Nick Seneca Jankel - Switch On: How to Ignite Your Creative Spirit with the New Science of Breakthrough

The story of Watkins Publishing dates back to March 1893, when John M. Watkins, a scholar of esotericism, overheard his friend and teacher Madame Blavatsky lamenting the fact that there was nowhere in London to buy books on mysticism, occultism or metaphysics. At that moment Watkins was born, soon to become the home of many of the leading lights of spiritual literature, including Carl Jung, Rudolf Steiner, Alice Bailey and Chgyam Trungpa.

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For Jai Milo and Noah Tao. May this book guide you whether you are looking for real answers, or simply better questions.

In memory of the forgotten millions who have struggled with adversity and come back able to heal their corner of the world.

Nick Seneca Jankel is a Cambridge-educated psychological coach, wisdom teacher, social-change champion and world-renowned innovation, creativity, and leadership expert.

Nick has starred as a psychological coach in four-part BBC TV series; coached a major celebrity on an MTV show; and helped design and host a three-year mental wellbeing experience for the BBC (that featured Kelly Osbourne). Nick has advised government bodies (including No. 10 Downing St, BIS, and the NHS), Fortune 500 and FTSE 100 companies (including Nike, Microsoft, Kraft, Fujitsu, Smirnoff, Unilever, and Disney), written for newspapers (including the Guardian and the Financial Times) and is a popular keynote speaker all over the world.

He has a triple First from the University of Cambridge and is a lifelong raver and serial (ethical) entrepreneur, starting his first company, a creative agency, aged 25. Nick teaches social entrepreneurs and change-makers on four continents. He lives with his wife and kids in the UK.

T HIS BOOK WAS HELPED along its way by the unflinching support of my best friend, craniosacral genius, business partner, fellow dancer, and wife, Alison. I am love with you. It would also have been far less elegant if it were not for the various friends, family members, agents, and editors who have read drafts, sparred with my thoughts, and provided advice and nourishment. Kate E, Simon H, Scott V, Tom F-M, Rohan G, and Will P, special shouts out to you. I also have an unending gratitude to the many living and dead giants of insight, wisdom, and compassion on whose shoulders I stand (and groove). I would also like to thank all the current (and former) friends, lovers, business partners, employees, random ravers, clients, collaborators, and connections who have helped me formulate the life philosophy in this book whether through collaboration or conflict, and often both.

T HE LASERS ARE FIRING and the sweat is dripping at an underground club in London. Its the early 1990s. A tingle of excitement ripples through the crowd as the pounding bass-lines begin to build. The ravers are preparing to go off, in a scene that is both scandalizing and revitalizing Thatchers Britain. A very fat, geeky 18-year-old, with lame glasses and even lamer clothes, wanders onto the empty dance floor. Its his first time at a club like this; and hes certainly no dancer (witness the embarrassing moment in a school production of West Side Story). Oh, and this kid has never had a girlfriend. In fact, he has never so much as kissed anyone.

Something peculiar starts to happen. As beat after beat pierces his mind and body, the music demands that he let go of his anxieties and awkwardness. All his beliefs about himself that have held him back, shredding his confidence for years, fade to black. Soon hes jumping about in breakbeat heaven. The faces, popping in and out of the laser lights, smile at him without judgment. None of his neuroses seem important now, as a crowd starts to form around him, inspired by his unfettered self-expression to dance too. For a few hours, hes at one with himself and the crowd: Lost in joy, free from worry, and dancing surprisingly well. Dance and dancer, breakbeat and brain wave, become one. He is feeling the love. He is expressing his truth. He is pulling shapes, busting moves. He is switched on.

The problem comes the following Monday (and all the rest of that week). Far from enjoying the fruits of his breakthrough, he finds he is still the shy, lonely, messed-up kid he was before. All the old habits and negative beliefs are still there. In fact, with him being so exhausted from a night of raving, they even get a bit worse.

Where did all the love go? Why is he feeling so jaded? What happened to that oceanic feeling of oneness, of communion, of creativity? Even though he will continue raving many times a week for the next decade, in a few years time he will be diagnosed with clinical depression, suffer a spate of panic attacks, and be wracked with daily agony by a strange condition called fibromyalgia, or chronic pain syndrome. It will take him a few years to get to kiss the girl(s), and many more for the self-loathing to fade. Nevertheless, something awoke in him that night. He realized that if he could feel so loved-up, connected, and innovative on a dance floor, he must also be able to feel that way at any given moment in everyday life. The question was, naturally, how? How could he thrive not just on the good days and in the happy moments, but on the bad days and in the difficult moments too?

That teenager was, of course, me, and this book sets out to answer that question. Those teenage experiences, and many more like them, inspired in me an irrepressible thirst for true and lasting freedom. Night after night, for years upon years, I reveled in the creative spirit of the rave, where people from every social class and walk of life expressed themselves as equals in a sea of unity. I still do, from time to time. Yet it was actually that Monday morning, when I felt so down and depleted, that really galvanized my lifes work. Every time I have felt the juiciness of life fade after an amazing moment, it has sparked me onward to find a way to recapture that switched-on feelingwhere everything is possible and everyone is my ally24/7 without using anything other than my own heart and mind.