Success & Happiness

Colin Durrant
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  • Self-Improvement
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This is a podcast where I interview and get insights from successful and happy people. What does success mean to them. What do they do to make them happy? I also interview couples that have inspired me with their amazing relationships. A lot of us strive and wish for one of those if we are already not in one. Have a listen and see what makes their relationship work and get my own insights and observations as to what it takes to be successful and happy. colindurrant.substack.com

  1. 2d ago

    Olimba: The Leopard Who Won the Hearts of South Luangwa

    A few days ago, Titus Elias sent me a story. Titus is a young man who lives in South Luangwa, and the story is about a leopard he saw with his own eyes. As a child, Titus was quiet but watched everything. He watched how a guide could read a footprint in the dust like a sentence and how his community gathered when someone needed help. He watched the way the river changed with the rains and how the animals moved with it. Her name was Olimba. If you watched Leopard Legacy on National Geographic, or the BBC’s Kingdom with David Attenborough, you may already have met her. For years she held a huge stretch of ground along the Luangwa River, in the Nsefu sector. The guides at Tafika first knew her as Pink-nose. She once fought off a nomadic male near her den and came back to find one of her cubs gone. She raised her son, Makumbi, until he could hunt for himself, then drove him away to find his own ground. In 2025, at fourteen, an old age for a wild leopard, she died during a hunt. A new camp in the Nsefu sector now carries her name. She was never supposed to become a legend. She was only a leopard. She came into the world with nothing but her golden coat, her dark rosettes and the instincts passed down through generations of wild leopards. Yet somewhere between the grasslands, the old woodlands and the winding Luangwa River, Olimba found a place in the hearts of people who had never touched her, never fed her and never called her to them. Most of them saw her for a few minutes from the back of a safari vehicle. That was enough. South Luangwa looks peaceful at sunrise, but it does not forgive. Lions patrol the plains, hyenas wait for their chance, crocodiles lie still along the river and rival leopards defend their ground. In the dry months, water and prey grow scarce. Olimba had to understand all of this without a map and without anyone to protect her. A lioness has her pride. Olimba faced the bush mostly alone. Her shoulders and forelegs were heavy with muscle, strong enough to drag a kill up into a tree. Her broad, padded paws let her move almost without sound, and her long tail kept her balanced on a branch. Under the midday sun her coat shone like polished gold, but in the broken shade of the woodland she could all but disappear. No two leopards carry the same pattern of rosettes. Hers was her own, like a fingerprint. People remembered her eyes most. When she rested, they were calm. The moment something moved in the grass, they changed completely. She did not roar across the plains like a lion. She could lie beneath a tree for hours, perfectly still, while the world went past. A sound in the distance might lift her ears or turn her head. Then, without warning, she became movement itself, a silent rush of muscle and fur. But behind the predator was a mother. To her cubs, Olimba was their entire universe. Every time she left them to hunt, she left them to chance. Would a lion find them? Would another leopard? Would she come back at all? A leopard mother cannot ask these questions aloud, but her life is shaped by them. Some nights she came back with food. Some nights she came back with nothing. Either way, somewhere in the dark her cubs were waiting, and their small calls meant she could not give up. In the bush there are no hospitals and no safe houses. There is only instinct, and the bond between a mother and her young. There must have been countless nights when Olimba walked alone under the stars, long after the camps had gone quiet. Hippos grunting near the river. Hyenas calling somewhere in the dark. Moonlight falling across her back. No camera followed her on those nights, and no guide knew where she was. Those hours belonged to her. A safari lasts a few hours. A leopard’s life carries on long after the vehicle has gone back to camp. Then there were the moments when people did see her. A vehicle moving slowly along a dusty track, and the guide stops. At first there is nothing, only grass and branches and shadow. Then a golden shoulder between the trees. A spotted head. And there she is. The vehicle goes silent. People who were talking a moment ago stop mid-sentence. Sometimes she would stop and look straight at the vehicle, wild eyes meeting human ones across a few metres of grass. Then she would turn and walk on. She never posed for the cameras. She simply lived her life. Wild animals are not perfect photographs. A leopard carries torn ears, healed wounds, patches where the fur never grew back. Every mark means something happened to her, and she carried on. She belonged to no one. Nobody could tell her where to go. She could vanish into thick bush, climb a tree or slip into the dark whenever she chose. She belonged to the wilderness, and the wilderness belongs to no one. Loving a wild animal means accepting that you cannot protect it. You can photograph it and tell its story, but you cannot promise it another sunrise. For Olimba, simply reaching the next morning was a victory. So picture her one last time. The sun is sinking behind the woodland and the Luangwa Valley turns gold. The air is starting to cool. Somewhere beyond the road, the river carries on its old journey. Olimba steps out of the tall grass. Her ears move. Her eyes sweep the ground ahead. For a few seconds she stands completely still. Then she walks. One paw touches the earth. Then another. The grass closes around her. The rosettes disappear. And then there is nothing left to see, only the place where she stood. Her footprints will vanish under dust and rain. New cubs will be born, and new leopards will take her ground. But those of us who saw her will remember her eyes, her silence and the way she walked, and the strange feeling of loving a wild creature that never belonged to us. She was Olimba. If Olimba’s story stayed with you, please leave a comment for Titus. I’ll make sure he reads every one, and it would mean a great deal to a young writer in the valley. And if you know someone who loves wild Africa, give this a like and share it with them. You can consider joining us on our next adventure to Zambia in 2027. Find out more here Support our work in South Luangwa here. You may enjoy these stories too: Get full access to Colin's Chronicles at colindurrant.substack.com/subscribe

  2. Sep 27

    A parable about owning everything, even the pain!

    When the world came back to life, only a few people were left to see it. The catastrophe had destroyed almost everything. The survivors had hidden in caves underground, and life there had been hard and brutal. Most of them died in the dark. Now the few who remained walked out into a new world, and they did not take the chance lightly. They could choose how things would run, how they would rule, and how they would treat each other. Above all, they realised the catastrophe had probably been caused by the people who came before them. The old world had been full of hatred and fear, of anger and killing and slavery, and of wars that never seemed to end. It was not a good place to live. And yet, even in that world, some people had still found beauty. Whatever was going on around them, they chose where to look. Joseph was a young man who had learned this for himself. By changing his mindset, he watched a different world appear in front of his eyes. He knew he could not save everyone. There was suffering all around him. But he could help the ones who truly wanted to change, the ones who had suffered enough and finally reached the point where they knew there must be a better way to live. They came to him because they saw others thriving. Families with full granaries and fat cattle. Homes where laughter carried out into the night. They wanted some of that. What Joseph told them first was not what they wanted to hear. “Every one of your problems,” he said, “was caused by the person looking back at you from the water.” No one else was to blame. Whatever had happened to them, however hard their lives had been, how they reacted to the world was a choice. In reality, Joseph said, the world is reacting to you, to your actions, your thoughts and your feelings. So if you want to complain about how the world treats you, look inwards instead. Some found this hard to hear. Some were angry with him for saying it. One man stood up. Someone in the village had insulted him, and he had fought him and hurt him badly. Now he was waiting for the elders to decide his punishment, and he knew he would lose years of his life to it. If he had let that insult pass, he said, his whole life would be different right now. “No one can actually insult you,” Joseph told him. “The people who try are only showing you themselves, their own fears and insecurities. To be insulted, you have to choose to be insulted.” Then Joseph told them something he rarely said out loud. For years he had felt the world was against him. He felt like a victim of his own life. He used to joke about it with people, but it wasn’t funny, and he knew it even while he was laughing. Because his focus was on being a victim, that is exactly what the world gave him. Enough to make him feel precisely what he was projecting. Much of the pain in his life, he had created himself. Owning that was the thing that finally set him free. “It’s the same with fear,” he said. “When you are anxious, you are sending that out into the world, and that is what comes back to you.” He told them to be kind to themselves in their thoughts. Not to beat themselves up, and not to live in regret. “The old world built machines for almost everything,” he said, “but it never built a time machine. We can’t go back and change what we’ve done. We can only learn the lesson and do better next time.” The hardest part was the stories. Every day, Joseph said, we make up stories in our heads, and it is those stories, far more than anything that actually happened, that make us angry. There was a man in the village who climbed the ridge every evening and shouted across the valley, loud, for as long as the light lasted. It drove people mad. Joseph had judged him too. He thought the man was arrogant and didn’t care who he disturbed. Then he found out why. The man’s father lived on the far side of the valley. He was old and hard of hearing, and he was dying. The river between them was too wide and too fierce to cross, so every evening his son climbed as high as he could and called across to him. He wanted his father not to be afraid, and he wanted every moment he could get with him before the end. He wasn’t doing it to be rude or to annoy anyone. He was in his own world, fighting his own battle. The people who trigger us, Joseph said, come into our awareness to teach us something. It may be empathy, or compassion, or understanding for others. It may simply be a reminder not to be distracted by things that aren’t ours to worry about. The people listened. They knew he was right. But knowing it and accepting it are different things, and a voice inside kept saying, I don’t want to believe this. The ego wants to be right all the time. It is too proud to face the fact that it was wrong. When we become humble enough to face the real truth, we start to grow into a better version of ourselves. Some of the people who came to Joseph never did get the fat cattle. Most of them stopped needing them. The survivors who walked out of the caves thought they had one chance to decide what kind of world they would build. They thought it was a choice made once, at the beginning. It wasn’t. It is made every time someone insults us and we decide what to do next. It is made every time a stranger’s noise drives us mad and we decide what story to tell about him. Somewhere tonight, a man is shouting across a valley. What story will you tell yourself about him? If this landed for you, or you’ve ever found out the story you told yourself about someone was completely wrong, I’d love to hear about it in the comments. And if you know someone who needs to read this, please share it. I’m all about changing people lives for the better. Through my own story and experiences and how I have changed my own life. Take a look at our adventure to Zambia in 2027 where we shift perspectives. Or, help us support the community by buying some books. You may enjoy these stories too: Get full access to Colin's Chronicles at colindurrant.substack.com/subscribe

  3. Sep 20

    Nobody Is Too Old to Wake Up.

    Long ago, in a small village in Africa, there was a boy who ate with his back to the wall. He ate fast, one arm curled around his bowl of thick porridge, because the bowl never stayed his for long. His brothers came anyway. A hand plunged into his food. A fist into his ribs, the kind that empties the breath out of you and leaves you making small wet noises on the ground. Not because he had done anything. Because they could. His parents watched from the fire. His mother sighed. His father looked at the boy a moment too long, as if waiting for something to happen. The boy never gave it to him. Those were hard times and the rule was plain. Fight for your food or go without, and the ones who went without withered. He was hungry most days. Some nights he lay in the dark with his knees drawn up and cried, for no reason except that he was alive. Some nights he begged whatever was listening to let him go. One morning he went into the forest to find his own food, because nobody was going to bring it. Masau fruit, if the monkeys had left any. Honey, if he could bear the stings. A handful of termites, if it came to that. He came round a bend in the path and there was an old woman he had never seen before. She was so small and so thin that the wind looked like it could carry her off. She took hold of his arm anyway, and her hand closed on it like a snare. He squealed. He pulled. He twisted until his shoulder burned, and the hand did not move. Something in him went slack, and the crying began, thin and hopeless, the crying of a boy who had done a great deal of it. She struck him across the back of the head. The crying stopped. Shock, mostly. “Sit,” she said. They sat on a fallen log. She had a voice like a dry hinge. “I will say this once, so listen. You have been given life. Do you know how rare that is? There are so many up among the stars who want what you are holding. They want a body. They want porridge, and sun, and the ache of a long walk. They would give anything for one day of it. And they are watching you right now.” She jabbed a finger at his face. “A boy crying because he is alive. A boy begging to be let out. They watch you throw away the thing they would give anything for.” The boy stared. Nobody had ever spoken to him as if he were worth shouting at. “You think your brothers hate you. Look at your arms.” He looked. Bruises in every stage, fresh purple and old yellow. “Every blow has been teaching you to stand. Your parents sit and watch because they are waiting for you to fight back. Everyone around you has been trying to make you strong, and you have taken it as an insult. You wish you had been born somewhere else, to other people. You chose these ones. You chose them because you knew you would have to be broken before you could rise. And when you are big and strong, you will stand between the weak and whatever is coming for them. That is what the breaking is for.” She spat to one side. “This land is hard. Nobody is coming to save you. So you find your own food, and you stop waiting to be fed like you are broken. You are not broken. Broken things do not struggle as hard as you did.” She swept an arm at the trees. “The world answers the way you look at it. Look for enemies and it will give you enemies. Look up. There is fruit in the branches and honey in the hollow logs. And you have time. Do you know what that is? The most valuable thing anyone can hold. A child has it. A grandmother has it. Look at me. I have been walking this earth longer than your village has had a name, and I am not finished. Nobody is too young to begin or too old to wake up. What will you spend it on? Getting stronger and wiser? Or sitting in the dirt and feeling sorry for yourself?” She cuffed him again, harder, to be sure he was listening. “Wake up. Your life is there for the taking. When you want something, you fight for it. I don’t mean go and hurt anyone. I mean don’t stop chasing what you want. Don’t stop looking for joy. Life is a beautiful gift, but only if you make it one, and if you don’t, there is no one to blame but you.” She leaned in until he could smell woodsmoke and crushed leaves on her. “Are you awake now?” she shouted. Something moved in the boy. His shoulders drew back on their own. His chest lifted. His eyes, which had been dull as river stones, cleared and began to shine. There was a warmth under his ribs, and his heart beat harder to fill it. Love. For himself. For the life he had been begging to leave. Even, and this was the strangest part, for the boys who had put him on the ground. Then he looked up, as she had told him to. He had walked this path a hundred times with his eyes on the dirt, watching for the next fist, the next empty bowl. Now the msasa leaves above him were flushed copper and red, and he stopped where he stood. Clouds stood in the sky like mountains, slow and unbothered. Every trunk was a different grey. A sunbird flashed across the path and was gone, and something rose in his throat that he had no word for, and then he did. Thanks. He was thankful for the leaves. For the sky. For the porridge, even the porridge he had to fight for. For the air moving in and out of him without being asked. The forest was the same forest it had always been. He was looking at it with thanks, and it had never been so bright. A smile pulled at his face. It felt strange, like a muscle nobody had ever used. The fizzing behind his breastbone was excitement, he realised. For tomorrow. For what he might do with it. He looked at the old woman again. She was laughing at him, a high, squeaky, delighted laugh, and her eyes were bright as a girl’s. She was the oldest person he had ever met, and the most awake. Age had nothing to do with it. He jumped up to thank her, and the log beside him was empty. A dent in the leaves where she had sat. That was all. He did not wonder about it. He ran. He ran barefoot through the trees and came into the clearing just as the evening meal was being dished out. He took his bowl and sat down by the fire. He did not put his back to the wall. His eldest brother’s hand came for the porridge, as it always did. The boy’s fingers closed around his wrist. He did not strike. He did not speak. It was a grip he had learnt that afternoon, and it did not move. His brother pulled. The hand stayed where it was. Their eyes met over the fire. Then the boy lifted the bowl with his other hand, and ate. Across the fire, his father had stopped chewing. His mother did not sigh. I wrote this story for the women of the wellbeing groups in Zambia, but it belongs to anyone who needs it. If this story reached something in you, I would love to hear it. Leave a comment and tell me which part stayed with you, or where in your own life you have been guarding the bowl. If it moved you, tap the heart so it finds more readers, and share it with someone who needs to hear that nobody is too young to begin or too old to wake up. And if you are not subscribed yet, subscribe, and the next story will come straight to you. Help support our work in Zambia Explore joining us for an adventure in Africa in 2027 You may like these posts to: Get full access to Colin's Chronicles at colindurrant.substack.com/subscribe

  4. Sep 13

    How the body holds what the mind won't, and how to finally let it go.

    I wrote a version of this two years ago. This is what I’d say now.Before my coach said a word, it was already coming. We’d have barely logged onto the call, her face just resolving on the screen, and something in my chest would loosen and rise like water finding a crack, my throat tightening before either of us had spoken. She didn’t need to ask what was wrong. She was just the trigger, the door swinging open on something that had been standing behind it the whole time. I used to think that was strange. Now I think it’s the whole point. Trauma isn’t the blow itself. Not the fist. Not the fall. Not the sound of a door slamming somewhere you couldn’t see. Your body can take an extraordinary amount of physical damage and come back from it, cells rebuilding, bone knitting closed. The wound that doesn’t close the same way is the emotional one, and it lives somewhere else entirely, in a part of you that has nothing to do with the part that heals a cut. When something is too much for the mind to hold, the mind doesn’t hold it. It sets it down somewhere out of reach and hands you a story instead, a version of events you can survive telling yourself. That’s not a malfunction. It’s the oldest trick the human brain knows, the same one that’s kept a child sane through things no child should have to survive sane. If you were being eaten alive by a lion, your mind wouldn’t let you feel the whole of that. It would give you somewhere else to be. The trouble is what happens after. The story stays. So does the thing underneath it, the actual charge of the event, undealt with, unspent. It sinks into the body and waits. Fear tends to settle in the stomach. That’s why the phrase exists, the pit of your stomach, because that’s exactly where it sits. And it doesn’t stay quiet. Years later, a raised voice, a slammed door, a certain tone from someone you love, and your stomach drops before your mind has caught up to why. You are not reacting to the person in front of you. You are reacting to someone else, in another room, a long time ago. The brain pulls the old file and holds it up like a warning. This happened before. Watch out. That’s a trigger. Measured against what’s actually happening in the room, it usually looks like an overreaction, because it is one. But it was never really about the room. It’s the trapped charge finding daylight, and every time it does, you get a choice you didn’t know you had. Shove it back down, the way you always have. Or let it move. I didn’t know how to let it move until a few years ago, working with a coach who helped me start releasing what was trapped in mine. Afterward I found language for what had happened, in Dr. Bradley Nelson’s The Emotion Code, and in David R. Hawkins’ Letting Go. Different books, same thing underneath. The trapped emotion doesn’t need you to understand it. It doesn’t need a story, or a diagnosis, or an explanation for why it’s still there. It needs to be felt, fully, once, and let go. That’s the part I want to walk you through, because it’s simple and it works, and I found it easier with someone on the other side of a screen than I ever did alone. If you don’t have that, you can still do this. Find somewhere quiet. Not the car. Not a room with other people in it. Somewhere you can afford to be undefended for a few minutes. Bring to mind something that still has a charge on it, an old anger, an old fear, something that moves in you even now when you think about it. Notice where you feel it. Not what you think about it. Where it sits in your body. Then do the opposite of what you’ve always done. Instead of flinching from it, turn toward it. Let it get bigger. Sit inside it fully, rather than at its edge. Everything in you will want to look away, the way it always has. Don’t. Stay until it crests, and if you stay long enough, you’ll feel it start to thin. Not vanish. Thin, the way pressure eases out of a room when a window opens. When it’s done, it’s done. No ceremony after. Try it again with something else, another memory, another old ache, and feel that one through too. One caution, because it deserves saying plainly. If what surfaces is more than you can hold on your own, don't let this stand in for real support. It's a good place to start. It is not the whole of the work. Find someone trained to sit with you in the harder parts of it, the way my coach sat with me in mine. It may take a few tries before it works the way I’ve described here. It may get louder before it goes quiet. That’s not a sign you’re doing it wrong. It’s a sign that something which has been waiting a long time has finally been asked to leave. I don’t get on those calls anymore. The skill is inside me now. When the old tension rises in my stomach, the one I’ve come to recognize by feel alone, I can turn and face it without anyone else on the screen. I feel it fully, the way I learned to, and then I feel it ease, the pressure going out of it until there’s nothing left where it used to sit. P.S. If this landed somewhere in you, hit like, it helps it find someone else who needs it. Share it with anyone you know who's still carrying something old. And if you try the exercise, tell me in the comments what came loose. If you want to help support the work we do in Zambia, please consider clicking below. Support us here Get full access to Colin's Chronicles at colindurrant.substack.com/subscribe

  5. Sep 6

    The Fear That Shows Up When You Start Writing a Book

    The cursor blinked on an unfinished sentence, and I was already gone. Not gone as in distracted by nothing in particular. Gone into a version of my life where the book had sold, where a number, three million dollars, sat somewhere just under my ribs like a held breath, where strangers asked me about the writing process and I answered them well. I could see the interview. I could see the house. But I could not see the next word. This happened most days, for as long as I was writing that book. I would catch myself an hour or two into the fantasy, manuscript untouched, and come back to the actual page feeling faintly ashamed, the way you feel walking back into a room you left mid-argument. It took me a long time to understand what that was. If you’ve got a manuscript open on your laptop right now, further in than you’re telling anyone, and the momentum’s gone for reasons you can’t quite name, you already know this from the inside. It wasn’t laziness. Laziness doesn’t build entire imagined press tours. What it was, I think now, was something closer to sabotage, generated by the part of me that had a great deal invested in staying exactly who I already was. Finishing the book meant becoming someone else, a person who had actually done the thing rather than talked about doing it. My mind, given the choice, will manufacture almost anything before it lets that happen, an urgent need to reorganise a bookshelf, a sudden doubt about a sentence three chapters back. Anything but the next word. It didn’t stop when the book was finished, and it was never really about the book at all. The same fear turns up wearing a different disguise every time I try to become more than I currently am. It was there again the first time I invited people to come with me into Zambia’s South Luangwa Valley, the same one I keep going back to. Their week, and in a real sense their safety, would be in my hands. It always arrives with a good argument for why now isn’t the time. In my experience, that argument has never once been true. It still shows up anyway. A caterpillar does not know it will fly. Inside the chrysalis it dissolves almost completely first, and there is no memory available to it of a caterpillar that skipped that part. It simply has to stop being what it was before it can be anything else. I don’t know if it experiences that as fear. I know I did, and still do, most times I try to become something I haven’t been yet. The book got finished the way most things get finished, not by winning the argument with the part of me that wanted to stay small, but by sitting down anyway while it was still talking. Some days I wrote past it. Some days I wrote a paragraph and stopped, went back to the fantasy, caught myself, came back again. There was no morning I woke up and the fear was gone. It just got quieter than my need to finish the thing. I still catch myself there sometimes, mid-sentence, imagining a life that’s already worked out. It isn’t only the book anymore. It’s whatever I’m building next. I’ve stopped being surprised by it. I just know now to look down and see what’s actually still unfinished in front of me. If this found you at the right time, tap like, it helps more people find it. Subscribe for the next one, because fear will be back with a new argument before long. And if you've got a minute, tell me in the comments: what's fear been arguing you out of lately? If you want to support our work in Zambia in anyway - Buy me a coffee Get full access to Colin's Chronicles at colindurrant.substack.com/subscribe

  6. Aug 30

    Free To Become An Angel

    I think a lot of dogs come into our lives to teach us how to treat others better. Especially the dog themselves. Not all people learn this lesson of course but many do. Dogs are kind and patient, empathetic and above all, understanding. They love us unconditionally regardless of how we treat them. If the human and dog are both lucky then both will treat each other better as time goes on. They will form an unbreakable bond. The dog will continue to teach the humans around her, and the humans will slowly see the dog for who she really is. They will see the beauty of her soul. They will appreciate the things she does to make our lives easier. Donnie was such a dog. She lived to please people, as long as she was fed of course. She will give you the world, but breakfast and dinner are non-negotiable. I remember once when she was sick and went off her food. A very rare occurrence for her but you knew things were serious if she stopped eating. Colin's Chronicles is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Once she was better and we went out for a few hours. At the time we also had two jack Russell's, (her step brothers) whose food was left on a shelf not quite high enough to be out of reach, as we discovered. However, the food was in a box and also sealed. Donnie, however, we discovered, was resourceful. She had also worked out that we owed her the three meals that she had missed. And so, she broke into the food packets and ate a pack and a half of the dog food. We never forgot that. She loved her swimming and her walks. As she got older, she would dive into a canal or pond with reckless abandon because she knew that I would rescue her and help her out of the water. You could sense the trust she had in me for this task she had assigned me. As the years went on, her long walks turned into shorter walks. You could feel she would still try and walk fast to not slow anyone else down. She was always thinking of others before herself. Eventually though, she just enjoyed a good sniff and would amble along on her walk. Enjoying the moments of her twilight years. She especially enjoyed the smells on a walk after it had just rained. Something I have started to pick up as well, thanks to her. Patience was another thing she taught me. Donnie was beautiful and strong. One of her names was Pretty Bull. This is because while Donnie was the perfect dog, she did have one weakness. Unattended dustbins. I remember coming downstairs once and seeing the dustbin on the floor with everything scattered everywhere. It was like it had exploded. You know when you look at something incredulously and you literally can’t believe what you are looking at. Well, this was one of those times. She would lull everyone into a false sense of security and then once again, bulldoze the poor hapless dustbin over and devour whatever she could. Eating her own poo was a habit worse than her dustbin obsession. Especially when she threw it up again on the carpet. I remember when my mum came to visit and Donnie did her party trick, she said it was the worst thing she had ever smelt and she had been a nurse for many years. She wasn’t kidding. But I can’t help thinking that she was such a good girl that she just wanted to clean up after herself. Her tummy just wasn’t part of the program and it backfired. Literally. But it is these moments that teach us to be understanding. Getting annoyed certainly won’t change anything. And so, we just continue to show her unconditional love as she does with us. Whenever we got home or someone came to visit, Donnie would always find a present as an offering. It was very cute. Mostly a shoe or a fireproof glove. Often discarded in the garden, which could be inconvenient when searching for the missing item. Sometimes I would carry her the last part of her walk. Something she really seemed to enjoy. She would look up at me with those big beautiful eyes and I knew what she wanted. She never struggled but just lay in my arms as I walked home with her. We thought it was the heat and her age but little did we know her heart was slowly giving in. She was a lab cross with a collie. It’s that collie in her that kept her going for longer than most. 15 and a half years in the end. Another thing she would do on a walk is that if one of us was either not on the walk or went off in a different direction, she would stop and wait. That herding instinct of hers. Wanting to keep the pack together. Always looking behind to check if everyone was together or coming. The older she got, the more she needed to be put first. The heat would affect her and I thought that if she could just get through this summer, she’ll be ok through the winter. Cooler weather, rain that she soaked up like a sponge. She loved going to the groomers and when she got back, she would run around to show everyone how good she looked and smelt. We used to joke she had her nails done too. She was always so good in the car and loved going for drives and adventures with her brothers. I remember we went to Barmouth in Wales with her and stayed at a hotel that turned out to have a room smelling so dreadful, that Donnie walked in, took one sniff, and immediately turned around trying to leave. That’s how bad it was. Having a dog in your life creates so many amazing memories. It is so incredibly sad when they leave us after what seems such a short space of time. But she had a good life and many exciting adventures. She was loved by many people and touched many lives. They have even put a photo of her up in her favourite café where she used to look forward to her doggie ice cream on a regular basis. I hope she didn’t suffer too long in the end. We tried everything we could to help her but we just didn’t realise how bad her heart was. She was swimming and having fun the week before she left us. As many dogs do, they suddenly go downhill very rapidly. They fight to put on a brave face because they know that their pain causes us to suffer. They pretend everything is fine and not to worry about them. They do that for us. Until they simply can’t do it anymore and before we know it, the end has come. I am so grateful that with all the spiritual work that I do, I understand that death is not the end. It is simply the start of another exciting adventure for our spirit. It makes logical sense at the end of the day. Why would God (if you believe in him) create a brand new spirit and being every time someone is born. It is simply logical to recycle spirits and for people and all other creatures to be born again. Just without the memory of our past lives. Which is still within our subconscious. I think it helps greatly with this understanding because we know then, that our loved ones are firstly no longer in pain but secondly will be on a new adventure soon enough. And so, as we helped her slip away, I told her not to worry and everything is going to be ok and exciting. We are all going to be ok as well, she doesn’t need to worry about us. She will soon no longer be in any pain and she is about to have an incredible experience and probably meet Nelson and the other dogs in her life that passed before her. I imagined her spirit leaving her broken body and watching us crying for her. Stroking her and loving her and already missing her. Touching her big soft black ears. It would have made her sad for a moment but I reminded her we will all be ok. She is free to go and become an angel. If Donnie reminded you of a dog of your own, gone or still here, tell me about them. I’d love to hear who they were. If this stayed with you, tap the heart. It helps this find someone else who needs reminding the love was worth it, however short the time was. If you know someone missing a dog right now, send this to them. Sometimes it just helps to know someone else understands exactly what that feels like. And if you’d like more of these, subscribe. There’ll be more dogs, more Zambia, more of all of it. Support our work in Zambia You may enjoy these stories too: Get full access to Colin's Chronicles at colindurrant.substack.com/subscribe

  7. Aug 23

    What You Rehearse, You Create

    Ask someone what they want in a partner and they’ll give you the whole list: kind, loyal, someone who makes them laugh. Ask what they actually expect to get, and watch the list disappear. I’ll probably end up alone, or with someone who ruins things, they say, half joking. It isn’t a joke. It’s an instruction. I’ve come to believe we build the exact rooms we brace ourselves to survive. Not because some cosmic ledger is keeping score, I can’t prove that and won’t pretend to, but because what we rehearse becomes what we recognise, what we expect becomes what we accept, and what we accept we stop questioning. Fear doesn’t need permission to arrive. It only needs a door left open, and we leave it open every time we tell ourselves how the story ends before it’s begun. Everything we do runs on one of two engines. Fear braces. It hoards what it has because it’s certain there won’t be more. It protects itself first and asks questions never. Love does the reverse: it gives before it knows if anything is coming back, assumes the best of a stranger before it has evidence either way, stays open in rooms where closing would be safer. Most days I run on both, switching without noticing which one has the wheel. Here’s the plain version, in case the engines lose you. What you feed grows. Feed the fear and you get more reasons to be afraid. Feed the love and, slowly, stubbornly, you get more reasons not to be. Change, if it comes at all, starts with noticing which engine is running. Not fixing it straight away. Just noticing. Because left unexamined, fear doesn’t stay where you put it. It leaks into rooms it was never invited into. It’s there when you snap at someone who did nothing wrong. When you leave a relationship before you can be left by it. When a small disagreement turns into proof that you were never really loved at all. Most people never trace it back that far. They call it having a temper, or being realistic, and they lose the marriage, the friendship, the years, still convinced the whole time that they were only protecting themselves. Once you can see the fear for what it is, you can choose something else. Until you can see it, you’re just its passenger, and it drives worse than you’d ever let a stranger drive you. That’s the trap in worrying something will go wrong: the worrying is often the rehearsal. You picture the partner who’ll let you down so vividly, so many nights in a row, that when someone ordinary and flawed and human finally arrives, you already know how to read them as a disappointment. Not because they are one. Because you cast them before they walked in. I try to run this test on the small stuff too, the stuff that doesn’t feel spiritual at all. When my wife does something that irritates me, the fastest question isn’t what’s wrong with her, it’s what’s this actually about, in me. Half the time the complaint dissolves before I’ve said it out loud. The other half, before I say anything, I ask what saying it will actually change. Whether it’ll just add irritation to irritation that didn’t need to exist. Whether it needs saying at all, or whether I’m just complaining, playing the victim, running short on tolerance. When the focus is genuinely on love, there’s usually nothing left to say. The clearest place to watch fear win is a phone screen at eleven at night. You’re typing out a furious reply to a comment, and a full two paragraphs in, you notice you’re arguing with a bot, and have been for ten minutes, entirely convinced it was a person. Nobody made you do that. You chose it, the way you choose to pick a scab, and it cost you the only thing you actually have any real say over: that hour, spent on something that won’t matter in a week and left you worse company for the people who do. So I’ve started asking, more times a day than I’d like to admit I need to: is this serving the life I’m actually trying to build, or is it just where my attention fell. If the honest answer is no, I try to put it down. Not always successfully. But more than I used to. The furthest edge of this, the one I still find hardest, is what to do with people who are actually cruel. Not comment-section cruel. Someone running drugs, or trafficking people, children. I can’t tell you what’s actually happening in a head like that, no one outside it can, but I’ve watched this kind of thing from a distance long enough to have a theory, and here it is straight: I don’t think most of them believe they still have a choice. One decision that seemed survivable led to the next, and the next, until the person doing it was too far from anyone who could have pulled him back. Pablo Escobar is the starkest example there is. More money than he could spend in ten lifetimes, and by every account he buried a fortune of it and spent his last years hunted, paranoid, terrified. That’s not what a free man’s fear looks like. That’s what it looks like when the thing you built to protect yourself turns into the cage. Wealth never touches it. It never does. Hate feels like protection when you’re standing inside it. It isn’t. It’s fear that’s given up negotiating, and it doesn’t shield you from what hurt you, it guarantees you’ll spend more of your life locked inside the wound it left. My instinct, same as anyone’s, is to meet that with the same currency. What I try instead, most nights before I sleep, is to send something warm toward the people I’d rather despise. I don’t know if it reaches them. I don’t know if it changes a single thing they do tomorrow. What I do know is what it changes in me by the time I wake up, and some mornings, that’s the only proof I need to keep doing it. Which engine’s been running you today? If this stayed with you, tap the heart. It costs nothing, and it’s the easiest way this reaches someone else who’s currently bracing for something that hasn’t happened yet. Tell me which engine’s been running you, love or fear. I read every comment, and I’d genuinely like to know. If you know someone stuck rehearsing a worst case, pass this on. Sometimes all it takes is one person naming the pattern out loud. And if you want more of this, subscribe. What you feed grows, this newsletter included. Some other posts you may enjoy: Get full access to Colin's Chronicles at colindurrant.substack.com/subscribe

  8. Aug 16

    Mud Under My Nails

    I have never been able to organise myself. Bills wait. Plans fall through my fingers before they become real. But when it came to getting on a plane with no route home and no idea what would happen once we landed, in a village in the Luangwa Valley we’d never seen, that was the easiest decision I’ve ever made. I know why now, though I didn’t then. For years I had been rehearsing disaster, bracing for the worst case scenario so it couldn’t catch me off guard. All that bracing did was build the very thing I feared, over and over, out of the fear itself. Somewhere in there, quietly, I started doing the opposite. I stopped rehearsing the crash landing and started acting as though everything would work out the way it was supposed to. I didn’t know if that was true. I only knew which version of myself I wanted to travel as. Before that shift, I carried something I don’t often say out loud. For years, more than I want to count, some part of me wanted to stop existing altogether. I’m not going to dress that up. It was there, and then, slowly, it wasn’t. We flew there for five weeks. I hadn’t taken two weeks off in years, let alone five. Whatever met us there, I decided in advance to meet it without flinching. And it held. I am a different person in Zambia. More present. More myself, if that makes sense, than I am anywhere else. One day we went deep into the villages to build eco stoves, simple things, mud and bits of metal, meant to save families from the smoke and the wood that is disappearing. Luciano was with us, showing us where to dig, how to pack the mud. I wasn’t guarded that morning, hands full of mud, nothing to prove or protect. Somewhere in the middle of that work, he started telling me about his brothers and sisters, most of them gone now, his father too, in ways that still didn’t sit right with him. Not natural. Not accidents. The only explanation that made any sense to him was dark witchcraft. Nothing else fits. He told me afterward that he doesn’t talk about this. Not to anyone. I think what I carried into that morning is what let him hand it to me. Not pity. Just space, and openness. By then, a group of thirty women were already coming to the centre to learn to read and write English. We used the classes, if I’m honest, as something close to a trial, and started trying to help with their wellbeing alongside the literacy lessons. We didn’t promise them anything for it. No money, no food, no jobs. Just an attempt to teach them something that might shift their mindset, and with it, their wellbeing. We spoke to them the way Luciano had spoken to me, plainly, about our own struggles, not performing openness but practicing it. And the door swung back the same way it had with him. Thirty women, and twenty-nine of them told us what they had lost. Husbands, children, years, safety, lack of food. Only one wasn’t ready yet, and no one asked her to be. Milika was one of the twenty-nine. She’s sixty-three. My husband died in 1995. I raised seven children after that, though two of them didn’t survive. I had a bad temper for a long time, I cried a lot, especially in those early years. From the lessons, I learned about focus: that if you do good things, good things come back to you, and if you don’t, the opposite happens too. I have tried to hold onto that. My temper has gone down. I handle things better than I used to. But life is not solved. My daughter was the one bringing money into this house, and she died in 2023. Since then I have struggled with grief I can’t shake, and most days the challenge is simply finding enough food. I still want to learn more. I am not finished with these lessons yet. I still don’t fully understand why people who had never met me chose to hand me something that heavy, Milika included. But I’ve stopped thinking it was luck. What you bring into a room decides what it gives back to you. It has happened three times now in that valley: Luciano, that first group of women, and this year, on our recent trip, a new circle, women and a few men this time, sitting down the same way, opening the same door. I think about that plane journey again, the one we got on with no plan. I understand now why it was the easy part. I had already decided, before I ever landed, what I was going to carry with me. Everything that followed, mud under my nails, Luciano’s voice, rooms of people choosing to speak because I’d chosen to first, was just that decision, arriving. If you would like to support our program for these amazing women, please click below. No pressure - click here If this touched with you, tap the heart. It’s a small thing, but it helps the piece find people who need it. Tell me what it opened up in you? If you know someone who should read this, please share it. That’s always the fastest way a story like this finds who it’s for. And if you want similar stories to reach you without having to go looking, hit subscribe. It’s free, and it’s the only thing keeping you in the circle once this post scrolls past. A heart felt thank you. Other posts you may enjoy: Get full access to Colin's Chronicles at colindurrant.substack.com/subscribe

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About

This is a podcast where I interview and get insights from successful and happy people. What does success mean to them. What do they do to make them happy? I also interview couples that have inspired me with their amazing relationships. A lot of us strive and wish for one of those if we are already not in one. Have a listen and see what makes their relationship work and get my own insights and observations as to what it takes to be successful and happy. colindurrant.substack.com

Information

  • Creator
    Colin Durrant
  • Years Active
    2022 - 2026
  • Episodes
    186
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © Colin Durrant
  • Show Website
    Success & Happiness