Daisy Davis launches her self-improvement book

By Elena Scialtiel

Daisy Davis launched her debut non-fiction book ‘Dare to follow your dreams. How to have the life you’ve always dreamed of’ at the John Mackintosh Hall last Thursday.

Daisy is a qualified counsellor and mindfulness coach currently training towards her licence in life coaching and neuro-linguistic programming, as well as a volunteer with The Happiness Foundation.

In her speech, she told an anecdote from one of her recent interviews: the journalist asked her, as a case scenario, what her advice was for a woman who’d decide, as an adult, to go to med school, while raising her young family and perhaps working her day job, and what career prospects will be once she graduates later in life.

Daisy replied that her advice to this hypothetical person is to never give up, and when the journalist insisted, for argument’s sake, that it was going to be hard and disheartening, she reiterated that the woman in question was to never ever give up, perhaps seeking support from her husband or parents, while staying focused on her purpose.

Never give up is Daisy’s mantra, and at this point she reminded her audience of the touching story of the junior team and their young coach who got trapped in a cave a few years ago in Thailand, after a sudden tidal rise.

The world watched with bated breath, except for a bunch of wilful divers who didn’t give up hope and ingenuity, and managed to swim into the cave and return the children to safety, despite having been warned by experts that it was going to be impossible, just because nobody had never tried, let alone succeeded in, such a stunt before.

The lesson that Daisy draws from this is: “If something has never been done before, then be the first to do it.”

Sitting next to her editor Vanessa Byrne of Oxygène Communications, Daisy spoke about the ‘rollercoaster of emotions’ that accompanied the genesis and development of her book: she definitely wanted to write it, and publish it, because she’s driven to help others in all the ways she can, so jotting it down was the easy part.

Then, concern hit when she reviewed and edited it.

“There were times when I thought ‘this is fantastic’ and others when I wondered who would read it, and the expectations of actually putting it out there scared me,” she said.

Nevertheless, she didn’t give up and completed her project as her pursuit of happiness and self-growth, a continuous process that strives for perfection all life long, and always leaves room for improvement, no matter what one’s age or circumstances are.

“I don’t have all the answers,” she admitted, because life is a journey of self-betterment, and it is important to keep asking yourself the right questions, in order to identify what you really want and then go for it, with self-worth and positive attitude.

She rounded up her speech with heartfelt thanks to her husband for his support, her parents for having raised her to chase her dreams, and with a nod to her children who unfortunately were unable to attend.