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Episode 63

Real Life’s Adventures in Living: The Path to True Happiness with Guest Alastair Henry Part II | EP 63

Alastair Henry, guest, is back with Part II, focused on “The Path to True Happiness” and what he learned about happiness and himself. He eloquently talks about acceptance, reflection time, being yourself, and being appreciative of having the opportunity to have renewed life through a double lung transplant, giving him the unique gift of more time/ to graciously give back to others, communities, and his family.

About the Guest

Alastair immigrated to Canada from England by himself when he was 19. He became a typical yuppie – family, a house in the suburbs, and a big job in the corporate sector. Following London Life’s Freedom 55 plan – he retired at 57 and went to live in the country.

A year later, disillusioned with the passivity of retirement, he shed his material possessions and went to live for two years with a small First Nations band in a remote fly-in location in the North-West Territories.

About the Host

Dr. Judith Holder’s passion is empowering people to be their best selves! Dr. Holder is the founder and executive director of Unique Pathways™ (www.uniquepathwayscoaching.com). She is a leadership coach-psychologist, facilitator, consultant, and author.

Our paths are filled with many adventures which Judith believes can be seen as growth opportunities, even during challenging times. She likes to think about, discover, and discuss personal and professional life circumstances as you journey through life through the lens of Christian values, Buddhist precepts, Ascended Master teachings, and Esoteric Principles to gain greater clarity and mastery in daily living. 

Dr. Holder is the author of Mastering Life’s Adventures: On the Beam – Essential Insights for Growth and Self-Mastery, and an e-book, Opening Up to Your Divinity: Practical Strategies and Practices for Soul Growth. 

On a personal note, Dr. Holder sees herself as a perpetual student/seeker learning from her everyday adventures, which she considers part of her ongoing growth and evolution of her SOUL. The fun part is we are all walking similar journeys together!

Judith enjoys spending time with family, vacationing at beaches and mountainsides, reading, walking, partaking in mindfulness practices, and is a certified yoga instructor.

Dr. Holder’s books Mastering Life’s Adventures: On the Beam and Opening Up to Your Divinity: Practical Strategies and Practices for Soul Growth can be found at -

https://www.uniquepathwayscoaching.com/services/spiritual-inquisitiveness/

Mastering Life’s Adventures “How to” Downloadable Courses at www.uniquepathwayscoaching.com under the Tab “Offerings”

  • Course 1: Mastering Life’s Adventures mini-course
  • Course 2: Opening Up to Your Divinity mini-course

Learn more about “Mental Fitness for Busy People” at www.uniquepathwayscoaching.com under the Tab “Offerings”

You can also check out Dr. Holder’s at

LinkedIn page: https://www.linkedin.com/in/judith-c-holder-phd-ms-pcc-bcc-a1a4a57/

Executive and Leadership Coaching website: www.uniquepathwayscoaching.com

Speaking Engagements (for Women New to Leading): www.drjudithholder.com

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Transcript
Speaker:

Dr. Judith: Welcome to Mastering Life's Adventures, an educational podcast about

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tapping into your true self, the soul, your soul, the substance of your life.

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To discover what life's ups and downs are really about, and how to

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have a greater sense of purpose, peace, joy, and fulfillment.

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I am Dr.

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Judith Holder, your host, coach psychologist, fellow seeker, who enjoys

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diving into the connections between spirituality, psychology, wellness.

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And your everyday life's adventures all preparing and polishing you

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like the fastest, a magnificent diamond to be your best self.

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If you're craving more from your life, you are in the right place.

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Come let's journey together and transforming what you know

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and to who you really are.

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Mastering life's adventures begins now.

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Hi, I am back with, uh, Alistair Henry, and we're talking about a, a slightly

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different topic, but similar vein.

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Our topic we're gonna be talking about today is the path to true

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happiness with the underscore true happiness and what that really means

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and what that really looks like.

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And I usually give the analogy sometimes that we have three ways

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in which we can move through life.

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We can move through life on a skateboard and slow things down and be observed

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and look at things and not fall off that skateboard and enjoy the

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experience that we're moving through.

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Or we can be like a cork and water that we can just float and experience

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the here and now and be mindfulness as we talked about in part one.

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We can also have like a springboard or a trampoline in which we're bouncing

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on to get to see something higher.

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So we're bouncing and bouncing.

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Seeing the higher view and understanding someone from a greater advantage point.

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And sometimes our life experiences a moving us all to all three

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or just one or two of them.

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I'm here to talk with Alistair about this whole notion in order for us to

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move towards this point of happiness, we need to know what that even means.

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So Alistair, why don't you talk a little bit about again,

Alastair:

who you are?

Alastair:

Yeah, I'm a, I'm an author.

Alastair:

I'm an adventurist and I'm a double lung transplant recipient.

Alastair:

And, uh, one of the advantages of being old is you can reflect.

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And as you reflect with the maturity comes wisdom and you can think back

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to different times in your life.

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And some of the decisions you made.

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And of course, at the time, when you make the decision, you think

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you're making the right decision.

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But upon reflection, you realize, wow, that was a bad decision

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because you were being biased by other factors in your life.

Alastair:

You didn't realize it at the time.

Alastair:

And I think it's, uh, when I look back to my twenties and thirties,

Alastair:

I was in the corporate world.

Alastair:

I was, um, I was a yuppie.

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I was working very hard, progressing, succeeding.

Alastair:

It was all about being ambitious and progressing.

Alastair:

But I look at it and I think, okay, but I wasn't happy.

Alastair:

I was succeeding.

Alastair:

So what is happiness?

Alastair:

Well, for me, it's being content, feeling fulfilled, being able to

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sleep at night soundly like a baby.

Alastair:

That's happiness.

Alastair:

But it took me a long time to get to that point.

Alastair:

It took a lot of, um, a lot of journeys, ups and downs to get there.

Alastair:

But little by little, I see that that was my journey.

Alastair:

But it was many chapters in life.

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I'm an author and I see life as a, as a book with different chapters

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and you walking your way through the book and one chapter leads to

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the next, to the next, to the next.

Alastair:

It's progressive.

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And that's the evolution of the soul.

Alastair:

That's the spirit.

Alastair:

Dr. Judith: Exactly.

Alastair:

That's what I was thinking about when you're talking about chapter to chapter.

Alastair:

Each experience in life is maybe a new chapter.

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That's what the soul likes too.

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The evolution of the progression of the soul is also on the

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crest of what is true happiness.

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Because we think it is in the materialistic world only of success.

Alastair:

Or achieving something, and that's what we've been conditioned into, but there's a

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whole new world, which you discovered when we talked about in part one in Canada,

Alastair:

in a remote area about mindfulness, being fully present, having time to reflect,

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having time to be able to look at how you're growing and evolving, and you

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went into a community from a, from one community of the corporate world with

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fast paced, Just get the dollar, let's keep it moving forward, looking at how

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we need to structure things to a whole new world saying, that don't work here.

Alastair:

And that don't work here.

Alastair:

And then you went from, you know, you know, the remote area in Canada,

Alastair:

and then you went to Bangladesh, and then, you know, you went to, you had

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these other adventures to continue to continue, continue to evolve

Alastair:

your soul evolution of awareness and sensitivity of the givingness.

Alastair:

The survey.

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of the helping is where I find some measures of happiness.

Alastair:

And I think when you give, you get it back.

Alastair:

It's weird.

Alastair:

You know, just, I mean, the Hindus believe in karma and I have, um,

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sort of Buddhist, Buddhist beliefs about things, about accepting things.

Alastair:

And, uh, yeah, I think there's a lot more that we don't know.

Alastair:

I mean, we're only human beings, but every once in a while I sense the

Alastair:

universe is sending me something that I don't quite understand, but it's there.

Alastair:

When I came back from Bangladesh, I volunteered in London and

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it was the Northwest London Resource Center was looking for a

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volunteer to work on their board.

Alastair:

And the executive director there was a lady called Candice Whitlock.

Alastair:

This is how I met Candice.

Alastair:

Our paths crossed.

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Candice liked what I was doing with my life.

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She'd already resigned.

Alastair:

Uh, she was gonna set off.

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So the two of us went off together.

Alastair:

That was 12 years ago.

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She sold a house, sold everything, and just set off.

Alastair:

She was a free spirit, just like me.

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And I think to myself, you know, how many women might I have met that

Alastair:

wouldn't have been on that wavelength?

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And yet, for some reason, I met Candice and she was on the same wavelength.

Alastair:

We both found what we were looking for and it worked out right from day one.

Alastair:

Wonderful.

Alastair:

Candice went to, um, Jamaica, Kingston, Jamaica with me for a year.

Alastair:

And then we went out to Georgetown, Guyana for a year.

Alastair:

And then in between assignments, of course, we came home.

Alastair:

I moved in with my daughter cause I had a bedroom in the basement and

Alastair:

Candice moved in with her daughters.

Alastair:

But we got talking and saying, you know, This isn't fair.

Alastair:

Yeah.

Alastair:

We keep imposing on our children.

Alastair:

It's like, well, how long are you going to be home dad?

Alastair:

You know, I don't know till the next assignment.

Alastair:

So we decided to go backpacking.

Alastair:

As if we were in our twenties, we're in our late sixties.

Alastair:

So we just went off to Central America for four months, for four months.

Alastair:

We just went off.

Alastair:

Yeah.

Alastair:

We're through Panama, Costa Rica, Nicaragua.

Alastair:

And the following year we went off to Southeast Asia through Bali.

Alastair:

Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, no reservations, nothing.

Alastair:

In fact, the first month we intended to stay in Thailand, but when we

Alastair:

got to Bangkok, it was raining so hard, and the forecast was

Alastair:

for rain to be for another week.

Alastair:

We just went back to the airport and got a little plane to Bali, to Denpasar in Bali.

Alastair:

So we spent the first month in Bali.

Alastair:

Out of all of that, it just flowed beautifully.

Alastair:

We never had a problem with, uh, finding accommodation or finding food or anything.

Alastair:

But I know most travelers gotta have everything lined up.

Alastair:

But that's the fear in this.

Alastair:

If I don't do this, bad things are gonna happen.

Alastair:

And they're not, they're not.

Alastair:

Yeah,

Alastair:

Dr. Judith: yeah.

Alastair:

And it's also, um, you're talking a degree of trust in the universe.

Alastair:

Yeah.

Alastair:

Yeah.

Alastair:

Yeah.

Alastair:

You trust the universe that things will work themselves out.

Alastair:

And I think that sometimes that's what we need to get more back to is if,

Alastair:

if you're faith based, or you have a Buddhist or Christian or whatever

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tradition that if you believe that things will work themselves out,

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and you keep yourself in alignment.

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With the good and doing the best that you can in a situation, then most things

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do usually work themselves out even the bad things that seem to happen to us.

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There is a silver lining, even in the bad things, if we can be able to kind of

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garner it and gather it and learn from it, because all experiences are trying to

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help us to continue to grow and advance and our awareness about ourselves, and

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about those that are around us as well.

Alastair:

Absolutely.

Alastair:

And you know, when I went to Bangladesh, I didn't realize, but,

Alastair:

uh, I had to learn to speak Bangla.

Alastair:

It's like, God, you gotta be joking.

Alastair:

I'm 62.

Alastair:

I can't learn a foreign language.

Alastair:

I took lessons and I learned enough to get by.

Alastair:

Amazing what you can do that you think you can't.

Alastair:

You just do it.

Alastair:

Just like Nike says, just do it.

Alastair:

And that is so true.

Alastair:

It really is so true.

Alastair:

We are our own worst enemy most of the time, because we're conditioned

Alastair:

to not have the confidence.

Alastair:

And the other part of us says, well, no, I've got to take some lessons.

Alastair:

I've got to go to night school too.

Alastair:

No, just do it.

Alastair:

Get to something for dummies and just read the book and teach yourself.

Alastair:

Dr. Judith: Yeah, it's kind of taking on the, for those individuals who

Alastair:

tend to be a little bit more cautious about how they want to live life is

Alastair:

that sometimes we need to just put our foot out there and just take the step

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and move forward on faith and knowing that we're doing the best we can and

Alastair:

also be open to trying something new because that opens a new door to us

Alastair:

that we wouldn't have had otherwise.

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We did it.

Alastair:

We found that, hey, I actually like this.

Alastair:

I'm learning new.

Alastair:

Otherwise, we keep a closed mindset, and it keeps us trapped, and our

Alastair:

soul doesn't want to be trapped.

Alastair:

Actually, our soul does not want to be put in the box and just say, this is all

Alastair:

you're going to do these four walls is it.

Alastair:

And as our soul says.

Alastair:

Um, no, that doesn't, you can put me in that box, I'm not going to be happy.

Alastair:

And I'm going to be restless.

Alastair:

And I'm also going to be sometimes we get into negativity, we're thinking,

Alastair:

where's this negativity coming from?

Alastair:

It's because you're not being attuned to your inner self, and our inner

Alastair:

self saying, I need more, I want more, please listen to me, please see me.

Alastair:

And please help

Alastair:

me.

Alastair:

And if you trust in the universe or whatever, you know,

Alastair:

it sends you these things.

Alastair:

And when we came back, we said, well, now we're in our, about

Alastair:

70, we were so late sixties.

Alastair:

And we just thought, no, we can't do this volunteering anymore.

Alastair:

It's just too, too hard.

Alastair:

We don't want to anyways, like been there, done it.

Alastair:

So what we were doing was writing actually at the time, as I said, I wrote that book

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awakening in the Northwest territories.

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And when I wrote that book, I called it White Man on the Land, and it

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was about a man who went to Loots O.

Alastair:

K.

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for two years, and then he left.

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And people said, love the book, love the story, but it causes the reader

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to say, well, we need to know more about this man that went into Loots O.

Alastair:

K., and what did he do afterwards?

Alastair:

So I carried on writing and writing, and I went right back, and

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it turned out to be a biography.

Alastair:

It starts when I'm born in Glasgow, Scotland, believe it or not.

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So, Awakening in the Northwest Territories is my autobiography.

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And then, because I enjoyed writing so much, we continued to write.

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So when we were volunteering, we were recording all of our adventures.

Alastair:

And Candace and I co wrote the book.

Alastair:

It's called Go For It.

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Volunteering Adventures on Roads Less Trouble.

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And the whole idea is to inspire and motivate other retirees to

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consider sharing their skills to help improve the lives of others

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in the world by volunteering.

Alastair:

That's what we did with that.

Alastair:

It reminds me of

Alastair:

Dr. Judith: the movie that came out several years ago about Pay It Forward.

Alastair:

Yeah.

Alastair:

Yeah.

Alastair:

Absolutely.

Alastair:

I know by paying it forward, the universe also returns back to us so

Alastair:

much more in happiness and contentment and sharing and giving of ourselves

Alastair:

and advancing communities and helping the communities to feel gifts that

Alastair:

we give and as a retiree or not as a retiree, um, allows to continue the

Alastair:

advancement of that particular community and also the advancement of the soul.

Alastair:

Thank you.

Alastair:

And when we went budget backpacking, we wrote every morning

Alastair:

and then just had fun in the afternoon.

Alastair:

But we realized, you know, that the rest of the world is cheap

Alastair:

compared to North America.

Alastair:

It really is.

Alastair:

And most of the places we stayed at, you know, we paid 10, 15 a night.

Alastair:

And we thought we can have a wonderful exotic holiday and you

Alastair:

don't have to spend a lot of money.

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So we did it on a budget.

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And the book we wrote was called Budget Backpacking for Boomers.

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And it's how to do it.

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So we showed you everybody where we went.

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So everywhere where we went at the back of the book is listed the hotel, how much

Alastair:

we paid, how little we paid and everything and all the wonderful adventures we had.

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Because for most people, when they think about holidays, they

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wanted a very organized trip, you know, thousands of dollars.

Alastair:

With a guide.

Alastair:

Well, we just wandered around for four months.

Alastair:

None of us spoke any of the languages.

Alastair:

Dr. Judith: Yeah.

Alastair:

Also, I think I, I hear that quality of the simplicity of happiness.

Alastair:

Absolutely.

Alastair:

Yes.

Alastair:

Yeah.

Alastair:

Um, and so minimalist.

Alastair:

Dr. Judith: Yeah.

Alastair:

Yeah.

Alastair:

It's kind of minimalist and the simplicity of it.

Alastair:

And that we also in our own culture, we think it has to be

Alastair:

complex to get to happiness.

Alastair:

Right.

Alastair:

Well, when I went to Lutz okay in the First Nations.

Alastair:

I was living minimally up there.

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Because you just have the bare essentials.

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I just had a lot.

Alastair:

It's a lot of fish and caribou and things like this.

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You couldn't do the big shopping at the grocery store because

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there just was not the selection.

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So you learn little by little that you only needed.

Alastair:

a knife and a fork and a cup and a plate.

Alastair:

You don't need 10 or two dozen.

Alastair:

You just need one of each.

Alastair:

So when I went to Bangladesh, it's the same thing.

Alastair:

You live minimally, uh, at the same level as your colleagues.

Alastair:

And, uh, that wasn't a problem for me, you know, same thing for Candice.

Alastair:

And we live minimally now, very frugally.

Alastair:

It's taught us to be very frugal.

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And that's just the way we are.

Alastair:

But we had to recondition ourselves because in, you know, we were

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brought up and we're primarily North Americans, but we've evolved.

Alastair:

And still happy.

Alastair:

And less is more.

Alastair:

With it.

Alastair:

Yeah.

Alastair:

Absolutely.

Alastair:

Oh yeah.

Alastair:

Dr. Judith: And I think that comment about less is more is very powerful

Alastair:

in the way for the soul evolving because the outer consciousness,

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the ego persona will always think, I need more, I need more, I need more.

Alastair:

It's not enough.

Alastair:

It's not enough.

Alastair:

It's not enough.

Alastair:

But the soul says, no, that's not the level in which we want or the

Alastair:

vibration which we want you to be in.

Alastair:

We want you to be aware of the fact that it is in the minimalist awareness

Alastair:

and attention and a reflection that you do through your writing, for example,

Alastair:

that allows you to tap into your soul, which is allows you to effortlessness.

Alastair:

And the flow of what happens, especially probably even when you're writing, there's

Alastair:

an effortlessness that happens, you know, with that process, because it is

Alastair:

the time we sometimes think our soul is separate from who we are, but our soul

Alastair:

is actually integrated to who we are.

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And we're trying to just uncover our soul and be aware of this

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experience as an existence.

Alastair:

Well, a little later this morning, I'd like to get back to

Alastair:

that because it's very important.

Alastair:

But I was saying, when I was in the corporate world, we have to multitask

Alastair:

because you've got meetings, you've got things cropping up all the time.

Alastair:

And my mind was always busy.

Alastair:

I was never living in the moment.

Alastair:

I was always going running, running, and I did all those like 20 years of that.

Alastair:

That's what I realized.

Alastair:

And it's the same thing now when I look around, everybody's on the

Alastair:

phone, nobody's living in the moment.

Alastair:

But when I went up there to live with you, it looks okay.

Alastair:

When you live in the moment, you stop, you live in the moment, all of a sudden

Alastair:

life becomes very rich, very full, and you can really appreciate it in technical.

Alastair:

Dr. Judith: I was just thinking that.

Alastair:

Otherwise you're just going through the motions.

Alastair:

So many people are going through the motions, they're running,

Alastair:

they're doing this, they're doing that, going from this to that.

Alastair:

But there's, they don't stop and really truly appreciate,

Alastair:

you know, whether it's food.

Alastair:

Or a glass of wine.

Alastair:

Everything is just a race.

Alastair:

Dr. Judith: You're saying something that's really critical.

Alastair:

That we've been conditioned to live that way.

Alastair:

And the more that we live that way as a race that's going on, the

Alastair:

further we get away from our soul.

Alastair:

And the soul sense of who we really are.

Alastair:

And get into game anchoring into that soul sense, because that's where the

Alastair:

richness of our happiness is that we will uncover and feel as if we're anchored

Alastair:

in something more than ourselves.

Alastair:

Then this next event that's coming up, or this next situation we need to deal with.

Alastair:

And that's entirely different world, not to say that these outer things we

Alastair:

don't need to attend to, but we also have to attend to the awareness that

Alastair:

if you want to have a greater sense of fulfillment and happiness and contentment.

Alastair:

And compassion and care is anchoring into that soul essence, that

Alastair:

substance, the substance of our life.

Alastair:

Absolutely.

Alastair:

And you know, Judith, I had a rude awakening when I went to

Alastair:

Bangladesh, very, I mean, one of the poorest nations on earth.

Alastair:

And then it dawned on me, how can these people be happy?

Alastair:

They have nothing.

Alastair:

And yet they were whistling.

Alastair:

Everybody was laughing.

Alastair:

And I thought, how can you do that?

Alastair:

You've got nothing.

Alastair:

And that's when I realized happiness is a state of mind.

Alastair:

It's not what you have.

Alastair:

It's not your bank account.

Alastair:

You know?

Alastair:

I mean, I had all of the stuff when I was up after I retired, but I wasn't as

Alastair:

happy as these people who had nothing.

Alastair:

But the guy was cleaning the public washroom, my God, you know, with a mop.

Alastair:

Oh, what a horrible, horrible, stinky job.

Alastair:

He was whistling.

Alastair:

And I thought, well, he just has a job.

Alastair:

He's happy.

Alastair:

He has a job.

Alastair:

Many people don't.

Alastair:

Men, Harold, were so spoiled, so privileged.

Alastair:

Really?

Alastair:

Mm hmm.

Alastair:

Dr. Judith: Mm hmm.

Alastair:

Yeah, we're not taking the advantage of understanding that the gifts that are

Alastair:

given to us, how do we utilize them in a way that helps others to move forward,

Alastair:

but also honor those gifts that we're given and not just throw them away.

Alastair:

It's like throwing out that, you know, throwing out food

Alastair:

because we don't want it.

Alastair:

But instead, no, can we give this food to someone else who can be able

Alastair:

to have it and enjoy it as well?

Alastair:

And so that presence, that living in the moment and a different mindset allows us

Alastair:

to be able to find maybe true happiness.

Alastair:

The other thing is community.

Alastair:

They, because they have nothing, they rely on each other.

Alastair:

But I noticed families were very tight, very happy.

Alastair:

And we've lost that in North America.

Alastair:

You know, we're all individuals.

Alastair:

We, we go to the movies, we do this, we do that.

Alastair:

But the whole idea of being community of people dropping in and family

Alastair:

gatherings, we're doing it traditionally at Christmas and Thanksgiving,

Alastair:

but it, it's a special occasion.

Alastair:

It's not part of daily life.

Alastair:

And that's what I noticed there.

Alastair:

That's what brings them happiness, is family.

Alastair:

The elderly, they look after their elderly.

Alastair:

A lot of times, the grandparents are the looking after the children.

Alastair:

Because the, well, the grandchildren, the children are scraping a living,

Alastair:

but it's the grandparents that are looking after the grandchildren.

Alastair:

Dr. Judith: And this is a quality, when you talk about community, I think

Alastair:

about coming into unity for community.

Alastair:

Coming into the unity of the oneness of the family of the community of the

Alastair:

core essence of caring and concern of enjoying each other's presence that we

Alastair:

sometimes have gotten away from because of our electronic devices that we find

Alastair:

ourselves on all the time, but they are doing it naturally and they probably

Alastair:

have a greater sense, true happiness that we think with our technical

Alastair:

abilities and our Individualistic perspectives, which they have their

Alastair:

place that that's going to only be the way for us to achieve our happiness.

Alastair:

And you're talking about another way that they have been able to do that through

Alastair:

that coming into unity of the community.

Alastair:

Well, I know there was some talk.

Alastair:

I read some studies about the happiness index and it turned

Alastair:

out, I think it was Nepal was the happiest country in the world.

Alastair:

They don't have any television or anything.

Alastair:

That's what makes them happy.

Alastair:

Yeah.

Alastair:

And you know, the other thing, Judith, really, at the end of

Alastair:

the day, every single person on this earth wants the same thing.

Alastair:

To be happy.

Alastair:

That's it.

Alastair:

To be happy.

Alastair:

All the things are important, but not as important as being happy.

Alastair:

I think about a lot of very successful, uh, I'd say rich people that I know.

Alastair:

Man, I, I would say they're not happy.

Alastair:

They're just, Hmm.

Alastair:

They're not happy.

Alastair:

They're not nice.

Alastair:

People.

Alastair:

Mm-hmm.

Alastair:

. Mm-hmm.

Alastair:

. Mm-hmm.

Alastair:

. They're rich and they're condescending and whatever, and discriminatory,

Alastair:

but they're not as happy as that guy cleaning the public washroom and dacker.

Alastair:

Right.

Alastair:

Dr. Judith: And is if the, you know, that person's cleaning the washroom

Alastair:

is a person who's being fully present, as you mentioned earlier.

Alastair:

Is the person who is living in the now and enjoying what they're doing

Alastair:

because they're aware of the fact they got a job and that can be happy.

Alastair:

Whereas we kind of move into this notion in search of we're

Alastair:

always in search of something in search of more, more, more, more.

Alastair:

And what we actually need to be is think about happiness and think about

Alastair:

joyfulness because part of what we're.

Alastair:

You know, sometimes people get in thinking about happiness as the end and

Alastair:

be all, and if it has true happiness has joyfulness with it, and that joy

Alastair:

of the spirit, the joy of the, it's the motor of life that allows us to be

Alastair:

able to giggle and then laugh and to find humor in things that maybe we're

Alastair:

serious and that we end up finding.

Alastair:

I can feel some, find some humor in this.

Alastair:

So the joy factor, I think is a contributor to this happiness factor.

Alastair:

What are your

Alastair:

thoughts?

Alastair:

Yeah, I agree.

Alastair:

For us, joy, It's when we can share and we see the smiles and we can impact somebody

Alastair:

else's life, either by inspiring or motivating them or giving them something.

Alastair:

When we stopped volunteering and backpacking, we decided

Alastair:

the universe sent us this idea.

Alastair:

Well, why don't you put your, um, all the photos you've got and

Alastair:

your stories together into a one hour audio visual presentation.

Alastair:

Go to long term homes, retirement residences, community centers,

Alastair:

and that's what we did, so we did that for five years.

Alastair:

Everybody enjoyed the stories and the photos and whatever.

Alastair:

So it was a way of us sharing our adventure and them living

Alastair:

through our stories and pictures and being entertained.

Alastair:

And it brought back a lot of memories.

Alastair:

People would say, wow, yeah, I went to Thailand when I was 20.

Alastair:

And then they start reminiscing and recalling.

Alastair:

So we did that for five years.

Alastair:

I only stopped touching when I got sick, you know, cause I was diagnosed

Alastair:

with idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis.

Alastair:

Did I tell you about

Alastair:

Dr. Judith: that?

Alastair:

Uh, I think the listeners have not heard about that.

Alastair:

And I think the seekers would probably be interested in hearing

Alastair:

that experience and how it tied into, you know, the core that we're

Alastair:

talking about, the happiness and joy.

Alastair:

Yeah.

Alastair:

Well, it was about December, 2019.

Alastair:

I was having trouble breathing.

Alastair:

Now, I'd been a pack a day smoker for 50 years and I was convinced I had lung

Alastair:

cancer and I'd been addicted, never could kick the habit and I resolved myself to

Alastair:

saying, okay, well, you'll go out, you know, you'll get lung cancer, just the

Alastair:

same as your mother and your brother.

Alastair:

That's how they died.

Alastair:

They were heavy smokers.

Alastair:

So it was no surprise in December, 2019.

Alastair:

I was 75 and I couldn't breathe.

Alastair:

I was like breathing, sucking through a straw.

Alastair:

So I went to see a respirologist and it was diagnosed as

Alastair:

idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis.

Alastair:

I was put on oxygen.

Alastair:

Immediately 24 seven and they said this fibrosis is it's a chronic disease

Alastair:

with a morbidity of three to six years.

Alastair:

And I said, well, what have I got three years, six years.

Alastair:

And they said, well, unfortunately, in your case.

Alastair:

Your fibrosis is quite advanced.

Alastair:

So you're looking at 18 months, 18 months.

Alastair:

So that gave me a best before date of about June 2020.

Alastair:

But with my Buddhist philosophy, I thought we're all going to die

Alastair:

and we all have a best before date.

Alastair:

I just know what mine is now.

Alastair:

I mean, some people are going to die before me.

Alastair:

They just don't know it yet.

Alastair:

So in a way, I felt fortunate.

Alastair:

I thought, okay, I've got 18 months now to do what I got to do.

Alastair:

And what I wanted to do was to go back to England, say goodbye to my

Alastair:

sister, friends, family, everybody.

Alastair:

So I went back to England with my wife, my three children, three

Alastair:

grandchildren, so eight of us.

Alastair:

We went to Manchester for a week and they came in from France.

Alastair:

And so it was about 25 of us there, big, lovely dinner one Saturday afternoon

Alastair:

and out in the country at a pub.

Alastair:

That was wonderful.

Alastair:

And then we went out to Guernsey for a week because my relatives are from

Alastair:

the Channel Islands and we had that.

Alastair:

So I came back and now it's getting towards December 2019.

Alastair:

And I've gone from three liters a minute.

Alastair:

To five to eight liters, 12 minutes.

Alastair:

So I realized I'm progressing, you know, probably got six months left.

Alastair:

So I'm going through this last Christmas, last Thanksgiving, last

Alastair:

birthday, last, last everything.

Alastair:

I'm accepting it all because my Buddhist philosophy is to

Alastair:

unconditionally accept what is, but my, my children weren't Buddhists.

Alastair:

They didn't accept it.

Alastair:

And they said, dad, how about a lung transplant?

Alastair:

And I said, no way.

Alastair:

Not at my age.

Alastair:

They don't do organ transplants at my age.

Alastair:

So we'll look into it.

Alastair:

So to please them, I did, but to my surprise, I found that, um,

Alastair:

anyway, I went on the wait list in June, 2020 and September, 2020,

Alastair:

I had a double lung transplant.

Alastair:

That's three years ago.

Alastair:

Dr. Judith: Congratulations.

Alastair:

Yeah.

Alastair:

Right.

Alastair:

It's as if you got a new opportunity.

Alastair:

That was given to you and your soul, so development and evolution itself,

Alastair:

and it's as if you actually use those analogies earlier, it allows you

Alastair:

first to float and just kind of be with what is that might be potential.

Alastair:

But then you had kind of a life raft to come through your kids saying once

Alastair:

you look into the lung transplant, and you ended up doing that.

Alastair:

And so it allows you now to be more purposeful.

Alastair:

And that's the springboard, looking at the higher, what's the higher

Alastair:

thing I can do with my time that I do.

Alastair:

And the grace has given me with more time, you know, planet earth.

Alastair:

I

Alastair:

began writing a book in 2016, an important book, but I stopped writing

Alastair:

in 2019 because I, what's the point, you know, anyway, I carried on writing.

Alastair:

So I was able to finish my book, publish it on Amazon and now it exists.

Alastair:

I brought it into existence and people are enjoying it because it's

Alastair:

got some important lessons in there.

Alastair:

It's a historical fiction romance novel and I narrated it.

Alastair:

Unbelievable.

Alastair:

I narrated it two years.

Alastair:

It's about twin boys, identical twin boys born to an unwed mother at a

Alastair:

time when such a thing was a disgrace.

Alastair:

It was 1920 in Lancashire, England.

Alastair:

So the church came in and took one of the children and put them in an orphanage.

Alastair:

Anyway, it's a big story.

Alastair:

The boy actually ends up coming to Canada.

Alastair:

Canada had this program over a hundred thousand children under the age of 13

Alastair:

were shipped to Canada as home children.

Alastair:

They were orphans and they were shipped because Canada had a labor shortage.

Alastair:

It needed domestics to work in the big houses as caregivers

Alastair:

and cooks and cleaners.

Alastair:

And the farmers needed workers for the harvest or whatever.

Alastair:

And at the time, England, all of these guys, all these boys and girls were

Alastair:

in orphanages in England, but people were complaining about the cost.

Alastair:

It was costing the government to feed and clothe these kids.

Alastair:

So they put it together this package to ship these kids to

Alastair:

Australia, New Zealand, and Canada.

Alastair:

So, one of the twins is a, is a, he becomes a home child.

Alastair:

But, we didn't teach this in our schools.

Alastair:

There's a lot of things about the colonialism in Canada that

Alastair:

was never taught in the schools.

Alastair:

We never taught about the Indian residential schools or the Chinese

Alastair:

head tax and the home children.

Alastair:

So this is to create a greater awareness.

Alastair:

Because these kids that came over, they were part of the huge part

Alastair:

of the development of Canada.

Alastair:

We owe them a huge debt of gratitude.

Alastair:

But here's the other thing, Judith, that people don't realize.

Alastair:

I'm breathing through somebody else's lungs.

Alastair:

These lungs will never be mine.

Alastair:

They're a different DNA.

Alastair:

And I'm taking all sorts of medications for life to stop my

Alastair:

body from rejecting these lungs.

Alastair:

So you wonder, where does the soul, the spirit live in the body?

Alastair:

Is it in the heart, the brain, or is it in the DNA?

Alastair:

And the weird thing every once in a while, I, I, I sense this other

Alastair:

person, I can feel their spirit.

Alastair:

Yeah.

Alastair:

Dr. Judith: Yeah, I think so.

Alastair:

That's a great question.

Alastair:

I

Alastair:

feel like a different person.

Alastair:

Yeah, it's weird.

Alastair:

Weird.

Alastair:

Dr. Judith: And I think this, the soul does, is housed in the solar

Alastair:

plexus of the body and it's housed in all throughout the body as well.

Alastair:

And so that when you have another.

Alastair:

aspect of you, which is your lungs, that there is some energy, you know,

Alastair:

as well that, you know, from that particular soul essence that was

Alastair:

originally in that body with that love, those lungs, you know, taking place.

Alastair:

So I can understand why you feel maybe their, their sense or their presence,

Alastair:

because it has some of that DNA, but even the soul is more than the DNA.

Alastair:

itself.

Alastair:

The soul does take flight once the body, which is the house,

Alastair:

for example, of the soul.

Alastair:

And then once the body is left, then the soul does evolve and move on.

Alastair:

But it doesn't mean that it's in the fragments of itself

Alastair:

in different places as well.

Alastair:

Right.

Alastair:

So that's a great, very interesting perspective.

Alastair:

That's right.

Alastair:

These lungs never died.

Alastair:

They were taken out of one person and given to me.

Alastair:

So there was no death of the lungs.

Alastair:

You know, so there's functioning just like they did in the other person.

Alastair:

And my book.

Alastair:

Dr. Judith: Right, right, right.

Alastair:

Yeah, it is powerful.

Alastair:

And I think it also ties back into this whole notion that we've been began

Alastair:

talking about is we're true happiness.

Alastair:

When we get when we have an opportunity to live life more.

Alastair:

Now that in this case a transplant is like is precious.

Alastair:

Life is precious now.

Alastair:

It is about being fortunate, feeling fortunate, realizing how

Alastair:

fortunate and appreciating it.

Alastair:

Like we only have a limited time on earth, you know, whatever comes into

Alastair:

our life, we just have to appreciate it for all, for all it's worth.

Alastair:

Right.

Alastair:

I look back and I think, wow, you know, this really is a gift of life.

Alastair:

It's a second chance at life.

Alastair:

Wow.

Alastair:

Not many people get this and yet I got it and I'm enjoying

Alastair:

it and doing so much with it.

Alastair:

Yes.

Alastair:

Dr. Judith: Especially about your serving and giving and trying to give back.

Alastair:

Whatever you gain, you try to give back, which is so delightful to see.

Alastair:

Well, I, that's a, an aspect of karma.

Alastair:

Mm-hmm.

Alastair:

, you know, in, in a sort of Buddhist, Hindu context.

Alastair:

It is.

Alastair:

It

Alastair:

Dr. Judith: is.

Alastair:

And that's a whole conversation in itself because I think there are karmic

Alastair:

situations that we find ourselves in, and you've taken the best light based

Alastair:

upon choices and experiences that we've made in our lives, that we can have

Alastair:

that good karma come back to us just as we can have that quote unquote bad

Alastair:

karma or life lessons I like to say.

Alastair:

that come back to us for us to learn and to continue to grow.

Alastair:

But for the soul, whether it's good or bad or indifferent, the soul just says,

Alastair:

let us learn, let us grow, let us advance.

Alastair:

Because we want to continue to move towards that greater sense of

Alastair:

Buhidic, that you're talking about, of the Christic nature that allows

Alastair:

us to serve and give more to others.

Alastair:

So with that being said, and as we're winding down, is there any last comment

Alastair:

you would like to leave the seekers?

Alastair:

I would say be yourself.

Alastair:

You know, try to shed off the pressures to be what you think you should be or what

Alastair:

you think other people might like you.

Alastair:

To be very honest and feel vulnerable and just be yourself.

Alastair:

And I think that way, when you got on that track, it leads you

Alastair:

down a path of authenticity.

Alastair:

And with that authenticity comes.

Alastair:

A sense of personal fulfillment, happiness, contentment,

Alastair:

you're just happy who you are.

Alastair:

It doesn't matter what other people think, because in our world, of

Alastair:

course, with fashion and conditioning and consumerism, there's a lot of

Alastair:

pressure on us, a lot of machoism to become who we think we should be.

Alastair:

But that just leads you astray, and if you go down that road, you won't be at peace.

Alastair:

You'll always be restless.

Alastair:

So just being yourself, just accepting all your warts and freckles and everything.

Alastair:

That's it.

Alastair:

You don't have to cover them up.

Alastair:

And you say, here I am world, this is me.

Alastair:

But that's, it's simple to say, but it's powerful to do.

Alastair:

Dr. Judith: Mm hmm.

Alastair:

Mm hmm.

Alastair:

I agree.

Alastair:

And I think that's in some ways, but many people are learning how to be is to be

Alastair:

more authentic to who they really are.

Alastair:

And that's a journey like you've been on the different journeys that you've

Alastair:

experienced and life adventures, you know, that you found yourself in.

Alastair:

So how may they reach you if they would like to reach out to you,

Alastair:

Alistair?

Alastair:

Yeah, if you go up and, uh, I've got a website.

Alastair:

It's www.

Alastair:

alistairhenry.

Alastair:

com.

Alastair:

I'll spell it for you.

Alastair:

It's A L A S T A I R H E N R Y.

Alastair:

And there you will find out more about more information about me and

Alastair:

my wife Candice and our adventures and books and some other aspects.

Alastair:

Home children donate organ donations.

Alastair:

There's a lot on the website.

Alastair:

Dr. Judith: Great.

Alastair:

Well it's been a delight to have you in this part two.

Alastair:

I'm grateful to hear your adventures and your experiences that you've garnered

Alastair:

and trying to give back to others.

Alastair:

I think the Seekers will be delighted to explore the website that

Alastair:

Alistair has just made mention of.

Alastair:

So thank you Seekers.

Alastair:

Take care.

Alastair:

Till we meet again, be well.

Alastair:

Thank you for joining me for this episode on Mastering Life's Adventures.

Alastair:

Being your best self through soul evolution.

Alastair:

If you have enjoyed what you've heard today, I would be delighted if you

Alastair:

would share this episode with others.

Alastair:

Leave a thumbs up and subscribe to my Mastering Life's Adventures podcast.

Alastair:

Look forward to your joining the next episode.

Alastair:

Please leave any comments or suggestions you might have below.

Alastair:

Bye for now.

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Judith Holder