#395: Divorced. Grieving. Burned Out. So He Left for 6 Months… and Didn’t Return for 14 Years

Kevin Lowe: He's the author of the book called Life Without a Tie, a book that is more than just an enjoyable read.

Kevin Lowe: It's a book here to help set you free, to show you happiness, joy from a man who took a chance, who had everything disappear.

Kevin Lowe: But again, instead of choosing to break down, he chose to break free.

Kevin Lowe: And maybe if nothing else, today's conversation is your inspiration to think about doing the same in your life.

Kevin Lowe: I'm your host, Kevin Lowe. And this, my friend, is episode 395 of Grit, Grace, and Inspiration.

Kevin Lowe: It is my amazing interview with today's guest, Ray Martin.

Kevin Lowe: I hope you enjoy, and more so, I hope that something said today makes an impact on you.

Kevin Lowe: That, well, you can put it into action in your life starting right away.

Kevin Lowe: Here is my interview with Ray Martin.

Podcast Opening Intro: Theme Song Plays: I got Grit, Grace, & Inspiration on my mind

Kevin Lowe: What is going on today? Welcome back to Grit, Grace, and Inspiration.

Kevin Lowe: Today, I have the pleasure of being in the studio with Ray Martin.

Kevin Lowe: Ray, welcome to the podcast.

Ray Martin: Thank you, Kevin. It's a pleasure to be here.

Kevin Lowe: Yes, man. Well, Ray, I'm excited to get to dive into this amazing story that you have today.

Kevin Lowe: But before we get to go traveling around the world with you, we might as well start back in the year 2005 when yeah kind of everything started coming unraveled in your life and so i would love it if we could start our conversation by you kind of taking me back then giving me an idea of kind of life before everything started coming unraveled and then of course those series of events that happened sure

Ray Martin: Yeah i'd love to do that. So let me, oh, I have to think back to 2005. It's now 20 years ago.

Kevin Lowe: If you believe it. Exactly.

Ray Martin: It feels like yesterday in some ways, but it feels like a lifetime ago in others.

Ray Martin: But back in 2005, I was the CEO of a business I founded, a management consulting business based in London, England.

Ray Martin: And my co-founder and business partner was my wife, the woman I was married to.

Ray Martin: And we were a sort of very successful husband and wife management team.

Ray Martin: We grew our company and in 2002 I'd been the recipient of a very prestigious award in England the Daily Telegraph Business Leader of the Year award so I was sort of following the the blueprint that most of us were taught when we were at school to get a really good job and a really good career and a great partner and a great home and start a family and have kids and those sorts of things I was sort of doing that to the letter and it was all sort of working really well that I had this strange sense that somehow I was on the wrong track.

Ray Martin: I didn't know why. It just used to gnaw away at me. I sort of felt I was living someone else's life in some ways.

Ray Martin: And one day, my business partner went off to a meeting and came back and very shockingly and suddenly said, this was after about 12 years together, said, I'm leaving you and I'm leaving the company.

Ray Martin: And it was massively shocking to my system in a way I can't describe.

Ray Martin: At the same time round about the same time my father got very ill and he went into hospital with all sorts of heart problems he died shortly afterwards and so within a very short space of time i was sort of facing being out of the business i created with her out of my home out of my marriage and my father gone and it was hugely disorientating and this was all happening at the back end of 2004 and early 2005 wow yeah that hopefully gives you a picture and i was a broken man at that point, you know, completely lost.

Ray Martin: I wasn't prepared for anything like that in my life. I'd never suffered anything so shocking.

Ray Martin: I just felt really broken. I didn't quite know what to do.

Kevin Lowe: So when your wife came to you with that, you had no idea.

Ray Martin: Well, I knew that I wasn't feeling a hundred percent right about life and how it was unfolding, but I just assumed that everyone had similar thoughts and just sort of normalized it and sort of thought well everyone must have some kind of degree of discontentment about these things i'm i need to be grateful for what i have and surely it will work itself out in the end somehow yeah just sort of just never really never really confronted it fully of.

Kevin Lowe: Course of course now how old were you at this point

Ray Martin: I was 44 then yeah 44 wow.

Kevin Lowe: Now you lost your father Was your mom still alive at this

Ray Martin: Point? Yeah, she still is, in fact. She is.

Kevin Lowe: Amazing.

Ray Martin: Amazing.

Kevin Lowe: Wow. So your wife comes to you, tells you she wants a divorce, but you guys are also business partners. So what does that do to the business?

Ray Martin: Well, it's, you know, it raises a lot of questions. And I looked at that closely because, you know, I had the possibility of continuing running the business without her and finding a replacement.

Ray Martin: But I sort of felt that we were like akin to something like if you're an ice skating pair or something like this.

Ray Martin: There was a creative dance between us, which I felt I couldn't replicate with anybody else because of the relationship we had.

Ray Martin: And the idea of being just a sort of straightforward business partner with someone else, just I didn't have the energy for that.

Ray Martin: And it didn't appeal to me. And I thought, you know, I've been in this field for years.

Ray Martin: 20 years, and I'm ready for something else.

Ray Martin: I don't know what, but I'm ready to do some reflection and explore what else could come next for me, but I don't want to continue down the same path.

Kevin Lowe: Yeah. Now, before I get into my next question, I want to clarify, did you guys have any children together?

Ray Martin: No. That was one of the things that was certainly making our breakup up easier because it was a matter of, you know, our home and our finances needing to be shared. But that was pretty much it.

Kevin Lowe: Yeah. Wow. So here you are 44.

Kevin Lowe: You're now divorced. Business is gone. You just lost your father.

Kevin Lowe: And I can't even imagine, honestly, your mindset at this point of thinking what in the world to do.

Kevin Lowe: But somebody, I think it was somebody or maybe you thought of said something about a sabbatical.

Ray Martin: Yeah, yeah. A good friend of mine, Julie Parker is her name.

Ray Martin: She obviously knew what was going on. And she said, you know, why don't you consider taking a six month sabbatical?

Ray Martin: It might give you a chance to get some new inputs into your thinking.

Ray Martin: If you go to a different place or somewhere different in the world, you might be able to reflect on everything that's happened and see it from a different perspective.

Ray Martin: And you might start to get some sort of ideas emerging about what's next for you and at first when she said it i thought that's ridiculous i've got all these bills to pay at home an expensive lifestyle to maintain there's no way i'm taking six months off i can't afford to i was quite resistant to the idea at first but then as a bit of time passed i suddenly thought oh you know that's actually it's actually quite a good idea i think that's what i'm going to do what tipped me over the edge was that i went out to Australia to look after a friend who

Ray Martin: was unwell who had breast cancer and I said I'd go up and stay with.

Ray Martin: Her for a month and look after her while she was being treated.

Ray Martin: While I was in Australia, I got offered the chance to act in a play, which was something I'd never, ever done or dreamed I'd ever do in my life.

Ray Martin: And the experience of doing that was so new and fresh and so outside of anything I could have ever imagined I would do.

Ray Martin: I loved it, to be honest, Kevin. I absolutely loved being Ray, an actor in a play for two or three months in Australia instead of Ray the Businessman in London, which was the character I'd been playing all my life.

Ray Martin: And it just made me think completely differently because I realized in going into the play and focusing on that for a couple of months, I'd actually learned how to become a character that I had to play.

Ray Martin: He had a certain name, he wore certain clothes, he had a certain voice, certain things to say in the script.

Ray Martin: And I thought, yeah, there's no difference between that character, George's name was.

Ray Martin: There's no difference between George and Ray the businessman, who's just as much a character.

Ray Martin: I'm not... Ray the businessman is not really who I am. It's not me.

Ray Martin: It's a character I play. And I thought, I don't really want to play that character in life anymore, at least not for now.

Ray Martin: So I decided after the play to quit and do the sabbatical because it seemed like quite a good idea now.

Ray Martin: Because even the period just before thinking about it, it started to crack my hardened reality that there wasn't any other option wow.

Kevin Lowe: That is fascinating that a trip to go help a friend suffering from cancer leads to you doing something you've never even done before acting in a play and then that kind of setting off this realization of yeah i just have to change the character i'm playing

Ray Martin: Yeah i mean i wrote about this story at length in a book that came out a couple of years ago and there's a lot more i said about it in there but but essentially the idea for going to see my friend in australia was because i was so depressed and darkened by what was going on so stuck in the mire of all of that suffering that a friend of mine said to me one day do you know what ray if you can't see a way through this and you're feeling bleak and can't see a way out of it one of the things

Ray Martin: you could do for a while would be to find someone else and just go into service 100% to them and just put all your troubles to one side and just go and help someone else for a while.

Ray Martin: And that might open a chink in the universe and sort of create a crack in the impossibility that you're looking into.

Ray Martin: And that's why I went to Australia because of that piece of advice.

Ray Martin: And it was a great piece of advice. Just go and help someone else for a while.

Kevin Lowe: Yeah, absolutely. So would you consider the time in Australia, was that part of the six month sabbatical or was that prior

Ray Martin: To prior prior because what that did was as i was coming back to england i decided to put my house up for sale in london, And what that meant was I was free of any financial burden because all the work that I was doing was mainly to service the debts on the property I was living in.

Ray Martin: And I didn't quite know what I thought I would do because I lived in a very big house.

Ray Martin: I was married and we were going to have a family. So it was big enough to accommodate all of that. But that dream had gone.

Ray Martin: And so I thought, well, I'll sell my house in London and maybe trade down to a smaller apartment just for myself, something small that I can, I don't need so much space.

Ray Martin: But i'll do that when i finish this six month sabbatical i'll sell the house put the money aside and then i'll buy something when i return because i don't want to do that before i go i'm not quite sure where to go and that's what i planned to do i still got rid of everything that was in the house i i minimalized i read the book by joshua fields milburn and ryan nicodemus the minimalists i was totally blown away by their take on minimalism it really fascinated me and i also read

Ray Martin: a book called Stuffocation by James Warman, who talked about how trends in life are changing away from values based on materialism, which was the generation I grew up in as a baby boomer, towards values based on experientialism was the word he used.

Ray Martin: So that millennials and Gen Zs, they are valuing much more the experiences that life offers rather than the material possessions that life offers.

Ray Martin: And I saw I resonated with that immensely. So I left myself with just one bag of clothes and a laptop after I sold my house and gave away all the stuff in it.

Kevin Lowe: Wow. Did family and friends think you were out of your mind?

Ray Martin: Maybe for a few seconds. And I said what my thinking was and why I was doing it.

Ray Martin: I realized that, you know, it wasn't so much of a risk because I had all the money from the house sale set to one side.

Ray Martin: And I certainly had all the expertise and experience i'd always had so i they knew i could re-enter the world of ray the businessman and take up any role i wanted to if it all went wrong and so there was nothing to be lost and everything to be gained because i was searching for new inspiration and new insight and a new perspective so i think the risks are really minimal to be honest yeah.

Kevin Lowe: Yeah no i mean makes sense so here we have ray entering kind of ray 2.0 a new character a new a new character in the play of life he's now sold his house essence he burned the boats as he storms the island and there's no turning back so how does one begin to plan out six months traveling the world i mean what was your plan?

Ray Martin: Well, I was quite lucky in that respect because around about time I made this decision to take the sabbatical, I'd started to have a couple of dates with someone I met in London, and she was also in her own life, you know, going to live abroad, but we hadn't planned to do it together initially.

Ray Martin: But the more we hung out together, she had a fixed date to leave, and she was leaving to go to Thailand in Asia.

Ray Martin: And I sort of was saying, look, let's just hang out while you're here.

Ray Martin: And the day she came to leave, I said, well, have a nice life.

Ray Martin: You know, I'll see you. Well, maybe never, you know, maybe one day.

Ray Martin: And and then i went off and did a couple of other things for a few weeks and when i got back she was still in london and i sort of said yeah why aren't you gone she said well i had some problems with my apartment which i wanted to rent out but there were some plumbing issues and i've had to stick behind and get them all sorted and now i'm ready to go and now i am gonna go she said by the way i've been thinking a lot about you and how us being together and i wondered if you might be willing or interested to join me on this trip?

Ray Martin: And she said, I'm scared to ask you because I feel like I hardly know you, right?

Ray Martin: And I said, well, that's interesting. I feel the same. I hardly know you, but something tells me it's feeling good. I said, why?

Ray Martin: I've just made a decision independently to sell my house in London.

Ray Martin: I think it's going to take about two or three months for that sale to go through.

Ray Martin: Why don't you move into my house with me for those two or three months and we'll live together and we'll find out if we're going to make it work on.

Ray Martin: And it was really spontaneous and it was really risky because i i but i had a good feeling i just had a good feeling and i've learned from a lot of spiritual teachers when you follow that good feeling often it works out really really well and that's your wisdom speaking to you i had a good feeling she said yes and then the rest is history we embark then together to go to asia oh.

Kevin Lowe: My goodness ray man 2.0 is going off the charts

Ray Martin: It was like honestly i sometimes i some days i felt like i was in a film a movie it was like it was so surreal i couldn't believe it was my actual real life yeah.

Kevin Lowe: So timeline from the time that those three months we talked about in 2005 when things started coming on Ravel.

Kevin Lowe: How long before you would set off on the trip to Thailand?

Ray Martin: Well, I did the trip to Australia in April of that year.

Kevin Lowe: Okay.

Ray Martin: And I finally sold up and left and got everything out.

Ray Martin: I left on, I think it was the 14th or 15th of November to go to Thailand.

Ray Martin: And the girl I was going with, she went out about a week before to get the first space set up for us.

Kevin Lowe: Okay. Wow. Now, prior to this trip to Thailand, had you ever done any extensive traveling like this?

Ray Martin: No, nothing. I mean, I'd been a sort of consumer of package holidays, you know, where you get a flight and a hotel and you just get taken from the airport to the hotel and you enjoy that and then you get shipped back to the airport and maybe do a couple of tours.

Ray Martin: But it's all sort of organized and laid on for you. So that was really the main type of travel I'd consumed, but no independent travel, which we were really going to do, where you just plan your own routes, you make your own arrangements, you go, you move and change as you feel like it, and you stay longer if you want to and things like that.

Ray Martin: And it's budget, you know, you're staying in straw huts on a beach rather than a hotel.

Kevin Lowe: Exactly.

Ray Martin: That was all new. It was like being Robinson Crusoe for a while.

Ray Martin: You know, it was completely new.

Kevin Lowe: Absolutely. I know I, in my head, I'm like, I can't think of anywhere more opposite than to go all the way to Thailand.

Kevin Lowe: So talk to me about that experience.

Kevin Lowe: You're setting off on this six month sabbatical.

Kevin Lowe: You're starting off in Thailand with a new person in your life.

Kevin Lowe: What was that experience?

Ray Martin: Well, it was mind blowing. You know, like every day was like a massive learning curve because, you know, in Thailand, the language is different.

Ray Martin: The climate's different. It's humid.

Ray Martin: Everything's designed in a different way. The streets, the vehicles, the way that people move around, even in restaurants, you know, they don't serve meals in the same way that they do in England or in America.

Ray Martin: If you're in a restaurant with someone, you might get your second course first while the other person gets nothing or they might get their meal before you 10 minutes and they finish by the time yours arrives.

Ray Martin: It's like, it's completely like, there's no...

Ray Martin: All the expectations we have about how things should be just don't operate in Thailand or any country in Asia for that matter.

Ray Martin: I mean, unless you're in Hong Kong or Singapore, where it's a bit more westernized.

Ray Martin: But a lot of it's very, very basic. And there's no ego involved.

Ray Martin: So you can't sort of sit in a restaurant thinking to yourself, God, don't they know who I am? Don't they realize how important I was in England?

Ray Martin: You just have to be humble and just know that you're an absolute nobody. And that's how it is.

Kevin Lowe: And I would almost think, though, in a sense, especially in this point in your life, that had to almost be freeing in a way. Oh, it was.

Ray Martin: Yeah. I mean, I was loving it. I love the anonymity of the life I was in.

Ray Martin: I was wearing flip flops and shorts and T-shirt every day of my life.

Ray Martin: I never had a shirt or a tie or a suit or any clothes at all like that.

Ray Martin: I had 20 kilos of clothes for the whole of my journey.

Ray Martin: And I love the simplicity and anonymity of it all.

Ray Martin: And I didn't have to worry about my image at all. I mean, it was quite psychologically challenging in some ways, but I loved it in the most for the most part.

Kevin Lowe: Yeah. So how long would you stay in Thailand for before moving on somewhere else?

Kevin Lowe: Or did you? I don't know. Maybe you stayed there the whole time.

Ray Martin: Yeah, for quite a few months because it's a big country and me and Annie, the lady I was traveling with, we wanted to see a lot of it.

Ray Martin: So we did quite a few different trips and tours just between the two of us.

Ray Martin: We even did attend a silent retreat in a Buddhist monastery, a silent meditation retreat with Buddhist monks in what's known as a Vipassana retreat, because after four or five months of being abroad, I was in paradise physically, but inside myself, emotionally, I was still feeling a bit of a wreck.

Ray Martin: I felt guilty about being a crappy husband. I felt a lot of shame about the failure of my life that I'd left.

Ray Martin: I felt scared about the future, very anxious that I wouldn't be secure financially and things like that.

Ray Martin: So I had a lot going on inside me that was troubling me. But when I spoke to other travelers about it, one or two said to me, have you ever thought of doing a meditation retreat like a vipassana?

Ray Martin: And I said, I don't even know what a vipassana is. And they said, well, you go into the monastery, you sit with the monks, you do silent meditations for 10 days, and they teach you about the Dharma, which is the Buddhist teachings.

Ray Martin: They said I think it could really work for you I think you'd get a lot from it and so in the end I decided to go for that and it changed my life doing that, absolutely was a game changer.

Kevin Lowe: Okay, you're going to have to tell me more about this because I'm very intrigued and also very confused about a 10-day silent meditation retreat.

Kevin Lowe: What is involved besides my envision of you just sitting like cross-legged in silence?

Ray Martin: Well, you're basically there to learn. That's the really fundamental thing.

Ray Martin: It's a learning experience. And so what you're learning is external information in the form of Dharma talks.

Ray Martin: So one time each day, one of the monks, only one of the monks will speak to the group and impart wisdom and teachings from the Buddhist texts and explain different parts of their principles and thinking.

Ray Martin: So you're being taught about life. And so, for example, one of the things that I was taught about, which has massively influenced how I think ever since and still does, is what the Buddhists call the cycle of craving.

Ray Martin: Because in the Buddhist way of looking at life, life contains suffering.

Ray Martin: Suffering is a part of life.

Ray Martin: And we create our own suffering because in our thinking mind, which is where most of us live most of the time, in our thinking mind.

Ray Martin: We think about how we think life should be.

Ray Martin: We have expectations of things we would desire how life should be and yet at the same moment we look at our actual real life in that moment and realize that our life as we see it is not as it should be or what we expect and there's a gap and the gap between what we expect and what's actually really happening that gap creates suffering a feeling of suffering like a hole in yourself that you can't fill and people try and fill that hole through all sorts of things you know drugs tea coffee beer alcohol

Ray Martin: shopping working a lot but everyone who's in that sort of discomfort in that gap is trying to fill that gap make that feeling go away and then something you get some let's say you get a new relationship a new boyfriend or a new girlfriend or some some new car or something like that for a few minutes or a few days the suffering stops you've got what the buddhists call temporary cessation so it stops for.

Ray Martin: A bit and then that the effects of that start to wear off and so you start clinging to finding something else which will then take the suffering away and then you have new desires and a new cycle of suffering begins and so it's called the cycle of suffering and we're all subject to it every single one of us and i didn't i wasn't aware of that i was i was what they call ignorant ignorant you know not seeing it basically i didn't have this understanding of life before i did the meditation retreat and when it came out i had that understanding

Ray Martin: and many many others that they taught us as well and it really started to shift.

Ray Martin: How I was thinking about life and me in it.

Ray Martin: Wow that explains it.

Kevin Lowe: Yeah no i mean i think that's fascinating now what was kind of the outcome after those 10 days

Ray Martin: Well first of all i felt hugely calm inside my own mind so when i went into the monastery on day one if i had a volume knob on the side of my head for the thoughts the crazy agitated thoughts in my mind it would have been a nine out of ten you know very loud very noisy and then when i came out it would have been a one or two out of ten so it's like someone had literally turned the volume down of my crazy thinking, my agitated thinking.

Ray Martin: So I felt very calm, very grounded, very peaceful.

Ray Martin: And it created in me a desire to build on and continue my mindfulness practice and develop that.

Ray Martin: So then I was looking for a place where I could go and stay for a while, where I could regularly meditate in a group.

Ray Martin: And I chose a place called Chiang Mai in the north of Thailand, which I knew had places like that. And I joined the mindful community and started to meditate every week with them to develop and build on my own practice.

Ray Martin: That's what happened next.

Kevin Lowe: Wow. Wow. Amazing. So I guess what I'm kind of wondering is, I mean, six months can pass pretty quickly.

Kevin Lowe: And me knowing the little bit of the behind the scenes, at some point in time, six months turned into 14 years.

Ray Martin: Yeah, that's right.

Kevin Lowe: So what was the point when you realized I'm not done?

Ray Martin: Yeah, I think it was after the end of the first six or seven months.

Ray Martin: I knew I wanted to stay longer and I didn't quite know how long or what was keeping it apart from this desire to keep growing and learning.

Ray Martin: And I had no kids in England, no property to look after, no stuff to look after, no job. I was self-employed, so no job.

Ray Martin: So I had nothing to rush back for, literally nothing at all.

Ray Martin: To come back to England for.

Ray Martin: And so I just decided to continue. And then...

Ray Martin: Life took on a sort of – life flowed in its own way.

Ray Martin: Like, for example, about after one year, I got taken to a place called the Elephant Nature Park in Thailand where they rescue elephants that are injured or distressed and they give them a new home in the wild again and look after them.

Ray Martin: It's a beautiful place. I've written much about it in my book. It's just lovely.

Ray Martin: And I was very moved by seeing the work they were doing there, which they were doing on a shoestring.

Ray Martin: You know, they had no government funding, no budget or anything.

Ray Martin: And they're relying totally on donations. And I started to think, God, I wish I could do something to help them raise money because that would really help them.

Ray Martin: And then I did some trekking in the Himalayas in Nepal.

Ray Martin: And I came across an orphanage in Pokhara where I organized a picnic for about 60 kids.

Ray Martin: And I saw the light that that brought to their lives, just spending $20 and organizing a picnic for an afternoon.

Ray Martin: And they started to make me think, gosh, you know, I wish I could do more for them.

Ray Martin: Look at this you know what what could they do if they could get everyone here a place in a good school and stuff like this and i started to have all these thoughts about what i could do and then by chance on my travels i met somebody called matt campbell an englishman who was living in thailand with his wife and kids and he'd run six marathons he was about 10 years younger than me and i said what's it like running a marathon he told me and as he was describing it kevin i was my body was tingling with excitement and

Ray Martin: curiosity i knew that my body was telling me there's something in this so i'm curious about this and so i listened carefully and i then i said to him look i've been trying to rack my brains to think of something i could do to raise money i said do you think i could do you think i could run a marathon matt he said have you run before i said no never not even he said well he looked at me physically and he said well you look quite fit And I guess you probably could, but I'll tell you what, I know why you're asking me.

Ray Martin: I mean, if you decide to stay here in Chiang Mai for six months, I promise I will train you to run a marathon if you want to do that.

Ray Martin: But you've got to stay here so I can work with you closely and we'll do it together.

Ray Martin: And I said, okay. I shook his hand and said, I'm going to do that.

Ray Martin: And so I started a fundraising foundation called the Calling All Angels Foundation.

Ray Martin: I started to train for my first marathon which i ran in new york in 2009 and i managed to raise fifteen thousand dollars in donations from that effort wow and i took it and i took that money and split it between the elephant nature park the orphanage in nepal and a cancer charity and i i went back to those places in person with their share of the money and distributed it and used it to buy building supplies and get school fixed and buy computers and, And this was all made up off my own back. I was doing it purely alone.

Ray Martin: I had no team, no staff, no admin or anything.

Ray Martin: I was literally doing it all myself. It took me two years to do that.

Kevin Lowe: Wow. Do you realize in the story, just let's set aside the amazing fact of the money that you were able to raise and then give to these different organizations.

Kevin Lowe: But i couldn't help but think of the most wild thing of you decide that you're going to run a marathon which is like who does that then you you start training in somewhere like thailand and yet your first marathon is in new york

Ray Martin: City yeah i tell you there's always a reason behind these choices you know it's funny isn't it because in 2007 which was two years before i even met Matt Campbell I happened to go to New York for a week to visit a friend okay and we were walking around Central Park and it just happened to be the weekend of the New York Marathon I didn't go for that reason it just happened to be on and so at that time there was a British athlete called Paula Radcliffe who was the world record holder of the marathon for women,

Ray Martin: and she was from the UK and I said and my friend's from the UK as well so I we said should we go into the central park and watch paula radcliffe sort of take the tape and finish the race it would be really exciting to do we said yeah let's do that so we went there we sort of got a place in the crowd and watched her finish and my friend angie said to me do you think you'd ever run the marathon ray i said no chance i said but if i did it would have to be this one because this is the biggest marathon in the world

Ray Martin: and i was standing there and i was feeling the excitement of it i said i'm never i'm not going to run a marathon but if i ever do it would be this one or i wouldn't bother so when matt campbell said to me i'll train you to run a marathon he said what marathon do you want to take part in right you know where would you like to do it i said that this is going to sound ridiculous honestly i feel silly even saying it but i'd really like to do new york.

Ray Martin: He said okay he said well you're going to have to go in the ballot because you can only get a place in the ballot by luck you know by draw and so i put my name in the ballot and i got a place first time.

Ray Martin: And I knew that was a confirmation signal. And I write a lot about confirmation signals in my book because this is something that started to, I realized life gives you these confirmation signals that you're on the right track.

Ray Martin: And so I got a place in the New York Marathon and then my brother stepped in because he worked for British Airways and they managed to get me like a kind of really super deal for some tickets to New York on the airline, which meant I could just divert all the funds to the causes I was raising for.

Kevin Lowe: Yeah. Wow. Absolutely fascinating.

Ray Martin: Yeah.

Kevin Lowe: So when you run the marathon, New York City Marathon, you raise $15,000.

Ray Martin: Yes.

Kevin Lowe: And then you take that, you go back to these different places.

Kevin Lowe: How did that moment impact how you viewed success?

Ray Martin: Oh, that's a really great question. I've sort of seen success as being target-driven type achievements, you know, achieving certain revenues and profit margins in the business and things like that and having a certain status.

Ray Martin: But what was really great about these projects was that I was feeling successful every night I went to bed because every day that I was doing this, I was feeling that my life was really worthwhile and I was living out a purpose that was of meaning.

Ray Martin: And so I felt successful every day of my life.

Ray Martin: And going to bed, I put my head on the pillow thinking, I'm the happiest man in the world. I don't need, it's not about money.

Ray Martin: I was just so happy and it started to make me sort of think a lot about the meaning of success and what it does mean.

Ray Martin: And I came to the realization that the richness in life I was experiencing was not to do with how much money I had, which had been the main driver, it was to do with how much free time I had to use it in a way that was meaningful to me.

Ray Martin: And I really was really making that distinction clear for me.

Ray Martin: I thought the rich man is the man who has a hundred percent discretion over what he does with his time.

Kevin Lowe: Yeah. Yeah. I love it so much. It kind of, it boils down to almost freedom.

Ray Martin: Yeah. Freedom. Yeah. That's, that's what to me, what being successful is.

Ray Martin: Yeah absolutely that doesn't mean you don't do anything to help anyone it just means if that's what you really want to do you can do that as much as you want exactly.

Kevin Lowe: Exactly powerful powerful wow yeah so amazing so to kind of i don't even know i i started to say to summarize 14 years span of your life what what other kind of destinations or experiences adventures moments kind of a stand out that maybe we could touch on over the rest of this time traveling

Ray Martin: Yeah sure i mean i still continue to travel but each time i traveled now there was some reason for doing it so the distribution of the funds from that marathon took me to the sort of midway through 2010 2010.

Ray Martin: So by now, I've been about five years since I left England.

Ray Martin: And I loved doing it all. And I hadn't earned any money for myself for five years. I'd just been living off my savings.

Ray Martin: And I saw that in 2008, with the global financial crisis, that I started to have some fear again about having enough money personally and stuff like that.

Ray Martin: So I thought, I need to engage with the world of work again, just a little, not full time, but I need to earn some money.

Ray Martin: And so after the 2010, I started to think that I'd like to dip my toe back in the world of business.

Ray Martin: And I wanted to do some coaching, which is the kind of work I did in England, but I wanted to do it in Asia.

Ray Martin: And you'll laugh, but in 2010, I really wanted to find a way of doing it virtually over Skype.

Ray Martin: I didn't want to do it in person and sit in a room with someone because you have to travel and you needed business clothes for that and things like that.

Ray Martin: So I kind of wrote down, I suppose, a prayer, if you want to call it something.

Ray Martin: I wrote down a description of what I was looking for on a piece of paper, just sort of stuck it on the wall and we pray in front of it each night saying, universe, universe, help me with this.

Ray Martin: And i wrote on linkedin to a couple of people to say i'm trying to find this would you help me and one wrote back and said i'm going to connect you with this guy warrapat in bangkok he's the best person to speak to and they did and i called him he said are you down in bangkok in the next week or two i said by chance i was i said yeah he said come and see me so i did he said i talked to him he asked me lots of questions and he said i think i know someone who's the right person to connect you with.

Ray Martin: He connected me with a lady called Danielle Marchant in Singapore, who had just opened a new coaching business from the UK, but in Singapore.

Ray Martin: She said, Ray, we've got loads of clients in Asia. That's not a problem.

Ray Martin: But we don't have enough coaches here in Asia. And we'd love to have you on the team.

Ray Martin: And she said, but there's one thing I need to tell you. I don't think you're going to like it, Ray. I said, what?

Ray Martin: She said, we're not going to do coaching face to facing our business we're only going to do it virtually using skype i said i said you've got to be kidding me i tell me punch me tell me this is real because i didn't tell her this she just said that's what they're going to do i said i can't believe it because i'd said to her that i only wanted to work you're gonna i feel embarrassed admitting this to your listeners i said i only want to work 20 hours a month not a week 20 hours a

Ray Martin: month and she said that's no problem we'll take All 20.

Kevin Lowe: Wow. Wow. Amazing how the pieces can fall into place.

Ray Martin: Yeah, I found that. That's one of the, when I wrote the book about this journey, my editors who are brilliant, they said, could you summarize in the last chapter the wisdom that you've learned from this entire journey?

Ray Martin: Because we really want to know what that is.

Ray Martin: And one of the things that I realized is that when you literally start living in alignment with your values, your truth, and doing things honestly, what you think other people want to hear about saying honestly what you really actually want, no matter how embarrassing that is, like in my case, 20 hours a month.

Ray Martin: If you start actually admitting and living honestly, according to those values and principles, the universe gives you way more luck and serendipity than you ever would have without it.

Ray Martin: I've noticed that. It's just like lots of things start falling into place that you can't go. How is that possible?

Ray Martin: That's just a fluke. How could that happen? It happens for me a lot.

Kevin Lowe: Yeah. Wow. So you get started coaching. How was that experience for you?

Ray Martin: Oh, I loved it. I absolutely loved it because I'd been coaching in the UK, but I hadn't done any for five years.

Ray Martin: But I had a lot of experience as a business leader. So I had a lot to offer and a lot of value to bring to people in the business leadership roles.

Ray Martin: I was helping so and I just really enjoyed the routines and the disciplines of doing some work you know because you know that your mind does go a bit soft around those things if you don't do any and uh and I also liked when I was in the team of coaches that I was virtually a part of I was hanging out with bright smart interesting learned people so I was always learning things hearing things that were interesting I you know I love being part of good teams and good communities and it helps me to

Ray Martin: grow helps me stay relevant and learn new stuff so i loved it to be honest and i was traveling around asia for various training events and workshops that i got invited to by the company to learn more so i was now traveling around asia but now it's being paid to be traveling it was great yeah.

Kevin Lowe: Wow absolutely incredible now i read something and i'm wondering if this ties into your role as a coach is that you described yourself as a torchbearer for human consciousness.

Ray Martin: Yeah it's once I got asked a question one time I can't remember who it was now, And they said, you know, if you had to describe your purpose for being here, because purpose is for me is like, why are we born in this incarnation?

Ray Martin: Why are we actually here?

Ray Martin: What have we put on planet Earth to do?

Ray Martin: And no matter what I've done in my life, there's one thread that runs through everything. I was the same at school and afterwards in all the jobs I've done.

Ray Martin: I've always been someone who's interested in how you can get the best out of yourself and others.

Ray Martin: So it's always been of interest to me. And the more I become more conscious and aware and self-reflected on who I am as a person and what fundamentally drives me, the more consciousness I've gained about myself, the more I feel happier and contented.

Ray Martin: And so whenever I meet people, I feel like I'm encouraging them to do the same.

Ray Martin: So I'm a kind of torchbearer for the idea of being more conscious about yourself.

Kevin Lowe: Yeah, I absolutely love that description of yourself. I think that's amazing.

Kevin Lowe: So powerful. so i guess my my next question is you end up living this sabbatical type lifestyle traveling doing this for a total of 14 years yeah how do you decide to stop

Ray Martin: It's a great question well first of all in 2011 i was told by my guidance from the universe in a very funny way i was basically getting this message from the universe, which is I needed to write a book about the journey, even though I was still in it.

Ray Martin: Because lots of people who I met kept saying to me, you'll laugh this, but they'd sit down with me for a cup of tea or a beer or something.

Ray Martin: And they'd say, how did you start this? And I'd tell them the stories I've told you.

Ray Martin: And they'd always say, wow, it's fascinating listening.

Ray Martin: They said, if you ever write a book about this, would you tell me?

Ray Martin: Here's my email address. I'd really like to know because if you do write a book, I'm definitely going to read it.

Ray Martin: And I used to laugh and say, oh, you're kidding. no i'm not doing any of this to write a book that's not my intention i'm just doing this for me but after about 50 people said that i thought i can tell i'm getting this message over and over i need to write and start writing a book and as i was thinking that i found on facebook some big shot from new york a literary superstar was coming to chiang mai for five days to run a five-day writer's course and i contacted her and said can

Ray Martin: i can i do this and she said yeah it's fine i knew that was a confirmation signal I was meant to be on that course.

Ray Martin: And so in about 2015, after I went on that course, I started writing the manuscript properly.

Ray Martin: And then I was halfway through the book, and by now I was living in Warsaw in Poland because I'd met someone from Poland who I sort of fell in love with, and we were living together in an apartment in Warsaw, writing those days.

Ray Martin: And then that relationship came to an end after a while.

Ray Martin: And so I sat in my grief about that on my own for a bit and asked the universe, where do I go? What's my guidance?

Ray Martin: And the universe said, well, the main thing you've got to do right now is go back to England for a while and get the book finished.

Ray Martin: Just that's your first priority is finish writing that book and get the story into the world.

Ray Martin: And then we'll take it from there. That's what you need to do next.

Ray Martin: So that's what I did. I came back to England and got on with writing the book.

Kevin Lowe: Wow. And so what year did you end up publishing this book? 2023 okay wow so were you back in england when the pandemic hit yes

Ray Martin: I came back just before it started yeah.

Kevin Lowe: Okay okay wow so

Ray Martin: I guess i was lucky to be in my home country while that was.

Kevin Lowe: Going on exactly exactly amazing how that worked talk to me a little bit more about the book remind me the name of the book, where we can find the book.

Kevin Lowe: And kind of more importantly, I think, who do you hope reads this book?

Ray Martin: Yeah, it's a good question. The book is called Life Without a Tie.

Ray Martin: And I don't just mean the tie of me as a businessman. That was one part of that picture.

Ray Martin: But also the four ties of life that identify all of us are the ties we have to our partner or spouse, the ties we have to our career, the ties we have to our physical house or home, and the ties we have to our community of family and friends.

Ray Martin: Those are the four big ties of life that define us.

Ray Martin: So I was writing about breaking ties with all of those.

Ray Martin: What is life without a tie really, really like? I wanted to write an account of it, not to say, oh, it's all amazing.

Ray Martin: You know, it's all brilliant. It has its fair share of crappy days, I have to say.

Ray Martin: It's like any life. You only see the edited highlights usually on social media of someone's life. so you don't get to see the really bad days.

Ray Martin: But it's just a different life. And I wanted to share what it was actually like for anyone who was thinking of making similar decisions.

Ray Martin: And the subtitle of the book is called Finding Your Path Amidst the Noise, Chaos, and Pressure to Conform.

Ray Martin: How do you find your own path in life that's unique and belongs to you and is truly the path that you want to walk on, even if no one else is living exactly that life and you're the first person?

Ray Martin: How do you do it? so that was really the essence of it.

Kevin Lowe: Yeah wow now in this this book is there any type of maybe specific insights because i know from my understanding there's different lessons you teach and and i would love to hear a little bit more about that

Ray Martin: Yeah there really is i mean first of all in the early stages of the book when i've been traveling a few months i wrote about this phase where I was feeling psychologically quite disturbed before I did the Vipassana retreat.

Ray Martin: And so I wrote, I created 10 guiding principles for myself that was going to follow in order to keep my mental health in good shape.

Ray Martin: And so I chose principles like the principle of being present, the presence.

Ray Martin: I thought no matter what happens, I'm going to learn from it and be deeply changed.

Ray Martin: And I committed to being fully present in each experience in the moments they were happening, accepting each one and being grateful for what was happening rather than thinking, oh, this shouldn't be happening or something like that.

Ray Martin: So being present and without judgment. Self-acceptance was a principle I decided because I'd beaten myself up a lot when I was in England going through the divorce.

Ray Martin: And I thought, no, I need to be kind to myself and accept that I'm doing my best and I'm growing.

Ray Martin: I'm in a learning journey. I started to accept myself more.

Ray Martin: The principle of wisdom, lightness was a principle because I'd had a heavy time before I left and I wanted to bring much more light and joy into the world.

Ray Martin: So I had these 10 guiding principles I was following on a daily basis as much as I could.

Ray Martin: And then another thing, and I've written all those out in the book and what they are.

Ray Martin: And then in the end of the book, in the section called, what did I learn?

Ray Martin: Or looking back, I penned what has become known as my six rules for happiness.

Ray Martin: And these are the six rules to follow if you want a happy life.

Ray Martin: And they're not easy to describe in one sentence, but they are things like build a strong foundation of self-awareness.

Ray Martin: Without self-awareness, you're really, really sunk.

Ray Martin: Become your own observer. If you cannot step out of your own thinking and observe yourself from a distance, that's going to be quite troublesome.

Ray Martin: So there's a difference between being in an event in which you get really angry and you're consumed by the anger. You're just, you are the anger.

Ray Martin: And you being in that event going, I noticed right now, I'm noticing that I am feeling angry about what has just happened.

Ray Martin: I'm noticing I've got the anger rising in me, and I'm noticing I've got some choices here about how I behave in response to that anger.

Ray Martin: What's the wisest choice I can make right now? That's quite different from just being angry and reacting from that.

Ray Martin: So those are two examples of the six rules. But one of them is about physical, mental, emotional, spiritual well-being.

Ray Martin: One is about being courageous about what you learn in life and how you remain courageous.

Kevin Lowe: Yeah, amazing. now for somebody before we move on somebody interested where's the best place that somebody could could find your book at oh

Ray Martin: The easiest place is amazon you know it's on amazon i've got a website called life without a tie.com and the only reason i mentioned that is for two reasons one is that a lot of readers who read the book said can we see photographs of all these places that you went to and things like that and the foundation and the elephants and the blah blah and so the website has pictures that represent each of the stories in the book because the book doesn't have any photos and then the second thing is if anyone

Ray Martin: wants a signed copy of the book they can buy that directly from my site and i can send it to them okay.

Kevin Lowe: Fantastic well i will be sure that both options are in the show notes links to the website and amazon of Of course.

Ray Martin: Super.

Kevin Lowe: Yeah. Now, we spoke earlier about purpose.

Kevin Lowe: And I find that there's a lot of us who struggle with that.

Kevin Lowe: Do you feel like throughout our lives, depending upon kind of what chapter of life we're in, do you feel like our purpose changes?

Kevin Lowe: Or do you feel like there's always an underlying purpose that ties it all together?

Ray Martin: Oh, it's a brilliant question and I'm actually struggling with this in my own life at the moment.

Ray Martin: So I do think it changes over time in terms of how it gets enacted or how it gets expressed.

Ray Martin: So coming back to your question earlier, I've always been someone who wants to represent or shine the light of greater human consciousness.

Ray Martin: That's never changed. That's a constant throughout all my years.

Ray Martin: I've wanted to be a torchbearer for being more conscious and more aware and that's always been what I encourage people to do.

Ray Martin: But I've done that as a sales rep. I've done that as a CEO of a business.

Ray Martin: I've done that as a fundraiser. I've done that as a book writer.

Ray Martin: So I'm expressing that purpose in many different forms, in many different roles, in many different ways in each of those.

Ray Martin: So the nature of how I do that changes with each vehicle that I take on a week, each character I play.

Ray Martin: But the purpose itself is probably fundamentally the same.

Ray Martin: It just gets dispensed in a different way. Does that make sense?

Kevin Lowe: It does. Absolutely.

Ray Martin: That's the best way I could answer that. So right now, I do most of my influencing around purpose through leadership coaching that I do.

Ray Martin: I've written the book. That's had a certain impact on the world.

Ray Martin: And now I coach one-to-one leaders and do it that way.

Ray Martin: I might start running workshops or seminars in the future and do it that way. I don't know.

Ray Martin: I can't see it all entirely clearly at the moment.

Ray Martin: But I'm thinking about that a lot myself because I turned 65 this year.

Ray Martin: And so i'm i'm getting older you know i don't want to work at the same frenetic pace that i have done before and i've got those things are coming into play of the other parts of my life are calling for attention and parts of me that i want to dedicate to that in my family for example, yeah yeah so so so things are shifting but even if i'm spending more time with family guess what i'll be picking them up on how conscious they are about themselves i'll still be living my purpose but just with different people in a different way yeah absolutely.

Kevin Lowe: That's that's absolutely beautiful yeah is there any part of you at this point in your life now that would love to set off traveling again

Ray Martin: Well funny i've just i've just spent two and a half months in asia i literally got back two days ago and i loved it i absolutely loved it i went with my partner and we had a lovely lovely time and we went to three four countries we went to cambodia laos vietnam and thailand and it was brilliant yeah so i and i've never been to south america at all and certain parts of the world so there's still many places i would really like to see before i leave yeah.

Kevin Lowe: Yeah amazing well yeah well ray i want to say that you you have so much wisdom that you have gained in your life

Ray Martin: Yeah and.

Kevin Lowe: I truly thank you for sharing just this little snapshot with us today And I guess what I would love is for the person listening today who is, Maybe they're at a point, maybe where you were back in 2005, but maybe because of obligations, they can't think about setting off and traveling the world.

Kevin Lowe: Do you have any bit of advice, any sense of hope that we could leave them with?

Ray Martin: Yeah, I do. And it's a great question I get asked a lot.

Ray Martin: The truth is you do not need to go physically traveling in order to change the way the world looks and feels to you.

Ray Martin: The main thing that is required is a change in your own thinking.

Ray Martin: So what conditions do you need in order to be able to examine your current thinking and shift to a more useful and helpful type of thinking?

Ray Martin: And it doesn't mean you have to travel to a foreign country.

Ray Martin: It could take a couple of days retreat where you live and you know and just hang out with some different kinds of people who think in a different way to you and start to look at things from a different perspective without doing it what the traveling does do is it takes you out of your usual routines and usual methods and habits of thinking and starts to open up new ways of looking at things so it's useful but it's not essential so i would say the main focus in the journey i've described is not the geography.

Ray Martin: That is nice, but it's not the focus. The focus is how do you escape from the confinement of your habitual way of thinking? And that's really the question.

Kevin Lowe: Yeah. Yeah. Powerful. Ray, it has been an absolute pleasure to have you here, man.

Kevin Lowe: Thank you so much for taking the time to sit down with me today and share your story.

Kevin Lowe: You're an awesome guy with a killer story and even more meaningful is just the insights you have to share, so thank you.

Ray Martin: Thanks, Kevin.

Kevin Lowe: Yeah, absolutely. For you listening today, I hope you're coming away with as much as I did.

Kevin Lowe: A whole new mindset on life, a whole new way of thinking about things.

Kevin Lowe: All thanks to today's amazing guest.

Kevin Lowe: Please be sure to take this interview today to the next level by grabbing Ray's book.

Kevin Lowe: Again, links are in the show notes for easy access. And hey, until next time Maybe start thinking about life Like Ray How can you start living life a little bit differently A little bit better A little bit bigger Until next time, I'm your host Kevin Lowe And this of course is Grit, Grace, and Inspiration

Podcast Outro Plays: Podcast Theme Song: I got Grit, Grace, & Inspiration on my mind