‘Why do you have to do this all by yourself?’
‘Because that’s what I do. I am self-sufficient. I’m capable. I’m—’
‘Standing in dog poo.’ He looked down at his foot. ‘Peter, you are definitely standing in a dog poo.’ He looked as if he was about to cry, again. ‘Peter, no one else does this all by themselves. No one. They have dog walkers, and vets, and puppy trainers and cleaners. Or at least everyone with full-time jobs in London seems to. You don’t have to do everything by yourself all the time.’
‘I just. Well. I always have.’
‘Peter, I have an appointment I have to go to now but, after, why don’t we take the puppies to my house for the night? There is nothing of value there for them to destroy, at all, and you can get some sleep while I look after them. I love dogs. I loved Jake.’ One of the pups was on my foot, chewing it. ‘And I know this great non-judgemental industrial cleaning company. I can arrange for them to come in and sort this place out while you stay with me. Don’t worry—their tagline is, “We won’t judge you, you dirty little fucker”.’ I snorted with laughter at my own joke. ‘Then tomorrow we can come up with a long-term action-plan. I think Grandma knows some dog trainers and dog walkers. And she can definitely organise for regular cleaners. She can organise stuff. Stuff and staff. That’s what she does. She manages.’
‘Thank you,’ he said, leaning down and engulfing me in an enormous hug. ‘Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you.’
man becomes what he thinks about
‘Kate,’ Bob began, stirring sugar into his fresh mint tea, ‘the boundaries and limits in our lives are always self-imposed. You can only live the life you can imagine. Sugar?’
‘No, thank you,’ I said, looking at my watch. I wanted to be back with Peter within the hour.
‘You are sweet enough, I’m sure.’ Bob beamed before adding another three spoons of sugar to his own tea.
I’d made an appointment with Bob (the life coach from Fat Camp) to discuss making a change. I told him I was ready for something new but needed help. So we met in his office in Chelsea, an airy studio space with a large glass atrium, and he’d invited me to sit on a brown leather sofa then poured me the aforementioned mint tea. We drank from tall glasses with metal handles and it reminded me of being in Morocco before all the bombings and discontent.
‘You say that you want your life to go in a different direction but you don’t quite know what that will be,’ he said, wiggling in his seat like a maths professor about to solve complicated algebra. ‘Kate, when you currently think about your future life, can I assume you are imagining the life you have now but a slightly blacker or slightly rosier version of it?’
‘I think so, yes. Certainly I can’t imagine how anything will ever be dramatically different. I hope that things will improve but I can’t really see it, if you know what I mean?’
‘For me,’ he said, touching his chest, ‘I think people focus too much on what they haven’t got, or what they don’t want. They obsess over these things; about a lack of abundance; about feeling sad; or being rejected; or maybe freaking out because they don’t know how to achieve change.’ I nodded along. ‘And that actually keeps them stuck where they are. All their thoughts are on the negatives so life has no opportunity to manifest change. Your life is limited to the life you can imagine. If you imagine badly that’s what you’ll get. I want to tell you something, Kate. I want to tell you about a friend of mine. He said to me, he said, “Bob, whatever you think you can do, begin it; action has magic, grace and power in it.”’
I didn’t want to tell Bob that his friend was quoting Goethe.
‘The important thing here is to imagine without limits, so I want us to do a little exercise. It’s one of my favourites. Will you indulge me? Great. I want you to daydream your dream life, a day in the life of your dream life, and every time you find yourself dismissing something, and saying to yourself, “Well, that’s ridiculous, Kate,” or, “That’s not possible, Kate, you could never do that,” then consciously remove that block and let yourself keep imagining, just for a second, that it is possible and what it would feel like.’
‘I think I did something similar with my cleaner, Mary. She wanted to be a mechanic.’
‘Well, that’s great news, Kate. So let’s do it for you this time. Get comfortable in your seat.’ He started wiggling again as if he were getting comfortable on my behalf. ‘Close your eyes, relax, take a deep breath and let yourself daydream your perfect existence, your perfect day. Where does it start? Where do you wake up? What is the bed like? What colour are the sheets? When you get dressed what clothes do you put on? What would you love to wear if you could wear anything? When you leave the house turn around—what kind of house is it? What kind of house would make your heart soar? Do you get in a car? What kind of car is it? Where are you driving to? What do you drive past? What is the weather like in your perfect day? Where do you eat lunch? Who do you eat with? Does someone call you? You are really happy to hear from them. What do you talk about? What do you do in the afternoon? What are your plans for the weekend? You can go anywhere, so where are you going? If all things were possible, Kate, if you were allowed anything, if you could have anything, if you could achieve anything, who would you be, Kate? Who would you be? Who would you be? Who would you be?’ Images were flicking through my head, objects, people, places, sports, foods, colours, cities, experiences. ‘Remember, Kate. You … Have … The … Power.’ He said this last bit in a deep breathy voice, as if he were blowing the magic power my way. I hoped that he was, that clever son of a gun. I kept my eyes closed and with the magic dust all around me I let my imagination go wild: a life without boundaries, without constraints, without limits. What would I do? I happily melted away into a world of golden happiness. After about 10 minutes I could hear Bob shift in his seat. I was pretty sure he was wiggling again.
‘And come back to reality, Kate,’ he said very quietly. I opened my eyes. ‘Welcome back, Kate,’ he cooed as if he knew where I’d been, as if he’d been there too, watching, like a Willy Wonka of dream states. ‘That exercise should start to give you a sense of the things you are drawn to?’ Every Californian sentence ended with what seemed like a question. ‘The images are all important and we will make a list of those images in just a moment. But we will also make a second list. Because the exercise should also make you aware of the feelings you are seeking, and by that I mean the feelings that you are wanting to experience in this life, be it feelings of happiness, feelings of strength, feelings of fitness, heaven knows, perhaps you want to feel more sexy!’ He slapped his thighs in excitement. ‘These are your cues, Kate; they are your markers. They are important. Because these feelings can be attained in a variety of different ways.’ He paused and just as I was about to ask he said, ‘Let me give you an example. An alcoholic may find an escape in his drinking. Being drunk may offer him the opportunity to run away from his problems; he feels free of life’s constraints; he feels liberated. It’s a false sense of freedom but for the alcoholic it’s the only activity that makes him feel free. A soldier in the army may crave the exact same feeling of freedom, but he gets it by throwing himself out of a plane and skydiving. A mother of three might get that same sense of freedom when she salsa dances. I might get it when I run along a beach. We are all seeking the same feeling and we have each discovered a different method for feeling it. Do you understand what I mean?’
I did, and I didn’t.
‘So what I want to do is make a list of the physical aspirations that you have identified in your daydream. You might have been riding through your dream on a Vespa; you might have been sprinting at high speed, physically really strong and fit; perhaps you were receiving an Oscar! After that we are going to make a list of the emotional aspirations, all the feelings you had in your perfect day. Then we can sit back and take a look at your picture. What your dream life looks and feels like. Then we start putting together small steps to work tow
ards realising your dream life. And it’s the smallest steps in life that can bring about the biggest and most powerful changes. Once we have fully identified who you were in your dream life, I want you to spend five minutes every day closing your eyes and being that person, and feeling what it feels like to be that version of yourself. You could do it while sat on the train, while in the shower, just as you wake up. The key here is to feel how you would feel if you were that person. If you find it tough the first few times try this. When you are in the shower each morning close your eyes and imagine how you would feel if you had 50 million pounds in the bank. When you close your eyes imagine you can see your bank statement and see your name at the top, your address, and the balance at the bottom says 50 million pounds. Know that it’s yours. What would that feel like?’
I started beaming. I felt elated, excited, naughty even, as if for the first time in my whole life I knew I would be OK. 50 million quid!
‘I think you get the idea, Kate. It’s that emotion, that wonderful feeling that I want you to home in on. I want your body to get used to feeling like you have 50 million pounds in the bank. I want your body to get used to feeling like you did in your perfect day. I want the universe to feel you feeling like that. And the universe will respond to you. Remember, as clichéd as it sounds, you get back what you put in. It’s not rocket science. Let these positive feelings of your perfect life out into the world every single day.’
‘If it’s that easy, Bob, then why aren’t we all doing it? Why don’t we all have everything we want?’
‘That’s a great question, Kate. There are two main stumbling blocks. One is that people focus on the things they don’t want, the other is that they go to all the bother of thinking positively, then let the negative voice of doubt creep in, and most of the time it’s noisier than the positive voice. I have a great example of both.’ He was off again. I decided to rename him ChatterBob. ‘I have a wonderful Italian friend from Rome. For as long as I have known her she has always said to me, “I will never date an Italian man, especially a man from Naples. Men from Naples are horrible. They are uncouth, they are philistines.” And what happened? She met and fell in love with a man from Naples. Why? Because she focused all her energy on what she didn’t want. So the universe kept hearing over and over again, “date an Italian man” or “boyfriend from Naples”. And that is eventually what she got. The other people get the first bit right, they focus on what they want, imagine it for a moment, and then they dismiss it. They think to themselves, “Well, that would be lovely but that’s not really going to happen,” or, “What are the chances? I’m not that lucky,” and that is what the universe hears. It hears you saying, “I will always be poor. I will always rent horrible flats; my job will always be rubbish. I won’t be able to make that change.” And they immediately undo all of their hard work.’
‘ChatterBob,’ I said to ChatterBob, forgetting he wasn’t aware of his new nickname, ‘I have done both of those things.’
‘If you are ever in doubt,’ said ChatterBob, ‘take a moment and think about the following. If you decide to drive from New York to San Francisco you can’t see the whole road ahead of you. It’s over 2,900 miles. In fact you can’t see more than about 200 metres ahead of you. But I bet you never doubt that you’ll get there. You never think, “I can’t see the whole entire road ahead of me. How do I know I will make it? I can’t imagine a road 2,900 miles long. If I can’t see it I can’t travel on it.” No, you decide you’ll drive from New York to San Fran and you just know you will get there. You focus on the destination, not the road ahead. That is what I need you to do with your dreams. Forget the road, just focus on the destination. The universe will do the rest.’
I didn’t fully understand the physics of ChatterBob’s idea, and I didn’t fully understand ChatterBob, but I was happy to give it a go. He got out a pen and paper and we started to make a list; of the things that had happened in my perfect day and a list of the feelings I’d felt. When we were finished I had a much clearer idea of what I needed to do for my very own Love-Stolen Dream.
I admit I could see a few immediate problems emerging, and they all fell under the heading of money. Because most of the things I wanted to do were far too expensive. The main one, the one that really would make me happy for years to come, would be qualifying as a ski and snowboarding instructor. After Gabriel and Julien, this was something I was certain of. To spend five months of every year teaching people on the mountain; being outside doing physical activity all day, going back to my chalet at the end of the day, eating cheese and speaking French—just the thought of it makes me feel lighter than air. But the training courses for qualification are expensive, tens of thousands of pounds, in fact, and tens of thousands of pounds isn’t hiding behind the excuse of money, it’s trembling in the shadow of the mountain of money I didn’t have. And that was before the intensive French immersion language course I wanted to do, and the chalet I’d need to buy to live in and, if we are making a list, and apparently we are, a round-the-world ticket, and a car. I could also do with some new ski equipment, and no girl says no to a makeover, and a wardrobe-replacing shopping spree. Bob was chipper, but he wasn’t bloody Jack in the Beanstalk. So what I needed was another way. And I didn’t have a clue what that other way would be. So with not a bean in my pocket or a Jack to my name I did what ChatterBob told me and set my positive intention to the universe; feeling how I would feel on the ski instructor training courses; feeling how I would feel when I passed the courses; feeling how I would feel when teaching people to ski, and speaking fluent French, and wandering around my chalet, and wearing wonderful clothes and driving a big black Range Rover with a pet dog called Spot who was ironically named because he’s totally black. At least that’s my sense of irony.
Bob’s version of the universe felt very much like QVC but I liked it, and I was more than happy to give it a try.
my apartment | east london
I found a dog walker. I booked industrial cleaners. I found a puppy day school, dog kennels, a vet, a behavioural specialist for the boy puppy (who I think likes to defecate on expensive pieces of furniture) and I bulk ordered dog food and biscuits. For once I was a chip off the old block that is Grandma. I even spent as long as was physically possible in the local park in the hope I could tire out the relentless puppies. When I finally got back to my apartment I found Peter exactly where I’d left him, completely fast asleep on my bed. The puppies immediately jumped on him and started licking his face.
‘I’d prefer it if a beautiful woman woke me up like this, not an unruly pair of dogs,’ he said as one of the puppies started chasing his hand before getting distracted by its own tail, chasing that, then falling off the bed. ‘I can’t normally sleep at other people’s houses,’ he said drowsily, propping himself up with some pillows. He patted the bed for me to lie next to him. ‘Kate, do you remember when we were little and we used to have sleepovers at your house?’
‘Are we talking pre-teen sleepovers,’ I said, lying down, ‘or adolescent ones when I was lucky to get through the night without you pouncing on me?’
‘Pre-teen Kitkat. Your grandma would always tell us off for talking too much. What on earth did we have to say to each other until four o’clock in the morning?’
‘You were probably giving me a lecture on the pros and cons of animated facial expressions with a focus on smiling and its wrinkle-producing effects. Or the Industrial Revolution.’
‘But we did used to be such an industrious country, Kitkat,’ he said, turning on his side to face me. ‘So, tell me what you plan to do if you quit your job,’ he said sleepily, his eyes once again fighting sleep.
‘Well, I think I have some ideas, or the beginnings of ideas. I have idea embryos.’
‘Do you want me to fertilize them for you, Kate? Honestly, you are always asking me to contribute my bodily fluids to make things for you. It’s disconcerting.’
‘Seriously, Peter, I’ve been so focused on fixing everyone else I didn
’t formulate a proper plan for myself. But now I think I know—as I said, I have idea embryos. I am on the road, even though I can’t see the road, there are no street lamps, but apparently that’s OK.’
‘Very cryptic, Kitkat.’ One of the puppies climbed onto my stomach and fell asleep. ‘Ah, look at that,’ Peter said, having noticed the puppy. ‘Well, I’m afraid now you can’t move,’ he said, gently stroking the dog’s head. ‘They rarely if ever sleep so if it’s sleeping on you then you are staying exactly where you are. I’m afraid you’re going to have to sleep next to me.’ He stopped stroking the dog and laid his arm across me, pulling me close against him. ‘Talk to me while I fall asleep, Kitkat. Your voice always had a sedating effect on me.’ He chuckled to himself before kissing my hand and squeezing it tightly. ‘Stay here with me,’ he said quietly.
I watched his face for a few minutes, the perfect complexion, lack of frown lines, even skin tone. The genetic lottery wasn’t the least bit fair.
‘Kate, I know you are watching me,’ he said, his lips twitching. ‘And it’s really, really disconcerting. And something I thought you’d grown out of. You used to do the same thing when we were kids.’
‘It’s not the same at all. Your mum had just died and you used to cry in your sleep. It was legitimate staring.’
‘So what kind of staring is this?’ He had his eyes closed but I could tell he was waiting for my response.
Love Is a Thief Page 25
