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Avil Beckford is founder of Ambeck Enterprise, The Invisible Mentor and Readers are Leaders. I founded The Invisible Mentor, a non-traditional mentoring program where professionals mentor themselves by way of expert interviews with highly successful people, profiles of wise people, and SummaReviews which are hybrid book summaries and reviews.
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Archive for the ‘Professional Development’ Category

Lucius Annaeus Seneca the Younger, Stoic Philosopher, Playwright and Tutor to Nero


Name: Lucius Annaeus Seneca the Younger

Birth Date: 4 BC – 65 AD

Job Functions: Philosopher, Playwright and Politician

Fields: Philosophy, Literature and Politics

Lucius Annaeus Seneca the Younger was born into a distinguished family of Italian origin in Cordova, Spain around 4 BC. Seneca’s father, known as Seneca Rhetor was an excellent orator and wrote about history and rhetoric.  Seneca’s older brother was a proconsul of Achaea in AD 51 – 52, and was the Gallio before whose tribunal the Apostle Paul in the Bible was brought.

Seneca, part of double-herm in Antikensammlung...

Seneca, part of double-herm in Antikensammlung Berlin (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Seneca was educated in Rome from an early age and received extensive lessons in public speaking and literary composition. His philosophy studies came from lectures he received from Papirus Fabianus and Sotion, adherants of Sextian moral philosophy; the cynic Demetrius; and the stoic Attalus.

Seneca pursued a political career, and in addition to being a lawyer, held the offices of quaestor (AD 31) and praetor before becoming a senator. After becoming a quaestor in AD 31, Seneca spent the next decade establishing himself as one of Rome’s leading writer and orator and won influential friends within the imperial family. When Emperor Claudius acceded to the throne in AD 41, for a time he was prominent in the court. However, he was accused of being the lover of Claudius’ niece, Julia Livilla and banished to Corsica where he lived eight years in exile. The exile was a great setback to his career as a politician and writer.

Fortunately for Seneca, Agrippina, Claudius’ wife recalled him to the court in AD 49 and appointed him as tutor to her son Nero. Seneca was appointed praetor in AD 50. In AD 54, Agrippina murdered her husband, and Nero at the age of 16 acceded to the throne. For the next eight years, Seneca and Sextus Afranius Burrus, the commander of the Praetorian Guard counselled and advised Emperor Nero in sound government. During the latter part of the eight years where they advised Nero, his behaviour became erratic and violent, though Seneca was compelled to overlook his actions.

In AD 59, Nero murdered his mother, Agrippina, explaining to the senate – in a dishonest statement prepared by Seneca – a discovery of her plot against the throne. Burrus died in AD 62, and one of his successors, Ofonius Tigellinus had an evil influence over Nero. Seneca asked to retire and his request was granted. Seneca devoted the next three years of his life to his studies and writing and created a great body of work in that short time.

In AD 65, Seneca was implicated in the Pisonian conspiracy to assinate Nero. Though the evidence was very weak, Seneca was sentenced to self-execution, a common practice under Roman emperors at that time. Seneca severed several veins and bled to death. Seneca’s wife wanted to commit suicide, but he convinced her not to do so.

According to Wikipedia, “There is also speculation in Peter Salway’s History of Roman Britain that Seneca had been involved in forcing large loans on the indigenous British aristocracy in the aftermath of Claudius’s Roman conquest of Britain, and then calling them in suddenly and aggressively. The suggestion is that this contributed to Boudica’s rebellion, and so possibly to his own fall.”

Seneca exercised great influence over Christian writers on morality and ethical conduct. “Seneca has been a source of moral precepts and examples, and especially of psychological descriptions on a higher level – in particular for Yves of Paris, Sebastian of Senlis, Senault Julian Hayneufve and Nicholas Caussin.”

Some of Seneca’s Literary Works

Seneca’s tragedies were written to be read and not acted because of their ingenious rhetoric.

Works Cited/Referenced

Encyclopedia of World Biography

Encyclopedia of Philosphy

New Catholic Encyclopedia

Science and Its Times

Arts and Humanities Through the Eras: Ancient Greece and Rome (1200 BCE – 476 CE)

Encyclopaedia Judaica

Please let me know your thoughts in the comments section below. Many readers read this blog from other sites, so why don’t you pop over to The Invisible Mentor and subscribe (top on the right hand side) by email or RSS Feed.

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Mentor Yourself : Book Review – The Railway Children by E. Nesbit


Why The Railway Children by E. Nesbit Matters Today

Though The Railway Children is a children’s book, it’s a perfect demonstration of why a safety net is so important. In the story, you have a father who is taken away, and we learn he is arrested for being a spy, which is a false accusation. The loss of income of the primary breadwinner forces the family into poverty. Today, with the economy still in a downturn, many people are only a pay cheque away from financial devastation. This tells us, that in the good times, no matter how little we earn, we should put away some of the money for ourselves, for the rainy days that will inevitably come.

The Railway Children

The Railway Children (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

In The Railway Children by E. Nesbit, Roberta, Phyllis and Peter are living idyllic lives with their parents in what is described as an “ordinary red-brick fronted villa, coloured glass in the front door, a tiled passage that was called a hall, a bathroom with and cold water, electric bells, French windows, and a good deal of white paint, and ‘every modern convenience,’ as the house agents say.”

The children are well-loved, and their parents make time to play with them. While they are at school, their mother writes stories and reads them to the children during tea time. And as a special treat, for their birthdays, she writes special poems for them. One day, two men come to visit their father and he leaves with them. The mother is quite upset, and tells the children not to ask questions. Shortly after the father leaves, the mother and children have to move out from suburbia into the country because their social and financial status has radically changed. And they take only the things that will be useful to them in their new life.

The mother is forced to work to take care of her family, and she does what she knows to do, which is to write children’s stories, and she has some success. Like any writer, there are times when her work is rejected and there are other times when a magazine publisher accepts the stories. In those times, the children get a special treat of buns.

The children are very aware that their situation has changed, but it doesn’t bother them that much – children are very resilient, and they are more intelligent and understanding that most adults give them credit for. The mother often emphasizes to the children that they are now poor. In The Railway Children, even among the poor, a class structure exists because there are different levels of poverty. For instance, their housekeeper, Mrs Viney, is much poorer than they are.

The three children no longer go to school, and to while the time away, they spend a lot of time exploring their new surroundings. Roberta, Peter and Phyllis love to visit the railway. While exploring they see a coal mine. At their new home, they no longer have ‘every modern convenience.’ Their home is no longer as warm as they are accustomed to, and mother doesn’t earn enough to buy the amount of coal needed. While the children explore the railway yard, Peter notices a lot of coal, and he makes up these rules as to what constitutes stealing. He comes up with idea of taking some of the coal, but he doesn’t want to get his sisters involved in taking it. They help him to transport the coal with the aid of a wheelbarrow up the hill to their home.

One day, Peter sneaks out, not knowing that Roberta and Phyllis are following him. When he gets to the coal mine, the station manager grabs him with the intention of reporting him. The children plead for mercy, and when the station manager learns why they are stealing, he lets him go free and tells him not to steal anymore coal. Even though Peter had tried to convince himself that taking the coal wasn’t stealing, deep down he knows the difference between right and wrong.

Because of the encounter with the station master, they want to stay away, but they cannot help themselves – they cannot keep away. In no time they learn the schedule for the arrival of the trains to the station which is close by, and they give the trains names like Green Dragon, Worm of Wantley and Fearsome Fly-by-Night. They make sure that they are close by when, Green Dragon, the 9:15 am train is passing by and they wave to the passengers, and out of first class, the hand of an older man waves back. This becomes a routine for the children.

As the story unfolds, you learn a lot about the characters. The three children are wise beyond their years, especially Roberta. And they are more resilient and stronger than their mother. The children go out into their new community and make friends, and learn about others, while the mother is wrapped up into their new circumstance. She is focused on earning money and doesn’t play with them as much as she used to. Because the children reach out to others with friendship, people in the community are kind to them.

One day the mother contracts influenza and the doctor prescribes a variety of things to help her recover. The mother decides which ones to buy because of her restricted budget. She is also very concerned about how she is going to pay for the doctor’s services. Roberta had heard Mrs Viney talking about a club that the doctor has, which enables the poorest people to afford his services. Roberta pays him a visit and asks that they be a part of the club, and he complies, even if he has to make a brand new club for them. The doctor is also poor, and he was excited that he had found a new patient. However, he is a man of compassion, and opens up the club to them. Roberta does this without her mother’s knowledge.

The children decide to take matters into their own hands to get the medicine needed for their mother to recover so they write a note to the old gentleman who always waves back to them. They write the letter and make their request, but they make it very clear that it’s an IOU and they ask him to give the package to the station manager and tell him it’s for Peter since they do not know which return train he will be on. When the 9:15 am train pulls into the station, Phyllis hands the note to the old gentleman.

At six pm in the evening there is a knock on their door, and it’s the friendly porter from the station with a package from the older gentleman. The children know that at some point they have to tell their mother what they have done, but decide to do so after she has recovered. Mother is angry because she does not want handouts, and she doesn’t want anyone feeling sorry for her and her family.

One day when the children go to the railway station there is a commotion, so they have to investigate. There is a distressed man there who doesn’t speak English and no one can figure out what language he is speaking. The station master suggests that the man is speaking French, but Peter knows it isn’t French because they used to study it at their school. In very bad French, “Parlay voo Frongsay” (Parlez-vous Francais), Peter asks the stranger if he speaks French, and he responds in French. Peter lets the station manager know that his mother speaks French. It so happens that on that day the mother had taken a trip, more than likely to visit her husband. In her limited French, Roberta tells the stranger that her mother speaks French.

When mother arrives, they take her to the stranger and in conversation they find out that he is Russian, has lost his train ticket and is ill. The stranger is a writer, and has written beautiful books, many of which mother has read. They take him home with them, and Roberta goes to fetch the doctor. Mother gives the stranger one of her husband’s outfit, and Roberta asks her mother if her father is dead and is told no.

As the stranger grows stronger, they learn more about his life. He was imprisoned because of his beliefs and what he writes about. He was enlisted into the army and deserted when it was safe and came to England. He knows his family is somewhere in England but doesn’t where. Mother writes many letters to Members of Parliament, editors of newspapers but cannot get any word on the stranger’s family.

One day while out exploring there is a bit of what appears to be a minor earthquake. Stones and trees and you name it, fall across the tracks shortly before the 3:15 train is to arrive. The children know the dangers and acted quickly. Using the girl’s red petticoats they make a flag to signal the train to stop, and they end up preventing a train crash. The children are honored for what they did, but that’s not why they did it. They have learned to be of service, to think of others, despite their changed circumstances. This plays out many times in The Railway Children.

The old gentleman is at the ceremony for their valour, and after the presentation, he and Roberta have a conversation. She tells him about the Russian stranger, Mr. Szezcpansk. The old gentleman knows people within the Russian community in London and promises Roberta that he will make some inquiries. A short while later, the old gentleman, finds out where Mr Szezcpansk’s family is, and the stranger reunites with them.

There are many tales in the book about the goodness of the children, the way that they make the lives of others much brighter. They teach the people in the community how to be a true community through their selfless actions. The old gentleman has also experienced their goodness when they rescue his grandson.

Roberta discovers from an old newspaper article that her father was arrested and he is in prison. She goes to her mother and they have an honest conversation. It’s difficult to believe that she is only 12 years old. Once again she goes to her friend, the older gentleman, to talk to him. He knows of the case and had the intention of helping, now he has a reason to, because he knows the three children, and the impact the arrest has had on their lives. He also believes in the father’s innocence.

The family is reunited. The Railway Children is a story of hope, and some of the big lessons it teaches us are:

  1. The good you do for others come back to you.
  2. The world is bigger than you. Life is more than about us.
  3. When going through a rough patch, do something good for another.
  4. Community is important. By lifting up others we lift up everyone.
  5. Build a safety net.

I recommend The Railway Children by Edith Nesbit. Please let me know your thoughts in the comments section below. Many readers read this blog from other sites, so why don’t you pop over to The Invisible Mentor and subscribe (top on the right hand side) by email or RSS Feed.

Additional Information

The Railway Children Part 1 HD

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The Railway Children
Theatre Review: The Railway Children

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Why You Must Read Broadly – Tip 3


Reading broadly helps to think critically

What you read is more important that how much you read. Ensure that your reading material is diverse, and vary in the level of difficultly to read. The “menu” of books should include a selection of not just bestsellers, but also books that are off the beaten tracks. In fact, the great thinkers who have transformed the world did not read bestsellers.

As an aspiring leader, or someone who wants to be on the fast track, if you focus only on what others are focusing on, how can you stretch and expand your thinking to develop the intellectual power required to respond with agility to opportunities and challenges in the workplace?  Books featured on bestsellers’ lists are unlikely to give your mind an intellectual workout.

Keep track of what you read so you can review to make sure that you are not reading too much of one type of book.  Reading broadly helps you to think critically while at the same time build intellectual power.

As English novelist and essayist E. M. Forster says, “The only books that influence us are those for which we are ready, and which have gone a little farther down our particular path than we have yet got ourselves.”

Do you agree or disagree that reading broadly helps you to think critically? Why? Why not? Please let me know your thoughts in the comments section below. Many readers read this blog from other sites, so why don’t you pop over to The Invisible Mentor and subscribe (top on the right hand side) by email or RSS Feed.

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The Invisible Mentor Week in Review


This is what we talked about on The Invisible Mentor Blog this week: George Bernard Shaw’s Pygmalion, Alexander Mackenzie, Scottish Explorer & Businessman, and Drew Dudley, Founder and Chief Catalyst.

Adventures in Learning

In computer programming, they have a concept called Garbage In, Garbage Out. The concept is appropriate for reading as well. What you read (your input), will impact the quality of your ideas and solutions (output). And when you read, never do it in a vacuum. Connect the new information with what you already know. Innovation occurs when an old idea intersects with a new one.

George Bernard Shaw, Nobel laureate in Literat...

George Bernard Shaw, Nobel laureate in Literature 1925 Deutsch: George Bernard Shaw, Nobelpreisträger für Literatur 1925 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Why You Must Read Broadly – Tip 2 

Booked for Mentoring

Pygmalion by George Bernard Shaw (26 July 1856 – 2 November 1950) is a play which was published in 1912. In Greek Mythology, Pygmalion is the name of a gifted sculptor who falls in love with one of his masterpieces, which he names Galatea. The interesting thing about this myth, is that for some reason, Pygmalion despised women, and vowed that he would never marry. He placed all his time and effort into his craft.

Mentor Yourself – Book Review – Pygmalion by George Bernard Shaws 

Wisdom of Life Profile

Alexander Mackenzie was born near Stornoway on Lewis Island to a prominent military family. Upon the death of his mother, his father took him to New York in 1774 when he was 12 years old. During the American Revolution, his father, a loyalist, joined forces loyal to the King of England and died during the revolution. As the Americans gained strength and the war turned against England, the Mackenzie family moved to Montreal, Canada in 1776.

Mentor Yourself: Sir Alexander Mackenzie, Scottish Explorer, Fur Trader, and Businessman 

Interviews for Mentoring

This week we featured Drew Dudley, Founder & Chief Catalyst, Nuance Leadership Development Services, Inc. Dudley is a thought leader and has much wisdom to share. He candidly speaks about his bipolar disorder. Here are Part I and Part II of Joann Lim’s interview.

Please let me know your thoughts in the comments section below. Many readers read this blog from other sites, so why don’t you pop over to The Invisible Mentor and subscribe (top on the right hand side) by email or RSS Feed.

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Mentor Yourself – An Interview With Drew Dudley, Founder & Chief Catalyst Part II


Invisible Mentor: Drew Dudley, Founder & Chief Catalyst

Company Name: Nuance Leadership Development Services, Inc.

Website: http://nuanceleadership.ca/ 

Avil Beckford: Tell me a little bit about yourself.

Drew Dudley:  The way I make my living is by using more than a couple of sentences at a time. I’m a professional speaker, an educator, and trying to be a writer and I absolutely love what I do.

Drew Dudley - Cartoons by Scott Mooney - TedxT...

Drew Dudley - Cartoons by Scott Mooney - TedxToronto (Photo credit: Ann Douglas)

Avil Beckford: How did mentors influence your life?

Drew Dudley:  Because I was looking for mentors in a conventional sense – who your boss is, who does what you do, and who you look up to – for most of my life I didn’t have much of that. My father was a tremendous mentor, but in terms of my career, there wasn’t very many. I didn’t work for people who really inspired me, and do things the way I would have been proud of doing. My perceived lack of mentors made me feel as if I had to take care of things on my own. The older I get, the more I realize that I had mentors every step of the way. They were my friends, they were my students. Those were mentors, but I thought mentorship was, only if you’re older, if you have more money, or you have a bigger title, those are the people who teach you things so you get the same stuff. I realize now that that perception of mentor had an impact on my life that was detrimental.

My mentors are students who forced me to apply to be a speaker at TED Toronto, which had a massively, positive impact on my career. Those were mentors, so when I look back, mentors had a big impact on my life in ways I did not recognize. I encourage people to look around and see who are the mentors in their life and to let go of the idea that they have to be older, have to have more money that they have to have bigger titles. I think mentors are the ones who live their lives in a way that you respect, and that you’d be proud of living your life. If you took money out of the world, and all we had as currency was how much value people add to others in terms of intellectual capacity, social, and spiritual capital. Look around and ask who pour most of that into the world, and those people should be your mentors. Once I started focusing on those people in my life, my life got tremendously better.

Avil Beckford: An invisible mentor is a unique leader you can learn things from by observing them from afar, in the capacity of an Invisible Mentor, what is one piece of advice that you would give to readers?

Drew Dudley:  Seth Godin says, “Never trust anyone who gives you a list of tips.” But I think if I had one piece of advice, it would be this, go back and think of the regrets in your life and reassess if they are still regrets.  We spend a lot of time thinking less of ourselves because of the mistakes that we make. We keep remembering mistakes the same way we thought of them right after we made them. So go back and think of the regrets you have in your life now. When someone asked me “what’s the biggest regret you have?” I started to list all the regrets I had based on how I felt when I had them and I realized at the moment that I wasn’t sad that that happened.

It was a big disappointment at the time, but it allowed me other things to happen later in my life. My biggest advice to people is to reassess your regrets and recognize that probably 80 percent of them you don’t regret anymore. That allows you the freedom to believe that every mistake you make, every regret that you have, is going to be one of those 80 percent.

Avil Beckford: How do you integrate your personal and professional life?

Drew Dudley: My personal and professional life is almost completely integrated as it is. The workshop and facilitation parts of my business are growing. All the lessons I use in the debrief come from my personal experience. When I speak, it’s me delivering messages about the mistakes I have made in my life. What my personal life is, is really a constant generation of ideas and content that I can share with other people, not just here is the success, but if you look at my presentations, most of them are on mistakes I made and what I learned from them.

It can be tough sometimes, but my personal and my business life, because of the nature of my business, are inextricably intertwined. Everything that goes on in one, leads into the other. A lot of people talk about work-life balance, but work-life balance insinuates that they are two separate things on opposite ends of the scale. I look at it the way you mentioned – integration. Because of what I do, everything I do businesswise is personal, and everything I do personally is business. Someone once told me that people don’t care about how much you know until they know how much you care. I can’t compartmentalize what I do for business because it means I don’t care, and there isn’t enough passion because I need to make what is business, personal and what is personal, business. 

Avil Beckford: What are five life lessons that you have learned so far?

Drew Dudley:

  1. Leadership is not about getting better. Leadership is realizing there is nothing wrong with you. Change the way you think and act to remind yourself of that more often.
  2. Almost anything bad that can happen to us has probably happened to us in some degree, so realize that you’ve survived everything that has happened to you so far – that you’ve dealt with every problem that you’ve ever had because you’re still here and we should give ourselves more credit for that.
  3. Give yourself more credit and that’s related to the point above.
  4. You matter – I matter.
  5. The basic unit of human understanding is the story. We need to recognize what our story is, be willing to tell it, and believe that it’s extraordinary.

Avil Beckford: How do you define success? And in your opinion what’s the formula for success?

Drew Dudley: I very consciously try not to define success in a general sense. I think the formula for success is a whiteboard, and something that can be erased, and new things drawn on it. And in fact, many things can be drawn on it. I define success as definable only for each individual situation. The formula for success is a blank board that allows you to rewrite it constantly. That’s a big part of me, I don’t define success in a general sense, I’ll define success in what’s today, what’s my definition for success today? and then I write that on my whiteboard.

When I come up with a different task, I wipe off the whiteboard, and figure out how I define success for that task. Allowing ourselves to define success differently in every context, we are able to recognize just how much flexibility we need to have in our lives. As a result we allow ourselves to have more success. If you say this is what success is, then you have to fit the things in your life into that definition, wherein if you say what success means right here, then you can make sure that there are many more successes that you can give yourself credit for in your life.

Avil Beckford: What are the steps you took to succeed in your field?

Drew Dudley: The first step was to get started, and the second was to get over the fear of starting. So the biggest steps to success for me, were the first and second to begin. And the third biggest step was a wrong one which took me down a path that I realized eventually wasn’t the one for me. The fourth biggest step was when I was willing to go backwards to start on a new path, and the fifth was the one I took where I couldn’t see where I was going to land. That’s not specific, but each one of these steps may be several years or several contexts, but those are the biggest steps to my success.

Avil Beckford: If trusted friends could introduce you to five people that you’ve always wanted to meet, who would you choose? And what would you say to them?

Drew Dudley: I would talk to myself because ultimately we are the only ones that we listen to about why we are awful and why we are great; about why we can do it and why we can’t. Hearing questions like the ones that you ask are ones that lead to revelations about ourselves. When people ask us questions about who we are and what we stand for, these are sometimes things we don’t think about, we just act on.

If I can be introduced to five people, and we’re suspending belief here, I’d like to talk to myself at five, as I was still discovering the world and being reminded of how I thought at five; I’d like to talk to myself at 12, 18, 45 and I’d like to talk to myself at 80. I’d ask myself at each stage, “What’s making you happy right now?” I think that would be an extraordinarily revealing conversation with all of them. To be able to ask yourself 10 years from now what’s making you happy now, to ask yourself 40 years from now, what’s making you happy now, and to be able to chase that earlier. If I ask myself at 12 what was making me happy, as I said before, one of my biggest regrets was not starting earlier. It would be awfully cool to have me older tell me what to start looking for now and to remind myself of the things to be educated out of, or experienced out of when I was younger and didn’t have so many things I was worrying about.

Avil Beckford: Which one book had a profound impact on your life? What was it about this book that impacted you so deeply?

Drew Dudley: I can’t even remember the name but it was the first book I read that made me want so many more books. It opened me up to the fact that there is so much joy to be had there. I grew up consuming any book I could. And if I take a step back and say the first book led to so many things – joy, happiness, knowledge – why would I ever say no to the first of anything?

Avil Beckford: You are one of the 10 finalists on the reality show, So, How Would You Spend Your Time? Each finalist is placed on separate deserted islands for two years. You have a basic hut on the island and all the tools for survival; you just have to be imaginative and inventive when using them. You are allowed to take five books, one movie and one music CD, and whatever else you take has to fit in one suitcase and a travel on case. What would you take with you and how would you spend the two years? T he prize is worth your while and at this stage in the game there really aren’t any losers among the 10 finalists, since each are guaranteed at least $2 million?

Drew Dudley:

Two Years

If you’re alone for two years you have lots of time to think about yourself, but we’re a part of everyone who we have ever met, and they are a part of us. We don’t take enough time to truly get to understand ourselves, or the people who love us and we love. I would take three books they said changed their lives. In reading those books I would learn about them, if that book was profound to them. The messages would speak to what they value and care about and I would like to know about that.

Five Books

  1. Macbook loaded with as much information as I can on how-to. Specifically, how-to build a power source for a Macbook. This is a commentary on the state of life because one of the things in life is to be flexible. Be ready to deal with whatever comes. Why not embrace what this amazing world has given us in terms of the ability to know things? You can load hundreds of things on a Macbook. Maybe I’m ducking your question, but I don’t want five books, I want a thousand and load them on a Macbook and take them with me.
  2. I would take a book from my youth called My Book About Me by Dr Seuss because it asks you to fill out all these things about yourself when you are three years old. If you have two years on a deserted island, it’s an extraordinary opportunity to sit and think about yourself and your life, and we don’t do that enough on an everyday basis. I remember seeing this book in storage at my parents’ place and opening it up and being reminded of that kid at three years old and how I always thought about what my favourite thing was, what I liked to do, and what made me happy. This book was filled with questions. Two years alone is an amazing chance to become more of who you are.
  3. I’d ask the most important people in my life which books changed theirs and I’d take those with me. Most people would take books that they read before and want to read again, but if I’m allowed to take my Macbook, I’d fill it up with both fiction and non-fiction, and the work of authors that I don’t know.

Movie & Music CD

I would take the 1988 baseball movie Bull Durham (20th Anniversary Edition) from Ron Shelton because I’ve seen it a million times with my dad who introduced me to it. We watched it together so many times. I would take it because I love it, and part of the reason I love it, is because every time I see it, I remember that moment when my dad and I were laughing at it a million times even though we knew exactly what was coming. The music CD would be the live recording of an event called Concert on the Lake, which happened in 2004. It’s a performance by a good friend of mine, Mike Allison, just him with a guitar at sunset on a floating stage. He had just gone through something really tough in his life, and it was such a remarkable moment with all of the closest people in my life – all my friends and family. Every time I listen to that recording, it takes me back to a place where everything in my life had seemed to come together and was good. I was remarkably happy, and when I hear that recording I think about all the different people there and why they are valuable to me. Even though we are far apart, when I hear the recording, I’m reminded that they are still a part of my life. So, I’d like that on the island.

Bull Durham – trailer

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Avil Beckford: What excites you about life?

Drew Dudley: Tomorrow! I get today. People often ask the question, “Where so you see yourself in five years,” and what excites me is that I don’t get the urge to answer that question. Maybe what excites me about life is that maybe I haven’t seen the best part yet. Life just keeps on getting better, and what excites me is that there is something better yet to come, and you don’t have to figure out what it is.

Avil Beckford: Complete the following, I am happy when…..

Drew Dudley: I allow myself to be happy! I really do. Sometimes you look at the things where you should be happy and for some reason you don’t let yourself be happy. And there are times when doing things, there is a moment I wasn’t happy because I didn’t allow myself. I can be happy anywhere if I let myself do it. Most of the times I’m unhappy is because I won’t let myself be happy because of silly reasons.

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