I’m so tired. I’m on the train back from speaking at Mediatech and both physically and emotionally shattered. The world has just been against me this week and i’m coming to understand just how much anger i have repressed over the years and how i have misused it. I know i have to mourn my father. I know i need to get into anger management and therapy to talk through a lot of things i’ve been through. I’m not scared of it and will face it. I have a trail of broken hearts and damage i’ve caused bearing down on my shoulders and the echoes of relationships past that haunt me, as well as the faces of the future coming popping their metaphorical heads round the door to let me know they’ve arrived.

I never really imagined being where i am now – i thought about it, but being there is another thing entirely. I worked, slipped up, slipped up again, worked, blocked, loved, worked, fell down, worked, fell down, loved, hated, fell down, you get the picture. It seems so unreal and i’m only at the beginning. What people see and who i see as me are so different. I’m beginning to see why life allows you to carry so much emotionally from an early age – it’s because later on you will carry great responsibility, and you need to be strong and mature enough to carry it in the first place. Not all the pain you’ve suffered was without purpose or simply random.

I never dreamed for a second that i’d be welcomed onto the stage by Doug Richard from Dragon’s Den with massive praise in front of a thousand or so media professionals and investors to chair a discussion with people from Channel 4, MTV and the BBC, and for them to be addressing me. I never really felt the confidence i have now when i present and somehow manage to apparently entertain and enthuse my passion so much in an audience. I didn’t even think i’d survive this year, but somehow so much has happened and lifted me up on an invisible wave. I do know now that it is my place to be. I need a business colleague that does the maths and gets on with the sensible stuff so i can get out there and front all the evangelical, passionate, exciting and glamorous things. That’s my place, under the lights.

In January i was overjoyed at the whole idea of getting married for the first time in my life and speaking to a few thousand people. I’ve always maintained i never, ever wanted that, or children. But i wasn’t sure about me. At the end of the year i am so far on my way that i can’t believe it. I built all this. It was worth it. I sacrificed everything and i still don’t regret it. I’m starting to believe in me. Everything i am labelled, i am in part. Despite all of the pain, my life has accelerated so far that i’m still trying to take it all in. I’m just me, faults and all. And there really are lots of faults.

None of this is easy. It never, ever will be. Things will get harder each time you overcome an obstacle. The darkness is so seductive and compelling, and it loves to draw you into itself very slowly comfortably. Before you know it you are powerless and feel so weak you can never see an end to any of it. You’re overwhelmed and chained down by the weight of all your concerns and problems. You may think i’m arrogant and smug, but i can tell you from the heart that i know just as well as anyone else how desperate it can be. I won’t cry in front of anyone, but believe me, i cry. It’s made worse for me because i’m proud, but i’ve come to see it now as me actually operating normally.

There are times when my despair gets so bad all i can see is black around me everywhere i go. The whole world turns its back or raises its fists and it’s just me in the corner having to fight my way out. I’m always on my own despite having so many people around me. Whole weeks can pass by and nothing will change or get better. You lose faith and get disheartened. You want to give up and get out. You don’t want to be there anymore or have to do any of it anymore. You wonder what the point is at all, or what the purpose of you being here is. There’s no answer and your chest just burns and caves in. Then the wolves arrive at your door and they kick you when you’re down.

The battle isn’t the one you see, it’s the world you don’t. It’s getting up in the morning when you don’t feel like there’s anything getting up for. It’s swallowing down when you get rejected or knocked back. It’s not the inspiring and positive words, it’s how you keep it together when nobody wants to hear your side or what you want to say. It’s being enthusiastic about something no-one else seems to want to believe in. It’s actually doing it when you think you can’t, or forcing yourself to get out of the boat when you want to walk out on the water. Out there it’s cold, and where you are is nice and warm. It’s realising you’re putting it off and forcing yourself to do it right now. It’s confronting the person you are terrified of. It’s stepping out to believe in someone when everyone around you tells you that they’re not worth the bother.

Its saying “i believe in you” and “i forgive you”. No matter what you’ve done, what’s happened or how much of a hit you took or how much was destroyed. To choose to believe in the good that person is made of. It’s saying you’re strong enough and showing them your heart is big enough. That you didn’t stop loving them because of what they did or what they said, and that they don’t need to do enough, be enough or have to earn your love. That the most valuable thing in the world flows freely like the most powerful and gentle river in the world, just because that’s part of who we are. It saying “i will not be scared to love you now and in the future because of the past”.

But you’re not alone. It feels like you are, but you aren’t. Your courage inspires and liberates others to do the same. I’ve lost count of the amount of times people have written to me saying i’ve inspired them. I don’t recognise how or why, even though they offer to tell me and i’m touched by it. It’s not false modesty either – i just do what i believe is right and risk what i need to. If i don’t, i will die. I may not be right every time. But that’s me – always running and pushing. It’s the way i was made and the person i am. I will regret what i don’t do. If i make a fool of myself, so be it. If i get rejected yet again, so be it. What matters is you do it.

As i walked down the path my mum said “good luck for tomorrow.” Without even thinking i turned to her and replied “i won’t need it. I’m good enough.” I can’t believe i’d said it and it was so automatic. At that point i realised i’d passed an important milestone – for a woman it’s knowing you are worthy of being loved, for a man it is whether you are good enough, and that reassurance and validation needs to come from your father. You can spend all your life searching for it in the wrong places and through the wrong people. But for me the time has arrived when i finally know i’m actually good enough. In my heart, not just my mind.

Whatever they did to me, i survived. The times i lost everything passed. When the flood came i washed up on the shore still breathing. They may have choked the life out of me, wrenched me from place to place and lashed out to hurt me over and over again, but i got up no matter how badly injured i was, just to say you hadn’t taken me down. I had no energy or will to do it at the time, but my auto-pilot picked me up. I was scared, worried and uncertain, but the thing i was certain of was that i should get up somehow. I loved regardless of how scared i was.

What i wanted to say was that even when it rains all day, there is hope. Don’t give up. Cry if you need to, but don’t give up. Fall apart, sink into your bed, hide in the sofa or walk in the rain. But never, ever give up. Nothing that is worth anything is easy to get, and if you get it easily, you won’t value it. When you ask yourself what the point of it all is, as i have so many times, the point of all of it is - you. You are the point. You are the purpose. This world is for you, not just for other people. You won’t ever feel for certain you have it right, and there is no perfect day. You can only risk, because that is all there is. If you don’t take a risk, you risk it all.

Maybe you’re in a cage and can’t unlock the door. Maybe you’re in a hole so deep that you can’t seem to climb out. Maybe your day to day life feels like an endless loop of the same thing. Perhaps you are angry with yourself for being scared or not knowing what to do. Maybe you think everyone else seems to have it all figured it out and you are the exception. It didn’t work before or it will all go wrong. Maybe you are just too scared to try to do anything. Perhaps you think you’ve fucked up too many times to be forgiven or aren’t worthy of someone’s love. That’s the time to ask for it, because only when you ask can you feel the response.

You are more than your skin or the way you look. There is a person locked up in you that wants to come out and enjoy all the wonderful things, but to do that is to risk being hurt at the same time. If you expect to get hurt, you will always lock your heart away. As much as you want to, you can’t do it selectively as it doesn’t work like that. Don’t let anyone tell or convince you that you aren’t worth what you are. Understand their bias and see their own unhappiness. See their fear and how they inflict it on you. See how your success would threaten them. Don’t believe what they say. Make sure your heart doesn’t believe it.

You never know whether what you’re doing is right, but you follow your heart. You believe in the best and choose to trust that things will work out in a beautiful way. You step out, take a chance and put your hand out for someone to catch. They’re doing the same so you find that person. You envision a world together that is better than you have now – the dream, the wonderful place you want to be in, and you just believe in it and focus on it. That is all that matters. You know where you are isn’t perfect but you all you think about is getting to that special place – that snapshot in time that’s so blissful and incredible. You work together to get there and just being with each other on the journey, for all the highs and all the lows. You can reach it, you can touch it and be there. All you need is for both of you to want to be there.

There are hurdles, but your vision keeps you together and on the road to the same place. It’s that vision that gives you the strength and the courage to work through the difficult times where everything seems like it’s lost. You fall back on your plan, and your dream. You choose hope, and the positive version of your situation, or you choose fear and the darkness. It’s not naive – the more you visualise and work towards it, the more real it becomes. Sometimes it’s hopeless. Nothing seems to make sense or work out. Where you are is hell. Everything’s gone and there is no way back. Accepting circumstances over your heart is a choice. Magic is where you believe in something bigger than yourself and where you are – the place you want to be and the resilience of the human spirit to overcome the darkness.

I live in that place in the future, and i don’t believe in the limitations of now. Most get lost in how impossible everything is in the moment they are in. It may look like there’s no way out or no hope. We are not in Auschwitz, and even those imprisoned there believed in hope and the human spirit. Nothing took their dignity and some of the most incredible and amazing acts were released from being in captivity. Only the most inspirational stories come from adversity. Perfection is a lie, and a flawed concept – and ironically, isn’t fulfilling. Only the fight and spirit for perfection is.

You could be on the floor right now with nothing – no chances, no hope, no future and very little reason to smile and even less energy to keep up the brave face. But i can tell you now that i will always be there for you. Yes, me. Angry, horrible, cruel, ferocious Alex, who you think hates you, doesn’t care about you, doesn’t respect you and wouldn’t even give you the time of day. And for a very simple reason - most of the people who said they would be there for me never were. I won’t allow anyone else to go through their darkest hours alone like i have. I will reach out if no-one else does, take your calls or give you a hug. I may be a monster but i will never, ever refuse compassion when it is needed. I may be cold, tough and hard, but i know what it is to be forsaken better than most i know. The word “forsaken” is tattooed on my forehead and is my own wound.

Of course you can put up walls, barriers and blocks designed to protect you from the world. You put someone or something in the middle as a proxy to shield yourself. But time passes and you come to see that you are not stopping the threats out there in the world from getting in, you’re actually stopping you from getting out, and trapping yourself. Those things that shield you from what could hurt you stop you from being able to let the love in you out. The problem is that you have too much love to give and it’s overwhelming. It’s like covering yourself in cling film and suffocating yourself just so you can stop people from touching your skin in case it makes you melt and open your heart up to them.

You can get out. You can live. But you can’t do it on your own. It means you need to reach out and trust in the human spirit – that those who care for you will care for you, will mean what they say and for you to commit to them truly and solely. You will make it. You will make it because you are with people who want you to and support you on the way. You are only fighting yourself or rejecting what could be. “No” is the safe option, and “yes” means you want to try and want to love and live. It will never be safe. That’s why it’s magical. What matters is you put out your hand for someone to grab it and pull you out of the coma.

And some time down the road it will cease just to be about you, but about who you share it all with, and who else you bring along. It’s ok to need someone or want what you want. Nobody should make you feel guilty and you shouldn’t feel like you have to please people. The only time when you can truly realise you want to be with someone is when you are totally on your own. That’s not fear, it’s just the human condition to want to be with another person for company and to feel secure in your own little world together. We need to do it or we die.

Next year i’m recording a whole bunch of tunes with a band i’m putting together, and the lead track is called “Where were you?”, which sums up everything i feel and have felt. It’s what i ask myself when i look at someone.

That’s my question to you right now. Where were you when i was suffering? Where are you right now? Do you even know where i am or how i’m feeling? You read this and it goes straight to your heart, but where were you when it mattered? Where will you be next time when it matters and i need you to be there? How will you even know when that is? What will your excuse be? Will you expect me to call you and let you know?

That’s when you need to ask yourself why you don’t have the relationship you want to or think you do with me.

That probably sounds like a real self-pity trip. It’s not. I am just beyond pretending that anyone actually means what they say or that they would truly take the bullet for me. I’d take it for you. Not for the heroic status, but because no-one would take it for me. My children will never go a day without knowing they are loved to death and that i am ridiculously proud of them just for having woken up and been mine. I may be someone to be scared of, but you always know i would take the bullet no matter what. All i’ve ever asked is for someone to do the same to me – to love me in the same way, with the same intensity and the same soul.

I want nothing else. That’s it. Just that. To be true, and actually tell me. To show me. To take the bullet for me. I do measure someone’s value by what they’ve done with their lives, but not in the people i love. They are incompatible with that idea. You don’t judge someone’s worth when you love them. You don’t see the bad spots, and if you somehow do, they make you love the person more. I don’t look at my nephew and see his faults – i’m fascinated by how wonderful he is and how much he makes me laugh. When he falls down i am just filled with love for him and i help him up and give him a kiss on the cheek to let him know everything’s OK.

These are the only things that matter. If you’d asked me a few years ago my answer would have been different, but things have changed for me. My heart’s opening up slowly and i’m beginning to face some of the things i’ve inherited and trying to change the future that i will have. I want those i love to share in it and cheer me on, not be scared of me or wonder why i’m doing it. I’m doing it so they can watch, and enjoy the rewards with me with a smile on their face. I’m doing it so i can whisper how my day was when i climb under the duvet to feel my skin brush against the skin of the one i love, and to know that no matter what the world throws at me, i’ll always come home to that and it’ll be OK. I felt it once, and since, there is nothing else that has ever mattered again.

But most of all, i’m not doing it so my father will actually be proud of me. I know that will never happen and i’m coming to accept it. There is a need in all of us to gain that approval and validation, but i’m moving past it. I’m OK with the idea that he doesn’t actually like or respect me very much nowadays, as disturbing as that sounds. It’s hard to forgive when i know i have to. I don’t want to. I want him to suffer, and everyone else who’s hurt me.

I look at him now and see a small and weak man who is scared of me and threatened by me. I will not spend my life living out the ways i involuntarily learnt from him or seeking his validation. I will not justify myself or account to him because it will never end – there will always be another thing i have failed at. I will never be good enough or warrant any interest from him even if was the fucking prime minister. In fact, that would make it worse. But i also won’t carry his anger or vicarious thinking. I see how unforgiving and explosive he is. I don’t want that to be me. There is no harder battle than undoing a lifetime of the wrong teaching. It’s like stripping away who you are.

I am angry. I have a fucking right to be. I’ve kept it down for so long now that i don’t know any other way. I thought it helped me to cope with the pain in the moment by gritting my teeth and sucking it down. I have to ask for help to get better and learn new ways. I need you to show me how some of this works and figure out what i need to stop doing. I’ve been so angry for so long that my own system shut down to stop it, which meant depression. I didn’t even know it was anger. I just thought being angry was about screaming, when it’s not. It’s far wider and more complex than a tantrum.

Life is that journey and not a destination, as Aerosmith so rightly say. It’s a harsh rollercoaster ride. Or it can be a gentle tedious cruise control on a boring motorway. The choice you have is which one you want it to be. To change and break out means you need to risk being hurt, scared and maybe lonely, because that’s what you’ve always known. Or maybe everyone else is like you, and because they fear the same thing you will both do your best to avoid it and it’s the common fear that actually bonds you together and forces you to work it out together.
You can sum it up by saying it’s about where you want to go, and where you could go together, not where you are or where you’ve been.

The choice is who you go on the journey with, and who do you choose to take on the ride. The answer is someone who will be there with you in the moment, live and breathe the vision you have together and fight. Fight like there is no tomorrow and nothing else matters. Someone who will travel any distance and die for what you want to make together; someone that feels and loves as intensely as you. That is your passion and your travelling companion – one who will shelter you from the coming cyclone, keep you warm when it’s cold, but you down when you are out of line and love you so passionately, crazily and intensely that you feel like you want to pass out. That is living. That is being alive.

Ask yourself this . Who is the greater person -the one with no faults at all, or the one who is brave enough to acknowledge their faults and change to overcome them?

There is a little person in me who wants to get out and break out from the shell, but that needs a lot of love, as feminine as i think it sounds. I’m not scared to admit what i need. The question is whether you care enough or believe in me like i believe in you. I would take the bullet and step out even though i’m terrified. Would you do that for me? Am i important enough to you? Is your fear more important than me? Are the circumstances more overpowering than what is in your heart?

But one thing i do know now is that it’s about what you learn on the journey and who you go on the adventure with. If you have no-one to share it with, it is meaningless. For me it’s about when you with a person who takes you away from it all to another place in a second, just by being there and the chemical reaction you have; the one who drives you crazy in almost ways, makes your adrenaline surge and takes you to the point of insanity; that person who has changed you more than any other; someone who makes you feel you could be anything you wanted to be; the one who makes it seem so insignificant in comparison to being with them; the one who you would give it all up to live on the side of the street with just because of how they made you feel. That person you look back with and go “fucking hell”.

So would you take my hand if i reached out to you? Would you see me as an angry dictator or someone closing their eyes, cringeing and hoping someone might value him they way he values you? If you’re reading any of this and it’s hitting you in the chest, it only means something if you do something about it. Don’t just fucking sit there.

And the day ended with this.

“Your resume is far too long. How old are you? 28? I don’t think you know just quite how extraordinary you are. I get the feeling that this isn’t just an entrepreneur thing with you, is it?”
“No it’s not. It’s about doing amazing things and changing the world. I don’t feel that at all. I feel tired. It feels like i’ve had to lose everything to gain the world.”
“Hah. Its sometimes the way. You’re going make a lot of money and be a very successful man. A lot of people are watching you, including this team. Just keep doing what you’re doing.”
“Thank you. But there is no amount of money, and nothing i could do, that could give me what i want.”
“Hah. And what’s that? Let me have that DVD and i’ll take a look.”
“The person i chose above all the others that i want to share it all with.”

The video will be published in the next few weeks, so i’ll pop up today’s session on this site as soon as i get it.

All these lives that you’ve been taking
Deep inside, my heart is breaking
The world outside these walls may know you’re breathing
The world outside these walls may know you’re breathing
But you ain’t comin’ in

“All These Lives” By Daughtry