Auspicium student Mark Straker shares his NLP journey with other students

Yeah, hi, my name is Mark Straker. The movie that we shot that won a Hollywood Award in Los Angeles was One of Us, and I'd just like to thank David Keys for helping me to achieve my overall goal, dreams, and aspirations.

Let me introduce you to Mark. Mark Straker. I explained to you, to those of you who were on the Part 1 Diploma a few weeks ago, that Mark was on a training course that I was delivering a number of years ago. And Mark's been on a journey and contacted me, as you know, in April. And I hadn't seen him for a good couple of years, I think it was. And I think really it's to sort of give a warm welcome to Mark. And he's going to share with you, just for the next few minutes, his journey, his story.

I remember after day 1 going away thinking, "There's so much to take in." You know, that was my big thing. It was like, "Okay, there's so much to take in." Dave said something to me which kind of changed my world in many ways. It was a thing called limiting beliefs. And I went home and I actually started thinking about who I was as a person and who I associated with. And there was an irony in the fact that I thought, where did that come from? Where did that belief come from? Hang on, that's my friend's belief. And hang on, that was my dad's belief. And my brother keeps telling me that. And so all these things that I was taught, I thought, they're not mine. They're not actually mine. And my beliefs are that I want to do things. I want to do things with young people. I want to change the way education is taught to young people. And my passion was basically, I I wasn't that bright at school. I learned a lot after I left school, going off to college and university. While I was at school, I was what you would call one of these disengaged students, yeah, and English was the only subject which I had any interest in at all. And it's no irony, the reason why I had an interest in English was because my English teacher took an interest in me. And my big thing was to say, right, okay, as the education system evolves and changes, how can I reach out to those disengaged students? And because English was my forte, and my English teacher used to say to me, "You're really gobby, aren't you? You love telling stories." And I was like, "Yeah, yeah, that's my passion." And I found myself staying behind after school in after-school classes and clubs and writing these stories, and he'd give me an A-minus, and I wanted an A, I really wanted an A, and I got this A, and this first A that I got, I was like, "Right, that's it, I'm on this journey now. I'm going to be this writer for Hollywood, and I'm going to go and write for BBC and ITV and..." You know, I'm gonna be, I'm gonna be the man. Bear in mind, I was living in a place, I don't know how many of you live locally, but I was brought up in a place called Letchworth in Hertfordshire. Yeah, really small town. And obviously sharing that with my friends, they were like, yeah right. And on the day of this whole Hollywood episode, in the morning I got an email from the East End Film Festival, East London, which would be, which would be shown in, I think, either Bow or Allgate, that said, "Thank you very much for your submission. Unfortunately, your work doesn't quite fit what the festival are looking for, but we wish you every success in endeavouring with your future." You know, it's the standard kind of— And I was kind of like, "OK." And then, 2 minutes, literally 2 minutes later, Gil's got on the phone and said, "You're going to Los Angeles. You're going to Hollywood." And I was like, "Oh, what's that all about then?" He said, "Oh well, basically, we've got this itinerary laid out for you. You've been accepted, but one of the key things is you're going to have to go and give talks in high schools to young people about your model and how it works." because a lot of young people chase the Hollywood dream, but there's this big independent thing happening in America as well. Whatever the result, I've won, because for me it was like, you know, if nothing else happened in my life at that point, to say I was sitting down, had conversations with Hilary Swank, with Danny DeVito, and with Brett Ratner, I'd be like, hang on a minute, you know. To whittle yourself down to the final 6 was an accomplishment. In America though, they don't see it that way. It's like, you've got to be a winner. You know, that's their big thing. I'm like, OK. And I thought, I'm sitting there thinking about all these things, and so then the guy says, right, so the nominees are, and so they do the whole thing, the Hollywood thing, and boom, up comes, and all the way from the UK, one of us, and all that. And then, In third place, in second place, and the winner is all the way from the UK, because we were the only UK entrant. Clint and Julian are up on stage, they've just, "Yes, we won!" And I'm now in this trance, because I'm thinking back, playing back my movie in reverse, thinking about all the things my mum and dad said, thinking about all the things my brother said, thinking about local government, thinking about school, thinking about Pythagoras' theory. I know it sounds bizarre. All of these things I'm thinking about, playing it all back, playing it all back, playing it all back. There are many different stories I could tell you about my life and growing up, where I grew up, and I could tell you many tales of adversity. But for me, that's the track that a lot of people I grew up with spend their lives doing. They talk about adversity and don't actually move into the place where you can actually look and say ambition can actually combat adversity. You all have different things that you're here for, there's different things you're going to learn and different things that you will take away from today and also the course in itself. My thing was limiting beliefs and how you can reframe and change your attitude. And the whole tears thing came as a result of me realizing that I could take control of my own destiny. Because, you know, whether you believe in life after death or not, my big thing is about When your heart is beating, you have life and you can do positive things. And so once your heart stops beating, unfortunately, you go to another place. So while you're here, throw away that stuff. And so when I was sitting where you were sitting many, many years ago, and I was listening to Dave's talk, I remember thinking, "Yeah, but— yeah, I hear what you're saying, but— yeah, but—" And all of those things, there was all these "buts" I was saying. 'Yeah, but see, but where I live is this— can I just ask you a question, Dad? Is that really—' And I was always questions, always asking questions. And when the whole limiting belief thing came up, I realised it wasn't me. And so when I took ownership of my beliefs and followed my dreams and my aspirations, because, you know, there's big things that people may want to put what they call hurdles off the obstacles, whatever. I just see them as challenges which have rules and they have regulations. That's all they are. I wanted to meet Dave again just to say thank you, you know, because people come into your life— I've got to see about reasons, seasons, lifetimes and all that, but I had this thing that Dave came into my life for a reason. And I've got also an opinion that he'll be in my life for a lifetime as well, whether that be physically, consciously, or subconsciously because he was the man that changed things for me.