I’m Bill Leckie and my life has been a Fantastic Journey.

It started in a tenement in Paisley, Scotland. It’s taken me to 84 countries around the world as a sportswriter and columnist. It’s been littered with hopes and dreams, successes and disappointments, happy times and dispiriting lows.

And all of it has brought us here, to a place where I hope my experiences can make your Fantastic Journey through life a little easier to navigate.

Back in 2020, I began studying a technique called Neuro-Linguistic Programming, a form of therapy that encourages us to find the solutions to our problems from within by changing the way we see ourselves and the world around us.

From there, I’ve developed my own techniques which help us to embrace change we’ve previously run away from, so we can build confidence, improve our relationships, sleep better feel calmer – and all though understanding our own minds a little better.

As a starting point, have a think about the timeline of your own life.
Write down all you’ve achieved; not just the big things, the awards and promotions, but everything. We’re talking about raising kids, learning new skills, helping others, championing causes, going above and beyond, getting through tough situations despite the odds.

Once we start to write down what we’ve done through the years, it’s amazing how quickly our mind starts to recall things we’d totally forgotten out. And once these memories start to fly, we start to realise just what a journey we’ve been on, how far we’ve come, even if sometimes it doesn’t feel like we’ve moved an inch.

Then, once we realise that, maybe – like me – we can begin to accept why sometimes we feel tired, overwhelmed, like there’s always that one plate too many to spin. Maybe we can stop beating ourselves up, stop thinking of tiredness as a weakness.

That’s the place I reached with my mental health back in the autumn of 2011. When I looked back at how much I’d done, how much I’d been through, how much I was trying too cope with 24/7, it finally became clear why dragging myself up to go again was getting more difficult by the day.

I’d been married twice, brought up a son and a daughter, been in debt for years, had met deadlines every day for decades, covered more than 1,500 football matches, spent more than a year in total abroad at major sporting events. I’d been a commentator on radio and TV, spoken at countless dinners, hosted scores of events. I’d run marathons, climbed volcanoes and cycled thousands of miles to help my favourite charities. I’d brought up a son and a daughter, lost both my parents.

And that’s just the first page.

Fact is, I was constantly either preparing for something big, in the middle of something big or dealing with the come-down from completing something big. I couldn’t say No to anything. I was knackered. Then, finally, it dawned that if I didn’t stop and breathe and think, it would all come tumbling down around me.

I was never in a properly dark place, never suicidal, it was all just too much to cope with. I needed to clear my mind, to put it onto the same sort of fitness regime as we do with our bodies.
This doesn’t happen overnight. But what matters is that the moment we choose to do it, to change who we tell ourselves we are, we’re already well on the road to making it happen.

From there, I began to write about this process, which encouraged others to get in touch to share their own feelings. From there? I decided to take it a stage further by qualifying in what I like to call mental health problem-solving – as in, helping others deal with the feelings of being overwhelmed and worn down that had affected me for far too long.

For most of all, that’s what mental health issues are. They’re not clinical illnesses, just feelings and emotions that mess with the things we do and say, that stop us being the best we can be.

This website is about someone who us passionate about mental health trying to get us all towards that place where we feel at our best.

On here, we can get together for the conversations that begin to change our mindset, you can find books I’ve written on life’s Fantastic Journey and thoughts on topical issues of the day that affect us all.

So have a look, have a think, get in touch.

And together, we’ll make the journey even more fantastic than it already is…