Life Coaching - My Story

My story of how I became a coach starts when I went through a relationship breakup. We had been together for 7 years, so I was really heartbroken that we were breaking up.

This was a period of deep depression, and unrelenting fear and self-doubt.

I felt that I was unlovable…

That there was something deeply wrong with me…

That I was never going to find anyone else and I'd be alone for the rest of my life…

That I wasn't man enough to keep her…

That so much of my identity was derived from the relationship, and now that it was over, who would I be without her?

I felt worthless. It felt like I hit rock bottom.

Little did I know the worst was yet to come…

6 months later, I developed severe pain in my right hand which severely limited its mobility and basically stopped me from being able to play piano.

Not only was this extremely painful physically, but psychologically it was devastating.

I was a musician, and now the thing I loved the most had been taken away from me.

I had to sideline my music career. I thought it wasn't fair, that it shouldn't be happening.

Over the course of 2016, I tried to get to the bottom of what was happening…

I saw several doctors…

I had X-rays, which showed nothing…

I had ultrasounds, which showed nothing…

I had several MRIs…

Finally, one of the MRIs yielded a diagnosis: tenosynovitis, an inflammation of the tendon sheath in my index finger. The doctor had no idea what caused it.

I tried so many different treatments to stop the inflammation: various heat rub creams, ultrasound therapy, acupuncture, extensive physiotherapy, cortisone injections.

Nothing helped.

Not only did none of these therapies help, my hand actually got worse. My index finger turned into a hook. I couldn't straighten or bend it. The hand specialist said he had never seen anything like it! That was reassuring.

I got more and more depressed, and very scared that this disability might be permanent and I might never play piano again and I'd have to completely give up on my dreams of being a professional musician, the thing that I had dedicated my entire adult life to achieving.

After months and months with no relief or improvement, it seemed like I had exhausted every possibility but surgery. The doctor recommended a tenolysis, where he would cut open the tendon sheath and debride the tendon of the adhesions that had formed along it, which was why my finger had become a hook and I couldn't move it.

In November of 2016, I had surgery on my right index finger. I went through the private health system because I wanted the best medical care. But because I didn't have private health cover, it cost me $6000.

According to the doctor, the surgery was a success. Everything went as it should.

The day after surgery, I began rigorous physiotherapy to rehabilitate my hand. I was getting some movement back in my finger.

Finally, I was starting to feel hopeful that this nightmare of 11 months was coming to an end.

I'd finally be able to get back to playing piano, the thing I loved to do most.

And then, a few weeks later…

I started to have intense pain in my left hand.

I was utterly devastated. Everything I had gone through for the past year with my right hand was now starting to happen in my left hand, my dominant hand. The doctor's response was…

“That's weird. That shouldn't be happening.”

So ultimately, the surgery didn't work. It only addressed the symptom, not the root cause, because now I was having the exact same thing happen in my other hand. Yes, I got some movement back in my right finger, but only a fraction of what's normal.

So the doctor referred me to a rheumatologist, which is the doctor they send you to when you have something weird that nobody else can figure out. He diagnosed me with an autoimmune disease called psoriatic arthritis.

For two years of my life, I suffered tremendously.

I was in immense physical pain. It was so bad that I couldn't play piano at all. But it wasn't just the physical pain…

There was also the disability.

I lost so much mobility and strength in my hands that I couldn't open bottles or even door handles.

I couldn't prepare my own food or do housework.

I lost my independence because I couldn't use my hands and had to rely on other people to do really simple tasks for me.

I felt completely useless.

But there was something even worse than the physical pain and disability and loss of independence…

The emotional pain and the uncertainty.

My life savings were quickly chewed up by medical expenses... surgery, physio, the various medical aids, all the treatments I had tried before surgery.

I was tormented by these questions…

Would I ever recover?

Would I ever be able to play piano again?

Would I have to give up on my dream of being a successful musician forever?

Who would I be if I wasn't a musician?

What was my place in the world?

What would I do? How would I support myself?

Would I completely lose the use of my hands?

Would I be able to look after myself?

Would I have to move in with my parents?

Would I even be able to wipe my own arse?

I fell deeper into the abyss of despair. It was the darkest time of my life.

The conventional medical establishment says that autoimmune diseases are incurable. So the best that they could offer me was immunosuppressive drugs I’d have to take for the rest of my life.

These drugs have potential side effects that can be worse than the symptoms of the disease, and potentially fatal. The way they work is by suppressing your immune system, so one of the side effects is that you're more prone to getting sick.

And they only superficially treat the symptoms, they don't address the root cause of the condition.

So understandably, I was reluctant to go down that path. It was the same path I'd already been down with the surgery, and that got me nowhere.

Most people would just accept that that was their only option and resign themselves to taking the pills.

But then something interesting happened to me…

I found this determination and resolve. I was not going to let this disease beat me.

I decided that taking immunosuppressive drugs for the rest of my life was not acceptable to me.

Superficially treating the symptoms with drugs that would undermine my health was not acceptable to me.

Nothing less than full recovery was acceptable to me.

This was a crisis on multiple fronts…

My health was at stake. My independence was at stake. My livelihood was at stake. My dreams were at stake.

After going down the conventional medical route without any success, I realised that I had been unconsciously abdicating responsibility for my recovery, relying on the doctors and experts. I was not satisfied with the conventional medical paradigm that it was incurable and all I could do is treat the symptoms by taking immunosuppressive drugs for the rest of my life.

At that point…

I started taking full responsibility for my recovery and health.

Since then…

I've spent thousands of hours educating myself on autoimmune conditions, the immune system, nutrition, health, supplementation, different holistic treatment modalities and protocols.

I've invested thousands of dollars in online programs and courses to educate myself.

I did the Wim Hof method where I was taking cold showers and ice baths in winter to reboot my immune system, along with specific breathing exercises every day.

I've been doing intermittent fasting every week and occasional extended fasting, including a 12-day fast.

I've invested in over $15,000 of high-quality, cutting-edge supplements to support my body.

I've completely overhauled my diet so that I only eat organic, non-GMO plant-based whole foods, which has basically doubled my grocery bill.

I’ve overhauled and completely swapped out all of my household cleaning products and personal hygiene products so that there’s no toxic ingredients which can trigger inflammatory processes in the body.

I've made other lifestyle changes. I exercise 6 times a week. I've optimised my sleep by getting to bed 3 hours earlier than I used to.

I've tried some pretty woo-woo stuff like sound healing and quantum healing hypnosis therapy, which involves past life regression... apparently, I was a pirate!

I spent a lot of time and money on all of these things, but I did so willingly because I considered them an investment in myself and in my health.

And I had a breakthrough.

Even though I haven't healed fully yet, I stopped the progress of the disease, and the pain largely went away and I regained some mobility. I upgraded and improved my diet and lifestyle. I'm healthier overall and my long-term health will be much better.

Because I had to wear compression gloves and hand splints at work, customers would ask about them and we'd get into conversations about health and nutrition and holistic modalities. It was obvious from the depth of those conversations that I was passionate and knowledgeable and wanted to help guide these people to having better health, so I would write down book and website recommendations for them to research. And they would always be very appreciative because of how frustrating their own journey had been.

And as I told people about all these things I was consistently doing for my health, they were astonished at how I could do them. They'd call me extreme or even crazy, or say I was superhuman for my dedication and consistency.

Most people aren't willing to do a fraction of all the things I was doing.

They considered these things somewhat extreme or hard and would say they could never do them.

I realised that I had a superpower most people don't seem to have (or at least they don't recognise they have it and so it lays dormant)…

I'm willing to do and have the ability to get myself to do really hard things that most people aren't willing to do and to commit to doing them consistently.

I'm willing to do whatever it takes to achieve the result I want. That goes back to the first few years I was learning piano and consistently doing 8 to 10 hours practice every day.

So I had an insight…

The crux of the issue was about being able to effectively deal with your emotions and your mindset as you go through challenges.

Even though I was experiencing intense physical pain and disability, I realised that the hardest part of dealing with my health issues was actually the mental and emotional aspects. This was also true of going through the relationship breakup. There were a lot of unresolved emotional and mental aspects that I had avoided dealing with. I realised that I was never going to heal physically if I kept neglecting these.

So then I prioritised my personal development.

I worked through courses, read books, listened to podcasts, did exercises and reflection and journalling, visualisations, installed a gratitude practice, meditated for an hour every day.

This was a huge investment in terms of time and effort, but it had a huge payoff…

I was able to bring consciousness to my suboptimal patterns and start to heal them.

I was able to work through my blocks and get out of my own way.

I shed limiting behaviours, habits, and beliefs.

I rebuilt my self-esteem.

I'm more emotionally centred and have a better mindset.

I'm more resilient and don't get derailed by events and circumstances like I used to.

I take more responsibility for my life and results.

While working on my emotional and mental blocks I had another insight…

Pain is inevitable, but suffering is optional.

Suffering is self-inflicted. Suffering was a choice. Often it's a choice we make by default because we don't have the tools to effectively deal with our emotions and thoughts. So we resist the pain in our lives, and that resistance causes suffering.

I realised that all of my suffering through both the breakup and my health issues was unnecessary.

Through my relationship breakup, I resisted the pain and created immense suffering for myself and my ex-partner. I didn't accept that the relationship was over, and I tried to prevent it from ending because I didn't want to experience the negative feelings that came from the pain. So what was already a painful situation was made exponentially more difficult because of the suffering I caused through my resistance.

I also realised that I had developed a resilience that I didn't have prior to going through these challenges. I had alchemised these “negative” situations into a positive result, which was my growth and actualisation. I could now see that these challenges had helped me evolve to my next level, they had forced me to adapt. And as counter-intuitive as it sounds, I was grateful to have gone through those experiences. I had developed a more empowering perspective of them.

And it was then that I realised that I'm a coach.

Since I was able to bring myself back from the abyss of depression and despair, I could offer other people valuable support and insight as they went through transitions, transformations, and challenges in their lives.

The importance of being able to effectively deal with your emotions and your mindset.

As you work towards your goals and go through challenges, you'll experience doubts, insecurities, fears, negative emotions, and limiting thoughts and beliefs. These can not only derail your progress, they can even make you give up on your dreams completely. So it's crucially important that you learn to regulate your emotions and your mindset. This is the ultimate superpower you can develop as a human being.

Another is realising the importance of having a big enough “why” – a desired outcome that's so compelling that you're willing to do whatever it takes to achieve it. If you can't connect the dots between your desired result and your actions that are going to get your result, you're not going to even begin to take the actions let alone do them consistently.

The last one I'll mention here is realising that I had this resolve and determination and relentlessness. If I could marshal these forces in the area of my health to get myself to do difficult and uncomfortable things, then I could transpose the same qualities over to other domains in my life to get results there.

I fundamentally believe that every person has these same latent qualities waiting to be unleashed: they have these powers to draw on to direct their thoughts, emotions, and actions so they can achieve their dreams.

Next: What Is Life Coaching?