Finished my research. Time for life to begin.

What's The Clear Man all about?

Jan 05, 2023

Hi, I’m Deri. I turn 43 in a few weeks time. Or, 3 years old, if you agree with Jung:

“Life really begins at forty. Up until then, you are just doing research.” - Carl Jung

By lots of measures my first 40 years were pretty good. But I also spent much of that time scrapping around in the dark.

Blind to who I was, or what really mattered to me in life.

Unclear.

This blog is about my work to get clear, and what that means to me.

My hope is that it helps you figure some stuff out about who you are and who you want to be as well.

My story

At school I was academically elite, getting 5 As at A-Level pretty easily. I went to Oxford, got a first, and stayed on to complete a doctorate in Organic Chemistry.

(You can call me Dr Hughes if you like, but please don’t test my retained knowledge of [2,3]-Sigmatropic N-O Rearrangements in Cyclic Systems…)

I’m a decent sportsman. While at Oxford I played rugby for the Blues (the 1st XV). I even got a run out against Australia in 2001. They were on tour to play England the following weekend and played a warm-up match against OURFC.

These days I compete in Powerlifting. I made it to the BDFPA World Championships a couple of years ago and won a silver medal.

After my DPhil I joined one of the world's leading strategy consulting firms, Bain & Company. I spent 6 years there doing some really interesting work and making good money. But it also ran me into the ground. The hours and the travel were too much.

Whilst at Bain I got married to an amazing girl. I left Bain in 2012 when she was pregnant with our first child. We now have 4 incredible, captivating, kids who make me laugh every day. Our little family unit is my world.

5 years ago I started my own business. I now work independently and flexibly, building a new business with people I love working with. I don’t work long hours and I can spend lots of time with my kids and my wife whilst earning enough to support them. Go me.

That’s the Instagram gloss version of my story.

Outwardly, my life looks pretty sorted. In many ways it is.

But in many other ways it’s just beginning.

What lies beneath

That outward persona masks what’s really going on for me. Maybe for you too?

We all project what we want the world to see or believe about us. It’s hard and scary to be transparently ‘you’.

For much of the last 40 years I was blind to who I really was. I believed I’d had a happy childhood because I’d blanked out the bits that weren’t. I couldn’t see how out of control I was. How that was impacting my behaviours and damaging the relationships I cared about.

I didn’t allow myself to realise how unhappy I frequently was.

I worked too hard to get validation from others. Getting ‘5s’ on my performance reviews meant everything to me. Being promoted faster than my peers was critical to my self-worth.

I drank too much. Most weekends were a drunken blur as I gave up on the stress of the week and chased a temporary high.

I was incredibly unhealthy. I wasn’t really exercising and my food addiction - binge eating when I was stressed - was out of control. I’d go through periods of getting back in control but never really finding peace.

I didn’t know it then, but all that behaviour was me just numbing out instead of tuning into what I really needed. Numbing out is a great way of avoiding being clear with yourself, and I’m a pro at it.

Getting clearer

In 2019, my wife and I realised we needed to invest in our marriage to make it work long-term. We have a beautiful vision of us as an old couple walking down a beach together hand-in-hand. We were on a path where that future was looking unlikely.

There was no crisis point but we had both observed that we were in a risky spot. At the time our kids were 7, 4, 2 & 2. It had been a demanding few years since the twins were born.

Our arguments were getting more frequent. We were more stressed with the kids. We realised we were starting to drift apart. Disconnecting from each other as we both focused on our own survival.

We decided to speak to some professionals and found a brilliant couple who offered couple’s therapy together. We liked the idea of that balanced view.

We only had 6 sessions with them but those 6 sessions changed our path completely. Genuinely life-changing.

I’ll talk more about the specifics in future posts. The big change is we now communicate clearly and calmly.

I continued for a few months with individual therapy. Through that I discovered men’s work, which for me centres around my weekly men’s group and The Mankind Project (MKP).

I’ve worked hard to tune into why I behave the way I do. What drives me. And how I can behave differently if I choose to.

Ultimately I’m figuring out how I can be the man I want to be.

I’ve only just started this journey (I’m only 3 years old, remember!) and there’s a long way to go.

If any of my story resonates for you then it may help you to walk alongside me for a while. I’d like that.

Looking forwards

In recent months I’ve realised that I’m probably autistic. My daughter was diagnosed and through her process a lot of things have fallen into place for me.

Already that is changing how I see myself and how I behave. Working that through with my wife, kids and friends is going to be challenging. I’m planning to seek a formal diagnosis this year.

My kids are still young, we have the teenage years yet to navigate. I’ve heard teenagers can be… interesting to live with.

We are heading into some tough economic times. I don’t know how my business might be impacted. What the implications could be for our lives. The world may change in ways we don’t yet understand.

Through all of this I plan to keep doing my work to understand myself. Control what I can control and let the rest be.

I’ll share the mistakes I make and what I learn from them.

Why “The Clear Man”?

The word “clear” kept cropping up in the work I was doing. When I was talking to my wife or friends of mine about this stuff we’d always ask each other questions like:

Are you clear on what you’re trying to achieve?
Can you clearly see what’s causing you to behave like that?
Are you communicating clearly?
Is there some conflict you need to clear up?
Can you hold your boundaries clearly & cleanly?

I realised that the centre of everything I was working towards was exactly that: being Clear.

I'm still figuring out exactly what that means so this may change, but right now I see 5 parts to being a Clear Man:

A clear purpose (Personal Mission)
Being clear with yourself (Self-Awareness & Personal Responsibility)
Being clear TO others (Honesty & Transparency)
Being clear WITH others (Integrity, Accountability, and clearing conflict)
A clear journey (Choosing what to work on)

Am I a Clear Man now? Sometimes. Not always. My work and my journey continue. I suspect they always will.

What I can say is I am much clearer on all 5 of those things than I was. I still trip myself up frequently. I still struggle with eating & drinking too much. I still get angry.

But, these days I recover much faster. I can listen to my wife when she’s upset without getting defensive or trying to fix it [edit from Mrs H: You can *usually* listen to your wife without getting defensive…]

I apologise to the kids and re-connect within minutes, rather than days. I catch myself slipping into emotional eating and adjust quickly. I care a lot less about what other people think of me.

My plan is to share what I’m learning here, as clearly as I can. I’ll keep it practical and useful.

I hope you find it helpful. I’d love you to join me in getting clear if you want to.

Deri.