The Best Thing That Never Happened

Born and raised in middle America, Joey Lott left university at the age of 19 to seek his fortune in California, where he became a software development prodigy in the dot-com world, overseeing the expansion into New England of the largest, privately-held advertising agency in the world. Becoming dissatisfied with the domineering and claustrophobic nature of corporate culture, he went on to set up his own consultancy which revolutionized the approach to the treatment of clients and employees alike.

On a personal level, however, Joey had from an early age suffered from intense forms of anxiety. For decades he had lived with restrictive eating disorders, obsessions, compulsions and an inescapable sense of fear. Despite his attempts to find solace through psychedelic drugs, diet, philosophy, meditation and a variety of extreme practices and beliefs, by the age of 30 he was physically sick, emotionally volatile, and obsessed with keeping any and all unwanted thoughts and experiences at bay.

By this point, he had given up his career and was living on a futon mattress in a tiny cabin in the woods, so sick that he could barely move. Too exhausted now to maintain his habitual forms of emotional self-defence, an insight awakened in him: he discovered that many hidden assumptions supported the sense of imprisonment that had so restricted his life. By investigating these assumptions and welcoming every experience that came his way, he began gradually to discover that in reality nothing was as he had imagined it to be. He discovered, in fact, that the true nature of life is unbounded and utterly free. In his own words: "The secret to happiness is to let go of everything - see through every assumption."

Joey now lives with his family in New Mexico, USA.