Igniting the Fire
I shall begin by leaning on one of the great philosophers of the modern age.
Danny Dyer — as he plays Tommy Johnson in the memorable football hooliganism film The Football Factory — delivers the following soliloquy. A rousing polemic against submission to the machine:
"What else are you gonna do on a Saturday? Sit in your fuckin' armchair wankin' off to Pop Idols? Then try and avoid your wife's gaze as you struggle to come to terms with your sexless marriage? Then go and spunk your wages on kebabs, fruit machines and brasses? Fuck that for a laugh! I know what I'd rather do. Tottenham away, love it!"
Now. While his proposed reaction to the malaise — beating people up at football matches — is something I can hardly condone, I wholeheartedly agree with the underlying sentiment. That bending over to the sludge, allowing oneself to fall prey to the swamp of conditioning, is something that really ought to be avoided at all costs.
This article is adapted from the materials in my Deep Writing programme — a dedicated small group container (maximum five humans) to get brilliant individuals finally publishing on a consistent basis. The method? My signature combination of militant Zen kung fu master discipline and cheeky soft side. I'll have you know I was even called a "sweetheart" by one friend and someone with a "heart of gold" by another.
Ahemmm.
I am about to give you my actual coaching materials. Why? Because roughly 99% of people reading this won't do a bloody thing with them. The value of coaching was never in the knowledge. It's in the container. The commitment. The application. The oversight.
So here you go. A clear picture of what it's actually like to work with me.
By this point in the programme, we've done the boring stuff. We've decluttered our digital lives — phones, desktops, browsers stripped to nothing. App blockers installed so your devices enforce focus rather than sabotage it. Notion set up as your command centre. Deep work temple built.
Now we need to ignite something. This module has four parts: Igniting the Fire, Smelting, Shadow, Crystallise. This article covers the first two — the aspiration. Part 2 covers the terror and the plan.
Part 1: Igniting the fire
Disclaimer. This exercise ventures copiously into Law of Attraction and The Secret territory. Very American. In reading this article, you hereby promise not to tell anybody I am delving into such waters.
I shall quote my man Neville Goddard — a fellow Brit — to soften my inner conflict:
"Stop trying to change the world since it is only the mirror. Man's attempt to change the world by force is as fruitless as breaking a mirror in the hope of changing his face. Leave the mirror and change your face."
(I have an occasional guilty pleasure for the Law of Attraction stuff and am using the above semi-ironically. As always, I don't know where the joke starts and ends.)
Most people walk their whole lives without asking: What do I actually want? We have fantasies when we're young. Then we learn to compromise. Contract. Fit in. Muffle ourselves.
I've done this exercise about ten times in three years. The first time, I wrote a North Star for my life and listened to a recording of it every day. Intentions I thought would take years manifested within weeks.
Our focus here is creative expression. What are the things you deeply want to say and express to the world?
The intention: to unblock your Qi. To remember — genuinely remember — what you really want. You know you've struck gold when you feel a rumbling sense of power and purpose.
Three questions. Timed. No editing. Just the raw ore.
Question 1: What do you want to say? (15 minutes). You've spotted the glitches. In your industry. In the way people live. In the advice that gets repeated like gospel but is obviously bollocks. And you've bitten your tongue. That tightening in your chest — why won't anyone just say it? — is your material. The rants that lit up dinner tables but never made it to a page. The frustrations that make you want to grab people by the shoulders and shake. There is a reservoir of unexpressed life force inside you. When you uncork it, it won't trickle. It will flood. You will suffer from writer's diarrhoea, not writer's block. (My case is serious.) Set a timer. Begin.
Question 2: What does it look like when you're fully expressed? (10 minutes). Imagine the you who is expressing all of this. Without muffling. Weekly newsletter to 100 devout readers? Keynotes? Quietly publishing essays? Global mega-star? (Don't curb your fantasies. Nobody's watching.) Get clear on: the medium, the frequency, the audience, what people feel when they encounter your work, what they say when you're not in the room.
Question 3: What needs to be in place? (10 minutes). What are the four to six life domains that need to be working for this creative expression to flow? Practice, Health, Creation, Rest, Relationships, Career — whatever yours are. What has to be true in each? Be specific. Not "I'm healthy." What do you eat? When do you train? How does your body feel?
Deep work: Share your raw answers. Don't edit. Don't polish. This is the ore, not the finished product.
Part 2: Smelting
Most visioning exercises produce something you read once and tuck away in the guilt pile. Alongside your abandoned gratitude journal and the vision board you made in 2019.
Not this.
You've just unleashed. Tapped into the raw material. Now we sit in it. Marinate. Get specific.
Intentions are prone to entropy. They have a half-life. Left vague, they dissolve within days. "Be healthier." "Write more." "Find balance." That won't do. "Meditate 5 days/week before 8am" is either true or it isn't. No hiding. No fudging. That specificity keeps entropy at bay.
Now take the raw ore and forge it. Talk or write through each life domain — what does it look like in five years? What are your specific intentions? Transition from aspirational to specific. From how you feel to what that actually looks like on a Tuesday.
Then pressure-test. Ask yourself — or better, ask someone who knows you: Is this actually what I want? Or is this the polite, socially acceptable version?
Crystallise into your 5-Year North Star:
Creative Expression North Star (400-500 words). First person, present tense. "It's March 2031. I wake up..." What you're creating. The medium. The audience. What people feel. What they say about you when you're not in the room. Make it vivid.
Day in the Life (300 words). Walk through a typical day in 2031.
Life Domains. For each, three paragraphs. Internal aspirations and tangible specifics.
Domain Intentions. 2-5 per domain. Measurable. "Train 5 days/week before 8am. No alcohol. Sleep 7.5 hours minimum."
Refine until it lands. When you read it and feel that rumbling sense of power and purpose, you're done.
Deep work: Write your full 5-Year North Star. All four sections. It should make you feel slightly terrified and slightly aroused.
In Part 2 of this series, we go to the dark place. We stare down the future where none of this happens. Then we compress the vision into something you can actually execute — cascading intentions from five years down to this afternoon.
Toodles.
