Happiness is a state of perception.

Happiness is a state of perception.

I talk a lot about my journey and how it came to pass that I freed myself from the trauma and baggage of my parents, friends and other negative influences in my life. I give you examples of how I did it and what steps I took to give me a happier perception of the world I am living in because that’s all it is, perception.

Let’s rewind ourselves in my journey 20 years or more when I had just been diagnosed as a Paranoid Schizophrenic by a panel of professionals. My life was literally over as soon as my consultant psychiatrist could even suggest such a thing. Here was me, a bright young boy with all his life ahead of him; with goals, with bucket lists, with aims, and it was all squashed by that diagnosis over one night. From there I basically gave up. Life was for existing now and nothing else. If I had ever enjoyed life beforehand this was the final nail in the coffin to any future.

I always remember the young lady friend I had that told me the sparkle that was once in my eyes was now gone. She was basically right. The fun-loving energy that I once had was now extinguished. I had moved to surviving instead of living.

See, this is where I had it wrong though.

This is where I had royally fucked up. I basically locked myself in my own mental prison and thrown away the lock and key. Nothing had changed about my life since the diagnosis. I was still Raymond, and I STILL had my whole life ahead of me, and if I thought about it hard enough there were still a copious number of things I could have achieved with my life. I was only twenty-one, and I was young enough to grab the world by the bollocks and run for it screaming. I could have achieved anything I wanted to – I certainly did that later in life, but alas, I had thrown myself in a bad spiral of negativity.

This is why people can get locked in their own prison of negativity and the world can seem a terribly harsh place to live in. We get trapped in past events and let them spiral out of control in our consciousness so that it impairs our ability to make good decisions for ourselves. I mean look at me, right? Young, 21, headhunted by various businesses, and had a career ahead of me. But right after having that diagnosis, just with the knowledge that I was something other than normal changed everything for me. Yet nothing had actually changed,

Only knowledge.

It’s why I’ve stopped reading the news and mainstream media; it’s all overbearing and negative and doom and gloom. I feel it’s almost designed to limit public transcendence into a happier medium. There’s always something going on in mainstream media, whether it’s President Trump, North Korea, The UK, Brexit, Men, Women, black, white, transgender, hetero, whatever, but when I pull myself back from all that world stuff and identify with my individuality and local surroundings it all seems far calmer and lovely. It feels happier again. It’s always better to refresh from time to time and reconnect with my surroundings.

People are outdated.

We are designed to think in stereotypes and blanket statements because our thinking hasn’t evolved much from when we existed in little communities shut off from the rest of the world. Existing in our caves we probably came across a handful of other humans in our lifetime, so ‘all red people’ was a relatively fair statement about the handful of red people a person saw in their lifetime. Now that the world has gone and connected itself beyond ways in which we can barely imagine, making a blanket statement simply doesn’t cut it anymore because if you look outwardly at the world you’ll see that most people are their own squiggly shaped peg and there’s no way they are going to fit anywhere near into the tight square hole society makes for them.

The media, and social media especially, preys on this aspect and it uses it to its advantage; to spread fear, to spread doubt, to spread miscommunication and create large ravines between humanity. Labels are important, but they are also being used against us too. We are less efficient when we are angry at one another than when we are united as one. If I spend my life being angry at [x label] then how am I going to have any time to concentrate on my own wellbeing, right?

So this is why I designed the Man Cave. A very large social project to make a good stab at bridging humanity closer together again. Where men can come in and just be themselves. There is no emphasis on being better, or changing for someone else, or doing x to make y happy. The aim will be to regain your personal power and be the best version of yourself -- that you are fine just as you are. Most people are squiggly pegs, y'know? And that's just fine. I think the Political climate right now oversimplifies things.

The core objectives of the man cave will actually BE to better ourselves, to learn new skills, trades, hobbies, or even just information -- and there are several men in there already who are ready and willing to share their awesome spice of life. They will learn from you, and vice versa.

Buuuut, if you have just come for the free whisky and cigars? That's fine too. Take a pew and take seat in one of our many chill zones and discuss beer, football, sports, or.. start up your own chat! The world is your oyster :)

Someone once told me to be the change you want to see in the world, and this is exactly what I'm doing.

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