Creating Success in Daily Life

February 12, 2010 louhamilton
Tags: book, Channel 4, Create Lab, Creating Success in Daily Life, Creative, Death, film, Lou Hamilton, photography

How my book was born:

It all started with Death. A funny way round but it did. I was directing a TV series on people with terminal illness. We filmed for three years. It was an intimate and powerful experience and we were all profoundly affected. What we discovered was that when people finally come to terms with the fact that their death is imminent, that is the moment they start really living. They start to really focus on their loved ones, they engage fully with the people around them, they soak up every experience, they are sensitive to every nuance in their relationships, they express their emotions openly and simply, and they live absolutely and completely in every moment.

It was then that I decided to change my life. I didn’t want to wait until I was about to die to start living fully and meaningfully. So I started my quest to understand how you do that. Of course I didn’t have to start from scratch. People have explored and written on this subject since the beginning of civilisation. All I had to do was read it all, absorb it and distil it to something simple that I could live by every day. It took me nearly ten years.

The other thing I learned from doing the Death series was that working creatively could effect positive change in people’s lives. One of the women we filmed was suffering with an acute, chronic and life-threatening  form of Chrone’s Disease. She had had botched surgery, had to have her dressings changed on open, suppurating wounds in her nether regions every single day of her life and was in constant and crippling pain. As we filmed she was given an opportunity to trial a new drug. It worked instantly. Suddenly she was pain-free and the wounds started to heal. Her life and relationships in her family were transformed. She had three months of treatment, then her health authority told her she couldn’t have any more. Her devastation was indescribable. However when the programme aired on Channel 4 someone was so moved by her story that they sent in an anonymous donation. And someone else did, and someone else and someone else. The money came pouring in. We set up a trust fund for her. In it she had enough money to pay for the drugs she needed for the rest of her life.

From that time on I dedicated myself to using creativity to inspire positive change in people’s lives. My own creativity has developed and evolved over time starting with painting and sculpture and moving into film and photography in the early nineties. My subject matter was always people I was inspired by but the Death series focused my attention on making work about people that would inspire other people.

In order to understand better how I could bring together my creative work and my ability to create positive change in people’s lives, including my own, I decided to train as a coach. Finally all the pieces of the picture came together and I was able to write about what I had learned and use my film experiences and photographs to illustrate what I had to offer. The obvious form to bring all these elements together was as a book and so was born “Creating Success in Daily Life”. Purchase £14.99 www.createlab.co.uk

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