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So I really did stop and change what I saw I was about, and really try to put that principle into play as the center of everything - my friendships, my marriage, my career, my family, my way of being in the world. And that changed everything for me.

I've come to believe that all my past failure and frustration were actually laying the foundation for the understandings that have created the new level of living I now enjoy.

I feel very grateful for the way I was brought up. I did not realise it then, but as I grew older and started writing and realised the material that was there was very strong, I felt very grateful that my life was complicated and that my identity was never clear but put me in a position that was always questioned.

I had lost a clear sense of the vision and values instilled in me as a child and was no longer driven by any mission or passion. I made the difficult decision to pull back from the noise of my life and reinvent the way I was living and leading.

I liked the fact that I was forced to get inside of my emotions and to really try to figure out a lot of what I was going through.

I had a go at changing history - maybe not all by myself - I fought at the battle of Normandy, I slogged through the Ardennes, and I celebrated the liberation of Paris on the streets with beautiful French girls throwing flowers at me. I said good-bye to my first true love and discovered what I really wanted to do with my life.

When I left prison, I had to figure out how to embrace my past.

I had a very supportive family environment that gave me room to explore and discover things about myself.

Everything was going my way. I was happily marching into the history books. Then it all just fell apart.