The book · Published 2026
From Morphine to Match Fit.
The story of homelessness, a terminal misdiagnosis of motor neurone disease and thirty-six tablets a day including morphine, and the five questions that built a life worth living.
About the book
Resilience, from Ordsall.
Dave Heffernan doesn’t talk about resilience from a position of comfort. He talks about it from Ordsall, Salford. From park benches. From courtrooms. From a bedroom table with thirty-six tablets in a plastic cup and a misdiagnosis that changed the shape of a decade.
Between the ages of five and eighteen, Dave served as an altar boy at St Joseph’s Church in Salford, attending close to three thousand funerals. It was there, aged eight, that he asked his priest the question that became the foundation of everything.
“How do I live a life of no regret?”
From Morphine to Match Fit is that story, told without the neat edges taken off, with the framework woven through it.
Memoir and manual
The SHIFT Code™, forged in real life.
The book moves between chapters of Dave’s life and the five stages of the framework, showing how each one was forged in real experience, not academic theory.
State
Where are you, honestly, right now?
Habits
What’s running on autopilot?
Identity
Who do you believe you are?
Focus
Where is your attention going?
Transformation
What do you do differently tomorrow?
For organisations
Bulk orders and speaking.
Bulk copies of From Morphine to Match Fit are available for organisations, leadership teams and event organisers. Dave is also available to speak at book events, leadership conferences and away days.