Leeds: Regrets, reflection and reinvention

If you could live your life again, would you do anything differently? Have you ever reinvented yourself and, if so, how?

Transcript

00:00Would I change anything? Everyone would probably change something they've done in their life

00:04but if changing something changes where I am now then I wouldn't really want to.

00:09Very happy with the children and yeah nice life but yeah I think reinventing yourself in this day

00:16and age is a lot easier. Career changes, you can have two or three careers in your life now whereas

00:20certainly my grandparents would have been pick a career at 17 and that's your life and you don't

00:25really get to change it so it's a great time to be around you do get to reinvent yourself as much as

00:30you want. A lot of things happen just as they need to you might not think it is but worrying about it

00:36is as much use as a chocolate teapot. I wish I hadn't been a heroin addict for most of my life and I wish

00:41I got to spend more time with my granddad before he passed away because he was a great guy and he

00:46I would have been a greater guy if I got to spend time with him. In my 30s I brought up my daughter

00:51who was disabled and sadly I lost her in 2010 and I had to take a break from my career. She was 22 so

01:01it was on pause and I always said to myself at some time or the other I'm going to go back to some of

01:07the passions that I have for things and one of the passions is in filmmaking and writing and creative

01:13work and so I set about to do that over the past couple of years gave up my full-time job and said

01:20I'm launching in here you know and I never want to sit back and say I wish I'd done it. Very

01:28happily I found people who kind of like the ideas and the little film that we're making next month

01:35is you know about the life that I lived with her. I wouldn't say I've technically done anything wrong

01:44or I've regretted any decisions that I made back home. I come from a really humble background

01:48and I've been able to see myself rise to become this man right. I mean I grew to a certain level

01:57before I started like pushing myself to do more for myself so if I had that time back I think I

02:02would have started a bit earlier. And it's actually the festival of Pesach at the moment the festival

02:06of Passover which this year has coincided with both Ramadan and Easter. It's obviously a Jewish festival but

02:14it comes at the time of spring we have a lot of symbolic foods that we eat that kind of symbolize

02:21the the the changing of the seasons and you know a lot of Jewish festivals are about renewal.

02:27If I had a chance um to to improve something in me would be really to work on myself more because

02:34as I heard Jim Rowe said work more on yourself than your jobs so I tend to improve myself because I'm

02:41not perfect nobody's perfect but I tend to improve myself more in order to be like a value into this

02:47community into this society and also inspire other people to do more than me more than what I'm doing

02:54already. It doesn't matter what we do or what we have done before we all deserve a fresh start.