I’m on the home stretch of Michael Neill’s latest 6 month Mastermind, Your Life Your Way.

The Mastermind kicked off with a 5-day immersion. Then there are monthly deep dives, monthly check-ins and three 1 on 1s with the main man himself.

If I’m honest, these 1 on 1s were a huge part of why I signed up to the Mastermind. 

When I saw they were part of the package, I felt all giddy, just like a kid in a candy store.

A few weeks ago, I fired up Zoom for my first 1 on 1. 

Michael popped up on my screen from his sitting room, his two dogs snoozing behind him. After some chit-chat about his golf plans in Scotland, he asked me the question:

“So what would you like to talk about?” 

Over the next 90 minutes, we covered everything from time management to parenting, from fear to overthinking, from coaching to my newsletter.

There were the little moments. Like when I told Michael how I was buzzing to publish my second book but that I needed to finish my first book first.

Michael smiled and said:

“That just sounds like something you’ve made up Tom”.

Of course, he was right.

Then there were the deeper, more profound, more mind-bending insights which are still settling.

And then at one point, the conversation turned to this newsletter.

One doubt I’ve been carrying around for a while is whether writing daily emails is really the right way to go.

It's not that I don’t love daily emails. I actually think this newsletter is turning into something really exciting.

But writing an email each & every day uses a fair whack of time. It still takes at least an hour to write one email, and that doesn’t take into account the thinking time, being on the hunt for ideas and jotting down notes when I’m out & about. I pour a lot of time into this newsletter and I’ve had to skip other things to put my writing first.

But Michael put my doubts to bed when he said this: 

“A healthy obsession is an absolute key to success in anything anyone does. I’ve never seen success happen without it”

He paused, and then followed up with:

“Well, I have seen it happen with an unhealthy obsession, but I’ve never seen it happen without an obsession”.

This was quite the lightbulb moment.

My old perfectionist and workaholic ways definitely fall into the “unhealthy obsession” category. Analysing financial models until 10pm was a weekly ritual and as unhealthy an obsession as you can get.

But this idea of a “healthy obsession” has clicked a few dots into place.

Take my passions for poker and magic.

If these hadn’t been healthy obsessions, I wouldn’t have funded my way through uni from my poker winnings. Nor would I have nailed a sleight of hand move which is normally out of reach for anyone but the magic pros.

In fact, the poker and magic remind me of this newsletter too.

All three started out with me knowing absolutely diddly squat, yet feeling completely swept up by the excitement, energy and pizazz of these worlds.

Yes, that’s really how it felt. It was like poker, magic and writing cast a spell on me.

That same energy carried over when the learning curve began, when things went wrong, when I peered up from behind my cards or my keyboard and saw people 10x further forward than me.

Then a healthy obsession took root, at which point things started to flow.

Truth is, I always thought an obsession was something negative.

Turns out I was wrong. An obsession can be a really good thing, and unashamedly so.

Thanks to Michael gently pointing this out, the doubts I’d been lugging around about this newsletter have dropped away and that excitement, energy and buzz is back.

This is the same excitement, energy and buzz we’re re-igniting on my new program, The Music Inside You.

The Music Inside You is designed to reconnect you with whatever lights you up from the inside so that you FEEL that aliveness, whatever is going on in your life.

Heck, even the idea itself of joining The Music Inside You might cause your pulse to quicken, your chest to fizz or a grin to spread over your face.

That’s a surefire clue this could be the program for you.

If that sounds like you and you’d like to check out the details, here’s the link:

The Music Inside You

Just over two days until the deadline.

To fulfilment,

Tom