Be More: What to Do When You Can't Do Any More!

By Charlie Hugh-Jones

We are complex beings capable of incredible creativity, intimate connection, and immeasurable compassion. But too often we get in our own way.

We spend our lives pursuing things outside of ourselves to convince us that we are enough, that we matter, that we belong or that there is some meaning in our suffering.

The truths that transform us—that allow us to be more—are not complicated. However, they are often hidden in plain sight, concealed from us by our own fear and busyness, waiting for us to slow down sufficiently to encounter them.

It took a crisis that almost brought me to a full stop to notice a reality that was right in front of me—a reality that now enables me to experience life with more ease and inspires me to access deeper realms of creativity, connection, and compassion. A reality that enables me to be more.

This book is about transcending our biological programing and cultural conditioning (our neurobiology and psychology) and re-connecting with the magnificence of who we really are, the magic of human connection and the mystery of our place in the universe.

This is a playbook for learning how to be, more.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Balboa Press
• Release date: Feb 1, 2022
• ISBN: 9781982275495

Charlie Hugh-Jones

Unconsciously, I spent many years looking to things outside of me to convince me that I was enough. A question of which I was barely aware, but insistently demanded an answer. A question that drove my single-minded pursuit of more. That pursuit unfolded as a familiar story of over-achievement, ambition and unyielding activity: - Youngest Partner at pre-eminent London Law Firm, - CEO of fastest growing regional healthcare technology company, - Global head of a division of one of the world's largest marketing and communications agencies, - Senior Executive of a West Coast Private Equity Fund, and then... I’d reached for the stars, trying to bend the universe to my will, to help as many people as humanly possible. But my journey, unwittingly fueled by my fear of never being enough - never being able to do enough - carved it’s inevitable arc back down to earth. A spent rocket failing to achieve escape velocity, temporarily defying gravity until running out of fuel. My personal crisis led to a decision to end my life… But what could have been a full stop in my story, instead became a pause; a pause that triggered an awakening in me that radically shifted my thinking, my relationships and released me from the suffering that had driven me to that decision. The day I almost ended my life was the day in which I came alive. What I went through that day was both a psychotic breakdown and an ecstatic experience that set me on my journey of learning to be, more...

Book preview

Copyright © 2021 Charlie Hugh-Jones.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

Balboa Press

A Division of Hay House

1663 Liberty Drive

Bloomington, IN 47403

www.balboapress.com

844-682-1282

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

The author of this book does not dispense medical advice or prescribe the use of any technique as a form of treatment for physical, emotional, or medical problems without the advice of a physician, either directly or indirectly. The intent of the author is only to offer information of a general nature to help you in your quest for emotional and spiritual well-being. In the event you use any of the information in this book for yourself, which is your constitutional right, the author and the publisher assume no responsibility for your actions.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.

ISBN: 978-1-9822-7548-8 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-9822-7550-1 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-9822-7549-5 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2021920512

Balboa Press rev. date: 01/27/2022

CONTENTS

Preface

Introduction

Prologue

A Year in Palm Beach

Part 1 Driving with the Brakes On

Chapter 1 Enough

Chapter 2 Attention

Chapter 3 Date with Destiny

Chapter 4 The Destiny Delusion

Chapter 5 Beyond Happiness

Chapter 6 Even Further Beyond Happiness

Part 2 Reconnection

Chapter 7 The Magnificence of Me

Chapter 8 Me, Me, M/We?

Chapter 9 The Magic of Human Connection

Chapter 10 What Comes Next?

Chapter 11 The Mystery of My Place in the Universe

Chapter 12 Transcendence

Part 3 Uh, hello …?

Chapter 13 Once Upon a Time …

Chapter 14 The Greatest Thing You’ll Ever Learn

Acknowledgements

Appendix 1

Appendix 2

Appendix 3

Appendix 4

Appendix 5

Appendix 6

Appendix 7

Endnotes

About the Author

For Abbey—through all time and space there will be no story like ours.

PREFACE

Hello! Thanks for picking up this book. I’m grateful you’re here because I’d love to share some of my story with you.

Each of us has a story that is unique, but I’m beginning to think that every one of us is given the opportunity to learn similar lessons. Just maybe, this human experience is all about learning to live more fearlessly so that we can love more fiercely and burn more brightly to light the way for others.

But that’s hard for so many of us to do right now.

One of the reasons I dared to write this book was that I noticed something: our stories can either be catalysts for growth or cages within which we imprison ourselves.

Over these last few years, I’ve studied, meditated, and reflected upon my own story, the journey of becoming who I am right now. And I’ve become convinced that our cultural conditioning and biological programming doesn’t determine our destiny; neither does it define who we are. Unless we let it.

Sometimes we just need a little help to get out of our own way. Perhaps a nudge in the right direction, a new perspective, or someone to show us a path we couldn’t see for ourselves. Sometimes we might just need someone to hold up a mirror so that we can see ourselves more clearly.

That’s one of the things I hope this book offers you: A chance to pause, see your own reflection in some aspect of my story, and to re-connect with who you really are, not who you think you are.

Because that’s something I struggled with for far longer than I now know I needed to. Thinking that I was never enough. Thinking that I had to do more to live up to who I was meant to be.

No matter how much success I achieved, no matter how big the projects I got to work on, and no matter how many people I got to help, it was never enough. I was never enough.

What I’ve come to accept is that everything I’ve been through in my journey up to the point of writing this book has been to wake me up to a truth that had been there all along. The truth that I was, already, so much more than enough. I just needed to learn how to be more.

Writing this book has been transformational. I don’t mean that I have magically become someone else or someone I always aspired to be. Rather, through writing it, I have become more of who I already am. Sounds profound, and it is. But it is also simple.

We are complex beings capable of incredible creativity, intimate connection, and immeasurable compassion. But the truths that transform us—that allow us to be more—are not complicated.

Sometimes, however, they are hidden in plain sight, concealed from us by our own fear and busyness, waiting for us to slow down sufficiently to encounter them.

It took a crisis that almost brought me to a full stop to make me notice a reality that was right in front of me—a reality that now enables me to experience life with more ease and inspires me to access deeper realms of creativity, connection and compassion. A reality that enables me to be more.

Now, more than ever, humanity needs more of us to be healed-up, hope-fueled and compassion-led as we come through a pandemic, confront one unrelenting climate crisis after another, challenge enduring systemic racial injustice, reduce financial and health inequality, and navigate our society’s hyper-polarization, identity politics and deepening sense of separation and disconnectedness. (An exhausting but not exhaustive list!)

And perhaps that’s why I was prompted to write this book right now. Maybe the reason you have it in your hand at this moment, is for you to be inspired and equipped to be more too.

INTRODUCTION

This is not an ordinary book. It’s unconventional in the sense that it is hard to categorize. Is it a memoire, a self-help book, or a work of philosophy? Perhaps it’s all three, and maybe it’s more.

Whatever it is, I recognize that it is long. And so, to help you navigate it with as much ease as possible, and to maintain the momentum of curiosity, I’d like to give you a quick overview of what you’re about to read.

The prologue drops you into my world on the day of my most acute crisis. Fueled by a deepening depression that almost drove me to take my own life, I found myself coming round from a catatonic state in a physician’s office. As I became aware of my surroundings, I felt a timeless sense of peace and connectedness. I experienced a profound sense of joy and love and of the sacredness of the moment that totally transcended the drama of the day.

But that’s just the start of the journey I’m inviting you to come on with me in this book—a journey from despair, through awakening, to some vital truths and daily disciplines (practices if you will) that constantly renew my hope, help me heal my pain, re-ignite my inspiration, and, ultimately, allow me to access a state of immense joy no matter what is going on in my world.

Those truths and practices continue to expand my capacity for creativity, connection, and compassion, and enable me to bring more of me to each present moment. To be more.

The first section that follows the prologue, A Year in Palm Beach, establishes what happened in the first year following my incident in that physician’s office as I moved from one continent to another—from South West London to South Florida, where I was introduced to some incredible people—people who confronted my closed-mindedness and challenged me to open my eyes to a reality to which I had unconsciously blinded myself.

That chapter ends with a reprise: A series of events similar to, but not the same as, those that led to my catatonic state in the physician’s office and that threatened to capsize me again.

But that year in Palm Beach and those new relationships had established some deep foundations for the transformation I was undergoing and equipped me to respond in a completely different way. I just didn’t recognize it at the time.

Part 1, Driving with the Brakes On, starts with a short prelude that briefly revisits the incident in the physician’s office to set up the next six chapters.

Chapters 1 through 6 are essentially about the unconscious beliefs and patterns of behavior that were holding me back from going deeper. They address some of the things that kept me from knowing, without doubt, that I was enough; things like chasing stuff and status (Chapters 1 and 2), chasing destiny and purpose (Chapters 3 and 4), and chasing happiness, or at least meaningfulness in life (Chapters 5 and 6).

In each chapter, I share some tools, techniques, and strategies we can use to identify and overcome our unconscious beliefs and counter that deep fear that we are not enough—a fear that drives many of us relentlessly to do more.

I root these tools, techniques, and strategies in the stories of how I discovered them and how I began to incorporate them into my daily life over the course of the several years following my first year in Palm Beach.

The chapters in Part 1 unfold in couplets. They reflect the duality of my experience at the time, a disconnect or tension between what I thought were two disparate sides of myself: the rational and the more mystical. The first chapter of each pair typically deals with psychology and philosophy, and the second chapter deals with the more spiritual aspects of my journey in learning how to be more.

Like Part 1, Part 2, Reconnection, starts with a brief prelude that revisits the moments leading up to the events shared in the prologue where the seeds were sown for the most profound lesson I would come to learn: the awareness that I am an infinite radiant spiritual being having a finite relational human experience mediated through a body and mind that simply want to keep me safe.

When I came round from my catatonic state in the physician’s office, I realized just how disconnected I had become. My mind and my body were entirely disconnected from my spirit. But I wasn’t just disconnected from myself; I’d also become disconnected from other people and from God, the Universe, my higher power.

That’s what the next part of this book is about: my awakening to and the deepening of my connection with the magnificence of who I really am (Chapter 7), the magic of human connection (Chapters 8 and 9) and the mystery of my place in the Universe (Chapters 10, 11, and 12).

Part 2 is about the healing journey of integration and wholeness, of becoming more of who we truly are so that we can relate to others from a place of authenticity and vulnerability. In Part 2, I share tools, techniques and strategies we can use to connect with others from a place of curiosity and with compassion rather than letting our fear of intimacy (in-to-me-see) and rejection or our tendency toward judgement keep us isolated, lonely, and from truly belonging.

Part 2 is also about the power of wonder and awe that can help us ground ourselves in the present moment while also signposting the mind-blowing paradox of our existence, of being both an infinite spiritual being and a finite human being. It’s about the dance between Newtonian laws and Quantum mechanics that governs the reality we experience and hints at the role we might play in cocreating that reality.

Part 3, Uh, hello…? is a coda, bringing the book and the part of the story I want to share with you to its close.

The introduction to this part highlights the simplicity, practicality, and significance of our daily habits in shaping our ability to be more. Chapter 13 then dives deep into the story-telling process that our minds use to make sense of the raw, unfiltered reality we are presented with every day. That chapter then goes on to explore the profound possibility that our reality is, in turn, shaped by the stories we consciously choose to tell ourselves.

If you read nothing else after this introduction other than Chapter 14, then this book would still be complete. I am convinced that, no matter the question, love is usually the answer. And love is what Chapter 14 is all about—but not necessarily how we’ve come to think of it.

To be loved is perhaps one of our deepest human needs, and its absence can be the source of our most destructive dysfunction. The search for love so often leads us to look outside of ourselves, to mortgage our joy, our sense of peace, and the value we place on our own being, on whether others tell us we matter, that we are accepted, that we are loved.

But what I now know is that love is already within us; it is part of each one of us. It is who we are, not necessarily something we need to get. It is boundless, inexhaustible, renewable without measure, and not constrained by culture, creed, or context.

In its fullest expression it is pure compassion—recognizing ourselves in each other. The walls we construct between us that polarize and paralyze us come tumbling down as this reality awakens within us.

If there was one singular reason for exploring being more, it would be to discover this: you and I are love.

To be more is to transcend our biological programing and cultural conditioning and to more fully be both who we truly are and become who we are meant to be!

My hope for you is that this book reads you as much as you read it, that you see your reflection in the stories I share, and find yourself inspired and more equipped to live life with more ease and more joy, and to more often access the deepest realms of creativity, connection, and compassion—to be more.

PROLOGUE

The Incident

Hello, Charlie. It’s good to have you back with us. My name is Dr. Scott.

These are the words I hear as I come around. The first thing I notice, apart from the warm and reassuring voice somewhere nearby, is the plastic feel of institutional pleather chairs, their tackiness sticky against my forearms.

My eyes open slowly and tentatively, and I look around. Where am I? Who am I? And who is this person welcoming me back with such concern?

For most of my adult life, I’ve been the one advising people what to do. I’ve been in charge. As a partner at a preeminent law firm in London and then as a strategist for some of the world’s most recognizable companies, my career was built on knowing exactly what to do and what to say in every single encounter. Here? I’ve no idea what I’m doing and no idea of what to say. It’s as if I’m waiting for someone to remind me who I’m supposed to be. But I’m not uncomfortable.

There’s something else too. Not only am I not in control; I’m also feeling a sense of lightness and freedom unlike anything I’ve known before. The stress of always having to know, of always having to be right, of always thinking I’m supposed to be the smartest person in the room … it’s gone.

Deeper feelings have shifted, too. The darkness, the anguish, the voiceless scream inside my head—gone! The desperation for everything to end, for some form of relief. Gone. The pressure in my face from the tears that just wouldn’t flow fast enough. Gone.

In their place is a sense of peace and a sense that everything is okay and is going to continue to be okay. I don’t need to strategize or sell or achieve anything anymore. After so many years of trying so hard, pushing so hard, I am seized by a voice inside my head so resonant and affirming, so definite it might as well be carved on the wall in front of me: "You are a human being, Charlie, not a human doing."

An eternity passes in what is really just a moment. Then that voice inside my head is back again: Your kids need you, Charlie, not your life insurance. And then, again: Everything is exactly as it is meant be. You are exactly who you are meant to be. There’s nothing for you to do right now. Don’t fight it.

It’s as if I’ve tapped into something so deep it’s almost beyond myself. I can’t put words to it, but it’s as if a portal has opened to reveal the most essential part of me, distinct from thought, separate from the stories I’ve been telling myself about me, my family, and my failure to provide—my failure to be what they needed me to be.

Up until this point in my life, it’s the closest I’ve come to clarity about who I really am. I feel a sense of wholeness and of profound beauty and connectedness with everything. It is a blurring of the boundaries between me and my surroundings, a lightning bolt of self-awareness and maybe even self-acceptance.

How long have I been here? I finally ask.

It’s been about two hours, Dr. Scott replies.

Later she tells me that I had been in a near catatonic state when I’d staggered into the building and collapsed into the chair by the reception desk. My eyes had been screwed shut, my mouth wide open, my body completely tense, yet I’d remained utterly still for several hours.

Can you tell me about what triggered this? Dr. Scott asks me after some time has passed.

It’s surreal as I hear myself explaining to her that my plan had been to commit suicide when the probationary period of my latest life insurance policy had expired. That would have been October 15, the first date after which my wife could safely make a claim on the policy.

But, Charlie, we are still in the middle of September. Something must have happened to change your plan. What was it? Dr. Scott enquires softly.

It takes a minute for me to gather the memory of it because it feels as if it happened to someone else. Then, in an oddly dispassionate way, I tell Dr. Scott that, earlier that day, I’d been in a marriage counselling session in which my wife had disclosed her feelings for someone else and announced she wanted out of our marriage.

The moment had been utterly devasting. My energy had instantly drained from my body. I’d felt as if my breath had been stolen. In that moment, the story in my head had shifted too. No longer was I just a financial ruin, my marriage and family were now shattered as well.

But here, in the exam room with Dr. Scott, I’m calm, collected, and certainly not overwhelmed as I recall the events of earlier that day. The memories slowly filter back as I continue to speak. I had left the counselling session separately from my wife. As I’d staggered out, like an extra from The Walking Dead all I could think about was driving my car at full speed into the nearest bridge pylon to end the agony.

But my body wouldn’t comply. It seemed to be actively resisting me. It wouldn’t let me drive any faster than five miles per hour as I set off with my fingers turning white as they rigidly clung to the steering wheel. At some point, barely noticing the drivers behind me honking their horns in frustration as I held up the traffic, I had pulled off the road and unconsciously made my way to the office of a physician I had previously spoken to only on the phone (to increase my dose of antidepressants) but had never met. Until today.

And now here I was, motionless and silent after my failed suicide mission, and yet feeling released, freer, and more alive than ever before. The peace and incredible joy of that moment defied all rational explanation.

48626.png

But let’s back up about eighteen months for some context.

Eighteen months before I ended up in Dr. Scott’s office, depression first took hold. I had just dropped off my two youngest kids, Melody and Leon, at school, and climbed back into my car. That’s when the tears had suddenly started to flow. Completely out of the blue.

I hadn’t been thinking any negative thoughts. At least, I couldn’t identify anything specific that had prompted me to feel that way. There was no worry on my mind, just a sudden and intense sadness that forced itself into me like a wave rushing into a small cove.

What I initially dismissed as a random, one-off episode happened again a week later and then gradually began to happen more often. I found myself hiding away in conference rooms, the restroom, or back in my car, crying. I began making excuses for not going out with friends.

I could muster the old Charlie for clients, but afterward, I was exhausted. My usual energy, drive, and enthusiasm—the very traits that had pushed me to partnership in a top law firm just ten years out of college—seemed to leach away from me almost as soon as the day began. Even coffee couldn’t bring that guy back, no matter how many shots I had.

What the hell was going on? At the time, I was well paid. I traveled the world. I’d managed to transition from being an attorney to becoming a strategist to some of the most influential companies in the world. I was self-employed and in charge of my own destiny. On paper, I was successful, wasn’t I? I lived in an enviable zip code and drove a fancy car. I had a beautiful wife and adorable, thriving kids. Why on earth should I be depressed?

I solved problems for a living, so I figured this, too, might have an easy fix. My primary care physician agreed. In less than ten minutes after I completed a simple form,¹ he diagnosed me with depression and prescribed antidepressants. Easy. Done.

Since then, I’d been successful at keeping that a secret from almost everyone. But toward the end of that eighteen months, those antidepressants weren’t working, even as the dosage kept creeping up. I was having more and more trouble hiding my state of mind. The tears. The lethargy. The dread. It took effort even to breathe sometimes without hyperventilating or being rooted to the spot shaking, hoping no one saw.

And then, the big project into which I’d sunk a year of my self-employed consulting life fell apart overnight. The money that I’d been counting on coming through immediately stopped flowing. With no savings and no rational perspective, debilitated by the darkness brought on by the depression, I couldn’t see any way to pay our massive monthly bills.

That’s when the sullen moods metastasized into much darker thoughts of suicide, and the strategist in me concluded, with some distorted logic, that there was only one way out of my financial hole: to end my life on October 15.

Flash forward to the afternoon I came around in Dr. Scott’s office.

My work wasn’t going to pay the bills. I wasn’t much of a model for my kids, and my wife was apparently in love with someone who wasn’t me. But following my breakdown—or awakening or whatever it was—somehow I knew that everything was going to be all right. Something inside of me had shifted.

I didn’t know it then, but within two months, I’d be signing preliminary papers for my second divorce (a sad cliché I know) and finding separate homes for me and my new ex while the kids struggled with the rhythms of ping-ponging between their split-up parents.

Then, a financial opportunity showed up that would take me nearly four thousand miles away from Wimbledon, London, to Palm Beach, Florida. I wasn’t exactly excited, knowing that I would have to leave my kids behind, but I had to try to make our finances work.

I felt as if I had little choice other than to just go with it and see where it took me. The strategist in me, who had always planned ten steps ahead, was forced to focus on one step at a time, and my next step was buying a ticket on a Virgin Atlantic flight to the United States.

A YEAR IN PALM BEACH

December 7. That’s the day I got on a plane at Heathrow to fly to Miami where I was to pick up the keys to my new condo in Palm Beach. Sitting in front of me was an incredible woman; I just didn’t know it yet.

As we took off and the patchwork of the English countryside receded steadily below us, I noticed that this woman seemed transfixed by the view. I was so struck by her sense of wonder and awe that I couldn’t stop myself from striking up a conversation.

We talked about everything! Our careers, our spiritual journeys, and the challenges we had with our respective religious heritage (mine Christian, hers Jewish). We shared childhood memories, reminisced about the cool TV commercials of our respective childhoods (growing up in a country with only four TV channels!), and told each other embarrassing stories about our parents.

Surprisingly to me (the uptight, straitlaced prude I’d been up until that point), we talked openly about sex, love, and dating. Somehow, we even ended up talking about whether mermaids actually existed! We talked nonstop for the entire nine hours of the flight and continued our conversation through immigration, into baggage claim, and all the way to Palm Beach, since she lived there, too, coincidentally.

But it was no coincidence. Not really. We were meant to meet on that day, on that flight, at that time in each of our lives. (Before this, I never would have used phrases like meant to be.) Abbey happened to be on that flight because she’d been visiting her parents at their family home back in London—guess where? Wimbledon.

We were travelling a near identical four-thousand-mile journey. Her parents lived ten minutes from where I had been living in Wimbledon, and Abbey lived ten minutes from where I was going to be living in Palm Beach!

On that plane, we connected in a way that I’d always thought was reserved for other people.

Reflecting upon that conversation now, I understand that we saw each other. We each allowed the other to look behind the practiced veneer of who we wanted people to see into the deeper things that shaped how we, in turn, saw the world.

Abbey was (and still is) the most wonderful, spiritually connected, open-hearted woman I have ever had the privilege of meeting. I couldn’t fathom why she hadn’t found the right guy. (Before you say something, this wasn’t my prescription for her. She told me she had been looking. Okay?)

At that time, I wondered whether I could be open to love again. But something from my breakdown or awakening or whatever it was had freed me up. All bets were off. I was open to writing a new story for myself, one that was no longer based on the stories my mind had been telling me about my past.

December 7 was a Sunday. Two days later, we planned our first lunch date at a wonderful, curbside eatery just over the bridge on Palm Beach Island. For someone who’s heart had been broken so badly, whose two former marriages had both ended so painfully, to embark on a relationship might have seemed like complete madness. But I chose to keep my heart open.

I found the courage to embrace curiosity and the mystery of not knowing. For once, the strategist in me didn’t have to know how story was going to play out. The serendipity of meeting Abbey on that plane was enough.

Too Good to Be True?

Within the first few weeks, as I was finding my feet, Abbey introduced me to a number of her friends—characters who were going to play significant roles as I shifted my worldview and shaped my new adventure.

Katherine Lee Borse was owner of Palm Beach Healing Arts, a center for acupuncture, Chinese herbology, and functional medicine. This was not a place I would have previously been comfortable frequenting. The lotus flowers, incense, and dream catchers would have been too out there for me.

My first acupuncture session was a revelation, though—a weird, wonderful, almost out-of-body experience that relieved the pain from a historic herniated disc and had me questioning why I’d been so resistant to the possibility that there were energy patterns and flows that Western medicine couldn’t yet explain.

It was difficult to resist the urge to investigate further. I had so many questions. I wanted to know why I had been wrong, how this worked, why it worked. But I let it go and refused to research it. Instead, I opted to enjoy the mystery of it, and I booked my next session.

Next, Abbey introduced me to Sara Lerner, a yogi at a yoga studio called Parasutra. The only sutra I’d known up until then was the school-boy-giggle-inducing Kama Sutra. This certainly heightened my interest in going to yoga when I was invited!

But there was certainly some hesitation on my part. As I was growing up, my family had been ardently religious. We were devout and energetic, yet conservative (in the nonpolitical sense) Evangelical Christians. The culture and community I was brought up in had taught that yoga (and basically anything that wasn’t included in our version of Christianity) was totally off limits, dangerous, taboo.

Yes, yoga as exercise was beginning to be considered pretty mainstream, so I could have rationalized that as an argument for going, but Parasutra was one of those