It's About Time: Rediscover Your Youth And Take The Fear Out of Change

By Ray Frigault

Albert Einstein said, "Time is a stubbornly persistent illusion."
Ray Frigault has his own theories about time.

Ray's 20 year story begins on his 40th birthday when a sitcom rerun reached inside his drunken mind and gave him the equation that would change his life forever. The equation?
40 + 40 = 80. What does it mean? Is it up there with E = mc2? Or, is it the formula to finally understand that "stubbornly persistent Illusion" called time?

This Book holds the key to unlocking the Fountain of Youth hidden within all of us. If you are entering mid-life with the fear that life has passed you by this Book is a must read!

From the Author
I lived a life of crime and drug abuse for many years that almost destroyed me. I used the above equation to lift myself out of self-despair and discover a rich, full life. I learned that Time can turn mistakes into wisdom, heartbreak into Love, and endings into new beginnings. It's About Time illustrates how I discovered this magical equation, what it means, and how others can use it to their advantage. It turns out that this quantum physics stuff isn't as complicated as you may think.

Ray Frigaut
Author / Speaker
www.rayfrigault.com
www.rayzortalks.com

• Language: English
• Publisher: Tellwell Talent
• Release date: Feb 27, 2020
• ISBN: 9781777046118

Ray Frigault

Ray Frigault was born February 11, 1955 in Niagara Falls, Ontario Canada. He graduated high school and went straight into General Motors at the age of 18. The ticket to a nice easy life for most people but not for Ray. He was never satisfied with his job at General Motors. At 31 years of age, after 13 years in the St Catharines GM Foundry, Ray quit General Motors to go start his own business. It was something he had always longed to do. His new business was called The Humanist Institute. It was a Dating service before Dating services became mainstream. The business did very well for a few years. but a stock market crash in 89, shortly after he had opened a second office, created the perfect storm that led to an early end to Ray's business career. His life slid pretty hard and fast from that point. He not only lost his business, he lost his family, his house his dignity and every penny he had ever saved.As he was approaching 40, drugs, alcohol, mental illness and poor choices eventually got the better of him and he was ready to throw in the towel. However, on his 40th Birthday, Ray made a dramatic discovery that gave him a whole new outlook on life. His goal since then has been to write about that experience.With a renewed zest for life, Ray went on to begin his third career as a Casino Dealer in one of the biggest Casinos in North America. In his 21 years at Niagara Casinos Ray worked his way up from Table Games Dealer to Supervisor and on to Pit Manager. He even had his own gig as a Learn to Play instructor where he would teach visitors how to play the various table games in the Casino.In 2017 Ray took an early retirement from this job that he absolutely loved, sold his house, bought a trailer and hit the road. He has begun his 4th career as a writer with his first book "It's About TIME, rediscover your youth and take the Fear out of Change", where he chronicles 20 years of his life following his great epiphany. Ray plans to live out the rest of his days going from one adventure to the next, travelling, writing and sharing his stories with whoever wants to listen.It's About TIME is not just about time. It's about Ray. It's about 20 years of his life. And it's about time he wrote it.

Book preview

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"It’s About Time is an eye-opening, radical shift in mindset that reveals the power we all have to give ourselves the unparalleled gift of a second chance."

-AK Turner, New York

Times bestselling author

In It’s About Time Ray Frigault takes you through his personal journey of growth. He pulls no punches and truly shows how changing your life is never impossible, that starting over and finding happiness at any point in your life is never out of reach. Ray’s story truly gives meaning to the saying that you are only as young as you feel! Everyone has problems with embracing and creating positive change in their lives and Ray shows over and over again that growth happens constantly throughout our lives and it happens at just the right times!

"It’s About Time" is an inspiring and uplifting read!

-Darcy Patrick, Author of Why I Run,

Creative Writing for the Mind, Body

and Soul and Guided Meditations

The notion that every day is an opportunity to start over is not in itself new, but the concept of mapping your present stage of life to the chronological age of a child is both refreshing and profound. Ray expertly interweaves this idea with his own personal life story — with all the usual and some not-so-usual trials and tribulations of life — and a big dose of good humour. The book had me smiling, chuckling and thinking long after I finished reading every page.

-Michel Neray, Professional Speaker

and Founder of momondays.com

I dedicate this book to my Mom, Beverley Shaw (Frigault), whose wise words resonate off the pages of this book.

And to Helen, my Rainbow, my Love, without whom this book would never have been written.

It’s About Time

Copyright © 2020 by Ray Frigault

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the author, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other non-commercial uses permitted by copyright law.

Tellwell Talent

www.tellwell.ca

ISBN

978-1-7770461-2-5 (Hardcover)

978-1-7770461-0-1 (Paperback)

978-1-7770461-1-8 (eBook)

It’s About

Time

Rediscover your youth and

Take the Fear out of Change

Ray Frigault

Life’s like an hourglass glued to the table.

– Anna Nalick, Breathe (2AM)

Table of Contents

About the Author

Forward

Chapter 1 The Vision

Chapter 2 Letting Go & Starting Over

Chapter 3 Bee-Lieve

Chapter 4 Create Stillness

Chapter 5 Give and You Will Grow

Chapter 6 Be Thankful

Chapter 7 The TAO

Chapter 8 This Too Shall Pass

Chapter 9 Don’t Be Afraid

of the Dark

Chapter 10 Priorities

Chapter 11 Get Over It

Chapter 12 Do What You Love

Chapter 13 Family

Chapter 14 The Big C

Chapter 15 Wiser not Wiser’s

Chapter 16 Stress Less

Chapter 17 ADHD, PTSD, BPD… WTF Is Wrong with Me?

Chapter 18 Discover Your Hidden Athlete

Chapter 19 Finding Forgiveness

Chapter 20 OMG I’m 60!

In Closing

Acknowledgments

About the Author

Ray Frigault was born February 11, 1955 in Niagara Falls, Ontario Canada. He graduated high school and went straight into General Motors at the age of 18. The ticket to a nice easy life for most people but not for Ray. He was never satisfied with his job at General Motors. At 31 years of age, after 13 years in the St Catharines GM Foundry, Ray quit General Motors to go start his own business. It was something he had always longed to do. His new business was called The Humanist Institute. It was a Dating service before Dating services became mainstream. The business operated by appointment only, which gave Ray the freedom to pursue his acting career. He had an agent in Toronto who arranged auditions and Ray was able to schedule his appointments around them. It was the perfect setup. The business did very well for a few years but a stock market crash in 89, shortly after he had opened a second office, created the perfect storm that led to an early end to Ray’s business career. At the same time his agent just up and moved to China. Right after Ray had landed his first speaking role in a movie. With no agent working on his behalf the auditions stopped coming in. His life slid pretty hard and fast from that point. He not only lost his agent and his business, he lost his family, his house his dignity and every penny he had ever saved.

As he was approaching 40, drugs, alcohol, mental illness and poor choices eventually got the better of him and he was ready to throw in the towel. However, on his 40th Birthday, Ray made a dramatic discovery that gave him a whole new outlook on life. His goal since then has been to write about that experience.

With a renewed zest for life, Ray went on to begin his third career as a Casino Dealer in one of the biggest Casinos in North America. In his 21 years at Niagara Casinos Ray worked his way up from Table Games Dealer to Supervisor and on to Pit Manager. He even had his own gig as a Learn to Play instructor where he would teach visitors how to play the various table games in the Casino.

In 2017 Ray took an early retirement from this job that he absolutely loved, sold his house, bought a trailer and hit the road. He has begun his 4th career as a writer with his first book It’s About TIME, rediscover your youth and take the Fear out of Change, where he chronicles 20 years of his life following his great epiphany. Ray plans to live out the rest of his days going from one adventure to the next, travelling, writing and sharing his stories with whoever wants to listen.

It’s About TIME is not just about time. It’s about Ray. It’s about 20 years of his life. And it’s about time he wrote it.

Forward

Time is the continual progression of existence and events. It’s the past, present, and future regarded as one impenetrable entity. It’s thought of as something we cannot change and for many people, it’s regarded with fear. Time is the monster breathing down our necks, the great foe that we’ll never outrun or outwit.

This book is about altering our perception of time. Our understanding of it. It’s about turning it over in your mind so that it feels different. So that it’s working in your favour.

We can only truly understand the amount of time that we have lived. A 30-year-old, for example, cannot possibly relate to how it feels to be 60. He can, however, understand what it feels like to be 30 years old, because he has lived them; that’s his whole life. Looking back on his 30 years, he has memories. And if he were to string those memories together he would realize two things. First of all, those years went by fast! And secondly, he did a lot in those 30 years. It is, after all, a lifetime for a 30-year-old.

For some reason, turning 40 is a milestone for people. To many, it feels like you are on your way out, as if the best part of your life is behind you. In reality, that’s only true if you make it so.

One of my favourite quotes is from Dr. Wayne Dyer. He says, Change the way you look at things and the things you look at change. I’m here to change the way you look at time. I’m going to take you back to my 40th birthday, to show you how to view time in a new way. You will realize just how much life is left to live when you’re 40, 50, 60 or even 70 years old. It’s about mindset, about learning how to turn that unvanquishable enemy into your greatest ally.

On his 80th birthday, George H. W. Bush, the 41st President of the United States, went skydiving. He said, You just gotta get out there and you’ll realize that, at 80, you still got a life. He gave credence to his words by going on to skydive again on both his 85th and 90th birthdays.

There’s a line in Anna Nalick’s song Breathe (2AM) that reads: Life’s like an hourglass glued to the table. In the same verse, she sings, No one can find the rewind button.

I did.

Chapter 1

The Vision

Experience is merely the name men

give to their mistakes.

–Oscar Wilde, The Picture

of Dorian Gray

I’m drunk.

It’s midnight, February 11th, 1995. My birthday. I just turned 40 years old.

I’m sitting in a broken and lopsided La-Z-Boy chair in a seedy, two-bedroom flat above a Chinese Restaurant in downtown Smalltown, Northern Canada.

My two daughters live with their mother, three hours away. I hardly see them and it breaks my heart. My eldest daughter is 15 years old and she hates me.

I don’t blame her.

I hate myself for what I’ve become.

I look around my apartment. My girlfriend is already passed out on the couch. A lit cigarette still burning in her hand is about to burn yet another hole in the carpet.

I get up, put her cigarette out in the ashtray and sit back down in front of the TV. I start to cry. I’m dying inside; I feel like my life is over.

I have been contemplating suicide for weeks. I have a bottle of pills that will do the job. My daughters are holding me back. I see them as the only thing I’ve done right in my life. I can’t leave them with the legacy of a father who committed suicide. Still, I am caught in a deep depression with no end in sight.

I’m a drunken fool feeling sorry for myself.

Northern Exposure starts to play on the television. It’s a quirky little sitcom about a self-centered, New York City-type doctor forced to work in a small town in Alaska, and all the eccentric people he deals with. One of these people is Maggie, a cute little bush pilot with plenty of issues.

In the episode Maggie cons Joel (the Doctor) into going with her to Detroit, to a party for her Grammy’s 80th birthday. I raise my glass.

Cheers, Grammy. Happy birthday to both of us.

The show unfolds with the usual buffoonery and sexual tension between Joel and Maggie. They arrive at Grammy’s house to discover she’s locked herself in her bathroom. She’s angry at her daughter for being too controlling. Maggie convinces Grammy to let her into the bathroom, and the two drink and smoke while Grammy covers all of the reasons for her anger. She talks about how active and healthy she is, but how her children see her as fragile. If I want to ride a motorcycle, says Grammy, I should be able to!

Then it hits me.

It’s Grammy’s 80th birthday.

It’s my 40th birthday.

Grammy is twice my age.

Double. My. Life.

I stop crying. The fog of alcohol begins to clear from my brain. I start to pay closer attention to the show as Grammy relives parts of her life. She’s alive. I don’t mean just taking in oxygen. She is still young and full of life. She wants to ride a motorcycle!

Now I see it! Clear as day. This character has lived two of my lives. The math is easy. If I’ve only lived half of my life, that means I have time to do it all over again.

Suddenly I don’t feel so old. I no longer feel like my life is beyond fixing. I have plenty of time to start over and make things right.

I think about my life, all that I’ve done up until this moment, and I see clearly that in no way is my life even close to being over.

My mistakes don’t matter. The fact that I’m broke and have lost everything, none of it matters.

I did it once (my life); I can do it again. Only this time without the mistakes.

In this moment, I realize that I’ve just been given an incredible birthday present.

A second chance.

* * *

Would you like a second chance in life? Of course you would, we would all like a chance to undo the wrong choices we have made in life. What you first have to understand is that you can’t change the past. It’s done.

History.

Your second chance doesn’t come with history. Your second chance doesn’t hinge on anything you have done in the past. Your past is what brought you here. Why on earth would you want to change it?

Your past is the conception of your now. Maybe there’s been a time in your life when you’ve thought, I wish my father never existed. Do you see the problem with that? Take away one of your parents and you don’t exist. Plain and simple.

Erasing the past is not the way to start a new life. Embracing the future is. Realizing you are here for a reason and going out to find it is the most gratifying experience.

Psychiatrist David Viscott said it best in Finding Your Strength in Difficult Times: A Book of Meditations:

The meaning of life is to discover your gift.

The work of life is to develop it.

The purpose of life is to give your gift away.

Go out and find your gift. Get pumped up and excited about your new life.

Look for people who are 80 years old and still active. They are everywhere in our aging population. Seniors today are active. Go to the ski slopes or the gym. Check out the local bicycle shop or golf course. Seniors today aren’t sitting around watching As the World Turns. They are living large and loving it.

Once you have accepted that you have so much more life to live, adjust your age. That’s right. You are no longer 42 years old. You are two.

In North America the overall average life expectancy is roughly 80 years. So I suggest that from your 40th birthday on, you give yourself a special gift. A chance to be reborn into a totally new life, full of opportunity and growth. A chance to use the knowledge you have gained from your past life in a positive way. If, as it was in my case, you are 40 years old, the math works perfectly. You are one year young, one year from now. If you are 41 or older, subtract your age from 80. That number is the minimum number of years you plan on living. That is how young you are. Forty-five years old is five years young. Today I am 23 (63), still a youngster. How young are you?

Don’t expect huge changes in your first year. After all, you are a baby. Just keep moving forward. Always try to improve as you go. You have to crawl before you can walk. An old saying, but a fitting one.

* * *

I agree with Anna Nalick. Life is like an hourglass glued to the table. The first time I heard this song I was on the highway and I had to pull my car over because tears were obstructing my vision. Those lyrics painted a picture I could see. The sands running through the glass. Every grain another day in my life. How many of those grains had I let slide without even noticing? Not any more. Today I make every day count.

I found a picture on the internet of a surfboard turned on its side on the beach. On the bottom of the surfboard, written in bold letters are the words: WAKE UP AND