So, I started writing a blog and then heard some more news. I let the shock set in, I took some time out to cry (and swear) a lot and I took a deep breath and listened to my heart, which has been speaking to me quite a bit lately. For some strange reason, this time around, my fucking head would not answer back and that was when I knew that maybe, I had finally listened to the message that I was being given.

Today I had the news that 2 people I knew, one very well, had died. The first young lady was sadly killed by a lion back home and the 2nd young lady died this morning really suddenly. Both of them were amazing people, they truly were but you know what was even more special about them. EVERY SINGLE day they got to do what they were passionate about. One worked in an animal orphanage, and the other worked as a teacher of small children. They loved what they did and they got to do it each and every day of their lives.

Keziah, the girl who died this morning was very special to me. You see, some time back, as you know, I was pretty fucked up. She was one of the first people I spoke to about some stuff that was going on back then and she gave me a book to read the changed my life. It was called The Cross and The Swicthblade about this minister who worked with heroin addicts on the streets in America. He never gave up on them and his ministry still goes today around the world. That book made me see that I was not going mad and that the dreams and visions I had for the future were possible. She always believed in me and whenever I spoke to her, she always inspired me and now she has gone to a place she strongly believed in.

You see, I don’t know if I speak for you, but I know that for me, I have some pretty big dreams that I want to achieve in my life. Because of my own fears and limitations that I have placed on myself, I guess you could say I have always come up with excuses and the like.

Until today !

How many signs and messages do we need to get before we actually take some specific sort of action towards what we want to do ? Life is short guys, it really is. I know that there was a time in my life where I hated everything going on and when I just wanted to be dead. Call it extreme but I know that there are people out there who know what I am talking about. I tried to end my life a few times, and in doing so, I hurt a lot of people but none more than I hurt myself. It has taken me many years to accept who I am and to truly love the person that I am every day now, realising how lucky I am to be alive and living now.

So, I am taking some action and this is where you come in because I need some help from you. It will be my birthday in August and before then, I intend to stand up and speak. I can’t teach you about internet marketing, and I can’t teach you about trading and fitness but what I can tell you is my story and how to be authentic and true to who you are. I can share with you from the heart what I have learnt in my life, in the hope that it will change your life in one way or another.

Fuck me, it is scarry writing this stuff, but these 2 friends of mine have shown me something truly special in life, and I believe that I can now share what I know with the people who are reading this and ready to listen.

I have some dates lined up and depending on the interest that is shown, Iguess that is how it goes. It will be towards the end of July, early-August and will be in the evening after work for a few hours. There will be a small charge to cover the costs of organising it, part of the proceeds of this will also go to The Gorilla Organisation, a charity that is very very close to my heart in all that i do, but it will be small.

If you are interested, please contact me via Facebook or by email on mycoachguy@yahoo.com and I will keep you informed, and if you can, please pass this on to your friends and family.

It’s my dream and I believe in it, so please support me in taking this HUGE step forwards, and remember, maket he most of everything because you never know what is going to happen next.

You know something – I frikkin love music – a frikkin lot !! I have been watching a new video of a song recently, and everytime I watch it, it brings tears to my eyes. Imaginative, creative, crazy, touching and beautiful in all respects. And while watching it over and over again, inside my head, some more shit started moving around. I saw people being unafraid to be who they were. I saw people coming together as one instead of being apart and different. I saw someone who clearly lives their passion and shares their message with the world, and it taught me some amazing lessons to be honest.

1)      It’s OK to TRUST people.

Trust is built and based around our expectations of the world. We grow up learning and believing things, and as we go through life, things happen that challenge this way of thinking. People disagree with us or do things we don’t really understand because we don’t know what they are going through, and it breaks down that supposed trust that we have in life. Expectations, to me, are really only premeditated resentments. If this person does this or that, then I will feel this or that. However, when we find that we are secure with who we are and where we are in life, it is actually OK to trust because we are in charge of where we are in life, and leave the other people’s reality to them. I never used to trust easily, and I have found this changing a lot lately and watching this showed me that it is actually OK to trust because I know in my heart now that I trust myself.

2)      Belief – in whatever you want to believe in.

Faith is an amazing thing, no matter what it is that you believe in. For me, faith is paramount to my existence and where I am in my life, and I realised recently how much I rely on it. It gets me through the dark times when I feel like the “voices” are going to actually eat me up alive and it makes me remember that I am on a journey all the time. My faith helps me feel the pain and emotions that I go through and it gives me the strength to deal with them – it does not take them away, because if it did, how would I make a difference by sharing what I go through. Every trial I go through helps me to grow as a being and to help others and share the love.

3)      It’s OK to be scared about situations in your life.

Fear is a very natural and real thing. It reminds us that we are alive and free to make choices. In times gone by, it helped us to survive and get through some pretty shit things. And at the same time, how would we ever be able to have courage and faith if fear had not shown up. I have recently found myself being very afraid of some stuff going on, but it made me see what strength, courage and faith I do have.

4)      Loving yourself happens when you least expect it

This video starts with a cup of coffee, some milk and marshmallows falling to the floor and images of people getting undressed. To me, being naked is the ultimate symbol of being exposed for who and what I truly am. It scares me being naked, it really does. Who knows why the coffee dropped and why these people exposed their vulnerability to those around them. What it showed me was that things happen in your life when you least expect it – you cannot control them but what you can do is give yourself the permission to be vulnerable and be who you were born to be – loving another person is the surest way to see how much you love yourself, and fuck me mate, this was a pretty big lesson for me.

5)      Self Hypnosis is frikkin awesome

I have found a very interesting pattern to some of the things that I do, and over the past couple of years, I have got a number of tattoos. I love them for many different reasons and I will tell you about that another time. I had a rather large and unfinished tattoo redone this weekend and as I am no longer a great fan of physical pain, I decided that I was going to do some pain alleviation hypnosis on myself and I fell asleep in the chair while the dude was inking my arm. I heard him laughing at me and he looked over at me and asked how I had managed to fall asleep while being tattooed because I actually snored a bit ! It’s really cool man and you should try it some time !!!

I found myself getting somewhat overwhelmed by things yesterday. You know what it is like when something goes on in your head, and then every other frikkin thing gets in the way – it is like this parade of shit going through your mind where everyone wants to get heard and everything wants your attention. You know what I am talking about right ?

So, last night I took the long and scenic route home, spent a bit of time appreciating the weather and everything for what it is right now – when you don’t have much sun around, you tend to realise how special it is when you do see it and it kind of makes things look different somehow. I looked at all the situations going on in my life currently, some of them big and some of them small, as you may well know and I realised how fucking lucky I actually am. I was getting upset with myself for letting myself have certain feelings, for thinking certain things and for just worrying the whole time and I guess it took getting to the state of overwhelm for me to take stock of things.

I learnt that you can’t control everything going on in your life – yes, I know that we all know that but do we actually listen to it and apply it all the time? Working in the personal development industry, there comes a stage, I guess, where you kind of second-guess everything you are feeling and thinking and doing. What part of me is this and what part of me is that ? Why am I doing this and why am I doing that ? It can be very empowering, but in my opinion, it can also make you, to some extent, doubt a lot of things as well. Now that is my opinion alone and some of you may very well disagree with it, but hey, that is life.

It made me see that it is OK to just feel sometimes. As painful as it is, it is good. It made me reach out and speak to people as well, not many, but it is a start. And it made me realise that some people come into your life for a fucking amazing reason. You care for them for who they are, for what you learn about them and for what you see about yourself in them. They have stuff going on to and when you are in that state of overwhelm, it is so easy to just forget about things.

I don’t know what today is going to bring, but you know what, right now I don’t give a shit. That may sound careless and senseless but hey, that’s me mate, and that’s how I am going to get through things right now. If things happen, they happen and if they don’t, then they don’t but the sun is shining, my thoughts are still racing and my mind is all over the place and today is today !

“The courage to be is the courage to accept oneself as accepted in spite of being unacceptable” – Paul Tillich

I personally believe that the journey to true self acceptance is one of the most challenging things a person can ever decide to embark upon. To put aside all masks and identities, to lay yourself bare to the world and say from the heart that this is me and this is who I am is a pretty tough thing to do and something that, due to my own bullshit, I have been very passionate about in my own life.

For a very very long time in my own life, I wore a mask – one that covered up a lot of personal pain and anguish and one that hurt a lot of people as well. When I woke up in a hospital bed, covered in tubes and needles, I decided then that I was going to find myself and be myself, and lying there, I never knew how much hard work and tireless dedication it would take. There have been times when all I have wanted to do is give up on it all, and so many times along the way when I have doubted everything I did.

And that was until a few years ago, when I accepted my life for what it was and me for who I was becoming and being every day. I have never openly spoken about myself, neither have I hidden it from anyone, but accepting myself as a gay man and a gay dad was one of the hardest, yet at the same time, most liberating things that I have done. For years I denied what people said, I argued and fought about it, and I hated every part of myself for feeling the way that I felt. I made myself an outsider, I hurt mysef to get away from it, and to be honest with you, there were times when I thought to myself that it would be better to be away from here than to accept this in my life.

I met some people who helped me through things, and I finally told the people closest and dearest to me about what I was going through and they were, and still are, a very special part of my life. Yet for some reason, I still could not bring myself to fully accept and love who I am, until recently when I realised a few things.

Some years ago, I decided that to love was something that was too painful – it ended in pain, it hurt people and it just caused problems, so yes, if I am honest with you, I decided that love was for other people. As I gradually accepted myself over the years, I began to like what I saw. I began to accept myself as a pretty good guy and a decent catch, but thanks to my decisions, I always ended up hurting myself in one way or another – sabotaging relationships with some amazing guys, creating shit fucked up stories in my head that made me act like an idiot, acting like a complete and utter fool at times as well by doing some stupid things – just the whole bunch of shit. It has been a tiring few years if I am honest with you and then recently something strange happened.

To be honest with you, right now I am terrified to write and publish this blog. It is possibly one of the most openly honest and intimate things I have allowed myself to think, let alone write here, but it is where I want to go with my life and what I feel could possibly be holding me back from the next step, so I am just doing what my heart tells me from now on.

I recently began feeling some very strange, yet vaguely familiar feelings and have been wondering what they were. Somebody came into my life that changed some stuff, and tonight on the way home, it dawned on me what was going on and why I was feeling this way. This man made me see me for what and who I truly was and whilst speaking to 2 other very special people in my life about this, I realised that I had started to actually love who I had become. I was being honest and open with people, I was sharing from my heart the truth that I believed in, and I was allowing myself to not be afraid to show whatever emotion I was going through. In doing so, I was touching people’s lives and having an impact on them just by BEING ME. When I realised that I was liking and loving me, and someone else maybe, because of that subconcious decision that I made many years ago, I began sabotaging things a lot to the point where I really had a very bad 2 or 3 days of self doubt.

Who did I think I was to feel like this ? Stuff like this is not for me ! You don’t deserve all this because it only ends in pain. How can you feel like this when there could be something better around the corner for you ? You only deserve a few moments of happiness and the rest, well who gives a shit, it is there for someone else.

Now that may sound mad and crazy, but you know what, it is the truth. I don’t ask for these thoughts and I don’t keep them quiet anymore, but you know what they did? They made me see that because I had allowed myself to find myself and love myself for who I was, warts and all, I had allowed myself to see someone else just as amazing who showed me everything I loved about me and more. Some people who have chosen a path to true self acceptance will know exactly what I am saying here, but by allowing myself to open up to the possibility of loving someone else actually allowed me to open up my heart to myself.

I sit here now, a little bit scared about all of this. I don’t know what is going to happen next but what I do know is that I don’t have to hide anymore and I don’t have to pretend anymore. This is me and this is who I am and if it means I have to wait a while, then I am prepared to wait and see what happens.