Gratitude – The Quickest Way To Change Your Life.

It’s the time of the year where millions of Americans will be celebrating Thanksgiving. In the spirit of giving and being grateful, I am dedicating this article to a unique individual who, over the last five years, saved my life on numerous occasions. Many of us are looking forward to saying goodbye to 2020, a year that has challenged us to the core and it has also allowed us to be grateful to the things and the people that matter most in our life.

You are reading this article because you do value gratitude because a someone or something in your life is helping you grow.

It’s an assumption that life is only challenging and complicated, and that because we’re going through a global pandemic, that it’s ‘all bad’, that things are ‘falling apart’ and we’re all in this ‘doom and gloom’ cycle together. Millions of people are buying into this mass market thinking, so was I until my paths crossed with Tony J. Selimi, a down to earth, hardworking, yet extremely professional and wise life strategist and business coach specialising in human behaviour, emotional intelligence and the psychology of success and wellbeing.

Before I share more of why I am so grateful to him, the pain he had to undergo to become the global teacher that he now is, take a quick moment and reflect on how what is shared on media makes you feel? Anxious? Angry? Tense? Desperate? Frustrated? Sad? Hopeless?

Know this, for over twenty years, I was living in a state where I was allowing the outer voices to influence every decision I was making. To the point where I became diagnosed with pure OCD, attempted to commit suicide on multiple occasions and became an alcoholic. I wished each day to have the strength to end my life, and with it, my pain and the pain I caused to my loved ones.

Embarking on an inside out personal transformation coaching and mentoring journey with Tony is the best decision I have ever made. It has been challenging, as working with a world-class expert does indeed come at an emotional and financial cost that generates a temporary pain. But, if like me you suffered for over twenty years, you will come to realise that investing in yourself is the greatest gift you can give to your future self.

When you live for over twenty years with pain, it takes courage, commitment and command of your inner voice. Tony’s integrated coaching took me from being at the mercy of the dominant outer voices of society to building inner resilience and strength and better manage my mental health. Tony’s incredible wisdom and ability to provide a safe place for me to heal is what created an alternative path that I am so grateful for.

We all have the power to change our reality literally. Still, when you are living imprisoned in “the caves of wretched solitude” a term Tony coined in his multi-award winning book #Loneliness, you are blinded to your power, greatness and wisdom.

Tony helped me shift my perspective on life, transformed my thinking and took me from a place of deep anger, frustration and pain into deep gratitude and appreciation for my life.

He helped me create a healthy mental health routine. On awakening, I sit down and write my daily gratitude journal with approximately thirty things I am grateful for in the previous day. And, for the last five years, without any intention, I’ve always written ‘I am thankful that Tony J. Selimi is in my life as my coach, healer and mentor.’

This year has been very challenging. I spent over seven months of it being unemployed. Consulting with him on a regular monthly basis, awakened me to the truth of how much the employer’s we work for contribute to our lives, through the exchange of a salary for the value we provide. This on it’s own stopped me from listening to the majority of people who were complaining bitterly about their jobs and being on furlough or laid off. Tony’s unique way of coaching transformed my psychology and instilled in me an attitude of gratitude, including towards those who I once perceived as moaners and greedy employers.

He made me dig deeper, and as I did that, I realised how the companies we work contribute to.

• The paying of our household bills, electricity, gas as an example
• The food that we buy for ourselves
• The clothes we buy for ourselves
• TV licence so we can entertain ourselves
• Trips to places that we love, in my case it’ll be London
• The costs of travel and accommodation for these trips
• Mobile phone so we can connect and communicate
• Internet whether mobile or home that allows us to search on subjects of interest
• Insurance should we need this for numerous purposes
• Gifts that we may like to buy for loved ones

So, although yet again, I find myself daily looking through online job-boards, contacting recruiters as I look to find my next position, my attitude is one of gratitude. It is in these difficult moments that what Tony and his books teach us that we can find the wisdom needed for us being grateful even when we hurt the most.

Such as the interconnectedness that surrounds us, so when I see many complaints about people’s partners, parents, children and employers, I wonder how many miracles these people would experience if like me, they too were to learn from this incredible teacher. His groundbreaking TJSeMethod: ALARM® has twenty-five conscious engineering principles that can truly transform your reality, shift your perspectives and instil in you an attitude of forever gratitude. Those of you who want to learn more I highly recommend you get a copy of his internationally bestselling book A Path to Wisdom and study it every day.

Before I worked with this man in 2015, I also had no real idea of how to handle money, as due to my numerous mental health illnesses and addictions, much of my hard-earned money would be squandered on alcohol and drugs to numb me from the pain of my existence back then.

So, when I spent over six months being redundant from March to September and living off furlough money, I was so grateful that I knew I would be able to live spending an absolute minimum each month. My reason why I was so appreciative was that I’d learned a lot about handling my finances through my coaching and mentoring sessions with Tony, and also learned just how far money could indeed go when circumstance beyond our control demands it of us.

Also, being a mental health ambassador, I suddenly then noticed many people and companies promoting positive mental health. Truth being, trying to be positive 100% of the time does not work, and I’ve found it to be exhausting. Ever since Tony crashed this illusion of trying to maintain or attain 100% of the time positive mental attitude, I have become more in peace with who I and all of us are in our essence. His “Duality- The Nest of Solitude” chapter is genuinely worth reading.

Learning to accept all sides of my life, and all traits the positive and negative was a key to my maintaining my mental health throughout 2020, trying to stay positive, and be healthy, will never suffice, especially if your outer circumstance is dictating your inner way of being, and thinking,

I learned on this journey with Tony that 100% positive mental health is an illusion and that seeing life with balanced psychology and not only with a positive one, is vital when it comes to maintaining our emotional and mental wellbeing. Perhaps all the negative experiences of 2020 have taught to you that life is never going to be all rosy, optimistic and right, and has shattered the illusion that this isn’t feasible, knowing this certainly made 2020 easier for myself mentally.

With great metaphors, in each consultation I had with Tony, he made me realise how our inner and outer realities reflect at us our dual nature, the positive and the negative, the good and the bad. In accepting this simple truth that often we are blinded by, he freed me from having a false expectation of self and others. Getting this and many other things Tony has taught me helped me heal my epilepsy, reduce my OCD, and stopped me living in a dream of a one-sided world fantasy.  If you still live this fantasy of trying to internally achieve a positive state of mind, your outer circumstances, will constantly prod at you in an attempt to reveal to you the balance that is already there for you to embrace.

It’s also why over the years I have become even more grateful to Tony J. Selimi and myself for choosing to invest in my self-mastery journey with him since 2015. His teachings helped me to maintain better my mental and physical health, my financial health, and to be grateful even at times, I find myself being made redundant and faced with the challenges of COVID-19.

I am also extremely grateful to all of my previous employers including Amec, Wood Group PSN, BP, Amec Foster Wheeler, Bilfinger, Wood.Plc and Engenda Group for their contribution that has changed my life. In working for these fantastic companies, their contribution to my life means I am now sat at my home office typing on my computer, in my heated home, with my nice clothes on, and plenty of food in my fridge, freezer and cupboards.

And without Tony J. Selimi, I would never have achieved this awareness of being grateful to my family, every company and every person within these companies, who have contributed to the saving of my life. I would also love to say thank you to several CEO’s including Jon Lewis (Amecfw, now Capita) Dave Stewart, Robin Watson (Wood Plc) and Bernard Looney (BP). Somewhere along the line, you all contributed to improving my physical, mental, emotional and financial health. Each job that I held helped me use a proportion of the money I earned in my ongoing wellbeing and professional development coaching journey with a man I can only call a gift to humanity.

May everything I have shared stimulate your imagination of the kind of transformation Tony can do for you, your family, employees, customers and leadership teams. Learning what he has taught me over the years, you too will create the kind of transformations your future self will thank you. The more people go through Tony’s teachings, the more in harmony the world, the businesses and all of us as individuals would be with one another. We would adopt an attitude of gratitude in the presence of one another.

Thank you, Tony J. Selimi for upgrading my mind, allowing me to see the unseen and for your patience and devotion to keeping me mentally healthy, and as you’ve always taught me, our health is our wealth.

Paul McMonagle

Piping Supervisor, Workpack Engineer and Mental Health Ambassador