Back in the bright and blustery days of 2008, I found myself smack in the middle of a critical career conundrum.

I was finishing four years of maths and mechanical engineering at Warwick Uni and the question I was wrestling with was:

Should I accept a safe & steady job offer from a UK high street bank? Or should I roll the dice and try my hand playing professional poker for a year?

The poker option wasn’t as crazy as it might sound. Warwick Uni was literally breeding poker champions during my time there.

One chap I was pally with took down a poker tournament in Sam Remo for a cool €1m.

Another guy called Alex came to poker society for the first time and didn’t know his diamonds from his hearts or his spades from his clovers. But a couple of years later, he’d become the number one heads-up player in the world at Texas Hold’em, winning a few millions of dollars in the process.

I didn’t have anywhere near this level of success.

But I wasn’t bleeding chips left, right and centre either.

In my first year at uni I won an entry to a poker tournament in Copenhagen and spun that into DKr 47,776. The year after, I snagged a seat in the Main Event of the World Series of Poker in Las Vegas and during my week in Sin City I chopped another poker tournament for $27k.

I thought that with a year of dedicated study & play, I could get even better results.

But it wasn’t just the money that grabbed me.

I LOVED playing cards too. Even if I was playing for pennies, it felt like stepping into a space where I belonged.

To cut to the river card, I ended up plumping for the safe and steady option of a full time job. It seemed like the sensible choice and I thought I could always try poker a year or two later.

Of course, that never happened. The time to try playing poker was then, when the idea came to mind. That was when it was fresh and alive with possibility. And as I donned my dandy suit & tie and trotted along to day 1 of my banking job, it felt like the poker gravy train had left the station leaving me standing on the platform clutching a bank-issued crusty bread roll and the thought that something warm, satisfying and meant-for-me was disappearing into the night.

I looked back on that crossroads a lot during the first decade of my banking career.

Of course, that’s not to say the poker would’ve worked out.

But it was the fact I hadn’t given it a go that gnawed away at me. It stung knowing I'd found something which made me feel truly, undeniably alive...and then walked away from it.

I did learn a little something from that experience however. I learned that when something feels aligned – when it energises me, inspires me and feels like something I’m meant to do – that’s not just random excitement. That’s my inner compass pointing the way.

It took thirteen long years of grinding away in banking and burning myself out for something else to come along that made me feel the same way.

That opportunity?

You’re reading it.

I feel the same way about my newsletter and coaching biz that I did about poker all those years ago.

Even though I still work a corporate banking job which is as corporate as they come, it feels like I’ve stepped out of someone else’s script, started to write my own script and that this is something I’m meant to do. And the peace and freedom which comes with that is undeniable. 

If you have the sense there's something deep within you that wants to be expressed, my 1:1 program The Music Inside You might be exactly what you're looking for.

I created The Music Inside You to help anyone who knows they’re ignoring what their soul is screaming out for them to do. It’s for people who are ready to stop delaying and start listening to what’s been calling them all along.

If that sounds like you, the next step is to read the sales page and book a free Discovery Call with me before 6th June.

Here's the link: 

The Music Inside You

To fulfilment, 

Tom