've integrated that understanding fully for yourself is by teaching others and the only way you can make it really deep in yourself is by having to model it and teach it and show it and be it to others and so that's important. yeah, thank you. And I wonder which of do you find most leaders struggle with most? Especially young leaders, young professionals? Yeah, it's quite hard to give you a scientifically quantified answer. I don't know, but I encounter all of them in the different relationships that I have with people I coach. But common ones are obviously, becoming your own observer is not something that is common. People are consumed by their own thinking quite a bit. I think people do get a sense of the works to build powerful relationships, but they could apply more intentionality to that, I think everyone's quite hot these days on proactive wellbeing. I mean, that seems to be from what I can pick up. Everyone's aware of that and of taking steps to address that. I think leaders have to make this shift from being focused on targets and goals and performance to being focused on the development of others. And that's a shift that we're seeing in real time, happening all the time, and that's growing. That's picking up a lot of momentum. That's how I'd answer that question. Those are some of my thoughts. yeah, great. I come to a question about leadership. Tell me about your leadership, of yourself and others and what challenges and milestones shaped you in the person you are today. And I mean, of course, your journey, I mean, you've spoken about changes that happened, but is there any particular challenge or particular milestones that find really important for your change? Yeah, think, I mean, when I was, when I stepped into the role of founding the company and becoming the CEO of that company, obviously I had no experience prior to that of being a CEO. I mean, I was out of my depth, something rotten. I was really, I was really not knowing what to do for a lot of the job. And so I hired a mentor and I saw the value of having that person. to be able to turn to and say, how do I think about this? Or how do I approach this? Or how do I do this? And for a while that sustained me and I saw the value of having that. But I think what I did want to do as a leader was to just build something I felt really proud of. And so that, for me, was the major driving force of what I was trying to do. And something I felt proud of meant that anybody could walk into our office and see that we were actually living and breathing the principles we had on the wall as a culture. And that was the most important thing. I didn't mind if we missed the target or we weren't like the richest company or we weren't growing at the fastest rate or any of those things. Those things were important. I'm not denying though. There was attention put on those things because every company needs to grow and create more profits in order to actually develop itself. So that was some attention that but for me personally, the real measure of success was are we building something that we're proud of and that other people respect and admire in terms of how we live it. And that was validated when I was chosen as the business leader of the year by the Daily Telegraph. And so that was one of my most powerful moments of my life. That was a peak moment for me. These days, obviously, I don't run, own or operate a business, so I'm not in the direct seat of leadership. But I do sometimes get the chance to take up leadership roles in my community with fundraising projects. In the book, I wrote a story when I was in Thailand and in Nepal in Asia. I came across a couple of things that really deeply touched me. An elephant sanctuary in Thailand and an orphanage in Nepal where I organised a picnic for 60 kids for about $25. And I saw the impact it had on those institutions and what they were trying to do and it was amazing. And I kept bugging me afterwards. I kept thinking, what could I do to help? What could I do to help? So I took the lead and I... I decided to start a fundraising organisation, it was just me, but I kind of addressed it as the "Calling All Angels campaign" and I had a big network so I started to write articles and stories into my network to try and get people's awareness. And then I met a guy, just randomly, who was a marathon runner and I'd never run in my life. And I was 48 years old when I met Matt Campbell, his name is. And he told me about marathon running and it just made me really... goosebumps with excitement when he was talking and I thought, I know there's something in this for me, just like it was when I got called to the audition for the play, was a very similar knowing. I knew there was something there. And I said to Matt, do you think I could run a marathon? Because I could use that to raise money for my foundation. And he said, yeah, you probably could. He said, I'll tell you what though, if you stay here where I live in Chiang Mai for six months, I'll train you and coach you how to run your first marathon. So I said, OK, it's a deal. So I stayed there for six months. And every day I was training and learning and getting ready. And then in the evenings and between sessions, I was doing fundraising on the phone. In 2009, the first of November, I ran my first marathon, it was in New York, the New York marathon, and managed to get a place. And because I applied to that thinking I'm never going to get a place there, I got a place immediately. That was a confirmation signal that I was meant to be in that race. I ran it and I raised $15,000. money to take back to the orphanage and to the elephant nature park and some got sent to a cancer charity in the UK as well. And just doing all of that really put me back into a leadership role, you know, and really championing these people without a voice and no support. you know, I went on to do, it was such a success that I decided I did four more marathons in my fifties. managed to raise about $50,000 in total for that foundation. that's another example of how living by one's values, because that just honored all my values. It gave me a sense of purpose about being, you know, making spreading joy and happiness in the world. It just lined up with everything on my dashboard that is in my rule number one, know, building a foundation of self-awareness. Hmm. Just justified all of that kind of conscious choice I was making and it all worked and people really supported it. I don't know if that answers the question. I might have gone off on a track. leadership, absolutely. Many people today, want to be successful. I mean, success, success, and they strive in different ways. And I wonder, when you walked away, or when you let go of what you had, what did you learn about success? Yeah, mean success, you define success how other people might measure it or you define success in your own terms and I'd always defined it in my early life as how other people would measure it and that meant I put my ladder up against what I call the wrong wall. I ended up with the success materially but that didn't make any difference to me. Yeah. But when you define it in your own terms, like are you living a life of purpose, vision, values, are you deeply content and fulfilled through being who you are, that's a different measure. tell us your definition of success today, would that be? I don't know if everyone would want my definition. I'll tell you, I'm sure some people would say no, that's not the bit. I define success. When I go to bed at night, can I go to sleep saying, "Did I show up in the best way that I could have done today? Was I kind? Was I compassionate? Did I give my best? Did I live true to my values and my way of being?" and if I can honestly close my eyes and put my head on it and go yeah I did, I did my absolute best I feel like the most successful person on earth yeah, yeah, that's it. After came back from your travels, how did you reintegrate your learning, things that you learned on your trip and so on? How did you use that learning into forming your life in a different way? Yeah, well, that's a great question. I obviously I was about halfway through the book in 2019 when I returned to the UK after 14 years. I'd started writing it in 2015. So, you know, three or four years of effort, was halfway there. And I knew in my guidance from my meditation was when you get back to England Ray, your main priority is to get the book finished and get it out into the world. That sort of took over my life for about a year and a half or two years until I got to the final manuscript. And then the book got launched and I've spent a lot of time ever since then talking to people about the wisdom that's sort of chronicled in that book. I give lots of talks, I go to book fairs to meet people who've read the book, I coach people who are interested in wanting to move their lives in that way but want some help. So it's kind of given me a new avenue of engagement that I didn't have before, just the life of the book and the story. At the same time, parallel to that, I was always a leadership coach throughout my journey. And so I now work as an associate for two or three different organizations who bring me in to coach their clients, and they're happy to do that. And I can share everything. What's really great about me doing that is I got, obviously, 10 years as a CEO. So I've got a lot of knowledge firsthand of being a leader. And I've got 10 more years of living, acquiring like more like Buddhist philosophy and other mindfulness teachings and training. I facilitate a mindfulness program for leaders, which I trained and certified in while I was in Asia. And so I've got a lot more depth and understanding in my own self of what it... what it takes to be a leader and it's not just about doing, it's more about the doing and being and how those two things combine and so I sort of feel much more capable as a leadership coach as well. If you would describe a typical day or a rhythm that you lived today, how would that look like? Describe a typical day for you today? Today's one exactly, you know, I woke up this morning I would have gone for a run really early, but it was pouring with rain in England So I decided to push it to tomorrow, but I woke up showered I come downstairs. I meditate for 20, 25 minutes quietly have a have a cup of coffee and then crack into opening messages and stuff for the day and get my first group coaching call today at 10 so I six clients together in a team that I'm coaching. Then I stopped that. I have an update call with one of the companies I work for as an associate, the leader of the CEO of that company, just to get a picture of what's coming down the line for the next few months. I then had lunch with my partner at home because I'm working from home. It's a touch base with her. And now I'm in this podcast interview with you. And then later on this afternoon, I've got a call with another business colleague who I'm going to be looking at a project with. And then I'll be doing bits and pieces as the day ends. Yeah Yeah, wow, interesting. What gives your life energy the work you do now and how do you keep the energy day by day? I get a lot of energy from feedback. A couple of days ago I saw someone posted on LinkedIn that they've made some huge changes and they're moving on in their life and they gave the reasons why. One of them that they mentioned was a leadership development programme they did two or three years ago, which is the programme that I work on and they named us said you know thanks to you guys because without that I don't think I would be doing this so when I hear and see people making real physical changes like that man I could sort of fly off the ground it's I love those things, so get a lot of energy from feedback and I get quite a lot of feedback from book readers and from colleagues, from people I coach. Other things outside of work, like I'm loving family life because I've been with my partner two years now. Since I returned, I'm tied now into a beautiful relationship again. and she has an extended family with lots of grandkids and I love playing with the grandkids. I never had children of my own when I was born so I feel like I'm filling in a missing part of my life by doing that. That gives me lot of energy. And then I also love adventure so I've just bought a motorbike to get it on Saturday. So I'm going to do quite a bit of touring on a motorcycle again which I always used to do when I was younger but I haven't done that for a long So projects like that, travelling, exploring, adventures, they give me energy too. And of course, last but not least, learning. I never stop. I'm reading books, watching TED Talks, videos all the time. And those things really energise me when I receive them. Yeah, great. advice would you give, for example, a 28-year-old professional who feels the tension between striving and meaning? What advice would you give them? Yeah, there's so many things one could say. I think I would start by saying the most important thing I think is the first step is to get your vision aligned. Really spend a lot of time until you feel you're ready. It can take months, it can take a year even sometimes, but just architect a vision that you truly feel compelled by and then start working out what are the steps that take me from where I sit today closer to that vision, what's the journey going to be, what are the steps in there. And working with the coach can help of course, but you can do it anyway. But without that vision being reasonably clear, like so for example, it doesn't have to be exact. When I did my vision work say in 2010, when I was halfway through my journey, I envision my life in terms of I put it into four pieces. What's my professional work vision? What's my home vision? What's self as a man in the world vision? And what's my vision as a partner in a relationship? And I use statements to describe it. So I would say, you know, like in my professional work, I travel constantly with my work. I'm engaged by companies to talk about the things that are really meaningful to me like vision values, etc. So I didn't say I'm going to go and give a talk at IBM. That would be too specific. But you can be broad enough, but it has to be specifically meaningful to you that you know what you're talking about. So getting that vision right, and by the way, for those that are listening, I exposed my vision in the book because I did all this work and I actually set it out so people could see what one person's vision physically looks like just to get the format of it. I don't have to copy my vision, but so they could see how I set it out and the amount of detail in it. So I put that in the book too. I didn't think when I first wrote the first draft I didn't, but then I thought this would be a good thing to do. of the last questions here. How do you balance and life? Because leaders struggle, struggle, struggle, work, work, work and forget family life. How do you find this balance now? Well, I've found I've had to make some adjustments consciously. You when I met my partner, I worked quite hard in a lot of days and I saw that we had a vision of what we wanted our relationship to be and the way I was working and my patterns of working were going to prevent that vision from actually being possible. So I had a choice to make and I decided to change and scale back my capacity for work in order to accommodate that vision for our relationship. I did it gradually over six to 12 months. So I could taper out of one way of working and taper in a new way. So it was kind of very gradual and thoughtfully done. So no one got a shock. including me, but now two years later I've got my balance of work and the rest of my life quite different. Just in terms of numbers of days that I'm willing to do and the kind of work I'm prepared to take on because certain types of work for me take a lot more preparation than others etc etc so these are just things to be thought about but is it possible to phase it gradually and taper it? That's a good way of doing it. If you had to leave us with thought, like one truth, about living a purposeful life without a tie, what would that be? I would definitely choose what I've said on the cover of the book, which is finding your own true path in life amidst the noise, chaos and pressure to conform is the hardest thing, but it's the most rewarding, satisfying thing I think any of us can do. So my encouragement would be find your true path and start walking on it. Yeah, great, perfect. You mentioned before about foundation, "Calling All Angels Foundation". Yes. Can you tell us a little about that? Yeah, it's just a vehicle I put together as a, people can look at that online, but it's a vehicle I put together to be able to do things like run marathons and other events and take the money that's raised to causes that really benefit from it. And so I don't have any... money to draw on other... Every penny that got raised went to those things. That's why I wanted to do it because I was a bit cynical about some of these huge global charities that end up, I don't know, actually deploying about 20 % of what they raise and the rest goes in staff salaries and admin costs etc. I didn't want to be part of that. Where can people find you if they want to get in contact with you and buy your book or get some coaching and so on? yeah, yeah, I mean, the easiest place in the first instance, I've got a website called lifewithoutatai.com that's described in the book and me... and you can reach me through that. I'm on LinkedIn. There's a lot of people reach me through LinkedIn. And either of those is a great way to start a conversation with me. I'm happy to jump on a Zoom call or something with anyone who's interested in talking, of course. I'd be delighted to talk to anybody so they can get me those two ways is probably the easiest. And the book's on Amazon, which is global. Yeah. Okay. Well, thank you. Thank you for being on the podcast today. It has been really nice to hear your life what you're doing. so I talk to your listeners and viewers. Thank you to you too for being here today. If you feel that this story has resonated with you, hesitate to contact Ray and buy the book. That's something you can do. I want to thank you especially if you have listened to the podcast also. Subscribe to this podcast you don't miss when the next is released. Or do share the podcast episode with somebody you think might need it or hear it. Thank you for today and until next time. Bye bye. Bye.