In this blog post I will explain who you are (who I serve), how I may serve you, what the coaching experience looks like, and why I am the coach to serve you.
Everything Else Has Failed! Don't You Think It's Time For Love? at the Tate Modern, London
You are a male high achiever in everything that you do, a professional, possibly a doctor or lawyer, a corporate leader, an actor or someone else in the public eye: What I would call the 'ego-based professions'. These self select for people who want to be admired, because of their subconscious low self-worth, and hence the higher suicide rate in these professions.
We hold ourselves up to impossible standards and then beat ourselves up if we don't quite reach them. We can never reach them as they are by definition impossible for anyone. We fail way above where others think that they have succeeded but in fact have not. It's ok to fail: Everyone does. It's part of being human. It's what we do next that matters and the choices me take make us who we are..
Worse still when we achieve all our dreams a cognitive dissonance follows, which means that we can't hold our success and our inherent lack of self worth at the same time in our minds. This is the basis of self-sabotage
Up to 10% of people in general are dangerously addicted to work. 75% of high achievers are driven relentlessly by childhood trauma, and you are completely unaware of this. There is far more than a 50% burnout rate in many professions. Despite your success your accolades are never enough. To quote the song "Never Enough' from the Greatest Showman (a great allegory for personal transformation):
All the shine of a thousand spotlights
All the stars we steal from the night sky
Will never be enough
Never be enough
Towers of gold are still too little
These hands could hold the world but it'll
Never be enough
Never be enough
Never Enough: The Greatest Showman
You are insatiable in your pursuit of success. You crave eternal validation. Even if you were to get it, you would want more. The other problem with craving external validation is that it reaffirms to you that you think that you are less than you are - you come from a place of scarcity and not abundance. Neville Goddard wrote ""I will be'' is a confession that "I am not."" Perhaps you are at the top of your game, yet you feel empty, exhausted, unloved, unworthy, ashamed, unfulfilled, desolate, in despair, lost, afraid, and disconnected from home. You feel that you have to constantly hustle, work, grind, prove your self, to get through each day, each week, each year. This may all be so overwhelming that you actually feel numb, nothing, and never have since you were young: That was how you got here: How you survived. You live for future success, and are rarely present in the moment. You have lost all enjoyment of life. You may be angry with your colleagues if they ever question your abilities. The manifestations may be quite subtle, until they are not. Your siblings may have overt mental illness and addictions. Validation addiction is often hidden, again until it is not. All addictions require increasing doses of the chosen behaviour or substance of choice to get the same feeling. Perhaps you are subconsciously self-sabotaging your success to drive your train off the track as you deeply lack meaning in your life. You are starting to falter, even though to others you appear to have it all, and you do according to societal standards, which makes them hate you. Our society encourages success, financial gain and achievement as if your life depended on it. You are rewarded for it. Until you are not. Maybe your whole life has just collapsed - the inevitable result of living a life that is totally out of balance.
Dr Gabor Maté, a world authority on addiction, says that being normal is a myth. All people fall into being what I call 'The Three As':
Angry
Addict
Awakened
Which one are you? The vast majority of people are in the first two categories. Angry people and addicts may become awakened or self-aware through transformative life coaching. Awakened people form a minute percentage.
Why are there so many angry people around? There is ubiquitous anger with road rage, shouting in business meetings, marital disharmony, hatred and poison in the news and tabloid press, internet trolls, and war. What drug that we use daily is distributed to our children on a massive scale and conditions our mind so that we stop believing in kindness? That drug is the news. The news, according to dozens of studies, is a health hazard. It’s a peddler of misanthropy (a dislike of humankind), and cynicism (an inclination to believe that people are motivated purely by self-interest). Those who follow the news often believe that as individuals we are helpless to better the world. In a study of over 4 million news items a study concluded that: There is a “negative relationship between news and reality.” As the Lebanese statistician wrote - “We are not rational enough to be exposed to the press.” So the press keeps serving up sensationalist clickbait and people swallow another dose of schadenfreude in the hope that others' misfortune will somehow bring them joy: It can't. 97% of people believe the worst in people when actually the vast majority of people respond with courage and charity. This has been confirmed in 700 studies since 1963. Dictators and despots, as well as trolls and tabloids, act from projection - thinking that others are ruled by self-interest, but it is actually all about them. In crisis man descends several rungs in the ladder of civilisation. When you point a finger, there are three fingers pointing back at you. A huge amount of manipulation is required to bring out the worst in people. Is it worth all this effort when hate is a boomerang - it comes back to attack your self. When you read books about philosophy or psychology instead of watching news you start reading truth, and gaining clarity on it.
Fear drives the ego and the ego drives conflict. Fear is in fact the language of the ego. I will explain later where your all-pervasive fear comes from. Marianne Williamson says "Its amazing how often we are counting up someone else's demerits, while giving hardly any attention to our own." Those with the most skeletons in their closet are the ones that want to rattle the closets of others the most. This was named denial and projection by Dr Carl Jung, the greatest psychiatrist of all time. It is rather odd that people behave in this way, and very sad, as we are all human beings suffering from the human condition. That is the only thing that we are guilty of, and we are all guilty. Carl Jung famously said, "Show me a sane man, and I will cure him for you." We are all traumatised people, traumatising other traumatised people subconsciously. Fortunately, as Neville Goddard wrote “Each person is born with an infinite power, against which no earthly force is of the slightest significance.” You need not worry about angry people, trolls, the tabloid press and other sources of pure poison when you come from your highest self. As William Shakespeare wrote in Macbeth “Life's but a walking shadow; a poor player, that struts and frets his hour upon the stage, and then is heard no more: it is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.” You need not be concerned with shadows when you step into the light of your highest self. In fact the shadows dissolve and disappear from your consciousness, and therefore your reality, when you become fully present, which is the golden key to accessing the highest version of you, the key to everything that you ever desired. Every circumstance then becomes a gift. As William Shakespeare wrote in Hamlet "There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so." Everything just is as it should be. The Universe does not roll dice. When you accept everything as it is, the 'isness' of the present moment, you are rewarded with a peace that passes all understanding. The Stoics had the philosophy 'Amor Fati', love your fate: This means to accept every moment as though you had chosen it. This is because every challenge or obstacle, or what your ego would call a 'problem', is actually created by the part of you that loves you the most to redirect your course deeper into being the real you that you were born to be. You create the life and times that you are experiencing for the sole purpose of awakening. Each circumstance is a gift, and in each is hidden a treasure. Change the way you behold events - do not judge them. This is the key to self mastery. 'Hell', an imaginary place, is simply the imaginary opposite of joy (joy has no real opposite - hence there is no unjoy, although there is unhappiness) is simply when you know, but don't experience, who you truly are - the highest version of you. Pain is simply the result of judgement about a thing - an error in thinking, due to previous experiences. If your thinking is hysterical, it's because it's historical, as a result of old past trauma, not the present situation. No one is doing anything to you. You can only change what you are doing.
All thoughts either come from a place of fear or a place of love. Viktor Frankl recognised love as a higher power that lives in the "innermost core" of your being. Real love has the power to give meaning to your life and it can use your suffering for a higher purpose. Your wounds contain your wisdom and are the place that the light enters. The world is currently running on fear. Every decision that is made is currently based on fear. Why? Because our parents and society teach us to be afraid. They don't love us unconditionally, even when they mean the best for us. This keeps everyone stuck in ego, which is their terrified 7-year old self, who is running their life. We don't show our open, vulnerable, loving, true selves to anyone. The world is just 7-year olds scrapping with each other. No-one grows up. We live in Neverland: aka 'Never be happy land'. Like a scrap in a playground, this always ends in tears. We need a shift in perception from fear to love.
The United Nations Declaration states that "Humankind owes to the child the best it has to give."
The Archbishop of Canterbury recently said that "Everyone is a mess."Dr Gabor Maté says that "90% of people are addicts, and the other 10% are kidding themselves." He also says that anyone who says that they should only be in one fellowship in recovery are in denial. Health systems neglect the role that trauma exerts on our bodies and our minds. Medicine fails to treat the whole person, ignoring how today's dysfunctional fear-based culture of scarcity conditions our minds, stresses our bodies, burdens our immune systems, causes physical disease and undermines our emotional balance. Addiction is the coping mechanism that we use to live in our dysfunctional society. It is a disease and not a choice or moral failure, despite the total ignorance of the tabloid press, much of the legal system and even many doctors and medical institutions, who are centuries behind the data. Elyn Saks, professor of law, psychology, and psychiatry says that "Stigma against mental illness is a scourge with many faces, and the medical community wears a number of those faces." This lack of compassion is criminal. Einstein said "Unthinking respect for authority is the greatest enemy of truth."
Addictions may be to substances such as nicotine, alcohol or drugs, or behavioural addictions (money, power, success, work, overeating, gambling, validation, internet, social media, gaming, exercise, shopping or people). Eckhart Tolle says that our primary addiction is to people: This may be in the form of seeking validation, sex or love. Sex and love addiction is the fastest growing addiction amongst doctors and other professionals. The causes and consequences of substance and behavioural addictions are the same. All addictions ultimately have serious consequences including death if people are not diagnosed and do not engage with recovery.
Dr Gabor Maté says “There are a number of things that people often don’t get. Many believe addictions are either a choice or some inherited disease. It’s neither. An addiction always serves a purpose in people’s lives: it gives comfort, a distraction from pain, a soothing of stress. If you look closely, you’ll always find that the addiction serves a valid purpose. Of course, it doesn’t serve this purpose effectively, but it serves a valid purpose. What happened to you in childhood that you have this problem? Addiction is not a primary problem it is an attempt to deal with a problem. How do you do that? By recovering your self.” So, how do you do that?
Dr Gabor Maté on Addiction
Dr Gabor Maté insists that addictive patterns of behaviour are rooted in the alienation and emotional suffering that are inseparable from Western capitalist cultures, which, by favouring externally validated measures of success, striving and acquiring over noticing and caring for one another, end up short-changing, and too often traumatising children and families. We need to stop enshrining in gold what is temporary and cannot enrich our lives or bring us joy. Happiness is a temporary elusive fraud. It's a temporary dopamine rush that leaves your body quickly and makes you desperate to feel it again. Gabor Maté argues that the more stressful our early years, the likelier we are to become addicts later as a substitute for the nurture and connection we never received. We need to form authentic connection based on openness and vulnerability. Only then do we experience the beauty of human interaction.
It's not a matter of if you will fail, but when. The sad thing is that many of us are unaware of all of this as it the result of subconscious behaviours resulting from childhood trauma. So what is the solution to all this mess, this pervasive pain and fear, this existential angst, this soul-sickness, this human condition?
How I May Serve You?
Joseph Campbell said “The privilege of a lifetime is being who you are.” You don’t need to take a pilgrimage to a far-off place to find your purpose: You simply need to become more present to where you are. To change who you are you just need to become who you are in your essence. You need to find the greatness within. Carl Jung wrote "Man can meet the demands of outer necessity in an ideal way only if he is adapted to his own inner world, that he is in harmony with himself." How do you do that? That's where I come in. You need to recover your true Self: The one that you were before conditioning created your false self (your ego), who runs your life. For this, deep compassion (from me and from your Self), wisdom and guidance are required. Wisdom cannot be learned from books. It is only gained by taking a personal Hero's Journey. For this you need a guide, otherwise it will take many lifetimes and you will make many huge mistakes in all areas of your life.
What is compassion? It's understanding without judging, and seeing and hearing someone. Those who judge do not understand and those who understand do not judge. One can only understand if you have taken the journey inside: If you have wisdom. I will be with you in your darkest hour, when you feel there is no hope at all, and nothing to live for. You will understand the universality of human suffering. I will see your greatness within until you see it your Self, and then no-one will be able to stop you from finding peace, joy, love, success, and even enlightenment. You will rise above the mess and become a much needed guiding star. You will literally be resurrected from your current crucifixion.
Neville Goddard said “Man's chief delusion is his conviction that there are causes other than his own state of consciousness.” This means that we can only create in line with our level of consciousness. During coaching we expand your consciousness by leaving low level fear based thoughts behind and quietening your incessant negative thinking. You move from using the small reptilian survival part of your brain to using your whole integrated brain: The power within. Your brain becomes whole and you can use all of it. Like the film 'Limitless'. This change has been demonstrated using functional MRI imaging after meditation for example.
It's all about you. The essence of my work is to facilitate self-growth by helping you identify the limiting beliefs (which come from your deepest subconscious human fears of being unloved, unworthy, and of being abandoned or even death) in your life, so that you can overcome them with confidence, in particular by discovering and harnessing your core values, needs and strengths. You are most likely not aware of any of these yet or of who you truly are.
Freddie Frankl said "The purpose of life is to work out what the real work of your life is." I specialise in creating personalised plans and providing tools to guide you forward, achieve your desired goals and go beyond them, and transform your life with integrity into total alignment with your true purpose and complete openness and authenticity. I will signpost resources to you as we go, timed for every turn in your own life journey. You will actually see life through a different lens: One without the veil of illusion that is fear. It's time to leave 'Never be happy land.'
What Does The Coaching Experience Look Like?
Contrary to popular opinion coaching is absolutely not just 'remedial' work for people who are not doing well. Transformative Life Coaching (TLC) is the ultimate personal development experience - involving energising compassionate servant-led leadership, management, developing true insight and expanded consciousness, wisdom and personal power way beyond the confines of the ego, and creating peaceful, harmonious relationships, with self-compassion. It will change your whole life and bring it all into alignment, so that you can drop all of your masks. TLC is creating an expanded way of BEing, whether that be in life, relationships, or career, and will create potentially epic outcomes. You will metamorphose from a human doing to a human BEing. Ego is who you think you are. TLC is about who you may become - your very real limitless highest Self. You have vast inner resources that you are not able to tap into yet because of fear.
Transformation and transformative coaching have become popular terms in business, leadership, and coaching circles. Unfortunately, when words are used so freely, people often lose touch with their true meaning and use them to describe something they are not. All transformation changes, but not all change is transformation. TLC is increasingly a blend of coaching, positive psychology, existential philosophy, and other influences including timeless truths. In simple terms, TLC is focused on enabling actual self-actualisation, the higheast human need: The crowning glory of the pyramid of Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs. Where mental illness takes away the sky, TLC gives you wings and a new and more beautiful sky to fly in: It can take you high-fliers to heights that you never even dreamed of and currently beyond the limits of your imagination. TLC can can save you from falling. I will be there if you have already fallen. TLC saved my life. Or rather, I saved my life through TLC. So will you. Here is my full guide to Transformative Life Coaching (TLC). I will serve you through TLC.
We begin with free connection calls to see if I am the right coach for you and you are the right client for me. Then I give you a free experience of being coached. We begin each 90 minute session with a short meditation to drop all your negative repetitive thoughts and bring you into creativity and clarity. Rumi said “Leave thinking to the one who gave intelligence. In silence there is eloquence. Stop weaving and watch how the pattern improves.” This will allow you to get out your own way. You already know the answers, but you have forgotten them. It is a process of remembering rather than learning. I will listen to you for ten minutes without interrupting you while I am totally present and focussed on you using principles from the Thinking Environment. I will then summarise what you have said back to you. You will never have had anyone listen to you so intently before. This is followed, with permission, by a deep dive into your subconscious beliefs and using clarifying questions. It is important that you are open, honest and vulnerable if you want to make progress. That might iniitally cause some hesitation. I hear you. We are always afraid of telling our truth because we didn’t experience unconditional love as children so we think that we have to hold back on our truth otherwise we will be abandoned. It’s a fear that is no longer real. In fact if you are fear-based and don't show the authentic you, you are abandoning your true Self. The great TLC question is, therefore “Who do you need to BE in order for your goals or dreams to become a reality?” If you feel that I am the right coach for you after those sessions we then book a defined number of sessions or months. We would normally meet or coach via Zoom every other week but we can meet weekly if you are in need, and I will always be available by phone. This is not an ongoing process like therapy. When we are finished you will be able to coach your Self.
Why I am The Coach To Serve You (Testimonials at bottom of the page)
I have trained in Transformation Life Coaching in London, United Kingdom. I have a Diploma with International Coaching Federation Accreditation, as well as the UK Association for Coaching (AC), and the European Mentoring and Coaching Council (EMCC). I believe so much in the deep power that coaching has to transform people that I have had, and continue to have, several Transformative Life Coaches myself. I am a a full-time Transformative Life Coach, and have been coaching for three years. But this wasn't always the case. I have a bachelor’s degree in Natural Sciences from Trinity College, Cambridge; a Master’s Degree in Philosophy from Trinity College, Cambridge; a PhD Doctorate in Scientific Research from University College London (UCL); a Medical Degree (MD/MBBS) from The Royal Free Hospital School of Medicine, London. I have published over 50 peer-reviewed scientific journal articles and I am the author of several scientific books. I was invited as a faculty member to present at the largest conferences in the world. I was voted as one of the top plastic surgeons in the UK for the first two years of my private practice. At one point I had a quarter of a million followers on social media, with several billion views, where I would disseminate the academic literature to a wider audience. Please note that I have deleted all my social media as I found it to be increasingly toxic and any accounts there in my name are simply trolls which I ignore. I was a surgeon based in London for over 20 years, working in most of the London teaching hospitals and major cancer reconstruction and trauma centres.
My gift is to be your guide on your own journey of transformation. So, why me? Because I have walked your path. I am a high flier like you. I get you. I hear you. I know the way out of where you are at. And I know the way forwards.
I am you. This is why I am allowing myself to be vulnerable in this article. So that you may do the same. Brené Brown wrote "Vulnerability is not weakness; it’s our greatest measure of courage... Vulnerability is the birthplace of innovation, creativity and change.” She concludes “If you own this story you get to write the ending.” What more need I say on this?
Four years ago my whole life smashed into smithereens. I was at the top of my game professionally as a plastic surgeon. My father died suddenly and unexpectedly. My stepfather had died the year before that. I did not take time to grieve: I was not given the time. I was not aware but I had lifelong severe anxiety (which I misinterpreted as drive, but it was actually a deep heartache). I had recurrent bouts of depression throughout my life since my teens, which no-one identified at the time, so I just pushed on. I have suffered severe childhood trauma, with my father leaving against his will due to my mother's affair when I was two years old. My mother was mentally ill but at that time she had not been diagnosed. She suffered from depression, anxiety and severe mood swings and an addiction to validation, and sex and love addiction. She was totally unboundaried. She had three husbands and four relationships, and we moved house six times with six changes of address and as many changes in my friendship group. Each time we moved she would give away all my pets including my dog, and flushing my fish down the loo! It made me very disconnected from anything and from people. Being abandoned became my norm. She made my older brother and I watch her having two violent suicide attempts when I was 7-years old, one with a knife where she locked us in the kitchen with her, and one with her jumping out of a moving car on a motorway. I tried to commit suicide via drowning shortly after this. I was rescued by a passer-by, not by my mother. She would be unavailable in the evenings and did not join us for holidays, packing us off to our grandparents so that she could conduct her affairs. I had buried the unbearable emotional pain of being unloved, unlovable, unworthy and of being abandoned deep inside me in order to survive. It was way too much for an infant and young child to deal with. She shamed me whenever I did not excel at something, calling me a loser and threatening that she would have me adopted in her frequent fits of rage. Every grade I ever got at school was an A. My mother had all too regular violent rows with her various husbands. In my teens she abandoned me so I lived with one of her husbands who was an alcoholic who shortly after died from cancer. My brother moved to France in my teens. I was very alone. I have now forgiven her and dropped all my resentments towards her. She was ill, and she didn't know. Her parents had failed to give her unconditional love and she never woke up to who she truly was. She now has dementia and her soul has left her. We are all victims of victims, which is why we need to replace a blame-culture where no-one wins with a compassion culture as we all suffer this human condition.
I spent four decades subconsciously trying to prove my self worth, with five A levels with top grades, a Masters degree from Trinity College, Cambridge, a medical degree from The Royal Free Hospital, London, a PhD from University College, London, other higher degrees and I became a surgeon: I unconsciously chose a career path in plastic surgery which recreated the toxic schema of my childhood as it was a highly sought after and highly regarded role with a toxic judgemental culture, especially in the cosmetic sector. This sector is based on selling joy in the form of surgical procedures to people, which never brings them joy, as joy can only come from within. I can see that with clarity now. I would never return to work in that field. I had a series of mentors who failed me due to their own egos. It's not their fault, almost everyone is sleep-walking through life as their 7-year old self. Despite excelling at everything I did and achieving what I thought were my 'dreams' I felt totally unworthy, unfulfilled, full of despair and became increasingly dissociated, with my old 'friends' anxiety and depression settling in. Subconsciously when my addiction to work and external validation failed to make me happy, as it always does with anyone (I have met billionaires who are suicidal) I turned to people, looking for crumbs of love, when I already had a banquet of love from my own family that I could not see. I had never been loved unconditionally as a child and felt abandoned. I was unable to receive love and searched for imitation love as described brilliantly by Greg Baer in his book 'Real Love' : A US-based surgeon who also became an addict, and then found joy through personal transformation. I was experiencing intense psychological suffering and emotional pain which led my addiction to cross professional boundaries with patients as a result of my undiagnosed mental illnesses. From the outside it looked as though I had achieved everything. Inside I was dead, numb and mentally ill. Us high performers can hide our pain until we can't. Emotions always resurface, even after decades of pushing them down, like trying to keep a football under water. The collapse of my career as a result of my total mental breakdown at the peak of my success resulted in my two suicide attempts and a very deep depression with severe anxiety, losing two stones in weight and sleeping over 20 hours a day for three months, requiring hospitalisation for suicide watch for 6 weeks on three occasions, three months of intensive psychotherapy with CBT, REBT therapy, over 200 hours of therapy, a course of EMDR treatment for childhood trauma, 100 hours of coaching, psychodynamic therapy (a modern form of psychoanalysis), reading over 200 books on personal transformation, joining and forming recovery groups, starting regular meditation and yoga, and an awakening of my true self. I now dedicate my life in service of others. Through trauma there may be transformation as it strips away your ego (your terrified 7-year old self who is running your life) to reveal who you truly are.
Extraordinary Awakenings: When Trauma Leads To Transformation by Dr Steve Taylor
Peter Levine said “Trauma is not what happens to us. But what we hold inside in the absence of an empathetic witness.” Working in plastic surgery was not an empathic environment. My childhood was totally dysfunctional and lacking in any kind of empathy. Data shows that 2/3 of surgeons in some surgical subspecialties have mental health conditions. Over 1 in 5 UK surgeons are addicts. Surgeons have a six times higher suicide rate than the general population despite our resilience. The burnout rate in the NHS is 75 percent. Mentally ill surgeons have a six times higher complication rate. 36 percent of UK surgeons have trauma symptoms, and 12 percent of UK surgeons have Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. According to "The Body Keeps The Score" by Van Der Kolk, nearly half of childhood trauma survivors numb their feelings with addictions. Trauma is trauma regardless of the cause. It is the same for childhood trauma survivors as it was for returning Vietnam Vets. There is no compassion for mentally ill doctors. Especially from the medical profession and the institutions that govern it. My experience of them has been horrific. Doctors can be patients too. We are all human beings. We are sick patients trying to get well, not bad doctors trying to become good. It is well recognised that compassion is essential to recovery & wellbeing. Medical institutions should be ashamed of themselves for consciously heaping further trauma and shame on these doctors who are patients. Since 2005, 33 doctors have committed suicide whilst under professional investigation: 33 families that have been detonated for generations.
Mental illness should not be a death sentence: It’s an opportunity to transform completely, awaken consciously, become the highest version of your self and be the best professional that you can possibly be. Rabindranath Tagore wrote "I slept and dreamt that life was joy. I awoke and saw that life was service. I acted and behold, service was joy." Sadly we are far from our jaded, anachronous institutions waking up to this truth. This is the case for most industries and professions. You are seen as replaceable. It is the institutions that go under the guise of civil society that Jean-Jacques Rousseau understood that: “Man is naturally good, and that it is from these institutions alone that men become wicked.” These institutions know that they are broken and not fit for purpose. Their own leaders state this repeatedly, as well as those that they are supposed to serve and be responsible for their wellbeing. They lack the consciousness (hopefully - otherwise they would actually be truly evil as that would imply intent), compassion and understanding on how to fix themselves. The solution is simple for individuals and institutions alike - wake up and become compassionate and loving. This would mean that they would need to stop taking the blue pill from the iconic film The Matrix. However, I have definitely taken the red pill. I invite you to do the same. Einstein wrote "Match the frequency of the reality you want, and you cannot help but get that reality." Let's go!
My unique offering in service to you is that I have walked the high flying path that you are on as well as felt the depths of total despair and unbearable anxiety and panic attacks that you may be experiencing or that are imminently approaching like a relentless dark enveloping cloud. I have successfully navigated my way through the cloud, with invaluable help from my coach and therapists. I have found true peace, love, joy, serenity, and have taken back my true personal power free of my limiting beliefs, as a result of Transformational Life Coaching (TLC). All my decades of medical training offered me no wisdom on how to live life. Not a single lecture. Neither did my childhood. The Western world is suffering from spiritual anorexia, and yet we are spiritual beings having a bloody awful human experience at best. Wisdom can only be gained by taking one's own Hero's Journey. I have found my true purpose, which is to dedicate the second half of my working life in service to you, to guide you from pain to peace and purpose. My transformation has been one from offering happiness in the form of cosmetic surgery, which never brings joy in of itself, to a career that shows you that all of your joy and success come from within. You are whole and complete already, you just feel terrible or numb, because you have forgotten who you are. Eckhart Tolle wrote "Some changes look negative on the surface but you soon realise that space is being created in your life for something new to emerge." The shift is one of perception from fear to love. My gift is to be your guide, Marianne Williamson wrote "The ego sees the world as something to serve it; Whereas the spirit sees the world as something to serve." If you can learn true self-love and internal validation, then you won't need anything else but your miraculous existence." As Einstein said "There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle.The other is as though everything is a miracle." I have chosen the second option so that you can too. Neville Goddard wrote “Do not waste one moment in regret, for to think feelingly of the mistakes of the past is to re-infect yourself. Turn from appearances and assume the feeling that would be yours where you are already the one you wish to be... Change your conception of yourself and you will automatically change the world in which you live. Do not try to change people; they are only messengers telling you who you are. Revalue yourself and they will confirm the change... The world is a mirror, forever reflecting what you are doing, within yourself... All you can possibly need or desire is already yours. Call your desires into being by imagining and feeling your wish fulfilled... You rise to a higher level of consciousness by taking your attention away from your present limitations and placing it upon that which you desire to be... You are free to choose the concept you will accept of yourself. Therefore, you possess the power of intervention, the power which enables you to alter the course of your future. The process of rising from your present concept to a higher concept of yourself is the means of all true progress. The higher concept is waiting for you to incarnate it in the world of experience... Claim it; it will respond.” Be a creation machine: Creation comes from your consciousness. Our soul's sole purpose is to remember who we truly are. As the psychiatrist who survived the concentration camps, although all of his family died, Viktor Frankl said “You don’t create your mission in life - you detect it.” Once you remember the truth of your highest reality this is the greatest treasure. You create your self anew - you die to be reborn - I am sure this is why my three suicide attempts were unsuccessful. Life had other plans for me - a greater purpose. I was simply dying a psychological death so that I could drop my ego and be open to welcoming my higher Self. You get to know your Self experientially by creating: This is why I create space for coaching, write my blog posts, articles and books, and draw and paint. Procrastination is the soul killer and leads to fear. Action brings us closer to our highest Self. Are you ready to take the journey of the great remembering and of creation? Are you ready to be a light in the darkness?
What you do (how you respond) at the time of your greatest trial will be your greatest triumph. As Jospeh Campbell wrote "The cave you fear to enter holds the treasure you seek." Action removes fear. There is nothing to fear apart from your own thoughts. Never react, only respond, when the time is right. All reaction is egoic conflict, in which no-one wins. Claim your highest version of you, and it will respond and reward you with a world created by you from love. I can tell you, that's a wonderful place to live. Why don't you come and join me?
As Joseph Campbell wrote "Follow your bliss. If you do follow your bliss, you put yourself on a kind of track that has been there all the while waiting for you, and the life you ought to be living is the one you are living. When you can see that, you begin to meet people who are in the field of your bliss, and they open the doors to you. I say, follow your bliss and don't be afraid, and doors will open where you didn't know they were going to be. If you follow your bliss, doors will open for you that wouldn't have opened for anyone else." Take the leap of faith into your new life, and the net will appear to catch you if you fall.
First we will focus on the knowledge that you require, but this is in your mind. So this will be followed by experiencing, coming from opening the heart. This is followed by BEing - it is from here that you inevitably create doing and then having. Instead of this correct order of things: BEing, doing, then having (like an acorn inevitably grows into an oak tree), we get it all wrong in today's world: We focus first on having, doing, BEing. This simply doesn't work, and any 'having'; returns to dust. We will build your tower with rock solid foundations, maybe even from the stones that people have thrown at you, not foundations made from dust. Then you too will proclaim, as Thomas Browne said, “I am the happiest man alive. I have that in me that can convert poverty to riches, adversity to prosperity, and I am more invulnerable than Achilles; Fortune hath not one place to hit me.”
My core values are unconditional love, authenticity, compassion, creativity and service. We will explore your core values. What are they? Hold to your values. As long as they bring the highest version of you. Once you can tell the world who you are and what you believe without breaking stride or hesitating then you have reached enlightenment. All that IS lacks nothing. You are struggling as you believe in scarcity. The Universe IS abundance. You just can't see it yet and that is why you can't manifest it yet.
Your sole purpose is to remember your soul, and always choose to come from that place. That is the end of fear and pain, and the beginning of love, peace, joy and true personal power. Our work then becomes to remind others so that they can remember too. That is why I created this article, and why I will create space for you to do the same, if you would like the life of your dreams. Your transformation is your value, just as it has been for me. It's all up to you. What would you like to bring to our discussions? How may I serve you? We will start with Chapter 1 of the life that you were created for as soon as you are ready.
Sending you love, light, and blessings.
'VOICE for men'
Please let me know if you would like to join our 'VOICE for men' group: 'Vulnerability & Openness Is a Choice Ensemble', where you can find your strength, courage, and authenticity, by dropping your egocentric fears and instead communicate openly with vulnerability. We are co-creating this space. It will change your life. It will empower you. This community is a safe space for men to connect and discuss philosophy, spirituality, positive psychology, awakening to Self-realisation, wisdom and timeless Truths, to share our experience, strength and hope, and to find solutions to our pain and fears. Our meeting is free to join. There is no script, just sharing. Click here to read my article on 'VOICE for men' to find out more:
Email me: hello@transformativelifecoach.co.uk
Olly Alexander Branford MD, MBBS, MA(Cantab), PhD
My gift is to be your guide. Let me know if you would like to continue this conversation...
Email me: hello@transformativelifecoach.co.uk
“Transformative life coaching uniquely creates and holds the space for you to see your self afresh, with clarity, and step into new ways of BEing, which will transform how you perceive and intuitively create your world. My work is to guide you to raise your own conscious awareness to the level that you want to achieve.” Olly Alexander Branford
My coaching themes and services - I work 1:1 and in groups with men who are looking for: Transformative Life Coaching, Transformational Coaching, Life Coaching, Personal Coaching, Positive Psychology Coaching, Recovery Coaching, Trauma Informed Coaching, Work Addiction Coaching, Workaholism Coaching, Addiction Coaching, Mindfulness Coaching.
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Suggested reading
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Hello,
I am very pleased to meet you. Thank you for reading this far. I very much look forward to connecting with the highest version of you, to seeing your highest possibility, and to our conversations. Please do contact me via my website for a free connection call and a free experience of coaching. I am here to serve you.
See you soon,
Olly Alexander Branford MD, MBBS, MA(Cantab), PhD
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I have a Bachelor's degree in Natural Sciences from Trinity College, Cambridge; a Master's Degree in Philosophy from Trinity College, Cambridge; a PhD Doctorate in Scientific Research from University College London (UCL); a Medical Degree (MD/MBBS) from The Royal Free Hospital School of Medicine, London and have been a doctor and reconstructive trauma and cancer surgeon in London for 20 years. I have published over 50 peer reviewed scientific journal articles, have been an associate editor and frequent scientific faculty member, and am the author of several scientific books. I have been awarded my Diploma in Transformative Life Coaching in London, which has International Coaching Federation (ICF) Accreditation, as well as the UK Association for Coaching (AC), and the European Mentoring and Coaching Council (EMCC). I have been on my own transformative journey full time for four years and I am ready to be your guide to you finding out who you really are and how the world works.