Penticton author, sports announcer, athlete and counsellor Stephen P. King is done writing books, after his third and final work this year, for a very simple reason.
“I feel I’ve got everything out of my system that I have any expertise on,” King said. “I felt a calling towards getting this done.”
King works as a clinical counsellor, but he is also well known in Penticton as the announcer for multiple sports events, including Challenge Penticton. He released 12 Steps to Authenticity in October. The book stems from the knowledge he has gained working as a counsellor over the years.
“Often I see people acting out lives that are not compatible with their beliefs because I work a lot with addictions,” King said.
King hopes his book will help others move from a place of discovering whether they are an advocate or adversary to themselves and follow the process through to further existential questions, which fits with his previous work The Book of Existential Questions. The 150 questions from his previous book become the final section of 12 Steps to Authenticity. The Book of Existential questions explores them each in more detail, but the questions themselves are found at the end of 12 Steps to Authenticity.
“It’s not 12 steps like AA (Alcoholics Anonymous) or NA (Narcotics Anonymous) it turned out to be 12 chapters. Each with a different theme that leads a person to a place where by the end of it, you should know the direction you want and how to be in that place,” King said. “It doesn’t mean you have to do anything, but obviously if you do nothing everything remains the same.”
Chapters include “Forgiveness,” and “Whole Brain Integration,” as well as “The Art of Observation and Awareness.” Each takes on a guiding principle to help readers gain a more healthy form of authenticity in their life.
“If you’re willing to go through this book it will help you identify where you may feel seperated from the real self. In other words, you may find yourself acting out scripts in life based on performances you’ve never written. You’re performing, but you never wrote the script and how life would be totally different if you wrote the script based on what you actually know to be true. Because often we find out beliefs we have about ourselves are not actually the truth, they’re just becoming perceptions we have that are there as a result of our interpretations of the universe,” King said.
King has already received “very positive” feedback a month after publishing the book.
King is an avid runner, race-walker and triathlete. Holding six national age group records, he has raced at Ironman and Ultraman triathlon distances and has been a member of Canada’s national 100-km team. In 2001, he became only the second Canadian ever to complete the gruelling Badwater Death Valley 135-mile run. So how does he maintain his own authenticity?
“I love my life, I love where I live, love my wife, got a great family, you know, I’m excited by things, I’m fascinated by things and so it keeps my energy up. I love doing the announcing, I still do about 45 events a year,” King said. “It keeps me busy, but I’m very happy being busy because it’s still exciting and fascinating for me.”
All of King’s books can be found online here.