WORD FROM THE WISE

IT’S NOT WHAT HAPPENS TO YOU, BUT HOW YOU RESPOND TO IT, THAT COUNTS. IF YOU CAN’T DO ANYTHING ABOUT A PROBLEM, PUT IT AWAY OR YOU’LL ONLY MAKE YOURSELF ILL

scored by an individual in a single game ( 98 points). That’s just two points away from top scorer Wilt Chamberlain’s 1962 record high of 100 points. “So close, yet so far away,” rues John, sportingly.

With his basketball career over, and after a few years managing basketball teams, John realised necessity was the mother of reinvention. Over the next 25 years, he took up several jobs, working at various radio stations, advertising agencies and even ran his own business as a sports promoter for a couple of years in between. But he was “bored” and constantly looking for a challenge. “I did well, but I didn’t enjoy the work much. It wasn’t a passion like basketball.”

The break he was yearning for came in 2007, when he met a man named Dave Clarke. “Dave was a 43- yearold adventurer and father of two, who’d left his company for a year to row 3,000 miles across the Atlantic single- handedly, despite having a bad back and no prior experience,” he says. “I was working on my NLP coaching certification at the time, and did a few free sessions with him every week to get his mind in the right place for the challenge. And he made it — in 83 days! I was elated. Imagine a career doing this!”

And that’s how, when John was made redundant by his last advertising firm about five years ago, he decided to reinvent himself one more time and set up JD Mindcoach Ltd. “For the first time in a long time, I felt passionate again,” he says.

Ironically, he had plenty of opportunity to practise the mental toughness he was now trying to motivate