Remember Me?

If you’ve ever found yourself thinking about how to change your life for the better then you’re not alone. Most people want to improve themselves in some way or another.

Ch Ch Ch Changes

People want to be healthier. To eat more wholesome food. To exercise on a more regular basis.

Or they want to be more creative. More effective at work. More ambitious. Earn more and achieve more.

Some want to develop their personal relationships. To become a better husband or wife. Boyfriend or girlfriend. Partner or friend. 

Others want to develop their business relationships, get on better with their colleagues, working together not against each other.

Others want to learn how to be at peace with themselves, to reflect more gently, to accept themselves and be content.

People want to develop in all sorts of different ways and many do go ahead and make those changes.

But how do they manage it? What is the catalyst that spurs them on to make the changes?

However you’ve thought about how to change your life for the better, when it’s actually happened I’ll bet there was a clear and compelling reason for doing so.

Let me tell you a story about one particular chap who was unexpectedly confronted with a very public reason for wanting to change.

Mr Dynamite

You’ve no doubt already heard of him, or at least the prestigious prizes awarded in his name. He was Alfred Nobel.

Yep, that Nobel. Those Nobel prizes. There’s quite a few.

• The Nobel Prize in Physics
• The Nobel Prize in Chemistry
• The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine
• The Nobel Prize in Literature (I’m still waiting for the call!)
• The Nobel Peace Prize

You already know that it’s quite a big deal to be awarded a Nobel prize. It’s very prestigious and there’s a big chunk of cash that goes with the award. It’s 10,000 Swedish krona which, if you’re wondering, is just under a million dollars or about 817,000 pounds.

The Nobel committee are able to award these large amounts every year because during his lifetime Alfred made a few quid.  In his will he specified that the bulk of his fortune, the equivalent of £265 million dollars, was to to be used for prizes.

For He Is Of Pure And Noble Breed

So obviously Alfred was clearly an altruistic, philanthropic sort of guy, right? Nobel by name, noble by nature.

Not so.

Nobel was a solitary character uninterested in others. He never married. He was by all accounts ingenious yet ruthless.

For most of his life he was a self-centred, money making businessman. Creative but uncaring, he invented a host of chemical combinations for use in munitions and engineering, including dynamite. 

(Interestingly, for me at least, his first demonstration of this explosive new product took place at a quarry in my hometown of Redhill, Surrey. Another fun fact is that he was going to call it Nobel’s Safety Powder but went with dynamite after the Greek word for ‘power’.)

Anyway, one morning, over his toast and tea, he was confronted by a newspaper report that changed everything. There was an obituary in the paper that gave Alfred his ‘how to change your life for the better’ moment. 

It was his own obituary.

His brother Ludwig had passed away but several newspapers erroneously reported that it was Alfred that had died.

The obituaries were less than flattering. They were ruthless in fact and energetically condemned him as a human being.

The Merchant Of Death

One report referred to him as “The Merchant Of Death” and reported "Dr. Alfred Nobel, who became rich by finding ways to kill more people faster than ever before, died yesterday.”

Appalled at how he would be remembered he decided to make amends. He made the decision to donate his wealth to “those who, during the preceding year, shall have conferred the greatest benefit to humankind.”

Reading his terrible obituaries was a proper wake up call. He resolved to leave behind a better legacy.

When thinking about how to change your life for the better it helps if you have a motivating reason. There’s no point in just vaguely wanting a change. That’s not going to cut it.

You need a definite ‘why’ that will propel you forward to make the changes that you desire.

How To Change Your Life For The Better

Weirdly, around the time I was thinking about Alfred Nobel’s obituary story as a Top Tips topic I heard another incredibly similar tale on the radio.

You’ve no doubt at sometime in your life suffered the misfortune of listening to the vacuous Itsy Bitsy Teeny Weeny Yellow Polka Dot Bikini.

It’s a dreadful novelty tune that for some reason resurfaces every fifteen years or so, dragged up the charts by Timmy Mallet or some Eurotrash equivalent. Seriously there are so many cover versions out there from all corners of the globe, it’s quite unfathomable.

Okay it’s obvious that I don’t care for the tune but there is one guy who really liked it. A lot. And that’s Paul Vance. 

He liked it because as the guy who wrote the thing it acted as a money machine, paying him millions of dollars in royalties. That song kept him in luxuries from 1960 when it was first released until the day he died earlier this year.

He was ninety two and his passing was marked on the BBC Radio Four programme Last Word. Listening to it I was amazed to hear that, just like Alfred Nobel, Vance had also been in the odd position of hearing his own obituary.

I Can Feel The Soil Falling Over My Head

In 2006 Vance was alive and well and only sixty eight years old. He was watching TV at his home in New York when the news ticker that crawls along the bottom of the screen announced that “Famous songwriter, Paul Vance has died”.

Within minutes family and friends were ringing his office, distraught at the news. His assistant answered the phone to Vance’s eldest son but her reassurances were not believed.

Because it was on the TV his son assumed the report was true. Vance had to get on the phone himself and tell him “I’m not dead, son”.

He called the Associated Press to get them to retract the announcement. They wouldn’t believe him! They took hours to be persuaded and insisted he send a copy of his latest Itsy Bitsy royalty cheque to prove that he was still very much not dead.

“I heard my own eulogy” he said, “You know something, it kind of changed me. The calls I got in. Reactions of these people who really loved me. And I didn’t realise I was so loved.”

He didn’t elaborate on exactly how it changed him but learning how much people cared about him, well that’s a hell of a thing.

Stop For A Minute

You don’t have experience your own obituary or be called A Merchant of Doom to consider how to change your life for the better. It can be a much smaller nudge than that.

But this week’s Top Tip is to consider what that nudge would need to be. What piece of information or reflection would make you want to change and become a better version of yourself?

You don’t need to donate your millions and have a slew of annual prizes named after you. Which is a relief I’m sure. 

Most big changes are the result of gradual but consistent behaviours anyway. You most likely don’t need a grand gesture, more like a one degree change in direction that will alter your course over time. But you’ll need a reason to shift that one small degree.

Have fun this weekend taking a few moments to consider your own eulogy. Well, not fun perhaps, but a moment of calm to think about how you’d like to be remembered and what you might need to change in order to do that.