Meet the man behind the bestselling book that lulls children to sleep
Swedish life coach and author Carl-Johan Forssén Ehrlin says he realised many bedtime stories get children excited instead of encouraging them to relax so they can sleep. ‘I knew I needed to strike a balance’
Dreams come true I was born in 1978 in Lekeryd, in Sweden, and lived there for my first 12 years. My father was a school caretaker and my mother a librarian. My brother, Christian, is three years older than me. When my parents separated, we moved to a town called Huskvarna, which is best known for the Husqvarna factory where they make chainsaws and motorcycles.
When I was about six, I used to take all our radios into my room to find foreign stations. From an early age I dreamed about the world and loved hearing different languages and about cultures. As a kid I thought of being a policeman. It was about wanting to help people. Today I realise I’m doing what I dreamed of as a kid – travelling the world and helping people through my books.
I didn’t like school much and my grades were low. After high school, at 19, I did military school for 10 months. I found the leadership aspect interesting, so I stayed on in the volunteers service as a soldier. At first, I was an instructor and planned and held exercises. Alongside that I was working as an IT teacher.
Getting personal When the dot-com bubble burst (in 2000), there was no IT work, so I took a job going to offices and companies and building lights. I met my wife, Linda, on that job – it was love at first sight. She was a little stubborn because she was planning to go with a friend to work in London. She did go to London, but came back after a month and we’ve been together ever since.
I realised I could have a bigger impact if I wrote books rather than coached people individually, so I stopped coaching to focus on writing self-help books
In 2003, I got a lift from one of the guys at my company and he played me a CD about personal development. It was a super-old recording, an old man saying things like, “You can choose your attitude”. It was my first encounter with self-help. The next day I went back to him and asked if he had anything else I could borrow. He opened a big bag full of cassette tapes and CDs on personal development. I borrowed a lot of tapes and listened from morning until I fell asleep.