There was a cold Sunday afternoon in Kenya when someone told me a home truth that I never learnt the lesson from. We were travelling south on the Nairobi-Mombasa overnight express and I was ready to pack up my stuff and leave. The world was bearing down and I had reached escape velocity.

Her name was Claire, and her and I had never seen eye to eye, despite the fact that in a weird way, we understood each other. Shed never really seemed interested in who I was or what I had to say, so it surprised me when she was so incisive. I had just assumed we were two radically different people who just didn’t get each other at all.

So I was staring out the window into the grassy savannah plain wondering how such a beautiful place could be so tragically ruined when she dropped the bomb.

You’re always running away, aren’t you Alex?

A movie-like silence ensued as I looked at her, unable to think of anything to say back.

Sometimes people just say things that knock you over even though you don’t expect them to. For me it was more a case that someone had even taken the time to think about me. For someone with the amount of friends and public face as me, youd be surprised how few people take those precious minutes to think about who you are underneath.

But she was right. I scuttle to protect myself very quickly and leave the crash site as fast as I can. Im no good with separation, upsetting moments in time or any kind of discomfort. Running is the easy thing to do, and its an effective short-term countermeasure for avoiding the pain.

I write these things because it helps. Its therapy. All my successes and failures are public and the pains and the joys are for everyone to share in should they choose to. In a way its me trying to reach out and be a little better; be a little more open as Im so guarded. Tear me up if you will, damn me if you wish. My truth may be your lies. But it is mine. What I write may be dramatised sometimes, but it comes from my heart, my mind and my soul. Words are like art to me as they are greater than the sword and more deadly than poison. They can inspire and crush in equal measure.

People often ask me if I’ll regret publishing what Ive written, and whether ill come unstuck when my thoughts are a little too loud when they need to fade into the quiet. As much of a fool as I look, Ill never regret it. I make mistakes and mess up like everyone else. You see me fall and you see my arrogant recklessness in the face of the obvious. Entertainment for some, frustration for others. My belief that we can do anything is usually is my undoing because so few others share the light I see or feel the energy drive thats at the core of who I am.

It can seem strange when I explain how I go about deciding who my friends are and who I will let into my life. Despite being a very polarising person, I make friends very quickly and I often find I have more than is practical to deal with. I have 5000 contacts in my Outlook right now, and thats about a third of the people I know. I cant deal with them all, and my public face tends to make the problem worse.

Im not someone who stands still and continuing the status quo. I need to be moving forward all the time as I dont want to get stuck in the quicksand of indifference, irrelevance and indecision. I clear out regularly to prune and trim, as it helps me to focus on, and give the time to, those who I love most and am closest to.

Structure is important to me. It makes me feel safe and that I have taken the time to make sure I protect all the relationships I have. My life is such chaos that its essential. I hate planning, and I hate schedules. But the sad truth is that everything would fall apart without them. And for me it extends past my business life into my personal world.

I never have enough of anything, let alone time. Im not obsessive about it, but Id be spinning around wildly if I didn’t try to organise some of it. The benefit is mostly to my sanity. The only other thing that keeps me alive in spontaneity, which is why I crave it. That mindless indulgence helps to balance out the bookings chart.

We all run away as its the easiest thing to do. Turning your back seems like the only way to kill the pain. Its always the cold-blooded animals whose bite is the most poisonous. Cutting the situation out like a cancer is hard, but its often the best way to detach. Ive spent 27 years doing it. Ive broken hearts, brought on tears, broken people in half, and in one case, ruined someones very promising career. Im a master when it comes to letting people rot.

I once wrote to an ex (Jemima) that I was happy she now hated me as I knew that she would never have the peace and forgiveness she would need to heal. As long s she felt that hate, she would suffer. Closure was the last thing I wouldnt offer because I knew how much she needed it.

And theres no doubt my bite can be deadly. I don’t say that in a macho way. In fact, its something Ive come to think about very differently over the years. There is a dark and evil place in me that enjoys punishing those who have hurt me and denying them what they need. I watch my dad suffer now and I smile. I smile for all the times I suffered at his hands and the times where he took what he wanted whilst I was left there in hell. Schadenfreude doesnt quite do it justice.

I always assume rather cynically that your intentions are bad. Its an automatic reflex. I fight myself to believe the best when I only ever expect the worse. Its not out of fear, its out of raw experience and pre-emptive defensiveness.

But lately the physician has had to heal himself, because he is a hypocrite and a fool. The books title says it all in one line. The struggle in my life has never been anything that anyone would expect it to be. I know I can do anything if my will is strong enough. I know how to make money, persuade, fight, protect, analyse, share and inspire. The real war is inside me, just like its inside all of us. The battle is against me. What tears me apart and is like a never-ending rage inside is a battle against the very despotic and vile part of me. The side thats ruthless, violent, defiant and likes to punish.

Every day I have to resist that person and fight to be a better human being. Ironically its the conflict that provides the creativity that fuels my success. Its a blessing and a curse. Its one of the things that makes me feel very alone.

Youll notice it most prominently in how I seethe and when I debate. It’s how i can argue both sides in an argument and win either that I choose. I can flip a switch if I need to as Im always seeing both sides of the situation. It can create a crippling inertia when you need to make a decision. I often wonder what I would be like if the balance had shifted in the early years. I learned to punish when I was young, in the same way they punished me. Its a template, and its one thats going to have to go. I wont be like them. That evil in me comes from fear, like it does in all people. I shudder when I think about it, as its not someone I want to be. Its who I fight every day as its impossible to escape. Its a very big reason why Im scared of obtaining power, because its a responsibility that I could abuse.

As they say in AA, its all about coming to terms with, and dealing with your feelings I wonder why they don’t teach it in school. I often say to my sister that my father doesn’t have a problem with love; he has a problem with expressing it. I wonder why I feel so dirty and ashamed. I wonder why I feel guilty every time Im angry, and why I cant control myself. I wonder why I carry so much of someone else’s baggage in the sack of bricks on my back. I wonder why I cant sleep at night and why at the happiest times the excitement makes me want to flatten everything in sight and declare my kingdom. But most importantly, I wonder why its so hard for me to face my feelings.

So when I cut them out, Im actually cutting the feelings out. Its a surgical procedure to remove the source of the pain so I can carry on, like if you removed a bullet from your flesh that you knew would get infected if you left it. Im a fighter, not a lover. When things get tough, I slap on the bulletproof shell and start slitting throats. When I feel vulnerable, I act to protect myself from further harm. I learnt to do it a long time ago and it became a habit for life which you see in a lot of men. .

If you hurt me or look like you’re going to, Ill get to you first or deliver a more violent blow in return. For me its not a petty vengeance or a small dose of despite, it’s a strike against you and meant to disable the source of the pain long enough for me to pick up the pieces and move on. As long as you’re not moving I’m safe.

And the storm has always encircled my life; it began a long time ago when every day was a brutal and emotionally crippling day of arguments and bad feeling that we all got so numb to that the malignancy became routine. Indeed, I often wonder if thats all my life is and I have seen, survived and lived through more than most. There is no problem too insurmountable, no situation that cant be changed and no wall that cant be punched through. My instant reaction is to break it down in whatever way is easiest. Its the way I survived through everything that tried to kill me.

But running from the storm is not the answer, and Im beginning to learn that. The storm is faster than you and will outrun or follow you until you learn to live within it. There will always be problems, inconveniences, pain and things that hold you back from what you want. The more you run, the more tired you get as the storm only gets more vicious. To deal with something, you have to face it. The longer you put it to the side, the more it grows and more infectious it becomes. Eventually you end up trying to avoid it altogether rather than wait for the day when you are ready.

Thats why procrastination is an insidious disease, not just a self-destructive circular habit. And it is a disease just like any other. A highly infectious one that kills in its silence, in the same way the misery and apathy of those around us brings us down. Its like a drug that it takes away anxiety temporarily, and thats why we use it as a tool for helping us cope with the worry and fear we feel. We learn it when were young and assume its normal as everyone else does the same.

Its like lepers nodding at each other in approval whilst walking around a leper colony thats been the only world they’ve known. Putting it off will steal the most precious things from you, and you’ll smile as it robs you and tells you its doing you the favour.

We live our lives in expectation that there will be plateaus, or peaceful moments when things are in harmony, we are happy with our lot and we rely on ourselves to recognise it when it appears. When we get to that point, well do it. There is always another day and better opportunities later. We tell ourselves that something has to happen, someone has to do something or be a certain way before we can do what we want or need to.

We put a barrier in front of us to hide behind rather than facing the road earnestly. That barrier we use is a way of avoiding the pain thats associated with facing up to the thing we have to do because the fear and risk that we feel leading up to it is unbearable. The other side to the problem is that we are always optimistic and assume things will take a third of the time they actually will. We do that simply to avoid dealing with the reality of how long they will take. And we fall every time.

Put simply, its buy now, pay later, with interest. Your credit limit is only so high before the debts are called in.

Alfred Hitchcock, the master of fear, famously said there is no terror in the bang, only the moment of anticipation before the bang itself. Those emancipated and fearless souls we all admire and aspire to be are the ones that have realised that the storm will never leave. Life doesnt work in plateaus, it is a rollercoaster where we have choice as to which rails coming up that we switch onto. Those moments are fools gold and a lost cause. The trick to balance is being able to deal with the good and bad simultaneously.

The secret is not the absence of the storm, but the freedom of peace within it. In plain English, that means that problems will always be there, and if you decide to wait for the world to be OK, you will be waiting forever because thousands of years of human wisdom tell us all that youre kidding yourself. It’s never happened to you before, or anyone else. But it makes you feel better as you dont have to be blinded by the lightning or feel the cold rain on your freezing skin.

And Ive always run away, despite knowing that the storm will always be there. Ive listened patiently to those who are being thrown around in it as they stand around and wait. As they are thrashed around they become more and more stubbornly resolved to stay there as time passes because they’ve been in the storm so long that they believe it has to end soon. And they’re afraid of where they will land because theyre used to the thrashing. But it will never end because it is part of the random complexity that is life.

The clouds will break to let the sunshine through at times, and the wind will calm into a warm breeze at times we dont expect. But the storm will resume in a flash, and beat you more violently than the last time.

When the clouds clear, we remember the numb bliss of our plateau were hoping will appear soon. But even then everything’s not clear like we thought it would be if we held on as the waves crashed against us. The storm has blown us somewhere else we didn’t expect to be. Everything around us has changed and we don’t remember when the change happened. Bridges are burning, the people we know are farther away and we have no map to get us back to where we were as we are too far to go back.

Ghandi’s answer to how we stayed so calm was that he never left his place of meditation. He never ignored the plight of those around him and never failed to fight what was crashing in everywhere he went. But he was wise and saw the calm in the middle of the violence. For him, God was in the darkest places because it was in him wherever he went. Most religions have at their centre the idea that suffering is caused by desire, and to cease suffering one must cease to desire.

The storm is a spiritual one, and to live within it we must cease to give it power and become its master rather than its servant. Problems must become opportunities and pain must become lessons. Frustration must become acceptance and fear must become courage.

Its terrifying to try and overcome fear or to sacrifice. And the storm is a very scary place to be. The hardest part of a bungy jump is standing on the edge of the cage and finding the will to overcome your survival instinct to dive off. If you’re scared of heights like me, its four times as bad. Living at peace means giving up and letting go, and letting the storm do its worst. It’s standing up in the midst of chaos and staring the madness down.

Fighting only makes the virulence more profound with all the energy you provide it with in as you writhe to address the discomfort. When youve been at war your whole life, you never truly come back. Peace is harder than fighting because you are powerless. A weapon in the hand is safer than a kiss, and screaming is more familiar than a gentle whisper.

So where does that leave me? The storm gathers over me every day, and a lot of the time I walk into it deliberately. Ive been known to walk into traffic just to stop the cars. I know my peace is in the middle of it, but all I want to do is trash the weather, for which Im never wearing the right clothes. Nads taught me the lesson of forgiveness, and that it not only closes doors, but opens them.

Emma is teaching me the lesson of understanding, as I struggle to fit into the place she has asked me to. That horrid part of me wants to disconnect, run and burn it all like a forest-clearing because I’m getting hurt and the frustrations going to continue and there will be nothing at the end. The kinder part of me wants to understand, forgive and learn.

There is strength in compassion and gentleness, strength that Im trying to find the courage for, and am failing at. The battleground is my heart, mind and soul.