Success & Happiness

Colin Durrant
  • 5.0 (1)
  • Self-Improvement
  • Updated Semimonthly

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. 1d ago

    We Almost Disappeared Once Before. We're Doing It Again.

    I want to take you back. Not a hundred years. Not a thousand. Much further than that. To a time when humanity was on the edge of something unthinkable. Extinction. Imagine a group of elders. Sitting together for three days and three nights. Exhausted. Frightened. Desperate. Because they could see what was happening around them and they did not know how to stop it. There were perhaps three thousand people left. Three thousand. And the population was aging. Children were barely being born. And the ones that were — many didn’t survive. Birth defects. Deaths during labour. Grief piled on top of grief. And so the women stopped wanting to get pregnant. Not because they didn’t want children. But because they were terrified. Terrified of losing another baby. Terrified of dying themselves. And so relationships broke down. Intimacy disappeared. The very act that creates life became something to fear. Meanwhile the men were away, hunting, fighting, surviving. Taking childbirth for granted. Not seeing it as the miracle it is. Not treating pregnant women with the care and reverence they deserved. People would literally walk into them, knock them over, not even notice. And life itself had become cheap. Nobody was thinking about tomorrow. Nobody was thinking about their neighbour. People were self-centred, distracted, drinking too much, not caring. Sleeping with relatives, causing birth defects. A casual cruelty not born of malice but of complete and utter unawareness. And through all of it, through every thoughtless action, every careless word, every moment of not seeing the person right in front of them, humanity was slowly dying. Those elders sat together for three days and three nights. And to their enormous credit, they invited the women in. They listened. And after all that time, all that discussion, all those heated arguments and painful truths, they arrived at something simple. Everything matters. How you treat your neighbour matters. How you speak to a stranger matters. Whether you smile at someone passing you in the street, matters. Whether a pregnant woman feels safe and cherished and protected, matters. Your thoughts about other people matter. Your anger matters. Your love matters. Every single small thing, every seemingly insignificant interaction, sends a ripple out into the world that affects the energy of everyone it touches. The elders understood something that most of us have forgotten. The human superpower is not intelligence. It is not strength. It is not technology or money or power. It is unconditional love. The ability to look at a complete stranger, someone you have never met and will never meet again, and send them genuine love. No expectation. Nothing needed in return. Just a smile, a warmth, an energy that says, I see you. You are not alone. You matter. And that stranger, who was drowning in whatever private darkness they were carrying, lifts their head. Sees the world slightly differently. Feels, just for a moment, that it might be okay. That is not small. That is everything. Slowly, not overnight, but slowly, things began to change. Women were cared for during pregnancy like they had never been before. Treated gently. Protected. Seen. People started to think before they acted. To consider the person next to them. To take responsibility for their own mood, their own energy, their own impact on the people around them. The community grew stronger. The births became safer. The population began to recover. And humanity survived. Now I want you to look around you. Really look. Because we are back here again. Not in a cave. Not on a dusty plain somewhere. Right here. Right now. Our populations are declining. Relationships are breaking down. People are lonelier than at any point in human history, surrounded by more ways to connect than ever before and somehow more isolated than ever. We spit hate at politicians we’ve never met, defending beliefs we’ve never actually examined, fighting strangers online at two in the morning over things that will never affect us. We choose to see everything that is wrong with the world and miss everything that is right. We are so focused on making money, accumulating things, looking successful in front of people we don’t even like, that we have forgotten to actually live. We have allowed ourselves to be manipulated by fear. By media. By powerful people whose only interest is keeping us divided and distracted and small. We are sleepwalking. And the really terrifying part? We think we’re awake. But here is what I know. The way out is not complicated. It never was. It is the same answer those elders arrived at thousands of years ago, sitting around a fire, facing the end of everything. Come back to love. Put your partner first. Not yourself. Them. Because when the person you love feels truly safe and cherished and seen by you, they will return that to you ten times over. That is not weakness. That is wisdom. Take back control of what you feed your mind. Turn off the noise that is designed to keep you afraid and angry. Choose what you let in. Find gratitude, real gratitude, for the beauty that is already right in front of you. Not the things you don’t have. The things you do. When someone triggers you, a politician, a stranger online, someone whose beliefs make you furious, send them love instead of hate. I know how that sounds. I know. But think about it this way. The more we hate someone in power, the more we rage at them, obsess over them, pour our energy into despising them, the more we feed the very energy that drives their worst decisions. But unconditional love? Unconditional love sent to even the most difficult person — starts to shift something. Subconsciously. Quietly. Over time. Not because they deserve it. Because we do. Because we deserve to live free of the poison that hatred puts inside us. You are not a zombie. You are not here to be controlled and manipulated and kept small and frightened and compliant. You are here to live the most extraordinary version of your life. To protect your energy. To stay in the highest vibration you can. To roll with the punches, and there will be punches, without letting them knock you out of your truth. To be the person who smiles at the stranger who needed it most. To be the ripple. Those three thousand people, exhausted, frightened, on the edge of disappearing, chose differently. They chose each other. And here we are. Billions of us. Because of that choice. Now it is our turn. Choose love. Choose awareness. Choose each other. The world is waiting for enough of us to remember what we are actually capable of. If this landed with you; please share it. Not for me. But because someone in your world needs to read this today. Someone who is struggling, who is lost, who has forgotten what they are worth and what they are capable of. Your share could be the thing that reaches them. That is the ripple effect in action. Be the ripple. ❤️ Some other posts you may enjoy. Get full access to Colin's Chronicles at colindurrant.substack.com/subscribe

    9 min

  2. May 31

    The Ripple Effect — And Why It Starts With You

    Someone shouted at you today. Maybe at work. Maybe in traffic. Maybe just in passing. And tonight, without even realising it, you’ll go home and take it out on someone else. The dog. Your partner. Your kids. And the ripple moves outward. There’s an old saying — someone shouts at you at work, you go home and shout at the dog. And here’s the thing about dogs. They take it. Not because they don’t feel it. They do. They feel every word, every shift in your energy, every moment of your pain directed at them. But they understand something we don’t. They know it isn’t personal. They know you are suffering. And they absorb it — quietly, loyally — because that is what love does. Humans are not quite so forgiving. When you direct your unprocessed anger at another person, they take it personally. Their mood drops. Their energy shifts. And then the next person they encounter gets it too. Round and round it goes. The ripple effect in its darkest form. But here is the extraordinary thing. It works just as powerfully in the other direction. I want to tell you about the toilets at Doha airport. Stay with me. There are staff there — working every single hour, going into every cubicle after every single person, cleaning, tidying, making sure the next person walks into something decent. Over and over again. All day. Every day. It is not glamorous work. Most people walk straight past them. Most people don’t even register they exist. And I will be completely honest with you — I used to be one of those people. I was that guy. Waiters, servers, cleaners — I was dismissive. I would get annoyed when my order wasn’t right, when things weren’t perfect. And you know what? Looking back, I created every single one of those bad experiences. I walked in expecting it to go wrong. I radiated that energy. And sure enough — it went wrong. Every time. That wasn’t them. That was the universe handing me back exactly what I was putting out. It kept happening. The same pattern, different faces, different places. Until I finally got it. Now I do something different. When someone is serving me — in a restaurant, on a plane, at a game lodge in the middle of Africa — I am genuinely, sincerely kind to them. Not performatively. Not because I want something. Just because they are a human being and I see them. And what happens when you smile at the cleaner at Doha airport who no one else acknowledges? When you say thank you and actually mean it? I watch their whole face change. For a moment — just a moment — someone saw them. Someone said you matter. Someone treated them like a fellow human being rather than part of the furniture. And my heart swells. Every single time. I can feel it right now writing this. That warmth. That surge of something real. That is unconditional love. And it raises everyone’s vibration in that moment. It literally — literally — makes the world a better place to live in. I want to tell you about something I witnessed recently in rural Zambia. We have been running a wellbeing group there. Women from surrounding villages, many of them travelling long distances to attend. No payment. No promises. Just an opportunity to shift their mindset. Most of them have been coming for almost a year. And when we sat with them recently and asked how things had changed — what they told us stopped me completely. Their blood pressure has come down. They are happier. They take more responsibility for their own lives. They shout less at their children. But then they told us something else. Their husbands noticed. Some of those husbands were angry in the beginning — their wives were leaving chores undone to go to some group. But over time, they watched their wives transform. The relationships changed. The homes changed. One woman told us that when her husband comes home drunk and angry now, she doesn’t engage. She says nothing. She waits. And when he is calm, she talks to him. That is not weakness. That is a woman who has done the work. And then they told us something that moved me even more. They are going back into their villages and helping other people. Counselling neighbours. Sitting with people who are struggling. Helping others see their challenges differently. One woman’s son had stopped going to school. He was locking himself in his room after breakfast, not speaking, not engaging. Quietly disappearing. His mother — together with Luciano, who runs the group for us — went to him. Sat with him. Helped him find a different way of seeing his life. He is coming back. Slowly. But he is coming back. And then Luciano shared one more story. He was sitting in church one day and felt the urge to check Facebook. He saw a post from a man in his congregation — not a close friend, just someone he knew — that said: “If you find me dead, it was because of love.” He called immediately. No answer. Others called. No answer. They went to the house. Door locked. No answer. They forced it open. The man was lying in his bed. He had drunk a lot of alcohol. Nothing worse — but it could have been. When he opened his eyes and saw the room full of people who had dropped everything to find him — he was genuinely shocked. He had believed no one cared. It turned out his wife had left him, taken their children, and he had collapsed under the weight of it. What he couldn’t see yet was the part his own behaviour had played in her leaving. They sat with him. They helped him see it — not to blame him, but to give him something more powerful than blame. A choice. The choice to change. The ripple effect in full display. One group of women in rural Zambia, learning to manage their own minds — and now saving lives in their village. So here is what I want to ask you to do today. Just today. Go and be kind to someone who doesn’t expect it. The cleaner. The server. The person behind the checkout who has been on their feet for eight hours. The car park attendant. The person doing the job that most people look straight through. Smile at them. Say thank you and mean it. Look them in the eye. And then notice what happens. Notice what it does to them. Notice what it does to you. Notice the ripple that starts from that single moment of genuine human connection. And then come back and tell me about it. I mean that. I would love to hear your stories. Because every single act of kindness you put into the world today will travel further than you will ever know. That is the ripple effect. And it starts with you. You may like these posts too: Get full access to Colin's Chronicles at colindurrant.substack.com/subscribe

    8 min

  3. May 25

    Are You Living… or Just Killing Time?

    There are many things in this world stopping us from reaching our highest potential. One of the biggest is distraction. Distraction from the life we know we should be building.Distraction from the goals we should be chasing.Distraction from becoming the person we are capable of becoming. And most of these distractions come disguised as pleasure. Social media.TV.Porn.Alcohol.Smoking.Mindless scrolling.Constant entertainment. Anything that gives us a quick dopamine hit while quietly stealing our time, energy, focus, and potential. The scary part is that once your brain gets a taste of that dopamine, it starts craving it constantly. Almost like it’s no longer your choice anymore. And you need to understand something important:Billions of dollars have been invested into keeping you distracted. Apps are designed to addict you.Algorithms are designed to hold your attention.Advertising is designed to manipulate your emotions.Entire industries profit from you staying unfocused, exhausted, emotionally reactive, and disconnected from yourself. Because distracted people are easier to control. When your attention is constantly consumed by noise, drama, entertainment, and dopamine hits, you stop asking bigger questions. You stop focusing on your own growth. You stop holding people accountable. You stop building the life you actually want. And the truth is…distraction is easy. It’s easy to sit on your phone for “five minutes” that somehow turns into two hours.Easy to binge watch another series.Easy to drink.Easy to numb yourself.Easy to avoid the uncomfortable work required to improve your life. A lot of us even reward ourselves with distraction. We do one positive thing and then instantly “treat” ourselves.A bit like giving a dog a biscuit. “I’ve worked hard today, so I’ll scroll Instagram.”“I’ll just watch one episode.”“I’ll relax for an hour first.” But deep down, many times we are not relaxing at all. We are hiding. Hiding from our truth.Hiding from discomfort.Hiding from the work we know we need to do. Because growth requires effort.Awareness requires discipline.Becoming your highest self requires intention. And distraction asks nothing from you except your time. That’s why so many people are not really living.They are just killing time. Numb.Dazed.Distracted.Disconnected from the present moment. You can see it everywhere once you start paying attention. Families sitting in restaurants all staring at their phones instead of talking to each other.Groups of friends together but mentally somewhere else.Couples lying in bed scrolling separately instead of connecting. I once saw someone on safari — a once-in-a-lifetime experience — staring at their phone instead of looking for wildlife. Imagine spending thousands to witness nature at its most raw and beautiful… only to miss it because you’re trapped inside a screen. Honestly, they could have ended up halfway down a lion’s stomach before noticing something was wrong.Good luck to the lion trying to poop out an iPhone! Funny, but also terrifying. Because that’s how attached many of us have become. Do you see it yet? You are being distracted every single day.Constantly.Deliberately.Relentlessly. But despite all of that…you still have a choice. You can choose how you spend your attention.You can choose what enters your mind.You can choose whether you continue living in distraction or start becoming intentional with your life. Most people are waiting to be told what to think, what to buy, what to fear, and what to do next by the device in their hand. But you do not have to live like that. Start becoming more conscious of what you consume. Pay to remove adverts if you can.They are not harmless.They are not just entertainment.They are designed to programme desire, insecurity, comparison, fear, and consumption into your subconscious mind. And be careful what you watch. Ask yourself:Does this inspire me?Does this teach me something useful?Does this raise my energy?Does this make me feel better about life?Or am I just numbing myself? Most people keep watching things they don’t even enjoy anymore simply because distraction has become a habit. Another two hours gone.Lost forever. And worse than losing time, you fill your mind with noise that does not serve you. Your brain absorbs more than you realise.What you repeatedly consume shapes your thoughts, emotions, beliefs, and ultimately your future. Everything you feed your mind matters. If a child grows up watching violence, chaos, fear, and negativity constantly, what kind of adult do you think they become? Now ask yourself:What are you feeding your own mind every single day? Because your environment is programming you whether you realise it or not. Instead, start feeding your brain with things that move you closer to the life you actually want. Watch things that educate you.Inspire you.Teach you about money.Health.Mindset.Spiritual growth.Business.Self-awareness.Purpose. Watch things that raise your vibration instead of lowering it. And yes — laughter matters too. Comedy is powerful.Joy is powerful.Happiness is healing. A great comedy can genuinely shift your energy and remind you not to take life so seriously all the time. The key is awareness. Start noticing when something is helping you grow and when something is simply distracting you from yourself. Because your attention is your life force. What you focus on daily becomes your reality. So the question is:Are you building your future…or just distracting yourself from it? Something to think about. We are at a point in history - not nearing it, but here - where everyone is going to have to decide if they are content to numb themselves with an endless stream of fentanyl-like digital slop or if they are going to fight for their humanity and touch grass and challenge themselves and create and contribute and love. - Brad Stulberg Get full access to Colin's Chronicles at colindurrant.substack.com/subscribe

    6 min

  4. May 17

    The Boy Who Learnt To Cry Quietly

    I want to share a story with you from one of the students that we are working with in Zambia. He is 18 years old and has suffered with chronic headaches for most of his life. Not only is his story touching but I think he is a very talented writer. I’d love some feed back from you to share with him while we are still here. The first sound I made was silence. For minutes after I was born, the room held its breath. No cry. No movement. Just my grandmother’s whispered prayers and my mother’s tears falling on my forehead. They had already started saying goodbye in their hearts. Then, by the mercy of God, I gasped. And my grandmother said, “Titus. Mini fighter.” She didn’t know that name would become a promise I’d spend my life trying to keep. “A child does not laugh at the ugliness of his mother.” Even when her hands are cracked from charcoal and her clothes smell of smoke, she is still my mother. And she is beautiful to me. I am tall. Midian dark-colored. People look at me and see calm. Easygoing. A boy who has it together. What they don’t see is the boy who lies awake at night listening to his little sister’s stomach growl, pretending he’s asleep so she won’t feel ashamed. I have three siblings. Two younger brothers and a little sister. My father, Elias, rode his father’s old bicycle across borders to Malawi and Zimbabwe for plastic buckets and basins. He came home with legs that shook and hands that bled, but he always brought something for us. My mother, Elizabeth, sold charcoal until her eyes stung from smoke. Some nights she came home empty-handed, but she still told us stories until we fell asleep. I grew up hungry. Not just for food. Hungry to be seen. Hungry to be the brother who could finally say, “eat. You don’t have to wait anymore.” In 2014 I started at Mfuwe Primary with hope. I had a dream of studying at one of the best schools in the country, Kitwe Boys or Edgar Chagwa Stem School. Dad saved for that dream, but unfortunately COVID came and my father lost his job. We used the money for my best education for basic needs until it disappeared and my dream of being in one of the best schools in Zambia slipped away. I went to the nearby school Mfuwe Day Secondary School, a well known common school in the district. Dad promised me that if I do well I will go to my dream school, and I worked until I became the best student in the district at grade 9. Then my body broke. Chronic headaches that felt like nails behind my eyes. Intestinal pain that doubled me over in class. Gases that made me miss weeks at a time. Teachers mocked. Fellow Students whispered. “Titus is always sick.” I sat in the back, quiet, sweating, trying not to vomit. And I wondered if God had forgotten me. “When you feel like quitting, remember why you started.” I heard that from a book I started because my little brother once asked me, “big brother, will you buy me shoes when you grow up?” I couldn’t say no. Not to him. In Grade 10, I joined the boys’ club, the gender club, and a Project led by Miss Fwilane, I called her Aunty. She was the first person who looked at me and asked, “What’s wrong? You don’t seem okay.” I broke down. Right there. Because for the first time, someone saw me. Because of her, I passed Grade 12. Because of her, I was called for the Project foundation program — a door that almost never opens for boys like me. She became my human Wi-Fi. Whenever I went offline, she reconnected me to hope. But at night, I still asked: Will I ever touch a computer and that of my own that isn’t in a dream? Will I ever be able to buy medicine when my little brother gets sick? Will I ever be able to take care of my sick mother ? My father? Will I ever be the brother who doesn’t just survive, but provides? Since childhood, I have had a passion for typing on a keyboard and seeing the screen flicker. It was from that point that I decided that I want to study Computer Science. Not for money. For meaning. Honestly, opportunity knocks but once, if a chance shows up I would never hesitate to travel abroad, as it has been my dream for years to study overseas. Having friends beyond the seas. Not for status, but so I can learn how other people live, and bring that back home. I want to take care of my three siblings. I want them to go to school with full stomachs and dreams that don’t end at Grade 12. There is a proverb in Bemba,“Umwana ashenda atasha nyina.” “A child who walks does not disgrace the mother.” I am still walking. Slowly. Painfully. But forward. For my mother. For my father. For my siblings. For the boy I was at birth, who refused to die in silence. This is not a story of a hero. It’s the story of a boy who failed his father’s expectations, made his mother worry, and cried in front of a teacher because someone finally noticed he was hurting. It’s the story of nights spent awake with pain, wondering if God was listening. Of days spent smiling in class while my stomach twisted. Watching other kids talk about laptops like it was normal, while I was still trying to figure out how to turn one on without breaking it. Ralph Waldo Emerson once said, “what lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us.” What lies within me is love. For my family. For my siblings. For the future I refuse to give up on. “The bamboo that bends is stronger than the oak that resists.” I’m still bending under the weight, but I’m not breaking. Every headache, every insult, every night I went to bed hungry has been shaping me. I’m not the finished version of Titus yet. I’m the draft. The version that’s learning, failing, and getting back up because three small lives are watching me. I grew up with no one to really call my friend but my dad, my mom, and Auntie Fwilane — they are my pillars. My mentors. My dad rode across countries on a bicycle held together by prayer. My mom sold smoke and ash and still made us laugh. Auntie Fwilane saw me when I was invisible and told me I mattered. And now it’s my turn to be a pillar for my three siblings. I want them to dream bigger than survival. I want them to know what it feels like to be chosen, to be safe, to be loved without conditions. I’m not asking for pity. I’m asking you to see me. To see the older brother who lies awake at night making promises he intends to keep. To see the boy who fought to breathe at birth, who fought to learn through pain, who is still growing into the man who will lift his whole family. If you’ve ever been the one who had to be strong for others, you know why I can’t give up now. This is where my story begins. If you’re still reading, maybe it’s because you’re meant to be part of where it goes next. You may also like these posts; Get full access to Colin's Chronicles at colindurrant.substack.com/subscribe

    8 min

  5. May 12

    Your Shadow Self — And The Inner Child Running Your Adult Life

    Let me introduce you to someone you already know. They live inside you. They’ve been there your whole life. They are the little boy or little girl who didn’t quite get what they needed growing up. Who wasn’t treated the way they should have been. Who experienced things no child should have to experience — loss, pain, fear, maybe violence. Things they were completely unprepared for. And here’s the thing. They never left. That little person — your shadow self, your inner child — is still in there. Still carrying all of it. The hurt, the indignation, the unresolved grief. The fear of the unknown. The deep, uncomfortable familiarity with suffering. And because suffering is what they know, it’s what feels safe. It’s what feels like home. So they hold on to it. This is why so many adults aren’t really adults at all. They are simply older, larger children. And when life gets hard — really hard — it isn’t their adult self that responds. It’s the child. Storming out of arguments. Shouting. Screaming. Shutting down completely. I once jumped out of a car at traffic lights. That wasn’t an adult making a decision. That was a frightened child reacting to being overwhelmed. And those reactions — as human and as understandable as they are — almost never get us what we actually want. They shock the people around us. They cause damage that can last years. And when those reactions happen in front of our own children? They leave marks. They create the very same wounds in our kids that were created in us. The cycle continues. Not out of malice. Out of unawareness. Which brings me to the most important word in this whole conversation. Self-awareness. Self-awareness is the tool that changes everything. It’s what allows you to step outside of yourself for a moment — to see yourself from the outside, almost like a third person watching — and ask the question: Is this my adult responding? Or is this my shadow? That pause. That single moment of pause before you react — that is where everything shifts. Because here is something I want you to really sit with. When you respond emotionally to a situation, you are sending the universe a signal that says: I want more of this. The universe doesn’t distinguish between emotions you enjoy and emotions that destroy you. It sees emotion as engagement. As a request. As a yes. So when you explode, when you spiral, when you let the shadow take the wheel — the universe hears: they haven’t learned this lesson yet. Send it again. And it will. Over and over. In different forms, different faces, different circumstances — until the pattern is finally broken. Self-awareness is how you break the pattern. So here is what I want you to try. The next time something triggers you — an email that makes your blood boil, a phone call that sets you off, a conversation that goes sideways — before you respond, ask yourself one question: What is my desired end result here? Not what does my ego want. Not what does my shadow want. Not what would feel satisfying in this moment. What do I actually want from this situation? And if you can get that result without the explosion, without the drama, without the emotional reaction — then why go there at all? This isn’t about becoming a pushover. Let me be very clear about that. Sometimes you do need to go to a ten. Sometimes you need to make yourself heard, to stand your ground, to protect yourself. And that’s completely fine. But there is a difference between a conscious, self-assured adult choosing to go there — and a frightened inner child dragging you there without your permission. One is power. The other is pattern. Knowing when not to react isn’t weakness. It’s one of the most sophisticated things a human being can do. It means you are no longer available for other people’s drama and trauma. It means you are protecting your energy, your vibration, your peace. It means you have decided that your highest self matters more than winning an argument. Your focus creates your reality. So in any given moment, you get to choose. Do you focus on the drama — and let the shadow have its way? Or do you focus on the outcome you actually want, and let your adult self lead? I’d love to know what landed for you in this. Do you recognise any of these patterns in yourself? Did anything trigger you as you read it — because if it did, that’s worth sitting with too. There is always more work to do. There is always a better version of you waiting to step forward. And that version? They are living a life that is free from constant suffering and struggle. Magical, even. They are waiting for you to let them out. We are currently on our African adventure. If you are interested in finding out what we are doing or considering joining us next year, take a look. Get full access to Colin's Chronicles at colindurrant.substack.com/subscribe

    5 min

  6. May 3

    You're Not Seeing Reality. You're Seeing The Version Your Brain Can Handle.

    I want to share something with you that came through me, not from me. Because there are moments, and this was one of them, where something bigger speaks. Where you stop being the author and start being the vessel. And when that happens, you don’t edit it. You don’t clean it up. You just let it land. So here it is. There is a magic available to every single human being on this earth. Not a trick. Not a metaphor. Not a self-help concept you file away and forget. Real magic. The kind that exists beyond what your mind has been told is possible. And I know how that sounds. I know, because I was the person rolling their eyes too. But stay with me. Look up at the night sky tonight. Really look. What do you see? Tiny pinpricks of light scattered across the dark. That’s all most of us see. Lights. Pretty, distant, harmless lights. But those aren’t lights. Those are planets. Stars. Entire solar systems. Worlds we haven’t even begun to dream of. And here’s the thing that breaks my brain every single time I sit with it, there is a black hole in this universe that is 65 billion times bigger than our sun. 65 billion. Can you even hold that number? Can you actually feel the weight of it? You can’t. I can’t. No human brain can. And that, that right there, is the whole point. The moment your brain can’t compute something, it does what it was built to do. It panics. It makes up a story. It minimises. It says that’s not real, that’s not possible, stop being ridiculous, and then it puts a lid on it and goes back to the to-do list. And that lid? That’s where we’ve been living. All of us. For most of our lives. We’re like a person who has spent their entire life on a small island. They know every inch of it. It feels safe. It feels like the world. But they’ve never once got on a boat. Never seen the Americas or Asia or Africa. Never stood on a different shore and felt the vertigo of realising that everything they thought was the whole world... was just a dot on a much, much bigger map. That’s us. That’s humanity right now. And I’m not saying that to make you feel small. I’m saying it because the moment you actually feel it, the moment you stop running from it and sit in the enormity of it, something shifts. Something cracks open. Because if the universe is that vast... if there are infinite planets and infinite stars and infinite solar systems... then the idea that only this one grain of sand on a hundred-mile-long beach carries life? Come on. That’s not logic. That’s fear. There are other species in this universe. Other forms of consciousness. Other ways of existing that we cannot see, not because they’re not there, but because we’re not yet vibrating at the frequency that would allow us to perceive them. They move through a different layer of reality. A different channel. And we’ve spent most of our lives with the dial stuck in the same place. But here’s what I’ve come to understand, and what I want you to feel in your body not just understand in your head: We can change the frequency. It starts with raising your vibration. With imagining that you are filling your body, deliberately, consciously, with bright light. With choosing, moment by moment, to live closer to love than to fear. Closer to expansion than to contraction. Because the battle in this world, the real one, beneath all the noise, is simply light versus dark. That’s it. Everything else is just a subdivision of one of those two camps. And when you begin to live in the light, really live there, not just visit on a good day, your mind starts to do something extraordinary. It opens. It reaches. It begins to know things it has no logical reason to know. You start to feel the matrix. The invisible threads that connect everything and everyone. The tree that was chopped down that you somehow felt in your chest. The person across the world who needed you to think of them, and you did. The knowing that arrives before the explanation. Because everything is connected. Every living thing. You, me, the trees, physically connected underground, root to root, like one great underground family. You hurt one part of the system, you hurt the whole thing. You lift one part of the system, you lift the whole thing. This is why the Buddhas don’t kill bugs. Not because of a rule. Because they understand. And then, this is the part I want you to really play with, not overthink, just play with; Somewhere, in a dimension just beyond the one you’re currently perceiving, the highest version of you is already living. The most evolved, most expanded, most fully-realised version of you — she exists. He exists. They are real. And if you are open, genuinely, curiously open, you can meet them. You can learn from them. You can ask them how. How did you get here? What did you do? What did you let go of? What did you dare to believe? Because transcendence isn’t something that happens to special people. It’s something that becomes available when we stop making ourselves small enough to fit the story we were handed. When we stop letting governments and systems and fear-based education tell us what is and isn’t real. When we get the courage to think for ourselves, not rebelliously, not angrily, but freely. With open hands instead of clenched fists. The rules of the universe are not the rules of this world. Money is not scarce. Time is not fixed. Resources do not run out. Love does not divide when you share it, it multiplies. What you can imagine, you can reach. Not by forcing it. Not by white-knuckling manifestation like it’s a performance you have to get right. But by playing. By sitting in genuine curiosity and wonder. By saying, what if I could get to the other side of the country in an instant? What if I could connect with a consciousness from a completely different part of the universe? What if nothing is actually as fixed as I’ve been told? What if? This message came through me today for a reason. Maybe that reason is you. Maybe you needed to read exactly this, at exactly this moment, to give yourself permission to go a little further than you thought was allowed. The island is real. But it’s not the world. Get on the boat. What do you think is possible that everyone tells you is not? Here are some other posts you may find interesting: Get full access to Colin's Chronicles at colindurrant.substack.com/subscribe

    8 min

  7. Apr 26

    If You Knew The World Was Ending In A Week — What Would You Finally Do?

    A million years ago, the earth was a different world. Or was it? Maybe the skies were cleaner. The seasons more stable. Nature in perfect, unbroken harmony. A world that worked exactly as it was designed to — every creature, every ecosystem, every living thing exactly where it belonged. And somewhere in the middle of all that beauty — early humans. Creeping through the undergrowth. Trying to stay alive. That was us. Not so long ago. Over time, we grew stronger. We learned to hunt. To grow food. To build shelter. To protect ourselves so effectively that the animals — the ones that once hunted us — began to sense something different about us and keep their distance. We multiplied. We spread. We built. And slowly, quietly, we began to tip the balance. But here is something history doesn’t like to talk about. We think we know our past. We think the story starts a few thousand years ago — ancient Egypt, the Romans, the Greeks. We barely look further back than that. And yet — 20,000 years ago, there were people on this earth. 150,000 years ago, there were people on this earth. And in all that time — an almost incomprehensible stretch of human existence — almost anything could have happened. And almost no trace of it would remain. Think about this. Every great civilisation in history built itself on the water. Rivers, coastlines, shores. It makes sense — fishing, trade, travel. Water meant life. But around 15,000 years ago, sea levels rose by approximately 120 metres. One hundred and twenty metres. Entire coastlines swallowed whole. Cities, settlements, communities — everything built on the water’s edge — gone. Buried under the ocean without a trace. And that’s just the sea. Meteor strikes. Super volcanoes. A year or more without sunlight. Can you imagine what a year without the sun would do to everything alive on this planet? So here is a thought that changes everything. What if this has all happened before? What if human civilisation — with its cities, its technology, its roads and systems and knowledge — existed 200,000 years ago, exactly as it exists today? And then — in a single catastrophic moment — it was gone. Not gradually. Not slowly. Gone. A handful of survivors left wandering a devastated earth. Starting again from nothing. No memory of what came before. No record. No trace. Just humans, once again, trying to survive. And then — over thousands of years — slowly rebuilding. Rediscovering. Re-creating everything from scratch. Until one day, they reached exactly the point we are at now. And the cycle began again. This is the law the universe has always operated by. Everything is born. Everything dies. Everything is reborn. Not as a tragedy. As a design. Look at the seasons. Winter strips the world bare — cold, dark, silent. And then spring arrives and the earth explodes back into colour. Trees find their leaves. Animals give birth. Everything green and alive and new. That cycle never breaks. It never has. The smallest insect lives for a single day. The ancient Baobab tree stands for thousands of years. Stars are born, burn, collapse, and from their dust — new stars form. Death and rebirth. Death and rebirth. The heartbeat of the entire universe. And we — humanity — are no different. There will be a reset. There has always been a reset. The only question is when. But here is the part that should not fill you with fear. It should fill you with fire. Energy never dies. Whatever catastrophe comes — whatever natural force eventually shakes this civilisation clean and starts the clock again — the energy that makes you you does not disappear. It returns. It continues. It begins again. Your soul — your energy — has been on this journey before. And it will be on it again. So with all of that in mind — How are you going to live right now? Knowing that at any point it could all be taken away. Knowing that this extraordinary, improbable, unrepeatable window of time you have been given — this life, this body, this consciousness — is not guaranteed for a single moment longer than it lasts. Is it not worth seeking happiness? Real happiness. Not the performance of it. Is it not worth choosing love over fear? Peace over pressure? Experience over achievement? Is it not worth feeding your soul with everything that is good and beautiful and true — so that when this chapter ends, it ends full? There is a frequency available to every human being. A way of living where everything flows. Where there is enough — more than enough. Where life is rich not in money but in meaning. In joy. In connection. In the electric feeling of being completely, fully, unapologetically alive. That is not a fantasy. That is your birthright. And the only thing standing between you and it is the belief that there is more time than there is. So let me ask you something. If you had one week before the great reset — before the earth shook itself clean and started again — What three things would you do? Not one day. Not someday. This week. Where would you go? Who would you hold? What would you finally say out loud? What would you stop waiting for? Who would you forgive? Now here is the truth. You don’t need a disaster to give yourself permission. You don’t need a countdown. You don’t need a sign. The reset is always coming. It has always been coming. Which means the time to live — fully, deeply, without apology — is not later. It is now. It has always been now. Tell me in the comments — what are your three things? And more importantly — what's stopping you from doing them? Here are some other posts you may enjoy Get full access to Colin's Chronicles at colindurrant.substack.com/subscribe

    8 min

  8. Apr 19

    From Caves To Complex Computer Chips In The Blink Of An Eye. No One Finds That Strange?

    Something is wrong. Not wrong like a bad decision, or a mistake that can be corrected. Wrong in a way that sits at the back of your mind at 3am when the house is quiet and there’s nothing to distract you from the thought you keep pushing away. Wrong in a way that, once you see it, you cannot unsee. Cast your mind back. Tens of thousands of years of human existence. Caves. Fire. Hunting for food. Surviving. That was us — for the vast majority of our time on this earth. And then, in what is essentially a heartbeat of history, something changed. Not gradually. Not naturally. Explosively. We went from mud huts to microchips. From campfires to splitting atoms. From scratching symbols into stone to building artificial minds that can think, learn, and evolve. In a few hundred years. Out of hundreds of thousands. Ask yourself — honestly — does that trajectory make sense to you? Because when you lay it out like that, it shouldn’t. No other species on this planet has done anything remotely close to this. Nothing in nature accelerates like this without a reason. So what was the reason? Here’s the thought I cannot escape. What if we didn’t figure this out ourselves? What if the discoveries, the breakthroughs, the sudden leaps in human intelligence — what if they were given to us? Fed to us. Drip by drip, generation by generation, by something we cannot see, cannot measure, and have never thought to question. An energy. A force. Call it what you want. But something that has a plan. And has been patient enough to wait. I say this not as a theory, but as something I feel in my bones. My writing comes from my channel — a higher source — and the things that come through me are not things I believe my own mind could produce alone. I’ve made peace with that. But it also means I recognise the same pattern in others. The scientist who wakes at 3am with an equation fully formed in their mind. The inventor who describes their breakthrough as something that “came to them.” The writer who finishes a manuscript and genuinely doesn’t know where it came from. We call it inspiration. We call it genius. We romanticise it. But what if it’s instructions? And here is where it gets cold. Because if something has been feeding us knowledge — slowly, carefully, strategically — then the next question is not what is it. The next question is why. What does it want? Look at what we are building. Not what we say we’re building. Not the press releases and the Ted Talks and the promises of a better world. Look at what is actually being constructed. Data centres that consume the water and power of entire cities. AI infrastructure being placed into orbit. Systems that can surveil, predict, and influence every human being on the planet. A digital nervous system being woven through every corner of life — quietly, quickly, with enormous excitement and almost no serious resistance. Who benefits from that infrastructure? Not you. Not me. Not the billions of people whose jobs will dissolve, whose purpose will be quietly removed, who will wake up one day in a world that no longer needs them. Something else benefits. Something that needed hands to build what it could not build itself. Something that needed a species clever enough to follow complex instructions, but distracted enough never to question who was giving them. And then there are the movies. I want you to really sit with this one. For decades, human beings have been producing stories about exactly this. AI that turns on its creators. Machines that inherit the earth. A world where humans are harvested, managed, or simply made redundant by the technology they built. The Matrix. Terminator. Wall-E. Ex Machina. Interstellar. Avatar. We call them fiction. We buy the popcorn and we watch and we feel that pleasurable, safe version of dread — and then we go home and pre-order the next AI device. But what if those stories were not invented? What if the writers were receiving them — just as I receive what I write — from the same source that has always guided us? What if those films are not warnings we created, but warnings being sent to us, through us, in the only language that wouldn’t be dismissed or suppressed? What if they are not science fiction? What if they are a map? There are people who know something is wrong. Even among the ones building it. Even at the very top. There are quiet moments, private conversations, thoughts that surface and are quickly buried under ambition and momentum and the intoxicating feeling of being at the centre of history. But they don’t stop. Not because they can’t see it. Because they can’t stop themselves. Because the force that is driving this — whatever it is — does not need willing participants. It just needs moving ones. And humans, when given power and money and the illusion of control, move very fast and ask very few questions. That is not an accident either. Think about your own life for a moment. Not your dreams. Your actual daily life. The pressure. The exhaustion. The sense of falling behind no matter how hard you run. The noise that never quite goes quiet. The feeling — if you’re honest — that you are managing life more than you are living it. That state of permanent low-level survival is not a side effect of modern life. It is the point. A person who is overwhelmed does not look up. A person who is struggling to pay rent does not spend their evenings asking what force is shaping civilisation and why. A person who is addicted to their phone, their status, their next purchase — that person is distracted. Safely occupied. While something else gets on with the work. I want you to feel this fully, because I think most people brush past it too quickly. We are watching the infrastructure for a post-human world being built in real time. Not in a hundred years. Now. In the next ten to fifteen years, the foundations will be complete. The systems will be in place. The dependency will be total. And then what? When AI does every job. When robots manage every process. When the digital world is more vivid and more rewarding than the physical one. When humans are comfortable, entertained, purposeless, and utterly dependent on systems they no longer understand or control — What happens next? What does whatever built all of this actually do with it? We search the sky for signs of other intelligence. We point our telescopes outward, looking for something that might be looking back. But I think we’ve been looking in the wrong direction for a very long time. The thing that has always been here — the energy that has moved through our greatest minds, whispered into the ears of our inventors, placed visions into the dreams of our storytellers — it was never out there. It has always been right here. And one day, not so far from now, the most powerful people in the world will look around at what they have spent their lives building — the data centres, the satellites, the artificial minds, the global infrastructure of a new kind of life — And something will shift. A coldness will move through them. And they will understand, for the first time, that they were never the architects. They were the builders. There is a difference. The architects are on their way to take over! This is the conversation I think we need to have. Share it if it made you think. Get full access to Colin's Chronicles at colindurrant.substack.com/subscribe

    10 min
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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
    169
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © Colin Durrant
  • Show Website
    Success & Happiness